Co-Prosperity

The Gilbertese Had Enough Of Jap

'THE following article Toy Mr. Harold 1 Cooper, is based on an interview with Mr. Maurice Reymond, who is at present living in Suva, Fiji, but who formerly lived in Butaritari in the Gilbert Islands and who was on Makin Island, of that Group, through out the Japanese occupation.

The Reymond family are ivell-known in the Pacific—Mr. Reymond’s son, Lieut. Bruno Reymond, vkis among the first men ashore when the Americans re-captured Butaritari on November 21, 1943. The Reymond girls have married and made homes in many of the Pacific Islands; two of them have been members of Sydney's Polynesian Club for many years.

Mr. Reymond, through Mr. Harold Cooper, has a number of interesting things to say about the Japanese “Co-

Prosperity sphere.”

rE Japs talked endlessly of the joys of their New Order and of the pride which the natives should feel in being admitted to the Co-Prosperity Sphere But nothing was done to make this New Order seem attractive and cer tainly the advent of the Japs brought no prosperity to Makin. On the contrary, it meant the immediate abandonment of the standard of living to which they had been accustomed under British rule.

Every able-bodied male was brusquely mobilised to work for the Japs. The hours were long, but no wages were paid.

The labourers were rewarded only with daily rations on the same meagre scale as that with which the Jap soldiers themselves had to be cohtent. Any native who was thought not to be showing suffi cient interest in his work was taken aside and given a thorough flogging with heavy sticks, which the Jap overseers earned for the purpose, and which they delighted to use on the flimsiest pretext.

HAVING been in the Solomons, I was not surprised to hear Reymond say that the Makin islanders had com plained vehemently of the wanton man ner in which the Japs had rifled their tafo patches (taro is to the Gilberts what the potato is to Ireland), stripped their breadfruit trees and, not satisfied with cutting down 15,000 palm-trees for the construction of defence works, had daily gorged themselves on the island s limited remaining supply of coconuts On Makin, as in the Solomons, the natives summed up the difference between the Jap invaders and the Ameri can counter-invaders by.saying. The Japs stole our food. The Americans brought us food.” , ...

Jap greed and Jap stupidity dragged the islanders down perilously c *ose to starvation level. Before the Jap occupa tion. fish were plentiful in the waters round Makin. Now they have sought other breeding grounds, thanks to the indiscriminate use by the Japs of dyna mite as a convenient labour-saving method of ensuring a satisfactory catch Nor are the islanders likely to forget the procedure by which the Japs exacted what they deemed appropriate vengeance for the help given to the Americans dur ing a Commando raid several ago. The Japs had learned that nine Americans of the raiding party had been left behind and were living m a native village. It would have been an easy mat ter for the Japs to round up these unfor tunate stragglers, who could scarcely have put up any resistance But the Jap Commander decided that the natives

needed to be taught a lesson, and he ordered that the village should be destroyed by aerial bombing. The Jap bombardiers did the job well.

They flew low over the target and, in a few minutes, -had killed 47 natives, wounded many others and razed every house in the village to the ground. When they returned to base they were momen tarily disturbed to find that an otherwise perfect performance had been marred by one slight mistake. They had bombed the wrong village.

WITH this reckless savagery, said Rey mond, the islanders compared the scrupulous regard which the Ameri cans, in their November attack on Makin, paid to the safety of the civil population.

So carefully were the targets picked out and so successfully was fire concentrated on exclusively military objectives that during the heavy and prolonged bom bardment which preceded and accom nanied the landings, only seven natives lost their lives.

The opportunity to serve the Allied cause was welcomed by the Gilbertese.

They were soon working side by side with the Seabees on the construction of new installations. Nor was there any need this time for the overseers to carry sticks. The natives worked with a will and there were no slackers. For they now had a double inducement—good wages and the knowledge that this time thev worked, not as slaves in the nower of a cruel foe, but as free men offering their services gladly to a generous ally. rAT was the story at Makin. It was also the story in the Solomons. It will be the story all along the road

that leads to Tokio. The subject races of the Co-Misery Sphere, dawdling to-day over the work set them by their hated taskmasters from Japan, will to-morrow be sweating cheerfully in the service of a cause which they know to be their own.

The enemy must extort co-operation. We have only to accept it.

Mr. J. J. Real has been appointed Acting Resident Magistrate in the Central and Western Districts of Fiji. He will be stationed in the Lautoka area, aiad replaces Mr. R. C. G. D. Higginson, who has been transferred to Suva.