Hunt Curios

Japs and Yanks Both Hunt Curios But With a Difference

PEOPLE of the Gilbert Islands have discovered that the Japanese and Americans are both ardent souvenir hunters, but there is an important differ ence between them. The American is ready to pay generously for souvenirs whereas the Jap expects to get his free and the only bargaining he does is with a bayonet.

When asked how they were treated by the Japs during the occupation, the Gil bertese will tell you that while the offi cers Were making unctuous announce ments about the prosperity the natives would enjoy under Jap rule, the other ranks were scouring the villages, seizing every petty household treasure that took their fancy.

They would enter native huts, wrench open boxes and help themselves to clothes, clocks, wrist-watches, torches, ornaments and pretty well anything else that was portable. The officers, on the few occasions when the natives dared to complain to them, expressed disapproval of these practices but did nothing to check them.

Equally distasteful to the natives was the fact that they were expected to labour on airfields .and other installations without pay—they had to be satisfied with the honour of serving their new Emperor.

On some islands the Gilbertese women were made to trudge long distances to deliver food (which in some parts of the Gilberts is by no means plentiful) to Jap camps. When they asked for compensa tion for this depletion of their own meagre stores, they were handed a few cigarettes and told “that is for carrying food. There is no need for us to pay you for it. Like everything else on these islands, it now belongs to Japan.”

I asked the Gilbertese on Tarawa why they liked the Americans and got this answer: “When they came through our villages they didn’t stop to steal things from us. All they thought about was chasing the Japanese.” The villagers showed where their sympathies lay in the matter by eagerly joining in the chase.—Harold Cooper.

Captain G. H. Vernon, the well-known doctor-planter of pre-war Papua v was in Sydney on leave in December. Since the outbreak of the Pacific war, he has been attached to ANGAU and has given great service to wartime Papua. This is the first occasion since the invasion that he has been persuaded to take well-earned leave.