Impertinent Flan for Mass Migration

No Japs Are Wanted Here

Impertinent Flan for Mass Migration to South Pacific Lands

RICHARD HUGHES, who is a special correspondent in Tokio for the Syd ney Sun and Melbourne Herald, says that Japan hopes, with United Nation’s blessing, to be able to move five million of its people into the “empty Pacific lands” in the first five years after any peace treaty is signed.

Much has been said in the past 12 months of the Japanese leaders’ aspira tions in respect of Pacific migration. In the past, however, the common Japanese man or woman has shown a notorious re luctance to migrate. Before the war there were more avenues of migration open to them than there are now—the .Asian mainland, the Marianas, Carolines and Marshalls, etc. The great majority of Japanese preferred to stay on the over crowded homeland. As mentioned in the following article there is, even to-day, immediate room for six million Japs in their own largely unsettled northern-most island of Hokkaido.

It is an undeniable fact that the popu lation of Japan has increased by about 10 million in as many years and the re sults of this have yet to be seen. There are two schools of thought as far as “population pressure” are concerned. It has not yet been proved, however, that over-population alone will turn a naturally stay-at-home race into a pioneering, migrating one.

There may be approval of Jap leaders’ migration plans from some Asiatic rep resentatives of UN, But there are signs of returning political sanity in the Wes tern Democracies and in five years from now we can confidently expect that the starry-eyed theorists who have been in the ascendancy since the war will no longer represent us at UN.

Despite General MacArthur’s apparent change of heart, recently-arranged British Empire trade pacts with Japan and other indications that we are now expected to forgive our bestial enemy of four short years ago, there is not a European in the South Pacific, whatever his political beliefs, who will countenance Jap migra tion in this direction. If South America wants them, as has been indicated, let them go there. They are not wanted here.

Hughes’ article follows for the infor mation of readers.

Migrant Plan for Millions

JAPAN hopes, with United Nations ap proval, to move five million migrants into empty South Pacific lands in the first five years after any peace treaty is signed.

In addition, her leaders propose boldly to use Japan’s ever soaring birth-rate as an economic weapon on the world’s markets.

These aims are thinly masked in the long-awaited report submitted by the Japanese Population Council to Prime Minister Yoshida recently.

Following five months’ deliberation, the council of hand-picked experts has at last presented a series of recommenda tions for “absorbing” Japan’s bursting population, which was 66 million in 1930- 34, 72 million at the end of the war. 80 million at the end of last year, and will be 105 million in 20 years.

After perfunctorily endorsing birth con trol, the council suggests that other courses open to Japan are:— Recovery of Japan’s international trade.

Promotion of secondary or urban in dustries.

Training of “industrious and peaceful migrants.”

The areas which Japan has specifically marked down for migration are: Borneo, New Guinea (beginning with Dutch New Guinea), the Celebes, Halmahera and Ceram.

Let Them Go to Hokkaido

JAPAN’S leaders ignore the fact that there is immediate room for six million pioneers in Hokkaido, the beautiful but cold and unsettled northern most island of the Japanese homeland.

They recognise that birth control is a strange alien idea in Japan, and that any central government could easily stifle public interest in its widespread adoption.

And, anyway, they don’t want to check Japan’s population growth.

That is the central point on which all Japanese parties, from Prime Minister Yoshida’s conservatives and reactionaries to Sanzo Nosaka’s Communists, are in firm nationalistic agreement.

Members of the Japanese Population Council believe, further, that in any United Nations’ discussion on migration they could first count on the help of Asiatic nations like China, India and In donesia.

Then they could also count on trad itionally friendly South American countries like Brazil and Argentina, which have already declared willingness to wel come “Industrious and peaceful Japanese migrants.”

“Dutch New Guinea, populated now by 200,000 natives, could support at least 20 million Japanese,” says a private appen dix to the Population Council’s report.

“Japanese pioneers who successfully operated cotton and hemp concessions on the north coast of Dutch New Guinea know that untapped natural resources could yield rich supplies of high-grade lumber, resin and processed forestry pro ducts.”

Japan’s irrepressible birth rate conse quently becomes at once a challenge to White Australia fears of an Asiatic popu lation spill-over into the south and a threat to Western high-wage tariffs against Japanese sweat-rag trade com petition.