 The National Broadcasting Company at its affiliated stations present the Pacific story. This is the story of the Pacific. The drama of the millions of people who live around this greatest sea, where the United States is now committed to a long-term policy of keeping the peace. This, as another public service of the National Broadcasting Company, is the background story of the events in the Pacific and their meaning to us and to the generations to come. Japan's Food Crisis. In the wake of the war, the Japanese are today feeling the pinch of hunger. To the restrictions of the imperial government removed, the people of Japan are giving voice to their want in mass demonstrations. We want food! We want war! Hunger and unemployment and need for shelter face the Japanese, and as the need increases, the millions are becoming more articulate. Waving flags and shouting, the Japanese are parading these days. They are making demands of their own government, and they are respectfully making requests of the Americans. We ask that you Americans help us get more bread from our government. But American policy in Japan is clear cut. We're going to fix things so that the Japanese will have a hard time eating the next 25 years. Much less have leisure and materials to build up for another war. To find out the food situation in Japan, select one Japanese at random from the hundreds demonstrating in the streets of Tokyo. My name is Kogaro Fuchida. Kogaro Fuchida is a farmer. Nearly half of the gainfully occupied population of Japan are farmers. I live west of Tokyo here, not far from the coast. In the basins in this area, rice is grown in the summer. In the winter, we drain off the land and grow barley and wheat, but we must depend on rice. Rice is cultivated in the uplands and in the lowlands. The upland rice grows in the fields where it is sown. The lowlands rice is transplanted and grows in fields that are flooded. We grow lowland rice. Take a look at Kogaro Fuchida's rice field. The entire Fuchida family works in the field. Lowland rice yields far more than upland rice per acre, but it requires much more work. The transplanting makes more rice. This is Kogaro Fuchida's wife who works with the others knee-deep in the water. Each rice seedling is planted by hand in a neat row. Kogaro Fuchida's two sons work the treadmill. To keep the field flooded, we must lift the water by the treadmill onto the field. We must keep the field flooded until October. Kogaro Fuchida shows you the extent of his land. We have two and one-half acres. Two and one-half acres. The average Japanese farm is two and seven tenths acres. The Fuchidas own about half of their land and rent the other half. The rent we pay is too much. It has been this way as long as anyone can remember. But giving half of all the rice we raise is too much? Yes. It is not right that we should pay all the expenses of raising the rice from our house. It is the way of the farmer. Come, my wife. Now we must relieve our two sons on the treadmill. We must keep up the level of the water on the field, or we shall have no right. The treadmills epitomize the plight of the Japanese farmer, grinding slowly, laboriously. Only 20% of the area of Japan is suitable for cultivation, and only 16% is actually cultivated. Most of the land is used twice a year, and some of it three times. In the extreme south, some of the land yields two crops of rice. In the other parts of the island, the rice crops are powered by barley and wheat. And in some special places, rye, oats, potatoes, soybeans, vegetables, fruit, and tea are grown. But not enough. In the good years, the Japanese farmer makes out. In poor years, he falls into debt, and his possibility of getting out of debt is slight. How can we ever pay $300 besides paying the taxes to the village and the prefecture and the government? $300. I do not know. How can we even pay the interest? 20%. If we even try to pay the interest, how can we buy fertilizer? I do not know. I do not know. We must have fertilizer. Or from our two and one-half acres, we shall not get enough even to eat. Because of the intensive farming, the soil has declined in fertility. This rain will save us a day's work on the treadmill, my father. But it will leach out the fertilizer. If fertilizer only did not cost so much, they say it must be brought in by ship. Here, if we are to grow rice and wheat and barley on our land, year after year, we must have fertilizer. Which do we need most? Rain we will get. But how can we afford fertilizer? And because Japan is an agricultural nation, the burden of taxation falls on the farmer. But only the farmers pay for the army and the navy. It is not only the farmers who are paying, and that is why they ask the tax collector to get the money. Why must we pay in taxes nearly one-third of the little money we get? The landlords pay nearly half of all they get in taxes. But what of the merchants? They pay 14%. And what of the big industry? The industries pay 18% of their income. We must have industries of Japaners to be strong. But must we farmers pay for the industries? The land and the products of the land must be the principal support of the government. How can we raise the food even enough to eat if everything is taken from us? It is regrettable, but I am here to correct the taxes. And it will be necessary for me to correct it. In order to build up its war machine, in order to promote the growth of industry and commerce, at any cost, the Japanese government will have the last possible drop of taxation out of the farmer. And the farmers' chance to get more land in order to produce bigger crops was almost out of the question. There is an all-enervable Mr. Fushida. Why is there no land? First, because the rural population is growing at such a rate, there is not enough land for all. Some go to the cities. The cities are going to? The cities are going. Yes. But they cannot absorb the growing rural population. Besides, we need all possible farmers to raise food. But how can we raise more food than we are raising? How can more farmers raise more food if there is no land for them to work? There is a land on the island of Hokkaido. Hokkaido? That is the northernmost island of Japan. Is it not? Yes. It is an undeveloped frontier, but it has possibilities. I know of Hokkaido. You could have more land there. There are no winter crops in Hokkaido. No, but the upland farming is good. Upland farming? Rice? Yes, salmon rice. But mostly other crops are grown in Hokkaido. Grains? Potatoes? No. Hokkaido is cold. I will not take my family there. You could go to Korea? Oh, or Manchukuo? Manchuria? Yes. Manchukuo has a 30 million acres of a fertile island. There you could grow wheat and a soybean. No. No, I grow rice. Or you could raise a turtle or sheep. No, I grow rice. No cattle, no sheep or rice. Japan raises fewer meat-producing animals in proportion to its population than any nation on Earth. In Japan's economy, there is no room for stock-raising. All this was before Pearl Harbor, while Kogarof Uchida still had his two sons to help him. And even at this time, the Japanese farmers could not grow enough rice to supply Japan itself. Rice had to be imported from Korea, Indochina and Thailand in Formosa. The life was almost squeezed out of it to prepare for the war. And when it came, with it came the specter of famine. He remembered the stories of famine that had come down to him. That year, the wisteria and the globe flowers bloomed a second time in June and July. And the primrose and Chinese hollyhock bloomed four to five times from spring to December. And bamboo shoots were still growing in October. But the rice had no ears. And a sharp frost on the night of August 13 killed the millet and soybeans. The people ate grass roots and ferns till the grasses and ferns were born. On the in September, the beggars were eating dogs and cats and monkeys. The outcast killed the dogs before our eyes and ate them without salt, which is the act of a demon. The beggars wandered around in such numbers that they were everywhere. Many among them were farmers who had left their land. At first, they ate the flesh of the dead only at night. At last, unmasked and unashamed, they ate the flesh of the dead in the open where they could be seen. Kogaro Fujita remembered these accounts, but he remembered more vividly the rice riots of 1918. Give us rice! Give us rice! Down with the Jurassic Ministry, we must have rice! How come we live with Porasi in front of all the rice? We won't lie! Give us rice! Give us rice! Give us rice! It's worth all of your gold! He remembered those rice riots of 1918 and he remembered even better the famine of 1931. The rice harvest this year is the worst since 1869. What shall we do, Kogaro? Quiet, my wife. On the island of Hokkaido, 10% of the land planted to rice yielded no rice whatever. No rice whatever. The rest yielded only 40% of the normal harvest. In the prefecture of Aomari, nearly 8,000 acres yielded no rice whatever and the rest yielded only a little more than 50%. This is the explanation for the shortage of rice this year. What will we do, Kogaro? We will be hungry. All this Kogaro Fujita remembered when Japan went to war with China in 1937. Then his sons were taken by the army. Most of the army and the navy were recruited from the land and those young men who did not go into the armed forces left the land to go into the war industries. In the same year that the Japanese attacked China, the farmers of Japan suffered another blow. The government has undertaken a new policy as to phosphate. This is the reason there is a shortage of phosphate for fertilizer. But we must have fertilizer. From now on, much or less will be available. Why? If we are to raise food, we must have... We cannot use our foreign exchange for both of phosphate and war materials. I do not understand. We are to save our foreign exchange so that we may buy war materials abroad and import them into Japan. It is necessary that we cut down on importing phosphate. I do not understand. If we are to raise rice, we, the government, will undertake to manufacture chemical fertilizer. When? At once. When can we get it? That the government is unable to say after this time. There was not adequate machinery for the manufacture of chemical fertilizer. The soil grew poorer. Use a fish meal or animal manure. But fish meal was inscracingly scarce but the gasoline rations to fishermen had been cut and the fishing of the Japanese had therefore been limited. And as for animal manure, there was little livestock to begin with. Horses in most cases had been owned jointly by several farmers. And now the few horses were being shipped to the Japanese armies on the continent of Asia. The situation worsened. The British and the American embargoes have made it impossible to import any phosphates, whatever, for fertilizer. This was due lie, 1941. What can we do? Until now we have had at least some phosphates for fertilizer. It cannot be imported. Therefore it is not available. Our land is growing out. If we are to eat orphaned and raise rice for the cities and for our armies overseas, we must have fertilizer. The Japanese farmer had long known this was coming. Not just war against China, but war with the United States and Britain. He had not been told specifically but he knew. For he had paid for the preparations. He had been taxed to promote industry and commerce and to build the war machine. In the face of mounting difficulties he had been urged to raise more. His sons had been taken. He had been conditioned for the war. And when Pearl Harbor came, he accepted it as a natural thing. The Chinese in the occupied areas of China are being unreasonable. They have refused to grow rice for our troops under the mainland. Our troops do not like the inferior rice of Indochina and Thailand. We therefore must feed them with our home-grown rice. But we cannot grow enough even to feed the people here at home in Japan. We must import more rice from Southeast Asia. That was more easily said than done. Seven more Japanese cargo ships have been sunk in the South China Sea. These vessels were carrying war supplies and home-grown Japanese rice to the Japanese troops in the South West Pacific. And were returning to Japan with rice grown from Korea and Indochina, Thailand and Burma. The twilight Japanese cargo carriers have been sunk in the South China Sea by American and British submarines. Nine more Japanese ships have been sent to the bottom of the South China Sea and the toll is growing. With the thinking of 16 more Japanese cargo carriers off the coast of Pomosa in the South China Sea, the Allies have now... Japan's rice line to the South was blasted and the troops overseas as well as the people at home felt annoying need for food. If we could get fish, if we only could get fish... Paul Jo says that there's absolutely no worry about food. He says that we will produce the food we need. How can we cook our own? We can raise no more rice and if there is no fish... To quiet the complaints of the people in Japan, stories were circulated of the shortages that the overseas troops were suffering. We here in the homeland are well fed and well cared for compared with our troops in the island of the South Sea. The troops on the island cut off by the enemy are now subsisting on whatever they can find in the jungles. They are eating lizards and snakes and wild birds and grubs from rotten logs and in many cases even crocodiles. They have no rice and except for the edible plants they can find have no vegetables. We here at home in Japan, indeed, are well fed and well fed. And as the Japanese men of war and cargo vessels were virtually driven from the sea, so also were her fishing fleets. The Japanese depended on this fish and other seafood almost completely for the protein in their diet. But before many months had passed after Pearl Harbor, this source of food was crippled. As there was not enough rice, there was not enough fish. The Japanese tightened their belts. It is well enough for the government to tell us to place beans and peas in the window until they sprout in order to get more to eat out of them. But what can we do when we have no beans or peas? Perhaps there will be more soybeans from Manjuku. Perhaps. Grasshoppers can be dipped in soybean sauce and then cooked. This is food for some. Grasshoppers. They say there is more food than grasshoppers than in fish. Fish. If we only had fish. The Japanese used the entire fish. The fish heads and bones and scales and skin and ventriles they pulverized and made into cakes. Seaweed they dried and ground and made into noodles. The government has said that we can never be starved out as long as we have soybeans on fish. But how can we get fish? And these soybeans must be brought from Manjuku. Soybeans meant transportation and distribution. But these systems were overloaded and inefficient in breaking down. The war makers knew this. But in their bureaucracy we're unable to meet the situation. Accordingly they took other steps. In order to meet the food emergency our school children will immediately start planting our soybeans along the railways and the highways. Farmers will give all possible help to the school children. The campaign of the school children will get underway at once. Throughout Japan the school children planted soybeans. And meantime official Japan issued a warning to the farmers. Production of food is service with the farmer must continue even at the sacrifice of his life. A person who eats what he has grown is not a Japanese. Even now there are some who fasten themselves at the expense of the nation. The things they grow do not belong to them but belong to the nation. The farmers must change their spirit. The farmer who says I will not grow it because it will be taken away from me is guilty of a crime against his nation. The pressure for food increased. Not only soybeans but other products were planted sweet potatoes, pumpkins and native greens. And then the blockade and the destruction of Japanese shipping began to tell in another way. Where is Keizo? He has not yet come back. We can catch no fish with our boats tied up here at the dock. We have not been out of the harbor for ten days. The engines of our fishing boats will not turn without gasoline. We should get our ration. Is there a shortage of gasoline or is it something else? That is what Keizo has gone to find out. It is our corrupt politician. That is the reason. Keizo said that it might be that there is no way to get the gasoline to us. That's why it is brought in. Look, look at this harbor full of fishing boats barring like corks from the water and not one of them with the gasoline to go to sea. Oh, there is Keizo now. Yes. Look at him, like a beaten dog. What is the news, Keizo? There is no gasoline now. No gasoline? How can we fish? They say there will be some. When? They do not know for sure. Why cannot we get gasoline if it has been brought in? Is it because of our corrupt politicians? There is no gasoline. The ships that water bring at them have been sunk. We should at least get our ration of the gasoline there is. Yes. What are we to do, Keizo? When gasoline is available, we will get our ration. That is what they say. Tojo had said there would be no worry about food. With defeat smashing the Japanese forces overseas and the mounting tenseness at home, the Tojo government fell. Kuniaki Kuiso, his successor, was more frank. We must grow more food. We must bend our backs to the task of growing more and more food. We must grow more food. Now Japan was fighting almost the entire world alone. Kogaro Fuchida and his wife were crushed. Stand away, my wife. This tree is coming down. Here? Stand away. Here it comes. What is she, Ms. Irkokaro? Two countries that are no more than suffering. What are we to do? If we are to sell charcoal, we must have wood. But if we cut all the young trees... We have cut all the grown trees. One day, there will be no trees. How else can we get money between crops? Charcoal we can sell. Every house needs charcoal. We should let the trees grow at least three years. Saplings like this... What would we do in the meantime? Well, let us not talk more. Now, take hold of the sapling there. Fuchida! Fuchida! It is now our neighbor. Fuchida! Fuchida! The war is ended. What? The war is ended. The world has just come. You see, my wife, just as they promised us, we have won. No. No. We have lost. Lost. The enemy has won? Yes. The enemy has won. The Emperor has stopped the war. We have lost. Lost. How could we lose when we have given so much? Japan's war-making policy had reached its climax in calamity. But the end of the war could not re-establish the status quo ante. The land was impoverished. The people were suffering from malnutrition, from lack of housing, and from unemployment. Kogaro Fuchida's two sons would not be back, nor would millions of other farm sons. Slowly, the meaning of absolute total defeat is sinking in. For years, in addition to the foodstuffs we imported from Southeast Asia, we got rice from Korea, soybeans from Manchuria, and sugar and fruits from Formosa. Now, Korea and Manchuria and Formosa are lost to us. In the next year, as many as 10 million Japanese may die. This is the Japanese estimate of their situation. Japan is in danger of starvation. American experts are studying the situation. The greatest need is in the industrial sections. It's difficult to get what food there is to these sections because of the poor transportation. The overburdened distribution system has bogged down. Though the Japanese servicemen are being discharged at a rapid rate, it will take some time before they are integrated into food reducing and food distribution. There is no one to help us now on our land. The Japanese will miss the agricultural manpower which was drafted into the Army and Navy, and which will not return. There is no one to help us, my wife. We must have food to tide us over. How can we live on what we have after all that has been taken from us all these years? The living store of foodstuffs is low. We have enough food on hand to supply only 1,500 calories per day for each Japanese for the next year. Against this, the American soldier gets between 3,800 and 5,000 calories a day. We must have at least 2,160 calories a day and order simply to maintain health. The Japanese today are looking for help to the nations they tried to conquer. They faced the lean days ahead. They remember the lean days of yesterday. The people ate grass roots and ferns till the grasses and ferns were gone. And in September, the beggars were eating dogs and cats and the monkeys. The outcast killed the dogs before our eyes and ate them without salt, which is the act of a demon. Today, the fate of the millions of Japanese is in the hands of the ones they try to destroy. Today, the people of Japan for the first time in years are beginning to realize and understand their situation. And for the first time in years are giving voice to their wants in mass demonstrations. Give us food. We want food. We want work. Give us food. Give us food. And among the demonstrators are farmers like Kogaro Fuchida who all their lives have raised food and now are without it. You have been listening to The Pacific Story, presented by the national broadcasting company and its affiliated independent stations as a public service to clarify events in the Pacific and to make understandable across currents of life in the Pacific Basin. For a reprint of this Pacific Story program, send 10 cents in stamps or a coin to University of California Press, Berkeley, California. The Pacific Story is written and directed by Arnold Marquess. The original musical score was composed and conducted by Thomas Paluso. Your narrator, Gain Whitman. This program came to you from Hollywood. This is the national broadcasting company. You have been watching this program for the first time in years. You have been watching this program for the first time in years. You have been watching this program for the first time in years. You have been watching this program for the first time in years. Thank you for your time, Gain.