Anniversary: Home Fronts

The spokesman of the Chinese Arn ies made an unprecedented announcement to Chungking's foreign correspondents last week. Four days short of four years had gone by since the guns of the Japanese Army had blasted an end to peace in Asia. It was time for the weekly press conference. But the conference, said the spokesman, would be canceled. There was "nothing to report."

As the fourth year of war sputtered out in fitful silence, the four million soldiers stretched from Mongolia to Canton kept their eyes fixed on the silent, inactive, parallel lines of hate. But far back of either side of the lines the painful activities of the struggle dragged along unabated on the weary home fronts.

Japan. Glory wears thin against the grindstone of saddened days. It was all glory in Tokyo four years ago as the war for Asia burst. "Without cessation," wrote an American correspondent, "from 5 a.m. till noon . . . departing troops rode to military barracks in trucks, busses, streetcars and taxicabs, completely blocking traffic along the main highways. The truckloads of cheering soldiers, waving flags and banners and singing war songs, followed each other so closely that they extended in a line as far as the eye could see. . . . Children in the street waved flags and joined in the war songs." Factories blazed by night, while the forges of Osaka and Nagoya hammered out the iron instruments of destiny. From the islands, the heavy-laden bombers swept away to blast Nanking.

As the fourth year of war rolled to a close on July 7, it found Japan this week still fighting, still strong--but taut, unhappy, sour. Much changed is war-weary Japan. Rice is rationed. Meatless days are a patriotic duty--only blubbery whale meat is on the free list. The production of warming sake (rice wine) is discouraged. Sugar has been replaced by long-forbidden saccharin in many commercial foods. Bitterest of all to the nervous, twitching Japanese is the shortage of cigarets.

Japanese textile factories operate at 40% of capacity. Staple-fiber--a species of rayon made of wood fiber--kimonos (which fall apart after several washings), staple-fiber suits (that curl up in the rain), staple-fiber diapers (that scratch babies' bottoms) have replaced the old fabrics; and even these are rationed.

Railways have replaced neither worn-out rails nor worn-out rolling stock. Accidents increase. Matsumoto-san, the Japanese man-in-the-street, shaves in the morning with a dull razor (blades are scarce), rides to work on an overcrowded charcoal-burning bus (motor fuel is rationed), climbs long flights of stairs to his office (electricity for elevators is no longer available), eats his noonday meal,(after showing his rice ration card) and goes home to bed without even the comfort of his much-loved steaming hot-water bath (charcoal is scarce); and wonders about glory.

Glory costs blood. Sightless, legless, armless veterans., fill commandeered seaside and mountain resorts (one hospital for wounded in Tokyo is so big that doctors use bicycles in making the rounds). Trains stop at villages regularly to disgorge little white boxes, each containing the ashes of a boy who has died at the China Front.

Wars affect the thinking of people--and never since the overthrow of feudalism 73 years ago have the Japanese so rejected all things foreign. Foreign movies have almost disappeared in Tokyo, foreign books except for technical texts are banned. Crime flourishes in overcrowded industrial towns (40,000 minors were tried in the Tokyo juvenile courts last year). Disease spreads.

Japan is not licked, but she is tired. With four years of war behind her and one of the world's great military machines in the field, her stocks of oil, materials and munitions are probably higher than ever before. Only in two essentials are the Japanese worse off than at war's outbreak --in fighting effectives; and in spirit of fighting. Grimly depressing is the knowledge that in the past century no highly industrialized nation has had to outlast a fifth year of war.

Chief worry of Japan today is the spreading vortex of the European war. Harassed by the attitude of the U.S., snubbed by the Indies, tempted by the Siberian provinces of warring Russia, Japan is confused (see p. 24).

China. Not glory but desperation drove Chiang Kai-shek to fight; and in desperation he has won glory. Chiang has traded space for time, has abandoned lowland and coastland, has moved industry and Government back into the mountains, has even moved the Yellow River from its bed and twisted it about hills to confine the enemy's North China thrust.

There is no kerosene for the lamps of China now, but vegetable oil replaces it; there is no cotton cloth, but homespun patches do. Sullenly determined, the peasant in the rear still gives food for the armies, sons for the slaughter, forced labor for the roads and airfields. In combat and occupied areas, war means more. It means a house burned, a wife raped, a lash weal across the face whitening into a scar. It means sabotage, civil espionage, fiery avenging hatred taken form in roving bands of guerrillas.

City dwellers too have suffered heavily. Bombing, exile, hunger they shrug off; but they worry about money. In Chungking, a Chinese sees rice prices multiply 30 times on the black market while his salary remains fixed. In the cold of winter he works in unheated offices while the price of an overcoat has climbed to three months' salary, if still purchasable.

Japan faces the future with greater industrial reserves than ever. China faces the future with industry crippled and panting--raw materials shy, fuel low, ferric ores few to the point of insignificance. On China's political horizon two clouds show: 1) inflation and food shortage; 2) civil war. Still festering are the grievances of Communists and Government, still unresolved are the irreconcilable philosophies of each.

Japan has turned inward in four years of war, morbidly examines its soul. But China has turned to the people, has rediscovered strength. For the first time in centuries, one can hear Chinese shouting the classic battle chant: "Recover our hills and rivers." Soldiers from peasant homes who in other times would not have traveled more than 30 miles from their native villages have marched thousands of miles from end to end of their country. China has a new feeling--that the land belongs to the people. Having fought for it, the men of China, like the men of Britain, will have much to say about its future when the war is over.

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