Report on the Enemy

In Stockholm last week a Spanish missionary just out of Japan told how the Japanese feel after three years of war.

They have no feeling yet that the war is lost. But they sense uneasily that Pearl Harbor was a mistake. For that they blame the Germans, whom they have come to hate. A popular Tokyo joke tells how a Jap slapped a Bulgarian military attache. When he was informed that his victim was an "honorably ally," the Jap apologized: "So sorry, I thought he was a German." But this feeling against Germans is part of a greater hostility toward all whites. (There are still a few thousand white neutrals in Japan.)

Only now is the pinch of war and blockade being felt. Rice rations are bolstered by an increasing supply of potatoes. Well-to-do Japanese have used up their stocks of captured Scotch whiskey. They are falling back on sake, the native rice wine. (Last week sake production was cut 75%, to conserve rice.)

The Japanese are counting on stockpiles of raw materials and dispersal of war plants to counter Allied bombings. Above all, they rely on their island position and their fertility. Said the missionary: "Japan's population is increasing at the rate of 2,000,000 a year, which means 1,000,000 fresh troops annually. . . . The 3,000,000 recruits acquired since 1941 are as well-trained, tough and fanatical as the old. . . . The Japanese will not collapse suddenly. They still think they can get away with their spoils."

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