OF eirae | — - Vancouver, B.C., Saturday, April 10, 1943 5 Cents F:vident from a close study of } anese newspapers recently ar- ‘ad in this capital, which give first authentic news of what been happening since Pearl thor on the Japanese labor at apan is a poor country in na- ai resources and, relative to {} West, in industrial develop- Pot. But the great trusts that trel her economy—the houses — Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo si Yasuda—are as firmly en- gnthed as those of any other ‘Beintry. |Vartime sacrifices have fallen jirely on the common people, fo even before the war lived £ above bare subsistence level. janese government statistics iwed that in May, 1941, the av- ' ge wage for men was 82 yen § 3.25) per month, for women 31 (a ($7.30). /}HE manpower for Japan’s army and -nayy is provided inly by the peasants. They Ke the sacrifices of war in od. Japan’s industrial work- are making their sacrifices in » ith and strength. Despite se- ® inflation, fixed wage ceil- s have kept their earnings 7, They are eating less food. to Serious is their position that y have braved savage suppres- = to stage lightning strikes and “ionstrations. Desertion of jobs common. The plight of the tkers has been echoed even recent conferences of the Im- tial Rule Assistance Associa- ia, Japan’s totalitarian party. fapan’s political parties, the Wukai, Minseito and Social “sss Party, were suppressed in jy, 1940, and replaced by the AA, which was designed to ibrace all elements of the popu- ion—business, labor, landlords d peasants—in one big “fellow- = p of service to the Emperor.” sikes and public meetings were ade illegal in Japan by the Na- nal Mobilization Law of March, N38, which also froze wages. "ade unions were abolished in jo decrees for the regimen- tation of labor have been iblished. Qne is political, aimed » those who have the courage * protest. It authorizes the ar- (st of suspected malcontents, ©2n if no actual evidence can ’ proved against them. Another eree empowers the government shift workers to any part of 2 “Co-prosperity Sphere.” |The Japanese military fascist Hvernment treats the whole /O-prosperity Sphere” as one 9st labor pool—but with certain yfervations which nullify most the advantages of this ap- Dach. The Japanese brand of fee theory demands that in- “Strial skills be reserved for the aster nation. In practice this sans the scattering of Japan's eady inadequate supply of CHUNGEING. ‘ES “he fact that Japan’s conquests have given her eontrol over a population of between 350,000,000 and 4,000,000 — one-third as large again as the Sooulnaion con- led by Nazi Germany — the fascists leaders of Japan today |. facing a labor problem as tough as that of their Axis part- *s, and they are finding it even harder to handle. So much skilled labor throughout the oc- cupied areas. To make this pos- sible, Chinese and Korean labor is brought to Japan proper to do heavy unskilled or semi-skilled tasks. Hi Japanese have a difficult labor problem on their hands in the Philippine Islands due to the active resistance of Chinese and Hilipino workers. “The Fili- pinos are unwilling to forget the past and do not seem able to ab- sorp the morality of the New Order in Asia,” one writer says. In the Philippines, as elsewhere in Japan’s “Co-Prosperity Sphere,’ the policy of the invaders is to confine native labor to unskilled jobs: skilled Chinese and Filipino workers are ousted and their places taken by Japanese. by ISRAEL EPSTEIN In Malaya the Chinese formerly enjoyed a superior economic posi-= tion. Malayaris have never taken kindly to industrial labor under the conditions of exploitation pre- vailing in their country; the Chinese predominated not only among the skilled workers but also among the business men, The Japanese have set out at all costs to uproot this Chinese mastery. During twelve months of occupa- tion they have killed over 20,000 skilled Chinese workers in Mal- aya, ostensibly for haying contri- buted to patriotic funds before the war. Thousands of others have been driven from employ- ment. Chinese are still used on plantations and in the mines, but to tend machines the Japanese have imported their own workers from Japan. These imported workers wear uniforms and are under military discipline. In Java, where the Dutch had built some of the most profitable colonial monopolies in history, the Japanese left the old system undisturbed. They tried a few ex- periments of their own at first, but quickly retreated. The Dutch overseers who ran these projects before the war are still being used by \the new masters. But for heavy labor for development pro- jects in Sumatra and New Guinea, the Japanese have had to bring in workers from Java and Malaya. HAT Japan is experiencing a shortage of sailors to man its Merchant marine (now increas- ingly composed of wooden ships of 100 to 500 tons, owing to allied sinkings of larger vessels) is zayppzaan: shown by the following strange fact: Mongols from the interior of Asia are now being used ag seamen on Japanese ships. This development began about a@ year ago when the Japanese army brought three young men from the steppes of Inner Mon- golia to Dairen, principal port on the Kwantung Peninsula, and sent them to a merchant sea- men’s training school to find out whether they would. make good AB’s. Today army writers report in the press with a great show of pride that for the first time in history Japanese genius has put Mongols on the water. Tokyo does not use Chinese for its ships, for fear of both espionage and Sabotage. .and Militarists Finding Problem Hard To Handle ie is now clear that lack of shipping and the predatory policy of Japanese imperialism have led to serious maladjust- ments in the economy of the “‘Co- Prosperity Sphere.” So Japan’s latest move has been to endow various ‘deserving’ industrialists with concessions government blessings to go out into the new empire and see what they can do for themselves and the war effort. At govern- ment expense staffs of university graduates have been trained in the Shonan training school in Tokyo for the special conditions they will meet in the South Seas. But it is fairly certain that their work, too, will boil down mainly to scavenging. There is a prece- Labor - dent for this in China, where the main function of the army, in the intervals between battles, is to ‘sweep the battlefield’—that is, to rob the population of all that Japan can use for war. Robbery and enslavement of the subject peoples, harsher exploita- tion and greater impoverishment of its own workers and peasants have so far been the accompani- ment of Japanese conquest. Not development, even for the benefit of the conqueror, but dislocation and despoilation have followed the Japanese wherever they have fone. It is this factor above all others that will seal the fate of the empire of the Japanese military — fascists. Sikhs- Brave Foes Of Tyranny By CYNTHIA CARTER Ox bright morning around the first of this century, when the west was still pretty much of a frontier and cheap labor was needed to stretch lines of rails from one end of Canada to the other, to fell trees in the lumber camps and man the sawmills, a group of men /stood on the deck of a boat in the Pacific, watching Van- couver Island grow out of the mist. These men were tall, and their faces were bronze below brilli- antly colored turbans. They were the first Sikhs to come to Brit- ish Columbia, Rumors of high Canadian wages—probably started by the Same people who caused tens of thousands of coolies to be shipped to Canada from Hong Kong— reached India in the last days of the 1890’s, and a number of Sikhs set out to make their fortunes. They expected a sort of paradise, with beautiful houses, wonderful food, and lots of money. They found instead wages that, while higher than those paid in India, weren’t what they had beeh prom- ised. They found, too, that while every one of them was born a British citizen, they were denied the basic democratic right of the vote. In 1908 they were refused further entry to Canada, although Japanese were settle here openly. INGE then the number of Sikbs has been rapidly dim- inishing, until today there are only 1,200 in all of British Colum- bia. Discrimination against them is widely practiced. They are barred from certain professions. They are not to be employed on public works, it has been said, and they are not even recruited by the RCAF. In business they are - systematically frozen out. And at the present time, certain elements are busy, in the Hitler- ite manner, in channeling the wrath of the public at the wood shortage against the Sikh wood dealers. At the same time, strangely enough, Sikhs throughout the world are among our most valiant allies against fascism. Thousands still allowed to. NAGINDAR SINGH GILL Secretary, Sikh Temple Ass’n of their sons from the Punjab have already given their lives in the liberation of Ethiopia, Syria, Worth Africa and in the tragic battles of Hong Kong, Singapore, and Burma. Traditionally they are fighting men. Born of struggle and revolt, their whole history is shining with revolutionary activity. A fa- mous saying among them is: “Since when did God take sides against the brave?” In the past two decades they have been in the vanguard of India’s fight for freedom, In the twenties the Sikh peas- antry fought against the land- lords and corrupt priesthood and brought them to their knees. Only four years ago they took an ac- tive part in the famous “peasant marches” of India, and today they form the bulk of Britain’s vic- torious Imperial Army of the Wile. e HITS heroic tradition is car- ried on even in British Co- lumbia, Here, as elsewhere, the Sikhs are to be found in the front ranks of every fight for democracy. Increasing numbers are taking an active part in the Canadian labor movement. More than 300 have already swelled the ranks of the organized wood- workers. Canadian Sikhs have contributed generously to each Victory Loan. Fewer than 100 Sikhs in Victoria raised over $7,000 for the first victory loan. At the same time, unfortunate- ly, many Sikhs who are eager to enlist in the armed forces are held back by discrimination and restrictions. Consistently anti- fascist, they wholehearedly sup- port the Indian National Congress and its leader Nehru. If the bar- riers to an equally wholehearted support of the Canadian war ef- fort were removed, they would be able to take their place beside other loyal citizens, ECENTLY a delegation head- ed by Nagindar Singh Gill, secretary of the Sikh Temple Society, which represents all the Sikhs of BC, met with Premier John Hart to discuss the prob- lem of the franchise. Hart prom- ised them that the cabinet would consider the problem seriously. So far, no decision has been forthcoming. On the battle fields, in trade unions, the bonds of friendship are being cemented between the Sikhs and all other Canadians. The Sikhs are Canadian citizens. They pay the same taxes, are sub- ject to the same army service. They were born on British soil. The further cementing of these bonds, feel the Sikhs of British Columbia, depends on the exten- sion of our democratic rights to them. It is these same rights that _ they are more than willing to fight to defend.