By LOUIS GREEN = ts

LLHOUGH Julian Napuunoa a rank and file longshoreman from Honolulu, reaiized

@ ‘NOWHERE DID WE HEAR TALK OF WAR,’ SAY UNIONISTS

Report
| Europe

! that the commercial press was printing outrageous lies about his union for organizing
the ‘dock, sugar and pineapple workers of the islands, he was not prepared for the stark

truth when he saw it first-hand in 10 countries of Europe.

Just back from a three-month
tour sponsored by the CIO Long-
shoremen’s and Warehousemen’s
Union, the jolly, stocky Hawaiian
brings with him on-the-spot refu-
tations of the sereaming anti-
Soviet® headlines, the
saber-rattling in the commercial
press and the sanctimonious
gloating over the “benefits” to
Europe of the Marshall Plan.

frothing

' ° .

Other members of the touring
group were. Herman Stuyvelaar,
of the San Francisco Ship Clerks
Jovan Zuber, Oakland
warehouseman, and Donald
Brown, Coos. Bay, Oregon, long-

local;

shoreman.

No matter where the four-man
delegation went in Europe, Nap-
uunoa relates—in the streets, fac-
tories, hotels or eating places—the
warkers stopped them to ask in-
dignantly, “Why is your country
against us? We fought together
side by side in the war. Now you
are rearming and rebuilding the
enemy nations against us once
again!”

And sometimes a worker would
ask them wonderingly, “How is
it that your working people can’t
unite around a man like Henry
Wallace? He is an honest man

“THE American

doing

with; opinions. *

“Back of the network’s
state of affairs,

rate mind. Since the
knotheads, fleet of finger
apparent approaches to,

produced not merely by 2
intelligence as well.

“That. ABO, after a prol
to uncover a script writer
Communism, is, we suspect,
writers will be receiving thi
on it.”

Broadcasting Company announced recently
that is was abandoning plans for a projected documentary

on Communism because it was unable to find a single first-rate
writer who wasn’t either pro-Communist or anti-Communist,”
writes the New Yorker, commenting: a ee

“We gather from this announcement that ABC felt distinctly
let down by the boys in the back room, that it had counted on —
business with orderly vacuums in gray flannel sack suits
and black four-in-hands and had, ante t, run up against people

wistful discovery of this unstable
we seemed to catch sight again of that ancient.
eam, the first-rate writer with the third-

Stee aioe th popinaing: both industries have done their
“ adequate supply of eloquent. and energetic

er keeae Hak bea Sad dull of wit, but, despite occasional
their goal, the supply es never aie
matched the demand. Even a documentary on the man-eating
ide: here and there, of having been

shark is likely to bear evid miele Oa Ses ae he Tuiman

onged and most diligent search, failed
without an opinion of some sort on
the highest tribute tltat radio script
s year, and we congratulate them §

with a great program, one that
will benefit the common people
‘of the United States. By the way,

do you have a Wallace button?”

The delegates would explain to
the questioner, who now would, be
one of a large crowd, that unfor-
tunately the labor movement in
the United States is divided, in
many cases is being sold out by
its officials, but that many work-
ing people here are not misled and
are rallying around the Wallace
movement. And we're sorry, the
delegation would say, we've al-
ready given away all of the Wal-
lace buttons we’d brought along.

The Hawaiian chuckled, “We

‘could have distributed thousands

of those buttons if we had them.
But we had no idea when we left
how deeply the workers of Eur-
ope were interested in Wallace.”

ees ay

No sooner did the group land in

‘Paris, Julian Napuunoa relates,

when the war tension that had
been surrounding them _ disap-
peared, “Nowhere did we hear

talk of war. Only wonder and be-
wilderment. The workers would
ask us, ‘Why isn’t there a work-
ers’ party in America that can

‘

°

‘stop your big industrialists and
their war talk? Here we only
want to rebuild from the ruins of
the last war. None of us wants

war again’,”

In France ‘and Italy, the, first -
two countries visited, the delegates
quickly found out that the Euro-~
pean Recovery Program means
enly increased urnsmployment for
the workers while building great-
er profits for the big business in-
terests there and in the United

4 1S dad
States, ar |

The greatest need is heavy ma-
chinery! tractors, agricultural
equipment, machine tools. In-
stead, finished goods are being
shipped over, flooding the store
windows’ but moving very slowly
because too many workers have
been put out of jobs and the
prices are too steep except for the
very rich.

The longshoreman grimaced as
he recounted Wallace’s statement
in San. Francicso that the U.S. is
shipping spaghetti to Italy. “We
saw something even more
strange,’ he said, “We saw cases
and cases of olive oil, made in
the U.S., in Italian store win-
dows.” , ;

“Worse than that,” Napuunoa
said, “was what we were told by
the manager of the nationalized
Renault plant in France. He took
us through the factory and we’
were pleasantly surprised to see
it running full blast. When we
questioned him, however, he grin-
ned sardonically. Pulling an order
sheet out of his pocket, he passed |
it over to us. It was for 15,000
automobiles—to be shipped to the
United States! Thus, while France
so desperately needs heavy ma-
chinery and goods for itself, its
labor and materials are beinis
shipped overseas to compete in
the American market.”

From Italy, the group flew to
Yugoslavia, where they had a
long interview with Marshall Tito.
This took place about the time *
of the beginning of Tito’s break
with the Communist Information
Bureau and Tito was somewhat
guarded in his comments.

Travelling through that coun-
try, the first one behind the al-
legedly impenetrable “Iron Cur-
tain,” they found a new spirit
alive in the land. Here was re-

- construction going ahead at full

throttle, the same renaissance
they were to see in all other coun-

tries of Bastern Europe.

“The unions were strong, mili-

tant, and worked closely with the
government. Scattered all over
the countryside, in mansions for-
merly owned by the wealthy, were
rest homes and sanitoria for the
workers. ;

They visited the world famous
Youth Railway, where young peo-
ple from all over the world were
contributing their labor ,to hew
out a new rail line. While they
were in Belgrade, a group of 21,-
600 youngsters, aged 16 and over,
turned up to take their places
with the builders of the new Bel-
grade—a 10-year project.

Luckily for the people, harvests
have been good this year all over
Europe, thus easing the rather
grim food situation -of recent
years. Rationing is rapidly dis-
appearing throughout Eastern
Europe, the delegation noted.

In Poland and Czechoslovakia,
they noted the same preoccupa-
tion with peaceful reconstruction.

In Poland, whére devastation was ~

almost incredible, they watched
men and women tearing down the
rubble with their hands—because
of the lack of heavy machinery.

As they left Poland for the Soy-
iet Union, Napuunoa particularly
was excited. Before leaving the
Hawaiian Islands after ‘his elec-
tion to this delegation, many of
his brother unionists, he said,
came to him and asked him to
find out for them the truth about
freedom of religion in the USSR.

“It was a revelation,’ Napuunoa
stated flatly. - !

“No wonder the great imperial-

-
ist powers want to keep the truth’
about the Soviet Union from their .
working people. We never saw
such a broad, wonderfully-func-
tioning system of social security
and benefits. Factories are spend-
ing their profits to build more
and better homes and schools for
their workers, instead of to en-
rich, a handful of monopolists.”

They were free to travel any-
where they pleased without ‘hind-
rance, he pointed out. Napuunoa,
himself mindful of his promise to
his union brothers, made his way
to many churches, found them
functioning and even well at-
tended.

In Moscow, he stopped an old
lady as she was about to enter a
church.

“Tell me, babushka, what are
you praying for?” /

The old lady looked at him in
surprise. “Why, I’m going to pray
for Stalin, of course!”

The Islander’s aloha shirt at-
tracted a great deal of interest in
the streets. As soon as the Mus-
kovites learned that this was a
delegation of trade unionists from
the United States, they asked —
many questions about the coun-
try, including observations about
the Taft-Hartley Law that made’

_ the group realize that these peo-

ple know more about the provi-
sions of the code than many
American workers.

It was from Moscow that the
deiegates sent their report to the
ILWU office in which they stated
that democracy in the USSR
trade union movement could serve
as a model for the rest of the
world.

Leaving the USSR, the delega-
tion flew to Sweden. One of the
first newspapermen to interview

them upon their arrival showed

them a copy of The Dispatcher,
cfficial publication .of the union,
in which their report was ‘prom-
inently displayed. “Do you know |
what was written here? Do you |
stand by everything said here?”
the reporter asked suspiciously.

Napuunoa’s face grew angry
again as he recounted what he
told the newspaper, “Not only did
we write the report—and it is
a true one—but we saw every-
thing we described with our own
eyes. We believe it and we're ‘go-
ing to’ do our utmost to Jt the
people know the truth,” 6

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