74
Sunday, the seventh December 1941 was a beautiful day - calm, peaceful, and tranquil. The Japanese officials boarded before noon for their usual second routine inspection. Again there was an absence of fuss, an almost deferential attitude, a haste to complete the inspection quickly, no quibbling over errors in the certificates. They even omitted to inspect the paper seals which were placed on all lavatories and toilets on the vessel. The seals were placed by the medical men to prevent the passengers using the toilets and flushing them into the river. The thousand or more passengers were expected and required to use large receptacles during the 48- hour detention period at the quarantine anchorage. Occasionally, if they remembered, the Japanese would send a tiny sampan from the quarantine station to collect the full utensils. When the Japanese were absent the Chinese boatman would rinse out the excrement buckets in the river, and on one occasion, I noticed him wiping his hands on the small quarantine (yellow) flag that his sampan carried on a pole. It was well nigh pathetic to see the zeal with which the Japanese army medical men went to work to clean up China. Imagine accusing a river vessel of contaminating the dear old Pearl River! The Japanese in many ways resembled the Germans by whom they have mostly been educated in medical methods. They would send out a horde of medical corpsmen with hypodermics and raid a city by giving all and sundry cholera shots. I have seen in Tientsin, during a sand storm, a diminutive Japanese soldier staggering along with his "hypo" in one hand and a wad of grimy, sand filled cotton wool in the other - this was the pad to sterilize the spot of the needle penetration. One could not recognize it as cotton it was so black and dirty. Yes, the Japanese made a determined and gallant effort to make China "shot" conscious, but they had not, with their lack of imagination taken into calculation the Chinese character. The poor misguided Japanese set out with a "Divine Will and a Divine Wind" to usher into China a new co-prosperity era, but only succeeded in kamakazing himself to death. The fighting is over and Mr. Sato and Sergeant Yoshitoki have been ignominiously repatriated to their Dai Nippon, back to their favorite pair of cassowary toed shoes, back to curse the Chinese for their failure to recognize "their brothers."
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