“When we issued our first appeal to the foreign communities of Japan in December, the impending calamity was on so vast a scale that we ourselves could hardly believe the official statements of 680,000 people in starving condition. Since then the members of our committee have been through the provinces, and now we must say that the above figures are too weak to represent the existing misery and that the wretchedness and suffering are simply appalling. As to the score of villages, the conditions of all we visited are pitiable in the extreme. There are able-bodied men clothed in thin, ragged garments, who have to face the piercing winds and snow to bring in from the mountains the coal and wood on the price of which labor their thinly-clad families are trying to eke out a living. There are mothers giving their very lives to keep their babies warm, themselves exposed to stinging blasts that must rapidly shorten life. There are even cultured old men and women, who in former days were in comparative comfort, but now are reduced to physical destitution that no words can describe. There are children bare-footed in the snow, whose scanty clothing and pinched faces tell the sad tale of only one meal a day and that of straw and daikon leaves in which is mixed a little cheap rice flour.
“But there is no need of further statements in this line. Rather we rejoice that there is another side. Amid all this widespread wretchedness there is a strong spirit of hope and helpfulness. There is a village called Devil’s Head, snowed under eight feet, leaving 156 people without a particle of food of any kind. Immediately the neighbors, but little better off, raised 60 yen (about $30), by means of which pittance the lives of these 156 persons are insured for three weeks until other aid can come. It is a privilege, indeed, to send a grain of comfort to such people by our timely and sympathetic gifts, especially when such aid is so highly appreciated by all and so gratefully received by those who are losing hope. The one great thing needed to save the lives of children and aged is money. All that we earnestly desire is that every sympathetic heart should know the facts and use any channel that promises to bring speedy relief to even a few hundred among the many hundreds of thousands who are in dire distress.”
On March 6th the American National Red Cross sent, through the State Department, to the Japanese Red Cross, $5,000, and on March 8th the “Christian Herald” forwarded its third $10,000 contribution. On March 12th the Red Cross again sent $5,000 and on March 15 $5,000, so that the amount collected and sent by the Red Cross up to March 15th amounts to $20,000, and this with the $30,000 sent by the “Christian Herald” through the American National Red Cross makes a total up to the last given date of $50,000.
The Japanese Government has expressed its great appreciation of President Roosevelt’s appeal for its famine-stricken provinces, and press despatches show that the Japanese people also are deeply appreciative of the sympathy expressed in their trouble by the contributions from the American people.
This Society hopes, in some later issues of the Bulletin, to be able to give reports of the relief work done by the Japanese Red Cross.
Just as the Bulletin goes to press the American National Red Cross has received from the “Christian Herald” a check for $50,000 making in all $80,000 contributed through this paper for the Famine Fund and bringing the total amount sent to the Japanese Red Cross by March 16th up to $100,000.
CHARTER
[Public—No. 4.]