Acting upon receipt of a letter with enclosures from Judge W. W. Morrow,
President of the California Red Cross Branch, the Central Committee sent
out Saturday, February 10th, to the secretaries of the Red Cross
Branches the following appeal:
“Through the California Branch, the American National Red Cross
has received from American residents in Japan an appeal for the
famine-stricken people in three northern provinces of that
country. In one province the rice crop has yielded only 12 per
cent. of the average, and the sentence of death hangs over a
quarter of a million of people if forgotten and unaided. In the
eastern portion of another province the yield is only 15 per
cent. and 500,000 people are in great distress and on the verge
of absolute starvation, and in the third province it is certain
that over 100,000 persons cannot live without speedy and
prolonged aid.
“Already thousands in these provinces are reduced to shrub roots
and the bark of trees by which mere life may for a time be
sustained, but at the least calculation 680,000 people are now
facing extreme conditions. What this means for their poor women
and children, we who live in the center of this oncoming misery
find no words to describe.
“Hundreds of thousands of persons are on the verge of starvation
and winter is adding its rigors to the distress. Snow having
hidden away the roots and herbs of the forests from the hands of
the stricken people, speedy death or physical anguish worse than
death confronts them.
“During the late war, the great European Red Cross Societies did
much to aid the Japanese Red Cross in its work of caring for the
sick and wounded, but our American National Red Cross, just
beginning its reorganization, could be of no assistance. Now the
opportunity arises for us to send to those brave famine-stricken
people some assistance from our abundance. The American National
Red Cross will gladly receive and forward to the Japanese Red
Cross to be used for the relief of these provinces such
contributions as the public at large or any of its own members
desire to make.
“All contributions in this city can be sent
to ...................
Treasurer of the .............................. Red Cross Branch.”
About the same time information was received by the State
Department at Washington through our consuls in Japan of the
very serious conditions in these northern provinces, and with
his accustomed promptness President Roosevelt issued a public
appeal, as follows:
“The famine situation in northern Japan is proving much more
serious than at first supposed, and thousands of persons are on
the verge of starvation. It is a calamity such as may
occasionally befall any country.
“Nations, like men, should stand ever ready to aid each other in
distress, and I appeal to the American people to help from their
abundance their suffering fellowmen of the great and friendly
nation of Japan. I recommend that contributions for this purpose
be sent to the American National Red Cross, which will forward
such funds to the Japanese Red Cross to be used as the Japanese
Government may direct.
“Contributions can be made to the local Red Cross treasurers or
sent direct to Hon. Charles Hallam Keep, Red Cross Treasurer,
United States Treasury Department, Washington, D.C.
“Theodore Roosevelt.”
Mr. Eki Hioki, the Japanese Chargé d’Affaires, was requested to inquire
if the Japanese Red Cross would undertake the disposition of the funds
forwarded by the American National Red Cross, and after communicating
with his Government sent the following reply:
“I have the pleasure to inform you that I have received a cable
message, in reply to mine, from the Japanese Minister of Foreign
Affairs, to the effect that the Japanese Red Cross Society will
be delighted to take charge of the disposition of the relief
fund which the American National Red Cross may send hereafter.
“Very truly yours,
“Eki Hioki,
“Chargé d’Affaires.”
The “Christian Herald” of New York, having already been aware of the
distress in Japan, had begun among its Christian readers a subscription
for the purposes of relief, and no sooner did the President’s appeal
appear than the American National Red Cross Treasurer, Hon. Charles
Hallam Keep, received from Dr. Louis Klopsch, Editor of the “Christian
Herald,” a most prompt and generous check for $10,000, already
contributed by its readers, to be forwarded to the Japanese Red Cross to
be used exclusively for the purchase of food supplies. This amount was
immediately cabled by the State Department, through our Embassy at
Tokyo. A few days later the “Christian Herald” followed its first
donation by another check for $10,000, sent directly to the State
Department to be forwarded without delay, as the need was so great, to
the Japanese Red Cross for the purchase of food. The readers of the
“Christian Herald” may justly feel that by their promptness and
generosity they have saved many of their fellowmen from suffering and
death by starvation, and this will be sincerely appreciated in Japan.
In these northern provinces many of the people are living upon
briquettes made of 75 per cent. straw and 25 per cent. foreign rice, or
upon roots, bark of trees, acorns, etc. The Japanese Government, in
spite of its immense war debt, has been remitting or postponing taxes
and at the same time trying to raise money for the purpose of providing
work for the able-bodied so as not to pauperize them, and food and
clothes for the children, old people and sick; but without outside aid
the herculean task will be too heavy a burden.
Mr. Frederick Palmer, the War Correspondent representing “Collier’s
Weekly,” served through the Russo-Japanese war with the soldiers from
the famine-stricken districts in the northern provinces of Japan. He
knows these people, their sterling qualities and the bitterness of their
need, and of them he says:
“From the heart of the famine-district came the second division
of the Japanese Army, known as ‘The Division which always
attacks.’ It exemplified in its character the fine and simple
qualities of the people of the Sendai country, their loyalty,
pride, courage, industry, and equability of temper. The second
of the divisions to leave Japan for the field, it marched
through Korea in midwinter to the Battle of the Yalu, and it was
the strong, dependable arm of General Kuroki’s army which never
gave ground to the close of the campaign.
“Not until December and January of this year, the third winter
since their departure, would transportation arrangements permit
the division’s departure from Manchuria, which was a bleak and
inhospitable land to these simple country boys who were
accustomed to their own beautiful landscape, their clean mats
and ornamental gardens. No heroes ever received a sadder welcome
home, for they returned to find their mothers and sisters and
wives wanting food. The absence of the men who had served their
country so well meant the absence of so many able-bodied tillers
of the soil. This and a cold and unusually rainy summer made the
rice crop the scantiest for generations.
“These proud northern people have not the facility of city
people in accepting charity. If you went into their houses you
would find that they would deny that they were hungry and
possibly offer you their last bowl of rice to show that they
needed no help. The home department of the Japanese Government
is taking measures of practical relief by offering employment on
public works which will increase the acreage for rice growing
and otherwise improve the agricultural resources of the region.
The opportunity is offered for foreigners to supplement the
government aid by private aid which will be sympathetically and
practically administered by the Japanese Red Cross Society. If
it be the duty of the Red Cross to soften the cruel consequences
of war, then it has here a duty as imperative as under the more
sensational surroundings of the battle field.”
On February 28th The American National Red Cross transmitted to the
State Department $5,000, which immediately cabled this amount, through
the United States Embassy at Tokyo, to the Japanese Red Cross to be
applied to the famine relief work.
In a second appeal issued by the foreign relief committee of northern
Japan, this committee says:
“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.
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