Correspondents' Correspondence

...Furthermore, industrialization has 13 greatly altered the pattern of life in U the agricultural areas themselves...

...Keeping that structure intact, he explained, might require force if Phu Truong were occupied by North Vietnamese troops...

...But if they try to take over my village, I will fight them...

...Correspondents' Correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL I NTEREST FROM LETIERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS...

...Lest outsiders suspected Phu Truong officials of being more concerned with keeping their jobs and reaping profits than bettering their constituents' lives, Hung raised the banner of democracy, not waved of late by the Saigon regime...

...It took a 500-man South Vietnamese task force, aided by an armored unit and air support, three days of bitter fighting to recapture the site...

...What do I care about who runs the government...

...The muscle could come from several hundred local militiamen under his control...

...Hung, a bespectacled man of 47, conceded that he had not received specific orders for such actions, but he contended that force might be needed to implement a little-publicized edict issued recently by Saigon...

...I am a poor person, and I will always be a poor person, under any regime...

...If they are forced to, he might have added...

...Japanese farmers supply about 80 per cent of the country's food, and high agricultural prices combined with wages earned in factories make them one of the top-paid groups in the nation...

...Moreover, he awarded the village flag-selling franchise to a deputy, who promptly raised the price nearly 400 per cent...

...An estimated 81 H million agricultural workers have 111 left the fields to live in the cities B during the past 10 years, and surveys H indicate that by 1980 Japan's farm II population will have dropped below 10 per cent of the total...

...Le Thi Ry, who peddled candy to schoolchildren before the recent battle destroyed her merchandise and ended classes...

...B Over half the rural families now H spend most of their time in local H factories, giving rise to the expres-B sion "Sunday Farmer" to describe H the nation's oldest profession...

...There are those, of course, who have not been so lucky...

...This, they asserted, was justified by instructions from Saigon????A grim foreshadowing of difficulties likely to ensue after the formal announcement of an end to hostilities...

...An Elusive Peace Phu Truong????while the world was waiting for a seemingly imminent cease-fire, the war came to this village 17 miles northwest of Saigon...

...But it has shifted so rapidly ¦§ in the other direction that farmers H today make up less than 25 per cent U of the population...

...Intelligence reports and prisoners' accounts indicate that the seizure was timed to coincide with the original October 31 deadline for the signing of an agreement...

...Perhaps no less significant than Communist intentions, though, were the reactions of local authorities and higher district officers who said they would have continued fighting despite a cease-fire...

...Farmers from the North, who eke out a living from the rugged terrain, are forced by heavy snows to come to the cities for winter employment...

...I want to know where to begin when nothing is left...

...There is no avid support for either side among the poor people of Phu Truong, just an overwhelming desire for peace.????Arnold Abrams Japan's Sunday Farmers TokyoAs little as 15 years ago Japan was still a predominantly rural society...

...A random sampling of public opinion here turned up agreement of a different kind: Were peace guaranteed, the village populacein contrast to government officials and most Saigon residents????would accept Communist leadership...

...Standing beside the ruins of her home, she wondered aloud how to salvage the wreckage of her life...

...To that end, the village chief has ordered the approximately 8,500 inhabitants here to tear up any Communist flags or posters and to obtain a minimum of two South Vietnamese flags per family for display...

...Well," replied Hung, "so long as the Communists stay in their own territory, we will not bother them...

...This is a government village, and we are going to keep it that way...

...Interest until now focused largely on Tanaka's recent China trip, but if the Prime Minister is serious about remodeling his country he will have to give more attention to its altered internal complexion, reflected in the emergence of Japan's Sunday Farmers.Michael Berger...

...For while the population has been radically redistributed over the past two decades, the representation of the Diet has remained largely static...

...Although the exodus to the cities continues, the majority of those who have stayed in the rural areas have prospered...

...The greatest significance of Japan's rapid rural-to-urban transition, however, is likely to be neither social nor economic, but political...

...I have no money, no clothing, no home, no way to earn a living...

...President Thieu has instructed us that the village government structure must not be changed, no matter what," Hung said...

...What, then, would be the point of a cease-fire...

...Her neighbors, though in less dire straits, expressed the same sentiments...

...Because they are valuable farmhands, the desperate parents will do almost anything to prevent them from permanently departing for Tokyo, Osaka or Na-goya, and teenagers, therefore, can demand????And often get????whatever they want: an electric guitar, a stereo set, a motorcycle, even a car...

...The attack on Phu Truong was part of the concerted land-grabbing campaign launched by the North Vietnamese in anticipation of a ceasefire...

...By occupying this village, which stretches for two miles along the strategic Highway 1 leading from Saigon to Cam-bodian border areas, the North Vietnamese had expected to gain officially sanctioned control of a key infiltration route and major supply link to the capital...

...And people who once farmed seven days a week now work five days in buildings constructed on what used to be rice paddies...

...And even though the new Prime Minister, Kakuei Tanaka, has written a best-selling book on how Japan ought to be "remodeled," his top Cabinet officers are mostly men born and raised in the country, with country constituencies on their minds...

...The average annual income for a rural family is approximately $5,000, well above the national average...

...Everything is gone," she said...

...This year, unfortunately, the number of jobs available to the estimated 500,000 migratory workers has diminished, owing to the business slump that followed 1971's "dollar shock...

...If the Communists left us alone and let us work, it would be all right," ventured Mrs...

...In the early-morning darkness of October 28, about 250 North Vietnamese troops emerged from surrounding ricefields and occupied the four hamlets that comprise Phu Truong...

...I only want peace...

...Interestingly, the children of these Northern families are among the most spoiled in Japan...

...I represent more than 8,000 people," he said, "and they all agree...

...Thou-(1 sands of workers in the electronics H industry, for instance, live not in ?urban areas but in country towns Bl and villages where several of the large firms have built satellite plants...

...Ry, 34, is a widow with four young children and a sickly old mother to support...

...The response of local officials seemed to point up how slim the prospects are for a genuine peace in Vietnam...

...If a cease-fire is declared while Communist forces are occupying Phu Truong, I will ignore it," said village chief Nguyen Van Hung...

...They are on the government side, and they will fight a Communist takeover...

...Gerald Curtis, a political scientist at Columbia University and author of a recent book on the Japanese election system, notes that the "shocks which rock Japan whenever a major political change occurs are the result of this largely rural leadership, still preoccupied with local politics and not geared to the long-range planning required in an increasingly mobile, urban society...