Correspondents' Correspondence Japan vs. the Boat People

...Joes not care where we go or under what conditions as long as we get out of Japan Mise does not debate the point Bv now, of course, most refugees would like nothing better than to leave on the next boat or plane—preferably headed toward the United States The trouble is, few of them qualify for residence in America, since the Japanese authorities require that the refugees be resettled in the flag countries of the ships that carried them to Japan At first, this stipulation appeared a mere formality Yet now Truong, for one, is facing a future in Liberia "How can I go there7" he asks "I know nothing about it I can do nothing there " Ironically, the refugees' desperate efforts to find new homes is cited by Japanese officials as a justification for excluding them The refugees themselves, it is claimed, "do not like Japan" and "do not want to stay here " One can't help suspecting, though, that Japan would have little trouble getting 50,000 refugees to apply for residence in a week if it suddenly reversed its policies against them Nor is there much validity to the plea that Japan is "too small " Beyond the sprawl of the Tokyo-Osaka axis, home of two thirds of the populace, lie thousands of towns and villages where refugees could easily be placed In fact, Prime Minister Ohira had put forth a "pastoral cities" plan for thinning out the overpopulated megalopoleses Inherent in the concept is the recognition that Japan has room to spare Nonetheless, that kind of argument evinces no more than polite nods and smiles from Japanese officials A feisty American priest, the Reverend Martin Clarke, working with Cantas in looking for homes for the refugees, is franker about the underlying problems "I don't thmk a single refugee should stay in Japan," says Clarke "It's an insular society The Japanese have to grow up to realize there's someone in the world beside themselves " Sadly, for the 19 Vietnamese leaving this oceanside city of ancient temples and pleasant homes, the awakemng, if it ever comes, will be too late —Donald Kirk...

...the Boat People Kamakura, Japana small yet not insignificant chapter of the great Indochinese refugee tragedy has ended here in abject failure Although only 19 Vietnamese volunteered for what was to have been a three-month introduction to Japan in the form of language study and vocational training, the program did initially appear to be a breakthrough in the wall of this nation's stance toward the refugees Soon, however, the 19 began a protest —and their action, led by Pham Dinh Truong, a former chief mariner, has revealed the depths of the ethnocen-tnsm and racism of Japan's policies As Truong explains it, the refugees who had volunteered for the program at a small Catholic Redemptonst mission on a quiet tree-shaded residential street here very quickly discovered that the authorities in fact had no plan for them At the end of the three months pardly enough time to pick up more than a few words and phrases in Japanese—they were to lose their meager allowances and go out on the job market to compete with naUves They would receive no luithcr liaming and would still not be eligible for social welfare and other benefits available to citizens In many communities their children would not even get a free education The grievances of the Vietnamese belie the lofty words of Japanese Foreign Minister Sunao Sunoda, who pleaded for "concrete and constructive results" at the Geneva conference on refugees Indeed, the sad outcome of the program makes Japan's agreement to pay half the annual $100 million incurred by the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UN-HCR) seem a bribe to keep other countries from pressuring Japan into accepting additional refugees At Geneva, Sonoda acknowledged "serious domestic difficulties and constraints" that would make it impossible for his country to admit on a "permanent" basis more than 500 refugees, an absurdly low figure considering Japan's wealth, its population of 115 million and its role in the Indochinese conflict as a rear base area for American troops (Japan is conservatively estimated to have netted over $4 billion by servicing the U S military ) The "constraints" assume specific torms that Sonoda neglected to mention For one thing, though the government has made much of its offei to help tund the UNHCR, it has set aside almost no money for assisting refugees left off at Japanese ports by the ships that picked them up Volunteer agencies, notably the Red Cross, the International Social Service (ISS) and Can-tas, the Catholic relief orgamzation, run the transient refugee program at small camps scattered throughout the country Right now, the camps are holding nearly 600 refugees on a "temporary" basis They are given allowances of 900 yen a day by the agencies, not the government, a third of which pays for their lodging At the current exchange rate of slightly more than 200 yen to a dollar, this provides little more than a subsistence diet in the world's highest-priced society Sonoda also did not mention that Japan grants only one-year renewable visas, even to those supposedly permitted to settle here permanently After 10 years, an official on Prime Minister Masayoshi Ohira's special task force told me, a refugee might conceivably apply for citizenship But, he added, it was "unlikely that a refugee could ever become Japanese " In the light of all these factors, it is hardly surprising that the Vietnamese here have the impression thev are not wanted The minions of bureaucratic investigators and troubleshooters in white shirts and ties have come to personify the sentiment against them Moreover, their feelings of insecurity are aggravated by the fact that the consensus among the Japanese prevails even in nongovernment organizations Officials from the Tokyo headquarters of the UNHCR, for example, joined efforts to dissuade the Vietnamese from their protest The ISS was equally rigid in enforcing the legendary "discipline' of Japanese authority When the refugees refused to call off their strike, it ordered them to leave this city and return to "temporary" camps to await resettlement \\\ the UN and ISS workers are Japanese The associate director ol the UNHCR in Tokyo, Hitoshi Mise, exudes s\m-pathv tor (lie refugees' ' an\iet\ about their lite alter resettlement, bin urges them to find a home in anothei coun-li\ Truong responds thai Misi...