The Waterbury Democrat., 1943-08-27

QOtGA1b AHAku Ol AAAoCAy 0CA4
 battle-ground of mighty powers, prize loot for the early victor, this picturesque country at the cross roads of Southern Asia must endure added tribulations before her gaily- clad, indulgent peasants return to their rice fields in peace.
 Bombing Will Mount
 Allied bombers for months have battered enemy targets there. AS Americans, British, Chinese and Indians begin the representation and voices of machineguns and ar tillery once more shout across her plain and jungles, bombing will beat a erescendo.
 In this peacetime summer capital of India, 1000 feet up in the Hima- layan foothills, British and Bur- mese administrators are planning the country's reconstruction. AS pertinent background they must know, and are learning, what it's like in Japanese-occupied Burma. I came from Allied outposts on the Burma border to hear the answers.
 Most of their information comes from refugees. Much of what they say is dubious information and of- ficials said 1t often tends to be ex- aggerated.
 Burma-wise Police Inspector General R. G. s. Prescott, who was ct the helm in Rangoon during demolition of important installa- tions a few hours before the Jap anese moved in, emphasized, Most of our information comes from areas closest to India; very little from the more Sophisticated" cen tral plain. Persons escaping to In- dia usually had hidden for months and hadn't seen much of the sit- nation."
 Hot Winds Famed Flames
 However, the administrators themselves know how thoroughly Burma was razed during the 1942 campaign, for many of them saw hot winds flaming the flames of bombed towns-almost all the i'm portant ones-and some participated an ~scorching" Rangoons port and power house, the great Ava bridge on the Irrawaddy, oil fields at Yen angyaung, Chauk and Lanywa and mines at Bawdin and Mawchi.
 Prescott, important reconstruc- tion officials, the director of coun- ter-propaganda for Burma and the governor, Sir Reginald Dorman- Smith, who talked of the record" described further, more far-reach- ing hardships engenered by Jap Rnese administration. Different of- 4icials emphasized some points and sn,inimizd others, but generally agreed on the following:
 The bottom has fallen out of Burma's economy, since 1t is @ single-crop (rice) agricultural coun- try which annually exported more than S,500,0o0 tons, which the Jap anese are now unable to take be- cause of lack of transportation.
 Diseases-both human and cat- ale-have spread because of Japa- nese failure to provide medical stocks and their practice of innocu- lattng civilians only in towns where troops are garrisoned.
 Prices Skyrocket \ There has been amost no impor- tation of consumers fioods( creat- ing extreme commodity scarcity, especially cloth, and skyrocketing prices.
 Banditry and lawlessness have in- creased with the breakdown of ad- ministrative and police machinery and use of arms and ammunition picked up from battlefields.
 Japanese troops have billeted Themselves on villages for weeks at Q time, depleted their food stocks, raped their women, then moved on.
 Bombing 8 Curse
 Allied bombing is a curse for which the Burmese blame the Jap Rnese.
 In a land that is 84 per cent ar- dently Buddhist, the Japanese are using the priests (pongyis) as a medium for circulating and giving