Boats & Boat

As Secretary Hull and Secretary Ickes were last week finding ways to make themselves disagreeable to aggressive Germany, aggressive Japan took one opportunity and was given another to make herself agreeable to the U. S.

Boats. Since 1935 Alaska's $46,000,000-a-year salmon-fishing industry, which depends on salmon spawned in Alaskan rivers and caught as they return from the sea to the rivers to breed, has yelled bloody murder about Japanese fishermen operating offshore. When the Japanese Government subsidized a three-year "salmon survey" of the Bering Sea in 1935, Alaska fishermen maintained that Japanese boats were trawling with heavy nets in all seasons, would soon exhaust the grounds. Japan retorted variously that she was investigating the possibility of floating canneries, that her nationals were not invading U. S. waters within the three-mile international limit, that licenses had been issued to Japanese boats only for crab fishing.

Last fall Alaska's Congressional Delegate Anthony J. Dimond brought the controversy to a head by introducing a resolution boldly forbidding foreign vessels to fish anywhere on Alaska's 100-mile continental shelf. Grumpy Alaskans appeared at committee hearings on the bill to testify that Japanese boats had been observed within the three-mile limit hauling in salmon with four-mile nets, that aviators flying over the Japanese fleet had seen as many as 20,000 salmon piled on the decks of four fishing vessels, that at the present rate Alaska's salmon would not last five years. The State Department, whose agreements with Great Britain and Japan settled the similar dispute over Bering Sea seal fishing in the '80s, sent a note to Japan affirming that salmon spawned in the U. S. and protected by the Bureau of Fisheries were U. S. property, waited for an answer. Last week it came in satisfactory form. In what amounted to a complete capitulation, Japan promised to suspend her "survey," issue no licenses for salmon fishing in the area, "take measures" to halt any violators of the agreement.

Boat. Having already promised to make "indemnification for all the losses" sustained when Japanese bombing planes sank the U. S. gunboat Panay, proceeding up the Yangtze with a convoy of three Standard Oil tankers last December 12, Japan last week received an itemized bill from U. S. Ambassador Joseph C. Grew in Tokyo. Property losses were put at $1,945,670.01, indemnification for death and personal injuries at $268,337.35. On the total of $2,214,007.36, which includes no punitive damages, the State Department expected prompt payment.

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