The Northwest Times

PHILDELPHIA, Pa., Aug. 26—With cooperation coming from the various individuals and groups in Japan, the American Friends Service Committee representative reports that the LARA (Licensed Agencies for Relief in Asia) goods are being accepted and distributed in rapid fashion.

The Japanese Welfare Ministry and the Police take more than merely official interest in seeing that the goods are delivered without mishap, according to the report.

"We have noted that the Japanese social workers are taking a more lively interest in the discussions at the Central Committee meetings. They feel that the LARA has already proved itself: that it operates on an impartial basis, that its clothing is for the naked, its food for the hungry and it brings no other message save the one of hope and encouragement for fellow-members of the human family."

"Our relations with Government officials, both Japanese and American, have been most cordial. We have found the Welfare Division of SCAP entirely cooperative and sympathetic."

"The sustained program has been caring for 6,000 babies, 15,000 children and 6,000 T.B. patients in approximately 700 institutions. In addition, over 5,000 people have been helped as 'specials,' such groups as old folks, lepers, the handicapped and repatriates."

The Japanese Welfare Ministry recently reported that thus far 400,000 people have been assisted to some extent by LARA food, clothing and medicine.

"The stories that come out of the institutions point to the fact that LARA has been instrumental not only in bettering the lives, but in actually saving the lives of many people. We are told of one mother who spent the night by a river bank with her tiny baby, struggling with the idea of whether or not to drown the baby and thus save it from what seemed inevitable slow starvation. A policeman found her there and told her she could obtain food for herself and baby at one of the institutions supplied by LARA. There she was received with kindness, her baby was given medical care, they were fed, a home was found for them and recently the mother came to express personally her own gratitude to the LARA representatives."

"The incidents of children running away from institutions have been remarkably lessened since the institutions are now able adequately to feed them."

"To watch a child taste its first piece of candy; or see a man handle a precious bar of soap as if it were a diamond ring; watch the light of hope come back into the face of a T.B. patient who had begun to feel that there was no longer any use making the struggle to keep hope alive; hear the stories the heads of institutions have to tell of what vitamins have done; witness the pride and delight of lepers who can at last have salve and clean bandages for their wounds and shoes that make it possible for them to go out again into the field and help with the garden work and thus feel themselves once more useful members of the community—these are some of the soul stirring experiences of your representatives who are privileged to do the work out here."