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National Geographic : 1947 Apr
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The National Geographic Magazine International No Volcano Can Bluff the Woman Who Hoes Her Crop 50 Feet from Steaming Lava In a land of death-dealing earthquakes, typhoons, and volcanoes, few Japanese feel secure for long. Not until Sakura Jima engulfed her farm two days after the picture was taken did this cultivator leave. various sawmills by rail, raft, or boat.* The mountain roads leading back into these logging operations were really something to write home about. We rode up such a nar row, tortuous, slippery road one cold, wet day in a Jap car. Our driver was an unsmiling Jap who seemed more interested in looking at the misty scen ery several hundred feet below us than in safely hugging the steep rock wall on the other side of the road. The car slithered into and out of the muddy ruts which still had ice and snow in spots. As we slid and jerked close to the edge, I could not keep my mind on the forest for which we were headed. I could think only of kamikaze pilots. Surely this Jap wouldn't try deliberately to take several Americans with him to meet his ancestors by rolling the car over the brink! I didn't convince myself, however, until we arrived at our destination at the top of the mountain. For the return trip down the mountain, however, I suddenly remembered that I had to talk over several things with the American GI driver of our jeep. It was colder in the open jeep than in the Jap car, but I didn't sweat as much under the collar on the descent. Women Work in Tree Nurseries In many of the tree nurseries in Japan, women perform most of the labor of cultivat ing the soil, making up the seedbeds, sowing, weeding, transplanting, and digging, as well as the planting of the seedlings on the cutover slopes. In one log yard in Akita Prefecture, in northern Honshu, most of the work of loading logs on handcars, pushing the cars to concrete aprons, and rolling the logs into the water for making up rafts, was done by women, except for the foremen and a few men. * See "Women's Work in Japan," by Mary A. Nourse, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE, January, 1938. 508
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