Page:The Cannery Boat.pdf/173

Rh hear him speak. But I didn’t understand it all. Then we got a Peasant Union in Osawa. It’s been broken up now, but are we going to sit down under it?”

“It’s no good, they’re all in prison and we can do nothing. No one’s left here but boys. And even these have been taken away and have been in in the police cells these three days.”

Old Ogawa well knew, thanks to the experience of March 15th, why the government was so much afraid of them: it was because all the best members of the Peasant Union worked in the Communist Party. The government was terribly afraid that the Communist Party would rise against the landowners again.

The words, “Thirty per cent. this year, fifty per cent. next year, and so on till they get the whole crop,” rang in the old man’s head.

Sixteen-year-old Tetsu, Siro, Yasuki and other lads, left without fathers, often dreamed of setting up the union again. But the police found out about their plans every time and the pioneers of old Simati found themselves time and again in the cells that autumn and winter.

Another year passed. Another spring came. Still greater numbers of visitors came to Yotani for the waters. A group of movie-actors came to take pictures. Rich people came in their own automobiles. The governor of the county himself came, and geishas were called specially from Otsu,