Page:The Cannery Boat.pdf/18

8 They all hoped to save money and go home. But, once they set foot in Hakodate or Otaru, they were stuck there like birds caught in quicklime. And then, simply “in their birthday suits,” they were turned out. They could no longer return home. So in snowy Hokkaido they were forced to sell their bodies for next to nothing.

A girl pedlar with a box of cakes strapped on her back, a medicine dealer and other petty traders came on board. In a separate place like a little island in the centre of the compartment they set out their goods. The men from the bunks on all four sides leaned out and rallied and joked at them.

Among the fishermen were some who had been sold as “octopuses” to the navvies’ shacks, on tracts of land just being opened up, or to railway construction camps in the interior of Hokkaido; others were wanderers who had sought and failed to get a living anywhere, and some only thought of getting enough sake to drink. There were also farmers from around Aomori, soft-hearted greenhorns, chosen by the heads of their villages. To draw them all like this from different parts was found, from the point of view of getting work out of them, to be the very best policy.

The Hakodate Labour Unions were struggling desperately to get organizers in on the crab canneries and among the fishermen going to Kamchatka. The Aomori and Akita Unions were joining in too. This was the great fear of the exploiters.

A steward in a short white starched coat kept coming and going busily, bringing beer and fruit and wine-glasses into the saloon aft.