Whale Lovers - Unite!

I wrote this in 1994 when Japan was vetoing the Southern Ocean whale sanctuary. With Japan’s latest efforts at sabotaging any restrictions on hunting of whales, I thought I would resurrect it in its original form. I would like to hear your opinions, so please post them on the Cruiser Log Forum, http://cruiserlog.conforums.com/index.cgi And, why not work on getting a boycott started?

March 3, 1994

So Japan thinks that cattle do enormous environmental damage by compacting the soil and emitting methane gas. Of course the Japanese would think that eating whale meat is better than eating beef, since they are so opposed to purchasing consumer goods from outside Japan - they only want to sell their products to the rest of the world, and there isn't room in Japan for soil compacting, methane-producing cattle as well as soil compacting, methane-producing Japanese.

To give Americans an idea of how little room Japan has for any creatures other than themselves, imagine if all the people now living on the east coast of the U.S. -Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, plus everyone now living in California and Illinois, were to be moved into the state of Montana. That's how packed in the Japanese are - a country the size of Montana with a population almost half that of the entire U.S. Montanans would no longer have a home where the buffalo roam, no room for playgrounds for the deer and the antelope. No wonder the Japanese are depleting the world's oceans - a few more decades of irresponsible procreation by the Japanese and more than whales are going to be endangered species - they're already making severe inroads on giant bluefin tuna stocks, and who knows what other fish (North Atlantic codfish stocks? The Canadians might want to join my proposed protest).

Not only do Americans suffer the indignity of a whopping trade deficit with Japan while Japan smugly states that there is nothing that the government can do because its people just don't want to buy inferior American goods; but Japan now insults our intelligence by nattering on about our concern for the whales, calling them "sacred cows". So far we've been content to let our government officials do all the talking, but I think it's time that the American people show Japan the stuff that we're made of - good old American initiative, forget the politicians, they don't seem to do much more than talk. Now is the time for action, and it's really very simple.

I am proposing a campaign, tentatively titled: Japan Is Greedy - Save A Whale (JIG-SAW for short, though I'm sure that a smarter person than I am can come up with a better slogan). All the American people have to do is decide that we're tired of being pushed around by the Japanese, and agree to stop purchasing Japanese products (borrowing from various labor unions in the U.S., call it a buying "sick out" or "slow down"). Set a date when nobody in the U.S. will buy any Japanese product - automobile, appliance, video, whatever, for a period of six months. By giving our retailers a few months notice they could reduce their stocks of Japanese goods and simply not order any more for the duration of our JIG-SAW strike. With a $60 billion (that's a low-ball guess, guys) U.S. trade deficit with Japan, how long do you think that Japan would hold out? $60 billion is a lot of money, even for the Japanese. With the right publicity, I think we could get France to join us (sacre bleu, "sacred cows" indeed!), maybe even half the European Economic Community might want to go along on this. That's an even bigger economic bloc than the U.S.

And it's not even that difficult. Just to not buy any Japanese product for six months shouldn't be an onerous burden for the American consumer - if (s)he doesn't just switch to a U.S.-made product, think of the money (s)he'll have left over to put in the bank.

What about Japanese retaliation, you say? What are they going to do? Stop buying U.S. products? What ones? They've been treating the U.S. like some poor backwater third-world country, with no more to offer the sophisticated Japanese taste than raw materials. Do you think that they'll stop buying up our trees? How long do you think 126 million people can go without toilet paper? How about our coal? I doubt it, they've already bullied Australia into reducing their coal prices with a threat of reduced purchases - do you think they'd be willing to go back to the Australian coal industry to renegotiate? Not exactly a face-saving maneuver. Perhaps they'll stop buying our oil, since they can get that from the Mid-east, although at the cost of higher shipping costs. But hold out until two or three months into their winter and see if their resolve stays firm. Perhaps they'll embarrass and put pressure on our government. Yeah, they might do that, but why would any American worry about their politicians being embarrassed - our news media does that to them on a daily basis already. Anyway, what could they say to our President - make Americans buy Japanese products again? I think that our President would welcome the opportunity to say back to the Japanese what they've been saying to us all these years. Oh, this could be fun.

With all the ingenuity and energy in the U.S., we should be able to get a good campaign going. Rap groups, Hollywood stars, comedians (David Letterman and Jay Leno could have an on-air contest to see who is the funniest non-consumer) could all get in the act. American companies could have a field day with the right advertising campaign: for starters, "Americans haven't had to use whale oil to light their homes for over 100 years. Buy GE and show the Japanese that they shouldn't either". Chrysler could introduce a new car, the Minke. Sales on end-of-the-year models on Fords could be advertised as a "whale of a deal". IBM could adopt the Blue Whale as its corporate logo ("Big Blue supports the big blues"); Apple Computer could introduce its new Humpbacked Apple personal computer. Harley-Davidson can bring out a black-with-white-spots chopper and call it "Killer". Whatever - we're smart, we're tough, we really ought to stop letting Japan push us around. Come on fellows, what do you say? Let's do it, June 1, 1994 will mark the start of the American Jig-Saw.

Jeanne Pockel