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Japanese pastors learn shocking things about Davao bananas

Published: January 29, 2008   |     |     |   Subscribe: RSS or Email    

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Reverend Isamo Koshiishi, also an NCCJ member, said there is no reason for Filipinos to be glad about the jobs that Japan open for them in the JPEPA, because those are jobs known in Japan as the 3K’s: “Kitani (hard), kitanai (dirty) and kiken (dangerous).”

“Caretakers and nurses are jobs known in Japan as the three K’s,” Koshiishi said,

“Those are the jobs that the Japanese hated, work that no one wants to do because they are very hard and they pay very low.”

And Him, Too. The Rev. Isamu Koshiishi, a member, NCCJ(davaotoday.com photo by Barry Ohaylan)

Reverend Toshifumi Aso, an NCCJ member, said that sweatshops and hard labor also exist in Japan, mostly employing migrant workers like Filipinos. “Industrialized economies are so dependent on exploited labor for support,” he said.

Koshiishi said thay are worried that JPEPA—already ratified by the Japanese parliament and awaiting ratification in the Philippine Senate—might take away what little is left for small fisherfolks and farmers to live on.

He cited the fisherfolks in General Santos city, who are still using “hardliners.” He said the method may still be a “primitive way of fishing,” but at present, it is “sufficient enough” to feed the fishers’ families. “I don’t know exactly what will happen after the agreement comes but I know the story of other countries in the South Pacific,” he said. “It’s a kind of joke but it’s not a joke: It’s a very serious story. Once the Japanese vessels start coming in with their very big nets, the small fishers could no longer lay their hands on the fish, they will have to buy the fish in cans from the big ones,” he said.

Koshiishi said it is the obligation of Church people like him to let the Japanese people know what’s going on in this part of the world. “What we saw in General Santos and Compostela Valley were inhuman that every good Church people should speak about,” he said.

Koshiishi said that the extent of poverty in the Philippines is very hard to understand in Japan, until one comes here to see it. “The Japanese people are not paying much attention because of government propaganda,” he said. “Government is telling them that the caretakers are coming and they like that idea, so, they don’t question it.”

But he said it’s a duty of a good Christian to tell the Japanese people what is going on.

He described the jobs being offered to Filipinos as a kind of “modern-day slavery,” an example of inequality that exists between a rich country and a poor one, something every good Christian church should speak about. He also said he wanted to give a message to the Japanese-owned Sumitomo Fruit Company, running a banana plantation in Compostela Valley. “I want to tell them, these people who are working for you are human beings, please, treat them as one,” he said. (Germelina Lacorte/davaotoday.com)