The National Broadcasting Company and its affiliated independent stations present The Pacific Story. This is the story of the Pacific, the drama of the millions of people who live around this greatest sea, where the United States is now committed to a long-term policy of securing the peace. This is the background story of the events in the Pacific and their meaning to us and to the generations to come. Tonight's Pacific Story comes to you with drama of the past and present and commentary by W.J. Morse, leading authority on the production of soybeans, hero of plant industry, United States Department of Agriculture. The Milk and Meat of the Far East. The Chinese speak of it this way. It is the poor man's meat. It is the cow of China. It is meat without bones. The Japanese speak of it this way. If we could have held Manchuria, it would have guaranteed that Japan could never be starved out. American nutritionists speak of it this way. It is high in protein. It is rich in vitamins, in A, B1, C, G, and E, and also in the blood clotting vitamin K. The Chinese speak of it this way. It contains several times as much B1 as beefsteak. And as for minerals, one-half cup of the flour contains as much calcium as a whole cup of milk, and one-half cup of the flour contains as much phosphorus as two cups of milk. And weight for weight, it contains as much iron as liver, twice as much iron as molasses, and three times as much iron as whole wheat flour. The soybean is a wonder food. One pound of soybeans is almost a complete one-day ration for an adult. Here, taste this. Recognize the flavor? How much of it is soybean? Fifty percent. The rest of it is split peas, wheat flour, a little peanut meal, a little onion, some salt, and a little fish oil. And how much of this mixture are you preparing here? Four million pounds of this preparation and twelve million pounds of other soybean mixtures. Sixteen million pounds. Yes, and all of it is going to the famine areas of China. Soybeans for China. Soybeans for the land where soybeans have been a mainstay for five thousand years. For science has found no more versatile plant than the soybean. Today, twelve percent of the world's supply of soybeans are grown in the United States, and eighty-four percent come from Manchuria, China, Korea, and Japan. But most of the world's output comes from Manchuria. Long ago, the Japanese recognized the value of soybeans. Soybeans grow well where the temperature is relatively high. Or what rainfall do they require? All they will do well is the rainfall is moderate. And in Manchuria, in some parts, the rainfall is plentiful. What parts are you thinking of? The valleys of the Liao and the Sungare. Or what are the rest of Manchuria? Or they will grow in other areas too. Soybeans can grow in soil that is not good. Actually, they make the soil better. They take nitrogen from the air and put it into the soil. But they must have water. Or some, yes. But they have great resistance to drought and even to insect infestation. You will prepare a chart, show where plantings can be made. Give me an estimate of what will be required for the plantings. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. The Japanese had made a good start in the development of soybeans in Manchuria. Manchuria was not their country. But by use of the South Manchuria Railroad, which they controlled, they extended their influence not only into the mining and industry, but also the agriculture of Manchuria. And soybeans were the greatest commodity of Manchuria. At Dairan, where the South Manchuria Railroad comes down to the Yellow Sea, the Japanese built a laboratory for soybean research. And twice each year, the Japanese invited Chinese farmers to conferences at this laboratory. There. That is the building there. That whole building is for soybeans? Yes. Is it not a fine building? Yes, but I do not understand. Huh? Why are the Japanese inviting us here? Chinese farmers like me, all the way from the Liao Valley. Some farmers come all the way from Shandong and Chile. Yes. I come all the way from the Valley of the Sangari. But why? They tell us how to plant the soybean and how to fertilize and how to harvest it. And my crop has more than doubled. More than doubled? Yes. And some get crops three times as large as they ever got before. And some four times. How can it be done? That is what the Japanese learned by their work in this big laboratory here. People from many parts of the world write to this laboratory for information about soybeans. But why are the Japanese doing this? Manchuria is not Japanese. All the Japanese are interested in is developing crops that can be shipped over the South Manchuria Railroad and out through this port of Dai Ren. Come now, let us go in. The meetings will soon start. In the central laboratory at Dai Ren, the assiduous Japanese studied the Wonder Bean with test tubes and microscopes, studied the soil it grew in, studied fertilizers and irrigation. Bright young Japanese educated in foreign universities were put to work in the Dai Ren lab. I was educated in the University of Wisconsin. And what is your job here? We are encouraged to make new discoveries. Ways to increase the soybean yield? Yes, new ways to process the soybeans and new commercial uses and ways to make, as you say, two braids of grass grow where one or none grew before. Outside the great port city of Dai Ren, the Japanese set up an agricultural experiment station. 400 miles north of Dai Ren, at Kung Chu Ling, they set up a still larger one, 750 acres. And along the South Manchuria Railroad, they set up nurseries, all for the purpose of developing and exploiting soybeans. After the bright young Japanese were trained in the laboratory at Dai Ren, some of them were sent out to work on the experiment station. You see, there are about 500 varieties of soybeans. 500? Yes. Look at these. You see, there are many colors. Yes, yellow, green, and that one's almost black. Black, yes. The yellow beans are the best quality, but there are many kinds of yellow. You see, we classify them according to the color of the navel. I see. The yellow beans are the richest in protein and fat, and that is what we are after. Through their work in the laboratory and on the experimental farms, the Japanese increased their crops from 10 to 20 percent. They increased the oil content of the beans 10 percent, and they laid out a progressive plan of expansion. This will be the first of our experimental factories. Yes, sir. We have learned enough about the expression of oil from the beans in the Dai Ren laboratory to prepare for the next step, commercial production. And that you will do in this factory? Yes, sir. The benzene process should get us into commercial production within a year. As soon as you get this factory to the commercial production stage, it will be turned over to private business to operate. I see no reason why this should not be done on schedule. Plans for the second experimental factory are already in preparation. By the time this one is in commercial operation, the second will be ready for you to take over. This was the plan, and it went apace until there were 200 large bean oil plants in southern Manchuria. And on the farms, the soybeans came out of the land in greater quantities than ever before. This district here is the best district in Manchuria for the growing of soybeans. The Japanese swept his hand over the upland country above Mukten. This soil has been deposited by the wind. It is excellent for shallow-rooted plants like the soybeans. What is better here in these hills than in the riverbeds of the Liao and the Sungari? The farther north the bean grows, the better the beans are. Well, isn't this Manchurian climate too severe? No, no, not at all. That we have learned on our experimental farms. Gets pretty cold. The variations in temperature are not great, and they do not come very often. I see. In the cold regions, the earlier maturing varieties require only from 100 to 125 days to mature. But in the warmer regions, the varieties mature in 140 to 175 days. Mm-hmm. Look at that farm down there, the way the furrows curve like waves. The farmers say they can get better crops and bigger crops from curved rows than from straight rows. Down below on the farm when the day was done, the farmer fed soybeans to his livestock. The stock likes it. Yes. We like to eat the beans too. You see this? What is that? This is tofu. What? Tofu. Tofu is bean curd made from soybeans. Oh, yes. This is fermented tofu. It is very good. Tofu is eaten in several forms, fresh, fermented, dried, or frozen. Just about any way it is prepared, its food value is preserved. I see. We also use the oil of the soybean. And with the soybean, we make soy sauce. You see, the Chinese and the Japanese, in fact, many of the Asiatic peoples, use the soybean in every way imaginable. With it, they make bean milk and bean flour. They roast them for confections. They eat them green. They sprout them. They even make drinks of them. And the products of soybeans of many other kinds were to turn up in America. Power handles, radio switches, steering wheels, salad oil, pens, pencils, vitamins, rims for eyeglasses, buttons, ashtrays, food drinks, a hundred different things, all made from soybeans. Dairyn became the great center of the soybean industry. It became the port through which most of the soybeans moved. Here the Japanese kept close tab on how much was produced and where it went. About 55 percent of the soybeans grown in Manchuria are used for human food. Ships loaded to the gunwales sailed out of Dairyn. Many went to England, to France, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, even to Egypt. And many went to Japan. Soybeans are helping to meet the pressing food problem in Japan. This will give you an idea. The great wharves of Dairyn were piled up as far as the eye could see with bags of soybeans, with bean cake and with soybean products. You see, 60 percent of the entire Manchurian export trade is soybeans. Trains of the South Manchuria Line brought in the soybeans by the thousands of tons and piled them from 12 to 15 feet high on the wharves. Japanese have developed here and at the other important points on the South Manchuria what they call the mixed storage system, transport, storage, and economy. The wharves were busy unloading the trains, piling some of the bean products up for storage, and transferring much of it directly into ships at the wharves for export. You see, it's all tied together. The growing of the bean, the processing, the transportation, and the export. The economy of Manchuria is being developed for the benefit of Japan. And there was more than met the eyes. Until now, my company and yours have been competitors in the export of soybeans. I know why you are here. These were representatives of the chief exporting companies of soybeans before the Japanese moved in. The French, Stryfus Company, and the Danish, Basard Company. Now the Bank of Manjokuo is trying to oust us. Not only our companies, Mr. Stryfus. All competitive export companies. The Bank of Manjokuo is buying up all the soybean business. The Bank is only the instrument of the powerful Japanese interests, the Mitsuis and the Mitsubishis. Your honor, I have been informed that the Japanese government claims that Manjokuo is an independent nation. We know better. Unless we are to be ruined, unless we are to be driven out of the soybean business of Manchuria, we must stand together against this outrage. It is my opinion that it is best for your company and for mine to sell and to get out of Manchuria as soon as possible. The powerful Japanese were shaping the economy of the puppet state of Manjokuo. They would force the soybean business out of the hands of the Europeans and out of the hands of the Chinese. They would then monopolize it. They used many methods. They speak of railroads. But what they actually mean is the South Manchuria Railroad with its terminus at Dairin. There is also the Chinese Eastern Railroad, which was built by the Russians and which crosses Manchuria from the northwest down to the southeast. The Chinese Eastern has its terminus at Vladivostok. These two railroads are in competition for the soybean business, each trying to direct the flow of cargoes to its own export. We ship all our soybeans over the South Manchuria Line out through Dairin. Well, you're actually a good deal closer to the Chinese Eastern. The rates of the Chinese Eastern are higher. But you saved the transportation from your plants to the railroad. But the South Manchuria gives us a rebate. With these conditions, neither the Chinese Eastern nor the European exporting companies could compete. The soybean business of Manchuria went into the hands of the Japanese, more specifically into the hands of the powerful Japanese private interests. By 1937, when the people of Manchuria had been under Japanese domination for six years, the economy of Manchuria was linked to that of Japan and the economy of Manchuria was linked to the soybean. The life of the peasants depends upon the growth of a single plant, the soybean. So spoke the thinking people of Manchuria. If anything should happen to the production of the soybean or to its export, the entire population of Manchuria would suffer a disaster. All railroads would come to a standstill. The oil mills would shut down and the farmers would lay down their tools and flock to the crowded cities. By 1937, the Japanese were ready for their next big move. They attacked China proper. This means that the Japanese have now developed Manchuria to a state satisfactory to supply their troops on the mainland as well as their civilians at home. By 1941, Manchuria was yielding some four million tons of soybeans. The Japanese controlled every pound of it and by 1941, they had fostered the growing of soybeans in Korea and also in Japan itself. Also by this time, the Japanese had seized a good part of the soybean country of China proper. But by Pearl Harbor, the United States was also growing soybeans, over three million tons in 1941. By 1945, it was nearly six million tons. Yes, sir, all that soybeans out there. You grow more soybeans here in Illinois than any other state in the Union. Close behind Illinois in soybeans came Iowa and Indiana, Ohio and Missouri and soybean planting spread to Arkansas and Mississippi and Louisiana, to Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, to North Carolina, Virginia, Delaware and Maryland. At Urbana, Illinois and at Beltsville, Maryland, the United States Department of Agriculture has experimented with soybeans. The department's research on this crop has been going on since about 1900. In Dearborn, Michigan, the Ford Motor Company established a soybean laboratory. But in Manchuria, the Japanese closed the door to the outside world and only secret reports came out. That wing Chinese junks loaded to the water line with soybeans are moving in fleets out of Diron. Some of the junks head out. The fields at Chung Chun are piled with bags of soybeans, tractors and trucks moving in the narrow alleys between the piles are lost from sight. The piles are so high and more soybeans are coming in. The Japanese have stepped up the production of soybeans. Now both the Chinese Eastern and the South Manchuria railroads are hauling the beans. The powerful Japanese private interests control the humble soybean of Manchuria, control its exports. Now Japan was at war and there were no exports to England and Holland, to Denmark and France and Egypt. Manchuria's soybeans went to her troops in the field and to her people at home. We could have no better food. Bean curd has a caloric value twice that of beef and its waste products have less tendency to poison the system and cause fatigue. Now the war is over and the soybean industry of Manchuria is lost to the Japanese. The fields, the laboratories, the experiment stations, the nurseries, the bean oil mills, the great port city of Diron with its wharves and its storage space, the Chinese Eastern railroad and even the South Manchuria railroad itself and the Bank of Manchukuo which controlled it all. All this is lost to the Japanese and if the people of Japan depend on the soybeans of Manchuria they must import them. But this may not be easy. Before the war 60% of Manchuria's exports were soybeans and products of soybeans. In the years to come you can look for a decline in the export of Manchurian soybeans. Yet there will not be less soybeans. As China industrializes her standard of living will rise and this means that China will herself consume more of the soybeans of Manchuria. We will consume much of the soybeans which before the war were exported to European countries and to Japan. This is the view of China and there is Russia. We will be in direct competition with Japan and the countries of Europe for the soybeans of Manchuria. In the years to come Russia will be using more and more soybeans. Today the United States is already shipping soybean products back to the Far East to the famine-stricken areas of China. This soybean preparation we're shipping back was scientifically worked out in the laboratory. It's got everything in it a man needs, calories, vitamins, minerals. You see it's dehydrated. All you do is add water and boil it 30 minutes. So the humble soybean again is playing a dramatic role. This time in the world's greatest famine. Actually we've hardly touched our supply of soybeans in this country. So far most of our soybeans have gone for feeding livestock. But now we know what they can mean to man. Now in this great crisis we are learning what the Chinese have known for thousands of years. It is the poor man's meat. It is the cow of China. It is meat without bones. Today from our fields from Illinois and Iowa and Indiana and Ohio and Missouri, from the Delta states, from the Middle Atlantic states, from the Dakotas and Minnesota and Wisconsin, our soybeans are going back to the lands whence they came to help feed the millions whose ancestors all the days of their lives tilled the soybean and lived on its good food. This is the story of the wonder food and the part it has played in our time. To tell you the significance of the development of the soybean, the National Broadcasting Company presents W.J. Morse of the Bureau of Plant Industry of the United States Department of Agriculture at Beltsville, Maryland. The next voice you hear will be that of Mr. Morse. We take you now to Washington. This specific program means a great deal to me. It is an impressive justification of the late Dr. Charlie Piper of the Department of Agriculture who was my boss nearly 40 years ago when I started working on soybeans. It was his vision of the possibilities in the United States of this great crop of the East that started the development as made it a teammate for our native Indian corn. It was in 1907 that Dr. Piper said to me, this plant has great possibilities for our agriculture and industry. He soon backed up his faith with action. Not only did we work on collecting new varieties from every possible source, but he sent me out to look over cottonseed oil mills as possible outlets for the flood of soybeans he felt sure would come. It has been my wish many times that Dr. Piper could have lived to see these later days, especially the present one, when the United States as a soybean producer has occupied second place, headed only by China. It is pleasing to us now that products of the American-grown soybeans are a great part of the bread that is returning across the Pacific to those people who gave us generously of breeding material. We began collecting new varieties and strains from the Orient about 1908. A few varieties had been brought over about 100 years before, but during that century it was merely a garden oddity. In those years we were living beside an undiscovered gold mine, you might say. But now we know we have something, the most valuable of the many plant gifts out of China, and perhaps the most versatile plant known. When I recite what we consider the virtues of the soybean, it may sound to the people on the other side of the Pacific like a schoolboy at the supper table announcing his discoveries of the day. Nevertheless, this is a good place to say that on both sides of this ocean, and in Europe too, it really deserves its name of wonder being. A valuable aid to good farming, a protein feed for livestock, a big ton of raw material for industry, and a nutritious human food that is winning a high place in the diet. The war greatly emphasized its usefulness. In the United States the acreage of this crop had reached sizable proportions before the war, and it had a place on the grain exchange, along with such mainstays of our life as wheat and corn. But in 1907, when Dr. Piper visions its future, the total acreage in the United States was only 50,000. Three years ago it reached a peak of nearly 16 million acres. The production of soybeans in 1917 was about 70,000 tons. By 1945 it had increased almost 100 fold. We needed the soybean, farmers, manufacturers, and consumers. And with great merit to start with, it was made to fit more exactly into various uses. Testing and selection are going on now at perhaps a greater rate than ever before, using types and strains brought in by thousands from China, Japan, Korea, and Manchuria. More than 15 years ago I spent two years in those countries. I have pleasant recollections of the people who proudly brought in their favorite beans from farms and villages and garden plots. We now have under test more than 2,500 varieties, types and strains, with about 100 varieties commercially available. Some of them bred or selected for the North Country mature in 75 days, and some suitable for southern states take 175 days. Until recent years the farmer has looked on the soybean mostly as a forage crop. Of late years it has gained in food and industrial uses. Today more than 100 oil mills are crushing soybeans, 200 concerns are manufacturing soybean food products, and more than 100 manufacturers are turning out various industrial products, including plastics and oil for paint and other uses. Now it is a $500 million industry. Not only has federal and state research widened the fields of usefulness of the soybean, but recently there has been much research by commercial interests. The soybean food list includes scores of products, but these are now getting most attention are soy flour, grits, flakes, and meat substitutes. Soy flour's greatest usefulness is in adding value to other foods. In industry the soybean is on a good and broad foundation, with about 70 percent of our production processed for oil mills. Industry uses the oil for the manufacture of cooking fat and many industrial products. The remaining high protein meal is used for stock feed, flour, plastics, and other industrial products. Altogether we have learned a lot about the soybean, from its home countries of the Orient and through our own efforts. And it has become as important, so to be almost indispensable. Our plant pot is really a melting pot. Thank you Mr. W.J. Morse. You have been listening to the Pacific Story, presented by the National Broadcasting Company and its affiliated independent stations, to clarify events in the Pacific and to make understandable the cross currents of life in the Pacific Basin. For a reprint of this Pacific Story program, send ten cents in stamps or coin to University of California Press, Berkeley, California. To repeat. For a reprint of this Pacific Story program, send ten cents in stamps or coin to University of California Press, Berkeley, California. The Pacific Story is written and directed by Arnold Marquis. The original musical score was composed and conducted by Thomas Paluso. Their narrator, Art Gilmore. Programs in this series of particular interest to servicemen and women are broadcast overseas through the worldwide facilities of the Armed Forces Radio Service. This program came to you from Hollywood. This is NBC, the National Broadcasting Company.
