be too serious as long as the operations remained within the present authorized fishing 
area, which is visited by only a emall percentage of the Pribilof seals. But this area 
eventually may be expanded, and the stage would then be set for sealing history to repeat 
itself unlees Japanese pelagic sealing is curbed. 
It ie doubtful if Occupation officials ever can supprese the current poaching 
entirely, except by such drastic measures as curtailing all fishing operations in the 
sealing waters, which would be neither feasible nor economically desirable. The area is 
too large to be patrolled adequately except at enormous expense. The only other possible 
immediate remedy, that of eliminating the profits from sealing by confiscating all fur 
seal products in. the markets, ie equally impractical because the market ie so widely diesi- 
pated. Even if trained personnel were available for surveillance and enforcement, prose- 
caution would be difficult, and the probable results would be only to drive the business 
further underground. 
However, the Japanese themselves are capable of stopping the practice, as they 
demonstrated back in the halcyon days of the treaty, from 1911 to 1917, Sut the problem 
ie more than one of enforcement alone. Enforcing laws with which people are not in syn- 
pathy is very difficult to do, as the United States iearned during Prohibition. By and 
large the Japanese are a law-abiding people, particularly in their home islands, but they 
are as yet far from convinced of the desirability or the necessity of stopping pelagic 
sealing. They see nothing basically immoral in the practice, and from their individual, 
local viewpoint they have every possible economic reason to continue it at present. The 
solution will require educational measures as much as political and supervisional ones. 
Surveillance during the remainder of the Occupation, to the fullest extent possi- 
ble, will keep unlawful pelagic sealing at a minimum. But the practice will never be 
stamped out until the Japanese themselves are convinced that euch action is economically 
as well as politically desirable. Even then it can be done only by the full cooperation 
of all those concerned -- fishermen, government officials, police, and the buying public 
as well. 
46 
