Tagomi-san is a good man, he doesn’t usually beat his help, I assure you. But he’s frustrated. We can’t get the authorities to release supplies of rice to feed the people stranded in the valley. The chandler is very high in the Japanese community here, and he’s been trying for months now. He thinks the Chinese bureaucrats, over on the island there… are hoping that most of the people inland will starve… So, you know, Tagomi has been trying to organize private relief, and we’ve been taking it inland on the flood. But it isn’t going well, and it’s been expensive, and so the old man is getting testy. His poor workers are paying for it.1 (my emphasis)