A Japanese shipping agent in Manhattan buys a cargo of rusty old rails, iron pipe, sawed-off steel girders, stoves, smashed automobiles. He loads it into a creaky freighter already headed for the junk heap. Manned by Japanese, the ship takes on enough coal for one voyage, limps south through the Panama Canal, manages to reach Nagasaki 11,000 mi. away. There the cargo is dumped into smelters. The ship proceeds to Osaka where, in the world's largest ship-breaking yard, acetylene torches reduce its hull to hunks of scrap. The crew works back to New York for another ship, another cargo. The scrap...
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