The Ient Family: Family History

Working Methods

We also built ships. I must say this about the Japanese mind, they don’t have ‘demarcation lines’ in jobs like we have. Compared to the Japanese, you can see why our ship building industry went for a Burton[i]. In Japan, workers did all jobs. One day you are shovelling coal, the next day he’s welding, the next day he’s riveting and the next day after that he’s doing a bit of plumbing work. Every job to the Japanese was interchangeable. When there was a shortage of workmen for one task, you were just moved from there to there and did whatever job you were told to do. You weld today, you’re shovelling coal the next day, you were doing totally different jobs all the time. All the trades were intermixed. As a result, of course, the ship just went up like that [meaning it got built faster]. There was no waiting anywhere, nobody was waiting for someone to drill a hole or arguing if the wood was attached to the metal and so on. Might be a bit dodgy some of the time but it got done.

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