Posted on 08/10/2008 6:39:06 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Abut 200 persons were killed in Canton, more than 300 were injured and scores were missing since the attacks started yesterday. The count by days, thus far:
Monday – 121 dead or missing, 180 injured.
Tuesday – 102 dead, 159 injured.
Canton was plunged into gloom by today’s three-hour bombardment, in which whole acres of flimsy dwellings were leveled by the explosives, mostly 500-pound bombs. An awful hush, reminiscent of the intervals between daily bombardments in June, settled over the metropolis.
Japanese airmen appeared over the city on Saturday and dropped leaflets declaring the Japanese intention of bombing Canton for ten consecutive days. Today’s assaults extended over Kwangtung Province, with attacks on railways and other population centers, but Canton suffered the greatest devastation and paid the highest toll in lives.
Hundreds of homes in industrial districts were demolished. Five 500-pound bombs burst simultaneously in Taipingshan, laying waste to almost two acres. Ten bombs wrecked the old water works.
A bomb fell behind the Grand Theatre where the film “Mystery Squadron” was being shown. Debris was piled thirty feet high against the theatre but the walls held. A bomb demolished the Forty-ninth Girls Primary School which had been evacuated less than an hour before.
Kwangtung officials expected even greater attacks. The Fifth Japanese Squadron recently relieved the Third Squadron in the task of bombing South China and hampering the northward flow of imported munitions to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s army.
An Associated Press representative toured the city and saw rescue corps retrieving the living and the dead and dying victims of the latest raid. He reported:
“I saw a demented father clamoring for the rescuers to dig for his entire family, buried under thirty feet of wreckage. I saw a woman extricated from a mass of debris, unharmed, but a child strapped to her back and another held at her breast were dead.”
The Japanese advance was said to have been bitterly contested, and the village of Fangkiawan was said to have been the scene of a three-hour close-in struggle before the Chinese were finally repulsed. Tatien is southeast of Shahochen, and possession of it by the Japanese consolidates their hold on the latter important town on the Kiukiang-Nanchang Railway.
Heavy fighting was also reported yesterday and today on the Chinese right wing in the vicinity of Kuling, where the Japanese were also attacking furiously. The Chinese counter-attack on the Japanese at Susung and Hwangmei, on the north bank of the Yangtze north of Kiukiang, was said to be continuing. In assault on Japanese forces in the environs of these towns, a Wuhan Daily News report from Tienchiachen asserts, the Chinese killed 1,000 Japanese and captured ten machine guns and four armored cars.
Japanese reinforcement were being rushed up from Hofei to handle the Chinese attacks around Taihu, Susung and Hwangmei, Chinese reports say.
Japanese warships were active above Kiukiang, shelling Chinese positions at Holungshan and Wukweishan on the south bank of the river and Lungping on the north bank. Small landing parties were reported at Hsuchiawan and near Matowchen, apparently to test Chinese defenses. All these points are within twenty-five miles of Kiukiang.
The troops were on their way from Hofei, Anhwei Province capital, to Kiukiang, Yangtze River port and Japanese advance base, 150 miles to the southwest of Anhwei and 135 miles downstream from Hankow.
Twenty-five miles north of Kiukiang Chinese forces assaulting Japanese at Hwangmei said 6,000 Japanese were encircled, but that Chinese could not dislodge them because it was impossible to bring up artillery in the flooded Yangtze Valley area. Chinese also struck at Susung, twenty miles east of Hwangmei, and Taihu, thirty-five miles north of the encircled town.
With Yangtze waters receding and reinforcement on the way, however, Japanese were expected to intensify their drive on Hankow in the near future. Japanese planes yesterday raided Chinese air bases at Kian and Changshuchen, in Kiangsi Province, reporting “serious damage to military establishments.”
In Shanghai itself an estimated 15,000 police, defense troops and voluntary units of various nationalities continued extraordinary precautions to prevent an outbreak next Sunday, anniversary of the start of Japanese-Chinese fighting at Shanghai.
A typhoon hovered off the city. The police and defense troops, patrolling in a heavy rain, diverted all traffic into three streets in order to search automobiles. All Chinese were being searched.
Chinese reported a heavy migration of Chinese civilians from Pootung, across the Whangpoo River from Shanghai, into the city itself. They were said to be hopeful of escaping danger of possible “incidents” in outlying territory.
Dispatches from Shantung Province said a Japanese landing force backed by the fire of destroyers had occupied Haichow, eastern terminus of the east-west Lung-Hai Railway, but had withdrawn after driving five miles inland.
This report indicated that while Japanese theoretically had occupied the Lung-Hai east of its junction with the Peiping-Hankow Railway at Chengchow, Chinese actually had reoccupied a large part of the area south of the Lung-Hai’s eastern end.
Mr. Johnson is likely to be the only diplomat of ambassadorial or ministerial rank in this city. Other major powers were sending lesser ranking diplomatic envoys.
He diagnosed “all these cases as caused by poisoning of a mustard gas type, or possibly by chlorine.”
Dr. Talbot described all the cases in technical detail, saying that six of the men were “very seriously ill and it appeared almost certain that five would die.”
He explained that he had examined the men between July 2 and 5, accompanied part of the time by Captain Frank Dorn, an American military attaché at Hankow, and by the Rev. Mr. Johnson of the Methodist Mission at Nanchang.
The Chinese Government points out that these soldiers were evacuated from the Matang area on the Yangtze front following the fighting there early in July. It asks only that the report be sent for information to members of the League and to the United States as a member of the League’s Advisory Committee.
Candidates include any of the following:
Mitsubishi Ki-1, served from 1933 through about 1938, replaced by Ki-21 by the fall of 1938:
Italy's Fiat BR.20 "stork," sold to Japan in early 1938:
Mitsubishi Ki-21 introduced in 1938, though possibly not in time for this Canton raid:
I know you have a reason for posting these. In fact, I suspect it is a conservative reason. I think it would be a good idea if you stated your goals each time as you make your posts.
Very few posters have an understanding of what conservatism is so any an all reminders are useful.
My objective, if I had to boil it down to one thing, would be to facilitate a long-term internet seminar on World War II. I am not a scholar or a historian so I am unable to offer any original insights or anlysis on the events of the era. In fact I am probably the biggest beneficiary of the knowledge passed along by the various respondants to my posts. If I am learning stuff then I imagine others are too. But I enjoy reading old newspapers and studying the popular culture of times past. So my contribution to the study of history is to offer a perspective on it that may not be found elsewhere.
Eventually, God willing and the creek don't rise, the seminar will become a venue for paying tribute to the Americans who won the war at such a cost. My father and uncle both experienced major combat in the war and their lives were shaped by it. They and their bothers-at-arms are going to be forgotten if their descendents don't keep their memories alive.
Finally, I disagree with your final statement. At Free Republic most posters have an understanding of what conservatism is.
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