CANTON’S NIGHT OF TERROR

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22424, 10 June 1938, Page 13

CANTON’S NIGHT OF TERROR

HOSPITAL RESOURCES INADEQUATE WOUNDED DIE FROM LACK OF ATTENTION FIVE HOURS’ BOMBARDMENT IN MOONLIGHT (UNITED PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT.) (Received June 9, 10 p.m.) CANTON, June 9. The hospitals are unable to deal with the situation arising from the Japanese air raids. The plight of the thousands of injured is terrible. Exhausted foreign and Chinese doctors are on duty for 24 hours at a stretch, yet many of the wounded are dying through lack of attention. Isolated cases of cholera are reported. Many of the dead are unburied.

Last night was one of terror for the city. The remorseless Japanese bombers, taking advantage of the brilliant moonlight, swept over and again for five hours. Obviously they were seeking out military targets, chiefly the power station at Saichuen.

Consequently it is believed that the civilian casualties are not high. The raiders dropped flares to identify their targets. Lack of current prevented the sirens giving warning of the raid. The Wongsha oil depot is blazing fiercely. It is estimated that, up to yesterday, 2500 have been killed, 5000 wounded, and 1700 houses destroyed. The Canton correspondent of Reuter’s reports that bombs fell on the Christian village of Honam, including the American Lingham University, with a staff of three Britons, 31 Americans, and one German. The nearest military objectives are & mile and a half distant.

A direct hit partially demolished the Saichuen power station, from which the hospitals are supplied with power.

British engineers engaged on, the waterworks, on which 40 bombs were dropped in 24 hours, miraculously escaped. The anger of the inhabitants is revealed by the firing of rifles and revolvers at the low-swooping Japanese aeroplanes, which are using both high explosive and incendiary bombs.

The latter caused a widespread blaze at Wongsha. which firemen heroically fought under constant attacks from the air. Some incendiary bombs dropped within 400 yards of the Shameen international quarter.

A hundred bombs rained on the Government headquarters, but the Sun Yat Sen Hall is miraculously intact.

The aeroplanes again appeared at 5.45 and 7.30 a.m. for the eleventh successive day. but received a vigorous fire from “archies.” No bombs were dropped, though later they bombed what remains of the Wongsha station.

A spokesman at the Japanese Foreign Office, repeating its denial that the air raids are directed at non-combatants, likened the Japanese policy to that of Britain in Waziristan.

It is estimated by the Chinese that Japanese losses in the year-old war are 750.000 killed and 1,750,000 wounded.

BETTER JUSTICE FOR NATIVES

AUSTRALIAN SYSTEM CONDEMNED

ANTHROPOLbGIST URGES NEW

METHODS

(Received June 9, 11.30 p.m.)

SYDNEY, June 9,

A complete revision of the administration of justice to natives is urged by an anthropologist, Dr. Donald Thomson, who lived among the aborigines of Northern Australia for five years. He condemns the present system by which the police act #as protectors as well as prosecutors, and suggests the substitution of special Courts which would replace imprisonment with up-to-date corrective methods for aborigines.