JAPANESE ATROCITIES.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 250, 21 October 1919, Page 5

JAPANESE ATROCITIES.

HEAP OF ROASTED BODIES. WAR PREDICTED. , FRHMAXTLK, October 11. Captain .T. Thempson, of the steamer Chefoo, which has arrived from the Far East, is of the opinion that Japan and America will be at war within eighteen months, and that is the opinion of most people in China. The rotations between China and Japan had been strained almost to the breaking point, he added; but the Japanese had maintained the upper hand through the influence of the military party in the Pakin Government. Describing atrocities he had witnessed, he said that at Tusan, in Korea, he wafl | horrified to find that the one Christian! church it possessed had been razed, and ■ among the smouldering debris were' heaped several hundred roasted bodies, j In a neighbouring township Japanese; had made a wholesale massacre of Korean students. They had disbanded j the schools, imprisoned the teachers, I drove the students into the streets, and. mowed them down with machine-guns under the pretext that they were connected with the independent movement. CHURCH SET ON PORE. A great number of Koreans had fled to the church, which was set on fire. The reason for the massacre, so far as he could ascertain, wae the Japanese desire to obtain possession of the rice fields. The Chinese quite realised that the Japanese will filch Shantung, the same Oβ they did Korea and Formosa. Chineae in Shantung had paraded the streets calling upon the Government to save their country. In Peking they wanted to interview the President; but numbers of them were shot down by the Chinese police, whose instructions were supposed to have emanated from Japan. A GENERAL STRIKE. Merchant* then collaborated with, students in th , . organisation of a general strike. Everything was at a standstill. The Cliineee withdrew their money from the Japanese banks, and tons of Japanese goode were hurnt in the centre of the Shanghai streets. Three Japanese torpedo boats and a cruiser arrived, and wanted to land an armed guard; but the trouble .subsided without this being done. At the present time untold acts of brutality are being commit--1 ted under an organised control. The boycott of Japanese goods continues. Captain Thompson eaid he was rather surprised to see Australia and New Zealand so passive over the Marshall and Caroline Islands (settlement, and apparently somebody is becoming due for a rude awakening, Japanese arc »hip- ' ping hundreds of tons of coment and many aeroplanes to these islands, and, Ihe thought, this activity was hardly for the purpose of tilling the soil*