NEW YORK'S CHINATOWN

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 306, 28 December 1931, Page 8

NEW YORK'S CHINATOWN

UNITED AGAINST JAPANESE. TRAINING AIRMEN FOR WAR. CAMPAIGNING FOR FUNDS. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SAN FRANCISCO, December 6. There is a heavy tension in the air of New York's Chinatown these days, for the Chinese of the Occidental world are heart and soul in the Manchurian war with Japan. Frequent bulletins from "the front" are posted, and attract throngs of patriots.

I Chinese families have been skimping [in their routine expenses, even economising on food, in order that money may go back to Nanking. Those traditional enemies, the On Leongs and the Hip Sings, have buried the hatchet and joined hands against the common enemy. Together they have planned campaign after campaign .for raising funds, -for boycotting the Japanese, for training war pilots for the Chinese armies. A visit to their quarter in New York showed they were in the midst of their drive for funds to school 3000 airmen in this country. According to their plan, these men would be recruited in various sections of the United States and sent to the nearest aviation training school to learn t-o pilot bombers or to become mechanics.

It was stated that the Chinese arrnv has about 300 modern aeroplanes, but faces a serious lack of men to fly them. Many of their ships are being flown by white Russians and Germans. There are already 20 Chinese youths, sent to America by the Chinese Government, training in aviation in the U.S.A., but in San Francisco such training has been stopped as a violation of neutrality. In New York there has been no show of violence. The metropolitan area holds some 12,000 Chinese and about 5000 Japanese. The Japanese have no colony, however, and are widely scattered. Some of them go about fearlessly in the Chinese districts. The Chinese have known them for years, and they regard them in a half-way fraternal spirit. It would be different if a strange Japanese ventured into Chinatown. °

Most of the stores have small bulletin boards in their windows for the posting of news dispatches. The big boards were so overloaded with dispatches that smaller boards were necessary. The

Chinese newspapers, appearing daily now with scare headlines, are distributed late at niglat for the following day, and until the following night's issue, important bulletins are posted on the boards. While Japanese newspapers in the East are inclined to conservative treatment of war dispatches, the Chinese papers roar and rant, scattering Chinese exclamation points indiscriminately through ; their pages, excitedly urging support of the eternal boycott of all things Japanese and demanding that "countrymen rise and kill all Japanese." One such paper, the ''Chinese Journal," has doubled its circulation since the unofficial war started.