GUNS FOR CHINA

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 39, 15 February 1945, Page 8

GUNS FOR CHINA

GREAT CAVE PLANTS

BOMB-PROOF ARSENALS

NEW YORK. China's good earth grows guns. After more than seven years of heroic warfare against the ruthless advance of invading Japanese troops the Chinese people continue their fight for the total victory that will make China free. Deprived by Japanese bombs of their chance to make guns and munitions of war in their surface factories and arsenals, the Chinese have gone underground. In huge rock-hewn production plants impervious to Jap block-busters, Chinese men, women and children are working without stint to supply their soldiers with sorely-needed weapons. The Bureau of Ordnance has planned, erected and now operates the arsenals system. Within this system plants for production of certain arms and ammunition have been constructed. Men and women hitherto untrained in any phase of mechanical work have been educated by the arsenal staff. Typical of these new underground production methods of China is the light machine-gun arsenal, located in the mountains of south-west China. Designed originally as a normal surface plant, it was begun in 1939. Before the end of that year the physical plant was completed, the staff and the employees assembled and the necessary machinery collected.

"Manpower And Patience" Then the Japanese airmen took a hand in the affair. Living quarters and workshops were subject to a savage and unrelenting bombardment from the air. The assault became so severe that the production of machine-guns had to be halted. , „ Because of the terrible need for guns work was rushed on the construction of protective caves. Lacking modern construction facilities, the Chinese had to depend on manpower, primitive tools and a grim, unending patience. Finally the bomb-proof were completed. Driven deep into solid rock, they provided bomb-proof shelter for essential machines and processes. The magnitude of this underround system of solid-rpofed caves and rock-walled connecting tunnels

must be seen really to be appreciated. Safe workrooms 25ft high, 40ft wide and as long as 200 ft, electrically lighted and impervious to weather and to death dropped from the sky, constitute the very backbone of China's will to wage war. With the original fundamental tools of production; other machine

tools have been built. Despite poor supplies, a completely self-sufficient industrial community has been nearly achieved. Taps, dies, milling cutters, twist drills, jigs and fixtures are all produced in the toolmaking shops of this underground arsenal. „ , These are only a small part of the items made by the arsenal to make possible its primary function, the uninterrupted manufacture of light machine-guns. To provide adequate transportation facilities, connecting roads have been built. Two steamboats have been placed in operation on the nearby lake to move raw materials and finished products both to and from this busy underground munitions hive. To increase the carrying capacitv of the two steamboats, loaded 'sampans are towed in their wake. These sampans, used by local Chinese for centuries in their lake commerce, have now become in effect "commercial trailers" in an unending transport fleet. • Education and Culture

Nor does the Bureau of Ordnance neglect the needs of its employees. Primary schools for children are in session, burrowed deep into China's patient soil. Evening classes are held for adults. In the machine shops, modern vocational training is carried out in conjunction with actual production work. A hospital is maintained for the care of employees and their children. There are co-opera-tive stores, where dairy and farm products produced on land adjacent to the arsenal are marketed.

The arsenal has its own printing press and its library. Playgrounds have been constructed for the small Chinese children, and there are basketball and tennis courts for the young workmen and girls. Not to be outdone by our own American system of supervised entertainment for troops and workers, the Chinese have built underground a school auditorium to which travelling actors and entertainers are brought to increase the morale of these isolated workmen and their families. — Auckland Star and N.A.N.A.