RAIN OF BOMBS

Evening Star, Issue 22805, 13 November 1937, Page 14

RAIN OF BOMBS

DEATH FROM THE SKIES ONE SNELL-700 CASUALTIES Following in the wake of a scene of carnage in the International Settlement of Shanghai on that awful day of August 14—a day that will go down in the history of the city as “ bloody Saturday ” —another terrible _ act of mass slaughter from the skies was staged on August 23 in Nanking road, at one of Shanghai’s busiest street crossings. Two bombs loosed from an aeroplane killed 173 and injured 549 innocent victims of the conflict between Japan and. China. A vivid description of these atrocities was given by Mr C. F. Taylor, an engineer of the Shanghai Electric Construction Company, in the course of an interview with the ‘ Star ’ 'to day. Mr Taylor, whose wife and child preceded him to New Zealand, is in Dunedin on six months’ furlough—a holiday that ordinarily would have been taken next year, and he is thankful to be far away from a locality where the . highways literally ran with blood, where' mutilated bodies packed the streets, and where solid buildings were torn and twisted. Shanghai, he said, had just recovered from the terrible holocaust of “ bloody Saturday,” when, shortly after noon on August 23, how ror was heaped on horror. " Two bombs were dropped from .an aeroplane flying at an altitude of about 15,000 ft,” he told a reporter. “ One landed on a warehouse, but failed to detonate, and did not do much damage. The other landed in Nanking road al a crowded corner, killing 173 and injuring 549, besides causing much damage to the buildings of two big departmental stores, known a* Wing On’s and Sincere’s. They are each six or seven stories high. The former store was damaged most, having the front and sides stripped. This disaster duplicated on a smaller scale the tragedy on “ bloody Saturday, which occurred before Mrs Taylor left for New Zealand.”

. The blame for these atrocities could not be attributed to Japan, said Mr Taylor. They had not dropped one bomb in the International Settlement, but had wrought such destruction from the air in Nanking that they did not deserve any medals for leaving the Settlement alone. The International Settlement was larger in area than Dunedin—about 16 miles long and 10 miles wide, and before he left the country on October 8, the French Concession was occupied by several regiments. The general .opinion among residents in the Settlement was that it was a Chinese plane that dropped the bombs, though nobody suggested that their dropping was anything but another case of misdirection of missiles aimed at some object from a height too great to ensure an accurate aim. In extenuation of the Chinese bombers for these costly blunders, Mr Taylor pointed out that "they had practically no experience of this dreadful form of warfare. On the other hand. Japanese bombing of civilians was'deliberate. When Mr Taylor left Shanghai, the population, with stoic fortitude, were making a brave attempt to forget the horrors of the bombings,’ .and banks opened their doors again, cable communication with the outside world was resumed, and two. of .the largest shipping companies were operating services. The price of food had soared, and foreigners were charged double what Chinese paid for their commodities, _ No motor cars were used by'the civilian population, as supplies of petrol were stopped through the Japanese firing across the Whangpoo River, which marks the boundary of the Settlement.