Jap Big Guns Fail To Dislodge Chinese

Horowhenua Chronicle, 6 February 1932, Page 7

Jap Big Guns Fail To Dislodge Chinese

MILE-WIDE CONFLAGRATION. New York Times Broadcast. SHANGHAI, Feb. 5. The devastated Chapei ■ section of Shanghai was churned • and battered by another heavy ■ Japanese bombardment to-day, but its Chinese defenders still clung to the barricaded strong- , holds they had set up amidst the ruins. Judging from the thunder.of /the guns, the Japanese were -using six-inch projectiles in their effort to blast the Chinese cut of their positions in the -northern' section of the city. This new artillery assault followed two major bombardments .yesterday which left the Chi--8 nese holding fast to ;their holes in the ground. The heavy, shelling started : forty minutes after midnight. -Shells exploded at ‘the rate of ■ one a minute, rattling the doors -and windows of houses three -miles away. After an hour the .heavy guns ceased firing, but three-inch pieces and' machineguns were kept in action. At -three-fifteen a.m. quiet descended on the battlefield. With the breaking of dawn /three, hours later, the guns got -busy again. Shells screamed through the air and burst in the / Chapei battleground where ma--chine-guns again had taken up . their rat-tat-tat. A trail of fire a mile long .lighted the sky over Chapei. .Smoke and fumes from the conflagration were swept down on the International Settlement by . a cold north wind. The Chines© .looked for a final desperate push on the part of the Japanese to clear out the last stronghold in Chapei before many more hours. Tse Chih College, a wellknown Chinese school in the - Japanese occupied district of Hong Kew, was destroyed by . flames early to-day. Chinese said the Japanese entered the four-storey ' dormitory of the .school and set fire to the furniture and then put the tore!* to rthe institution’s other two build- . ings.

Fresh detachments of the United States marines, brought in on the cruiser Houston, took their places in the International Settlement guard line. The United States transport Chaumont was expected from Manila to-day with 1200 members of the Thirty-first Infantry and about one hundred additional marines. These new forces will bring the total United States here to almost 6000 men.

’When all the United States : naval vessels en route from f Shanghai arrive, there will be ~a total of seventeen American warships in the Whangpoo. The marines had a hard time keeping off thousands of Chinese refugees who stormed the gates to bridges over Soochow -creek in a vain attempt to get into the International Settlement. Only persons ■passes were admitted, for the already was swarm-

ing- with, refugees estimated, to total one million. During one of the two engagements yesterday an artilshell crossed the Xnteinational Settlement border and exploded in a group of Chinese buildings only a block from the main post office. The shell injured half a dozen Chinese and several houses were burned. The Chinese claimed they were still holding the Woosung forts, sixteen miles down the river, despite a two-day bombardment by Japanese ships of war. Shells blew out the commercial cable head at Woosung, leaving the Great Northern cable and the radio as the only means of communication with the outside world.