RISKS OF TRAVEL IN CHINA

Southland Times, Issue 23840, 10 June 1939, Page 7

RISKS OF TRAVEL IN CHINA

JAPANESE AIR RAIDS ON CHUNGKING AUCKLAND MISSIONARY’S JOURNEY (Special to The Times) AUCKLAND, June 9. The formidable difficulties and grave risks faced by travellers in war-tom China were experienced in full measure by an Auckland missionary, Mr H. H. E. Knight, a member of the China Inland Mission, who, with his wife and two young children, travelled from the borders of Tibet to Hong Kong last month, returning to New Zealand on furlough after eight years’ service in China. Mr Knight vividly describes his experiences in Japanese air raids during his trip to the coast in a letter to his mother, Mrs M. A. Knight, of Mt. Albert.

Leaving their headquarters at Tienshui, in the province of Kansu, Mr and Mrs Knight travelled by train and motor-lorry to Sian. With so many air liners brought down or destroyed on the field by Japanese aviators, there was a delay of two weeks before an aeroplane could be obtained to transport them on the next stage of their journey to. Hanchung, where a landing was made because of an air raid alarm being sounded at the normal destination at Chungking. After being forced back several times the party eventually reached Chungking, the present capital of China. The city had not then recovered from an air raid on the previous day and some of the ruins were still smouldering when Mr Knight went into the town to engage an aeroplane for Hong Kong. With another missionary he was walking along the main street when an alarm was again sounded. “A DEATH TRAP” “Chungking is a death trap, being on an angle between two rivers and surrounded on three sides by water.” Mr Knight stated. “The streets are also narrow and most of them consist of stone steps. The city was full of people during this air raid, which some have described as the worst in any war. After a while somebody thought they heard the all clear signal, so we ventured out from our dug-out and got as far as the Eurasia Aeroplane office, when’suddenly the lights went out, indicating that aeroplanes had arrived. A few minutes later we heard the chugchug of an anti-aircraft gun just across the way. There was nowhere for us to go. The streets were all cleared by the police and the place where we were —the bottom story of a fourstoried building—had no dug-out. “We did not have to wait long,” Mr Knight continued. “The first bomb of the raid fell on the road the length of a cricket pitch from the door of our building. We heard the swish of it and ‘of succeeding bombs and almost instinctively threw ourselves on the floor. I found myself with a Chinese clerk seeking protection under a wicker work table. Plaster and glass fell all around us and the whole atmosphere was full of dust and smoke, our mouths and nostrils being 'blocked. The front of the building seemed to bend towards us with the force of the concussion on the street, which was now red with flames from a building struck by ah incendiary bomb. The bombing grew more distant and we ventured out into the street, which was now beginning to be crowded again by terrorstricken people, carrying children and bedding and rushing anywhere to get away from where they were, scrambling over .the debris which littered the street and tripping over wires which lay in all directions on the street. The police and militia were gallantly attempting to keep order. BRITISH CONSULATE HIT “We never knew when we might be blocked by fire, impassable crowds or wreckage,” Mr Knight stated. “On the hill behind the town the British Consulate had been hit by three bombs and a huge fire was raging. We went to bed, but not to sleep. In the four days we remained at Chungking such experiences were common and on the Sunday night before we left we had children in the dug-out until 4 a.m.” Mr Knight added that eventually berths were obtained on an aeroplane to Hong Kong, the machine crossing the front line and flying over Japanese territory at Kweilin. He added that the Japanese appeared to be trying their best to get the Eurasia liners and to stop air lines, with the result that the trips were all taken on the quiet The flight was made at a very high altitude above the clouds and a night landing was made at Hong Kong. Mr and Mrs Knight expected to leave Hong Kong early tiffs month. They will arrive at Auckland at the end of June.