PITIFUL PLIGHT OF REFUGEES

Timaru Herald, Volume CLIII, Issue 22477, 12 January 1943, Page 2

PITIFUL PLIGHT OF REFUGEES

Conditions In China

Tribute To Christians

A vivid picture of conditions in

China after the occupation by the Japanese was given by the Rev. P, Anderson in a sermon at the Temuka Presbyterian Church on Sunday, in which he emphasised the change in outlook experienced by Chinese Chrisians from the old indifference to human suffering and distress. It was the Chinese who had first organised relief for refugees from the stricken areas, and Mr Anderson told something of the great job they had made of it.

Mr Anderson was for seven years teaching English at the Anglo-Chinese College at Amoy in South China, leaving there in January, 1941, after the Japanese occupation of Amoy, but before Japan entered the European war. Unable to return to England because of war conditions, Mr and Mrs Anderson came to New Zealand to spend their furlough and hope to return to their work in China at the first opportunity. “In the early days of the war most of the fighting took place along the railway lines of the north-eastern provinces,” said Mr Anderson. “The Chinese Government did its best to evacuate the wounded from the front line. The walking cases often had to walk some hundreds of miles. But I really want to speak of the wounded who were helpless cases. These were placed on trains for evacuation to the interior, but these trains were not at all like your comfortable New Zealand trains. They were only cattle trucks, open to the burning sun and the beating rain.

“The wounded were packed into these cattle trucks so closely that you could not step between them. On their journey to the interior they were too often shunted on to a siding to stay there for two or three days while troop trains passed to the front. The journey for these wounded often lasted two or three weeks. They had no one to clean them up, to dress their wounds or to give them food and drink. The Y.M.C.A. of China heard the call for service. They sent out an SOS for volunteers. In the old days a student would rather die than dirty his fingers, and Mrs Anderson, who is a nurse, tells me that it is only a trained nurse who can appreciate the filthiness and repulsiveness of the task for which volunteers were called. And yet they came forward by the hundreds. “One of the students from the New Zealand Presbyterian Mission at Canton was a leader of one of these bands. The method of working was very simple. A group of workers would get on at one station and travel to the next, doing what they could for the men. They then got out and made their way back to the starting point while a fresh band boarded the train. 50,000,000 Dead “As the enemy advanced through this densely populated area, 60,000,000 of the inhabitants rose and fled from the face of the enemy. Of those left, 50,000,000 died of starvation. Can you picture the refugees in their trek of over 1000 miles? Disease and starvation thinned their ranks drastically as they went, and the policy of the Government, which was to disperse these refugees in the Far West, kept them on the move. In the earlier stages Japanese aeroplanes roared overhead, bombing and machine-gunning. Thousands upon thousands fell by the wav through weakness, starvation and sickness. Scenes of suffering and distress were seen absolutely beyond the conception of any but eye-witnesses. “The church heard the call for service. In every township and city through which these refugees passed, church committees were formed. These committees provided resting places for the refugees, where food and drink were supplied whenever they had sufficient funds. In the terminus towns, where the refugees were allowed to settle, these church committees did what they could to rehabilitate the refugees. They set them up in business, or found some little corner of land for them to scratch a living and set up school for the children. “I have said that the Christians of China were mostly desperately poor.” said Mr Anderson. “The greater number of them are living well below the starvation line, and yet these, poor as they are, found dollars by the hundred to feed, clothe, and house these refugees. We have no conception of the sacrifice entailed. The high values placed upon these Christian services are not the fanciful imaginings of a missionary. The Chinese Government itself has given weighty recognition. Government Decision Reversed “Some years before the war, the Chinese Government forbade religious education in the schools. After some 18 months of war, the same personnel in the Government reversed their decree and gave Christian schools full liberty of action. They stated that the decision had been made because of the service given by Christian Chinese to the nation. They also gave the native church the job of settling the hill tribes of the South and SouthWest, a task in which they themselves had repeatedly failed. The Church took its chance with both hands and has made an immediate and amazing success. Many Chinese Christians have laid down their lives in this cause already. “Tire head of the Chinese Government, General Chiang Kai-shek and his wife are both Christians, though the Government itself is largely not Christian. The Christian influence is in the vanguard of progress in China to-day.”