TERRIBLE PLIGHT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 November 1938, Page 6

TERRIBLE PLIGHT

HORDES OF REFUGEES IN CHINA EXPERIENCES OF MASTERTON DOCTOR. STATIONED AT CHENGCHOW. The Far-East Relief Committee of the Joint Council of the Order of St John and New Zealand Red Cross Society has received a further communication from Dr T. A. Watson, son of Mr and Mrs T. F. Watson, of Masterton, who is stationed at Chengchow. His letter reads: — “We are being kept very busy here just now, by refugees, wounded civilians and soldiers wounded north of the Yellow River, and south from here. The Japanese are on three sides of us here, and are now within 25 miles of the railway line joining Chengchow and Hangkow. They are expected to cut this line shortly, thus destroying, or at least greatly delaying our mails to Hong Kong. Therefore you may not hear from me again for some time.

“Chengchow is still the centre for refugee work for the Sunghai and Pei-ping-Hangkow sections. Half the present population of Chengchow is now made up of refugees, of whom two-thirds are either indigent now, or soon 'will be. About 5000 of these are in refugee camps (a very small percentage of the total number in the city). The rest are either trying to get into the camps or are living on the town. I find it impossible to imagine fat and self-satisfied New Zealanders under similar conditions. These refugees move by families, carrying all their possessions with them. These usually consist of one or two small bundles. Even if they had more they would be too wehk to carry it. Most have their eyes painful and swollen with tracoma while, as far as I can see, every refugees has at least one large sloughing ulcer somewhere about him. These are the more healthy of them. The others have malaria, cholera, venereal disease, or dysentery. “Some are refugees from floods, others from Japanese, and some from both. Unfortunately there seems very little chance of improvement of conditions at present. Refugees, in large overcrowded railway trucks going from town A to town B, pass equally crowded trains going from B to A. There are still tens of thousands of refugees waiting about the edges of the Yellow River flood, hoping still that it is just another flood and that they will be able to get back to their homes when the waters recede—they do not realise that this flood is a permanent one. “We are seeing between 150-200 refugees alone in our clinics daily, and average 90 refugees in hospital. This represents a very small percentage of the number that should be cared for, but it is our maximum, as we also have regular patients, wounded civilians, and wounded soldiers. Nurses are difficult to obtain, and Chinese doctors will not come to Chengchow. We are just at the end of a terrible cholera epidemic, now there is malaria in epidemic quantities, typhoid is just beginning, and deficiency diseases are seen on every hand. “From the fighting north of the Yellow River, 30 miles from here, and with the likelihood of the hostilities between here and Kaifeng, during the next week, we are likely to have a good deal of work, among wounded soldiers. This week 300 were brought to Chengchow from over the Yellow River. Of this number we treated about 150 in out-patients, and admitted about 40.”