POISON GAS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 March 1943, Page 3

POISON GAS

AGAIN USED BY JAPANESE IN CHINA ACCORDING TO CHUNGKING COMMUNIQUE. ENEMY GROWING DESPERATE. (By Telegraph—Press Association.—Copyright) • CHUNGKING, March 22. A charge that the Japanese used gas in a battle in the south .of Hupeh province, where the invaders are striving to safeguard their communications to Ichang, is made in a Chinese communique. It says that after a bitter coun-ter-attack by the Chinese in one sector the Japanese in retaliation resorted to gas attacks, and more than 100 Chinese officers and men were affected, suffering from skin blisters, sore throats, vomiting, suffocation and stomach pains. The communique says, “These mean tactics to camouflage the defeat have been reported on many previous occasions.” The Japanese are growing desperate over the continued Chinese resistance, and are now trying to cause a Chinese collapse before American supplies increase, said General Wang, the air attache who, together with the United States Ambassador, Mr C. E. Gauss, and Dr. Wellington Koo, the Chinese Ambassador to London, has arrived in the United States from China by air, a Washington message reports. General Wang added: “We need planes, big cannon, tanks and, above all, petrol, which is the basic weapon of this war.” Dr. Koo and General Wang are returning to their posts after conferences in China. Mr Gauss will confer with the American State Department.