Tragedy in China

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 121, 17 October 1941, Unnumbered Page

Tragedy in China

ACH woman who came seemed to have a tale to tell, but one story remains ever present in my mind, I had gone over to a friend’s house one day, when I met Mrs, R,, a tragic figure in black. I had spent Christmas at her house the year before. Very simply she told me what had happened. As she spoke her fifteen-year-old daughter sat, nervous, twitching her hands. She described the bombing of a certain amusement centre. She, her husband, and daughter had gone out in the car to do some f shopping and, as they went down town, they foun themselves caught in the usual rush of office cars, They determined to turn and go home by another road which they hoped would be less crowded. As they reached a certain corner, the refugee crowds of Chinese, who were thronging the streets, became more dense. They all seemed to be looking upwards, craning their necks to watch a dog fight betwéen two aeroplanes. It was in the very early days of the fighting, and there were no dug-outs and the crowds had not learnt to scatter. Seeing it was impossible to drive forward, her husband stopped the car to see what was happening. Suddenly he dropped to the ground. His wife jumped out of the car and turned him over. He had shrapnel through the heart. At that moment there was a blinding flash, a roar as a bomb fell. The two women tried to lift the body, and as they put it into the car, a badly wounded Chinese girl crept up, and begged to be taken away. With amazing courage the widow first drove to a hospital to deliver her patient, then to an undertaker’s to deposit her husband’s body. She went home and collapsed. A week later, on board the President Hoover, with her daughter and a‘ few suitcases, leaving her home and shop to their fate, she sailed to Manila and was met by an earthquake, And here they wete now in Hong Kong on their way to America. Four ddys later they were in the President Hoover when she was bombed outside

Shanghai, mistaken for a troop ship. This is but one instance of the tales that met us continually.- (" What It’s Like to be a Refugee," Barbara Collins, 2YA, October 8.)