CONFLICT IN CHINA

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 209, 4 August 1937, Page 10

CONFLICT IN CHINA

3.15 P.M. EDITION.

JAPANESE BOMBING RAIDS. STORIES OF ATROCITIES. (United Press Association —By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) Received August 4, 12.15 p.m. TIENTSIN, Aug. 3. Japanese ’planes again bombed Paotingfu, Kalgan and other places in the Hopei Province. The Japanese have occupied Yangliuching, west of Tientsin, without resistance. A Chinese report says that the Japanese troops have killed hundreds of villagers as a reprisal for alleged tampering with the Pekin-Tientsin railway. The Times Tokio correspondentsays that, according to Japanese news, nil the northern provinces of China are preparing their defence. Rich Chinese are leaving ’lsingtao for Shanghai. Japanese women and children have already been brought to Tsingtao eii route to Japan. Air defences are being prepared at laiyuan, where the people are dispersing to the hills. • Other advices from Tokio state that an official War Office report announces the Japanese casualties since the start of the conflict in North China at 330 killed and 837 wounded. Major Nakagawa, spokesman for the War Office, told an all-party conference of the House of Representatives that 130 bodies of Japanese and Koreans, including women and children, had been recovered from Tungchow. All bore hideous marks of atrocities. Major Nakagawa added that 11 Japanese women taking refuge in an hotel at Tungchow were all outraged. Escaped Japanese told the Tientsin correspondent of the journal Asahi that he had found a pond inside the east gate crimson with the blood of 60 Japanese and Koreans, who had been killed and thrown into the pynd. Twenty-nine others were found butchered in another pond nearby. Women and children were included in each case. . . Japan lias summarily rejected the Soviet protest against the raid on the Consulate at Tientsin, stilting that the incident occurred outside the area controlled by the Japanese. Japan suggests that Russian Whites were responsible for the raid, their object being to seize the archives, in which they were successful.