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News Chronicle
In Hong Kong Now
Little Food But Plenty of Opium
From Our Special Correspondent
E
CHUNGKING, Sunday. YEWITNESS accounts which have just reached me of conditions in Hong Kong report that Irish are moving freely about the ter- ritory and that many Nazis wearing swastika badges have arrived there.
Practically all shops in Hong Kong are closed. Everything of value has been confiscated and shipped away by the Japs. Money and food are getting scarcer, while many gambling and opium dens are being opened.
Hong Kong University is among the many buildings which have been looted by Japanese troops.
SHANGHAI HUNGER
Latest private letters from Shanghai. dated the end of January, describe how British Quaker missionaries are bravely carrying on the "Friends Centre." But most of the time has to be spent in trying to get food. Sterling cannot be exchanged. and in any event little food is available.
The Quakers' receiving home for destitute children, over- crowded, has had to cut down rations.
Members of the China Inland Mission are reported well
One Briton writes that so far there has been relatively little direct interference by "enemy aliens."
CHILDREN SNATCH FOOD
But the poor are in deplorable plight. Destitute children snatch food from passers-by. Two hun- dred bodies can be counted in the streets every night.
Letters from Tientsin report that the Japs are allowing foreigners just enough money from the banks for bare survival. Most of the missionaries are in their own homes. The London Mission hospital is carrying on, under the Japs, but Mission members are not allowed to visit people in the British concession. English Methodists and other Britons have had their houses appropriated. Some Britons have now been released.
Chinese are everywhere trying to help foreigners.
23 FEB 1942
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