MANCHUKUO: No Ordinary Wreck

Tall, lanky Henry Walsworth Kinney, public relations director for Japan’s South Manchuria Railway, who boasts proudly of his Japanese artist-wife and her step-motherly care of his part Hawaiian son, walked into Harbin last week dressed in a potato sack and part of a tent. Other U. S. travelers were not so lucky. Nude, blue with cold, suffering from exhaustion they staggered into town to tell about four brigand-staged trainwrecks. Most graphic description came from young Henry Hilgard Villard, son of Editor Oswald Garrison Villard of the Nation, on his way across Russia to study in Britain at Cambridge :

“It was no ordinary trainwreck, but one accompanied by a fierce armed attack in the dead of night, with the bandits intent on kidnapping, plunder and murder.

“After I recovered from the terrific impact of the wreck itself, I crouched on the floor of the coach, using suitcases as barriers and expecting every minute to be shot. . . . The bandits then boarded the train ordering everybody out at revolver points. We were lined up like criminals and while one group pressed the muzzles of pistols to our heads and another squad held us covered from behind, a third stripped and robbed us. … Apparently our clothes and baggage were worth more to the brigands than our bodies. In the midst of our misery we could hear the agonized cries of those pinioned in the wreckage, most of them horribly mangled.

“The Chinese soldiers refused to help them, saying ‘What’s the use of dragging them out? There are no doctors here and they will bleed to death anyway.’ I then started to rescue some of the victims myself. Only when daylight came did we feel safe from another attack.”

U. S. Consul-General George C. Hanson loudly demanded that Japan’s newly recognized Manchukuo Government, headed by Puppet Henry Pu Yi (see below) should increase protection for foreigners, especially in Harbin. His demands were the more insistent because he had just been held up by bandits on the Harbin golf course. Japanese officers promised strenuous efforts to provide protection. The trainwrecks and hold-ups were just the sort of incident they needed to show the necessity for Japanese troops in Manchukuo.