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The Five Days of an Old Shanghai Christmas – #2 – 1942, a cold and hungry Christmas in Japanese occupied Shanghai

Posted: December 21st, 2016 | No Comments »

December 1942 – the second Christmas of Japanese occupation of all Shanghai. This report emanated from the capital of Free China, Chungking (Chongqing). The reporter claims that thousands of Chinese are dying every week from starvation  and disease; food supplies are erratic at best and greatly reduced. Among the foreigners left in the city, Jewish refugee children are the worst affected and as many as 12 a week dying of malnutrition. Jewish children are reported to be fighting with Chinese beggar kids for scraps. Coal, rice, meat, all fuels…in short supply and with prices spiraling upwards; foreigners are being interned, some in camps, some in common prisons…

1942 was a grim Christmas in Shanghai…there were to be yet two more Christmases before liberation in 1945….

tucson_daily_citizen_thu__dec_24__1942_cold and hungry



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