FOOCHOW RECAPTURED

Foochow Recaptured

Last week the Chinese retook Foochow. The Japanese could have held it -- but they were concentrating all available for more spectacular adventures on the road to glory (see p. 23). The Chinese nevertheless thought the achievement brilliant. It was the first time since the Japanese had sealed the south China coast almost airtight last spring (TIME, May 5) that the Chinese had fought their way into possession of a major seaport.

To the great smuggling rings of the China coast, with headquarters in swank Shanghai hotels and in Hong Kong, the recapture of Foochow meant cash in their itching palms.

Through such ports, until their occupation by the Japanese, the smugglers had run vessels under Italian, German and other flags, carrying gasoline, cloth, medicines, luxuries past the guns of the Japanese Navy. Profits were fantastic. For incoming gasoline the Chinese Government paid original costs plus expenses plus profit. Goods lost due to enemy action en route were also paid for. Out of such ports as Foochow the smugglers shipped much of the tung oil that repaid Chinese Government borrowing from the U.S.

Silent partner in the smuggling up the south China coast out of Hong Kong last year was the Japanese Navy. For approximately 34,000 Hong Kong dollars a month (U.S. $8,500) Japanese Navy agents granted smugglers the right to sneak into China one tug with as many barges as it could tow up the coast. Military supplies were forbidden but gasoline was permitted. A Japanese agent accompanied the tug to give the O.K. to any inquisitive warship of the Imperial Navy.

Evacuating Foochow the Japanese declared that, having destroyed the Foochow supply route into China's interior, they need no longer pin troops there. This was nonsense. Even the Japanese must have known that they had not wiped from the minds of the coastal men the memory of tricky paths to the interior.

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