Japan Runs Amuck

Just ten years ago the Japanese press went wild at a report that Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson had accused the Japanese Army of "running amuck." Stimson had never made the statement--but he had every right to. Here is the record of Japanese aggressions beginning in 1931:

Sept. 18, 1931. Japanese troops, without warning, marched into Mukden, went on to conquer the Chinese province of Manchuria, set up the puppet state of Manchukuo. The Japanese Navy bombarded Shanghai; its Army moved in to kill some 100,000 Chinese.

March 26, 1933. Japan pulled out of the League of Nations, which still believed in international law.

Dec. 31, 1936. Japan refused to continue 5-5-3 naval limitation.

July 7, 1937. Japanese troops without warning fired on Chinese sentries at Marco Polo Bridge, proceeded to take Peking.

Because Chiang Kai-shek resisted, Japan again attacked Shanghai and entered it after eleven weeks' bloody fighting.

Oct. 6, 1937. The League of Nations finally labeled Japan an aggressor.

Dec. 12, 1937. Japanese aircraft bombed and sank the U.S.S. Panay in Yangtze River, later said "Very sorry," paid $2,214,000 indemnity.

Dec. 13-27, 1937. Japanese troops advanced up the Yangtze, took and looted Nanking, committed some of the most fearful atrocities of modern history--mass murder of civilians and rape of tens of thousands of Chinese women.

Nov. 18, 1938. Japan proclaimed her "New Order in Asia." ("Japan . . . is devoting her energy to the establishment of a new order based on genuine international justice throughout East Asia.") Feb. II, 1939. Japan's troops seized China's Hainan Island, off the eastern coast of French Indo-China. Explanation: a "military necessity" to cut off war supplies from China.

June 19, 1939. Tension at the foreign concession in Tientsin reached a climax after Japan's troops had erected live-wire barricades around the British and French Concessions. Japanese slapped the faces of several British women, stripped others.

Next day the British evacuated their women and children to safety.

March 30, 1940. Japan set up its Wang Ching-wei puppet Government at Nanking.

Aug. 30, 1940. Japanese troops marched into French Indo-China in a "limited occupation"--by agreement with the Vichy Government of a France already defeated.

Sept. 27, 1940. Japan's Ambassador in Berlin, Saburo Kurusu, signed a military alliance--directed against the U.S.--with Germany and Italy.

May 25, 1941. Japanese soldiers smashed the doors of two warehouses in Haiphong, seized $10,000,000 worth of U.S. products destined for China.

July 30, 1941. Under a new pact with Vichy for "common defense" of the territory, more Japanese troops poured into French Indo-China.

Nov. 15, 1941. Saburo Kurusu arrived in Washington as a special Japanese envoy, ostensibly to try to agree on a peaceable settlement with the U.S.

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