LOOTED CITY

Six months after the Russians entered Mukden, industrial metropolis of Manchuria, U.S. correspondents were allowed to enter. Reported TIME Correspondent William Gray:

The main street of Mukden's former modern Japanese area is now "Stalin Prospect." The Yamato Hotel is "Hotel of the Intourist Travel Agency of Moscow, U.S.S.R." Near Mukden's railway station is a granite-mounted Red Army tank, a memorial to Russian soldiers. Russian and Chinese flags fly together everywhere, but there is little doubt which flag dominates.

The atmosphere of Mukden is charged with a degree and kind of fear that Americans should never experience, and find hard to believe until it infects them also. We toured this depressing city one cold bright morning in a Chinese Army truck. In one street we came upon ten blackening Chinese or Japanese corpses, a fortnight old and partly gnawed by dogs. Grisly as this sight was, it was more easily forgotten than the sight of Mukden's ravished factories.

This week Russia was still picking through the bare bones for industrial loot. When Red Army men carted off machinery from the Mukden ice plant, the city's new Chinese mayor, Tung Wen-chi, protested to the Russian garrison commander, Major General Andrei Kovtun-Stankevich. A man of remarkable statements (see INTERNATIONAL), the Soviet officer blandly replied: "The Red Army is very powerful. I cannot stop them."

Dismantled Factories. The gaunt facts of Mukden's sacking are there for anybody to see, but it is a rare man indeed who will tell what he knows about the days last fall when looting was at its height. By chance we met a young Japanese engineer who had witnessed the dismantling of the Japanese-built Anshan Steel Works, about 60 miles from Mukden, and Manchuria's biggest industry.

The Russians, he said, took 70% to 80% of Anshan's equipment, including foundry tools, machine shop, steel rolling and milling machines, chemical equipment, trucks, locomotives. The booty was sent by rail to Dairen and to Russian-occupied Korea, for shipment to Russia.

As we talked to the Japanese, a Chinese official burst into the room and warned: "The Chinese manager of the British Tobacco Company who talked to American correspondents here last week was shot and wounded by a Chinese gunman the following day." Our informant said he was not worried; he could take care of him self. Nevertheless he was removed to a place where there was some assurance of his safety.

Planned Chaos. These are the dominant facts about Manchuria today:

After six months of Russian occupation, Manchuria's industry is destroyed; it was apparently the Soviet Union's dual desire to rebuild Russia's own factories with Manchurian equipment, and to weaken China on her Asiatic flank. Mukden has been reduced from a great industrial city into a tragic, crowded way station on the Russian-controlled railroad to Dairen. A strong China is not Russia's aim.

China's Central Government has a fairly stable grip only on the short southwest leg of Manchuria bordering the railroad from Shanhaikwan to Mukden; its hold on the cities of Changchun and Mukden is only nominal and by charity of the Russians. Fifteen thousand National troops in the western outskirts of Mukden are confined to their barracks by their commanders to avoid the chance of "incidents" with the Russians, who one night this week concluded tank maneuvers in front of the Chinese 25th Division barracks by firing a volley over the barracks, and then departing. Soviet planes have fired on U.S. planes patrolling in the Port Arthur-Dairen area, and Moscow has informed Washington that no U.S. plane may come within twelve miles of the coast without permission.

The Chinese Central Government and the Chinese Communists are still warring in Manchuria. Confusion and local control are the order of the day. The National Army commander says flatly that the Russians are aiding the Communists. The Russians contend that they cannot tell one Chinese force from another; there could be some honest confusion, but the Russians are smart enough not to be confused if they want to know the truth.

The Russians have taken what Japanese they wanted as a labor force. They have made efforts to befriend and propagandize Japanese technicians. Finally they will be content to leave a Japanese residue in Manchuria as a confusing and weakening factor for China to cope with. The Russians are not just leaving China with an empty house in Manchuria; they appear to want to leave it full of termites, too.

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