Viewing page 66 of 127

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

Mme. Wellington Koo   -2-    June 14, 1942

On the day when the Japanese started their invasion of China in 1937, Chinese women of all ages started their own resistance against the invader, and when Japan finally is driven from the land, the women of China will have been in no small measure responsible for the Japanese defeat.

Chinese women not only are serving behind the front in a second line of defense, engaging in first aid and relief activities, but they are actively engaging the enemy in ways not duplicated by women of any other fighting nation.

Inside occupied territory, where Chinese Guerrilla fighters make frequent forays to obtain ammunition and to carry out sabotage, Chinese girls have been of direct assistance to guerillas.  They have allowed themselves to be decoys.

Their plan of operation is this: Dressed for the occasion in their gayest and brightest gowns, a group of Chinese girls leave the town and go to a point where Japanese troops are expected to pass with reinforcements to their front.  The girls sit in the fields just off the road, and when the Japanese soldiers appear, they call and beckon, and soon some of the troops start towards them.  As the troops approach, the Chinese girls run further in to the bushes, and when they have gone far enough, Chinese guerillas hiding there take over.

In a large Chinese city inside occupied territory, a professor's wife at the present time is risking death every day by running a secret kitchen to feed daring guerilla soldiers, dressed as Chinese coolies, who make frequent trips to gain military information for the Chinese armies.  This woman used child runners - to send the food, by night, to the guerilla hideout on the outskirts of the town.  She also supplies them with clothes and when needed, with money.

In northwest China five young girls are members of a band of guerilla songsters who have dedicated their lives to making music for guerilla soldiers.  The girls pass and repass Japanese lines to carry on their "cultural fight" against the Japanese.  Arrived at their destination, they give concerts or dances, songs and original plays for several days, then move on to another guerilla district.  The girls' equipment consists of violins and harmonicas, two sub machine guns, a rifle and fifty hand grenades.

Chinses movie actresses who lost their jobs when the Japanese occupies the east coast movie centers have formed themselves in to ano0ther band that tours the fighting lines bordering the barren "roadless areas" to take amusement to the Chinese fighters.

Old Chinese women washing clothes in country streams form one of the most reliable sources of information of troop movements inside occupied territory.  By night, they dispatch runners with news of what they have seen.  Other old ladies serve as watchdogs guarding the hidden west pocket industries that manufacture guerilla soldiers' uniforms and small arms under the noses of the enemy.