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TORONTO DAILY STAR, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1941 SAW 2,000 DEAD, HEARD GIRL WAIL 'WA YAW WADA MAMA' Mortally Wounded Chinese Crawl Off Road to Keep War Traffic Free AVIATRIX IN CITY China's only aviatrix, a hospital executive and a patriot, Miss Lee Ya Ching, in Toronto for the United China Relief, has seen much of the world. "I have seen 2,000 dead refugees, killed by the Japanese bombs in Shanghai," she said today. "They had been in a camp--if you would call it a camp--when the Japanese planes came. The explosions were so fierce they blew most of the clothing off the bodies of those 2,000 Chinese. "With my own eyes I have also seen a seven-year-old Chinese girl running in the streets, sobbing words which in English sound like "Wa yaw wada mama?--Where is my mother?" "She was walking hand in hand with her mother wen a bomb fell." Her first name Miss Lee Ya Ching explained, is Ya Ching, not Lee, because "we put the cart before the horse, a custom that the Chinese are not likely to change for all the tea in China, as the English say." Japs Won't Alter It She sipped a cup of coffee--not tea--in her hotel room. Taking time off from he4r preparations for a flip over Toronto in a Cub plane she told of another cart-before-the-horse custom of the Chinese. And the Chinese, she said, most certainly will never alter it--not for all the bombs and bullets in Japan. It is this: The utmost consideration is shown, not buy those who live to those who die, but by those who die to those who live. "I have seen the Japanese bomb and machine-gun helpless Chinese on a highway," said miss Lee. "I have seen dying men, women and children with their last breath of life crawling off the road. They don't want it to be said that soldiers and supplies to fight the Japs were delayed because Chinese bodies blocked the roads. Not over their dead bodies will the army's lines of communication be clogged. Miss lee was born in China. As a girl she travelled with her father to Switzerland, France and England and came to the United States to graduate from California's Boeing flying school, a feat of which she is proud. She also became the first Chinese member of the caterpillar club during an upside down flip with an unfastened safety belt over San Francisco Bay, a feat which she describes as "very stupid," In 1936 she set out for China to make her homeland air-minded. She flew every airline, visited every airport, became an instructor at China's biggest air school in Shanghai. By July of 1937, though, the Japanese washed out her flying career for the time being. Six Nurses For 200 This talented Chinese girl, who had never been in a hospital in her life except to visit a sick friend, became administrator of a 200-bed military establishment in Shanghai where terrific bombardments and shellings left thousands wounded and homeless. "The Belgium Radium Institute provided the doctors but we has only six trained nurses," said Miss Lee. "That left only three nurses on shift at a time for 200 Chinese soldiers, all of whom were seriously wounded." Her hospital was in the international settlement because the Japanese bombed every hospital that wasn't. The red crosses that the Chinese painted on their hospital roofs were bad. Instead of providing protection they made the targets stand out more clearly on Japanese bomb sights. "Not one of the men in our hospital." said Miss Lee "arrived in daylight. They were smuggled in at night in groups of 10, 15 or 20. The Japanese machine-gunned every ambulance they laid their eyes on. "Some of the wounded walked and crawled 150 miles to get to us. It took them days and weeks and their wounds remained undressed. Some of the wounded who could not walk were carried on the backs of the wounded who could. Buddhist priests and boy scouts would help to get others off the battlefield into the ambulances. They were the lucky ones--unless the Japanese saw the ambulances from the air." Burn Chinese Alive Atrocities she heard about from doctors and soldiers at the hospital are even more gruesome than those she has seen. "When the Japanese take prisoners they do not put them in a prison camp but kill them in any manner that suits their fancy," Miss Lee said. "They shoot them in the front, in the back, any place. They chop their heads off. They use the Chinese for target practice. They rope them together, throw gasoline on them, set them on fire--for sport. "The doctors, too, have told me how the Japanese treat helpless Chinese women and children. Girls of six, grandmothers of 60, brutally assaulted, driven insane. They are better off dead. "Since the war began, the number of refugees has piled up to 50,000,000. You will see hundreds every day, digging in the rubble for what? A handful of rice? No, they count themselves lucky if they gete only a grain or two. To them one whole bun a day is a luxury. "In some cities, at least 300 die every night of hunger or cold. There are children by the thousands, orphans, huddled together with tags around their necks, inside fences waiting for their parents to come and call out their names. "They have to be fed and clothed and housed, and for $20 you can do that for not only one child, but you can educate him, too, for a whole year. One dollar will feed an adult for a month. "For our hospitals we need anaesthetics most of all. Anaesthetics first, iodine next, and then quinine and serums. Remember, that in the hospitals inland they are operating without anaesthetics. In our hospital we were lucky that we had supply. I do not wish to be in a hospital that is without." No Time to Think Speaking for herself, Miss Lee said that she has been in many bombings. She was as close as 200 feet to an exploding missile. What do you think about when a bomb falls? "If you are alive, you rush to help; you have no time to think, for perhaps every 20 feet you will find--a body." Yesterday afternoon and last night, Miss Lee spent meeting representatives of about 15 groups in have given wonderful help," she Toronto's Chinese colony. "They said. "People in the United States and in Canada are becoming far more sympathetic because they realize what China is suffering for democracy and civilization." PRETTY GIRL PILOT FLYING FOR CHINA [[image]] Lee Ya-Ching, beautiful Chinese girl, came to Toronto to officially open a campaign to raise $100,000 for the Red Cross Chinese Relief fund. First girl to obtain a pilot's license in her own country, she has been flying for eight years and now has upwards of 550 hours to her credit. Arriving at Malton airport in an American airliner, she flew to Toronto from Hamilton in a brand new Piper Cub monoplane which was donated to the fund by an anonymous benefactor. It will be raffled off to raise funds for relief of civilian war victims in China. Miss Lee will spend some time in Toronto as a guest of the Friends of China society. THE GLOBE AND MAIL, TORONTO, SATURDAY, EPTEMBER 13, 1941 FRIENDS OF CHINA SERVICE. Rev. Dr. C. A. Williams, minister of Howard Park United Church, Sunnyside and Marmaduke Avenues, is giving over his Sunday evening service to the Friends of China. Miss Lee Ya-ching, the Chinese aviatrix, will be the special speaker. Rev. Dr. A. J. Brace, prominent in the Friends Society, will also be on the platform.
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