Japanese Occupation

The Stars and Stripes – Wednesday 14^th November, 1945

Text and Sketches by Lou Glist

Looking into a city through someone else’s eyes is difficult. Accuracy suffers. For how can you explain a smell, a look, a gesture? Conditions are factual. Cold. Outwardly perhaps revealing, but looking beneath the surface, you see the real story.

Impressions of a city vary with the approach. You can enter the city of Liuzhou by air, by river, or by the road. By air your reaction would be: “Look at the pimples on the face of the earth – they just don’t care where they put those mountains.”

By road the remaining walls of the ruined buildings look like a stage setting. Going up one of the tributaries of the West River which winds around Liuzhou like a double “S”, the sudden appearance of such a large city annoys you.

Liuzhou is six days by road from Kunming if the [?] haven’t been washed out the road.

It’s three weeks from Guangzhou by man powered boat, but only four and one half hours by plane from Shanghai. It is so accessible by air, land and water, Liuzhou became the hub of domestic and military operations.

When the river was denied by the Japanese advance, you had to choose between air and the road. And when the road was bombed, airplanes kept the lifeline beating. But air activity was dangerous. The Liuzhou airfield is cradled by rugged, jagged mountains and dust plays havoc in summer and [?][?] in winter.

In Jap hands Liuzhou became the nucleus for advances to Ishan and Tushan and their cynical attack on Guiyang. Liuzhou became a fortress. Every mountain was honeycombed with caves which held huge armament and ammunition supplies.

At the mouth of every cave was a pillbox and these mountains covered the airport, the bridge crossings and the city approaches.

The late in June of this year the city was retaken by Chinese and American forces. The Chinese poured in as fast as [?] trucks and feet could carry them. Supplies came in by every means. By truck, by [?][?], by jin-pole. The roads were packed with troops, animals and carts. It was time to go back to Liuzhou.

The shattered approach to the city was merely a prelude to what was ahead. Bombing had wiped out the railroads, leaving craters, which were turned into public laundries and swimming holes.

Liuzhou had known hell. It had been gutted and [?] into an ugly scar on the face of China. Its people bore the suffering of the city in their faces and bodies.

You could still see traces rising up out of the broken shell of a city. You could tell it was once a modern, thriving metropolis. The evidence was there in a dangling electric wire, a flush toilet resting against a crumpled wall. Transportation in Liuzhou, once made up of Chevys, Fords and Dodge trucks is now mainly by jin-poles and man-pushed, junior sized [?]. The Chevys, Fords and Dodge trucks are wrecks in the gullies by the side of the road.

Liuzhou’s people have come out of the hills. Out from hiding to rebuild their city. Little businesses have sprung up, always indicative of their intention to stay. It doesn’t take much. All you have to do is place your merchandise on the sidewalk and you are ready for customers.

Liuzhou’s pulse is coming back to normal. It is a slow hard struggle, but the ugliness is being overshadowed by the beauty in the spirit of the people.