If you go to a Blockbuster or some other video store or rent from Netflix, you can obtain the movie Shanghai Ghetto. It is about Jews who fled Germany and Eastern Europe in the late 1930s to the only place in the world they could go without a visa: the International community in the Hongkew section of Shanghai. There were also non—Jews who fled there as well. Despite poor conditions, life was bearable for these Europeans.
But the Japanese military placed a radio communications complex either in or bordering the Hongkew neighborhood of the refugees. Needless to say, the Imperial Japanese forces did not organize alternative housing for those near this military target. They wanted the Allies to be too hesitant to bomb that target. But in 1945, American B—29 bombers were sent to take out that communications center. They caused collateral damage killing at least 31 of the refugees. It was a tragedy, but it is one of the things that happens in warfare. I don't believe Japanese diplomats filed a complaint about deaths in a country hundreds of miles from Japan and brutally occupied by their forces.
Jack Kemp (not the politician) 7 31 06
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