Tokyo, July 14.
Return of third-party nationals to their former homes in Central China, now within the area under Japanese occupation, will have to wait the restoration of normal conditions there, a spokesman for the Japanese Navy Ministry said today.
The reopening of the river to commercial traffic, Japanese as well as foreign, will also be delayed, he indicated. y The question, the spokesman said, concerned not only the navy but the army as well.
From a naval standpoint alone, he declared, third party nationals in China had "better wait some time" before returning to Nanking and other points on the Yangtze in view of the prevailing circumstances.
The river, he asserted, was still "full of hazards" to navigation, such as booms, "runaway" mines and other obstacles.
The Japanese navy, he said, had just succeeded in opening a channel in the Yangtze only to meet the requirements for the prosecution of naval and military operations, It was "impossible," the spokesman said, to reopen the Yangtze to general traffic at the present, The Japanese authorities, he contended, were empowered to settle this question at their own discretion as one coming fully under their control, When conditions return to "normal," he added, third party nationals will be permitted to proceed up the Yangtze as well as to reside in various parts of the valley.—Domei, 3.45 am., when eight or nine Japanese bombers were again sighted en route to Hankow.
Chinese pursuit planes immediately went up but after circling around Hankow for an hour, the bombers flew off again.—Reuter.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.