Tientsin, Feb. 3.
Complete devastation met a Japanese detachment as it entered Hokien, not far from the Peiping-Pukow Railway at the confluence of the Hutou and Huloo Rivers on January 24, according to belated field reports reaching here today.
Besides' ing all' available highways, roads, and other lanes in the vicinity that might be used for passage, the Communist Eighth Route Army had reduced the town to a mass of rubble. Commandeering of food by the retreating Chinese had been so thorough and systematic that not a mouthful remained, the report said.
Faced with imminent starvation, the population of 40,000 in the southern Hopei town had fled, leaving only ten Chinese inside the town, according ihe report.
2,000 of the former residents far returned to the ruined omei.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.