Standing at a street corner for ten minutes, Reuter saw over 120 mangled bodies carried past, some moaning terribly, others completely lifeless. Particularly pathetic was the sight of stretchers bearing infant victims. All around he area the mingled with the dying. The majority of the injured were bleeding from gaping wounds and completely naked.
The proportion of children killed seemed inordinately large, presumably because most of them were indoors at the time. Tiny bodies seemed to outnumber those of adults.
Police, students and volunteers worked heroically under the most trying conditions, extricating the injured and removing the dead. Many Students appeared visibly exhausted late in the night but stuck to their grim task, The Mayor, Mr, K. C. Wu, and other prominent Chinese officials personally directed operations and Prevented wholesale confusion.
Rescue work was hampered by the failure of the electric lighting system and the lamentable shortage of doctors and ambulance workers, although the few available laboured unceasingly.
Some 10,000 Chinese were living in Wuchingmiao when the raid occurred. it is stated that at the time of the bombing there was no Chinese soldier for miles around, while the arsenal, presumably the objective of the Japanese planes, is at least four miles distant.
The Aviation Headquarters announced that four Japanese planes were shot down, two at Hsiakwan, one over the South City and one outside the South Gate. Eye-witnesses claim that they saw three "planes shot down.
Japanese bombs started three big fires along Chunhua Road, in the South City, where many shops are located. Chinese pursuit planes this morning did not engage the invaders, leaving this task entirely to the antiaircraft batteries, whose marksmanship surpassed expectations.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.