Death in the Darkness

Chungking is a rocky, corrugated tongue of land sticking out at the junction of the swift-flowing Kialing and Yangtze rivers. One evening last week, as the moon painted the rivers silver to guide the invading Japanese planes once more to their mark, the tongue squirmed and writhed in pain as never before.

Under the silent city, waiting for the bombers in the half-light of the world's largest dugout (estimated capacity: 30,000), hundreds of Chinese died. They died not of bombs but of suffocation, in mad frenzy, as they clawed and tore at each other to fight their way to fresh air.

In one of the longest (five hours) air raids in Chungking's three years of experience, the dugout's ventilation system had failed. The yellow vegetable-oil lamps had flickered out, one by one, for lack of oxygen. The thousands within had grown restive, then in panic had tried to force their way out all at once through the narrow twisting slits in the rock. Last official count of the dead: 461--a full half-season's toll in a single evening.

What made this modern Black Hole of Calcutta particularly painful was that Chungking is the only city on earth with sufficient dugout protection for its citizenry (400,000), that this dugout system had been considered death-proof, that the municipal-built dugouts had won the people's total, unquestioning confidence.

Still carrying on at his desk, although relieved of his post and title by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek because of the catastrophe, was plucky, chubby Mayor K. C. ("Casey") Wu, still proud of his municipal-built dugouts. The confidence of Chungking's fighting little men in their Air-Raid Protective System, still the world's best, was, however, shaken.

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