Birthday Surprise

Two days after His Majesty the Emperor Hirohito had dedicated a casket in Tokyo's Westminster Abbey, Yasukuni Shrine, to the memory of 531 soldiers killed in Manchuria and China since the beginning of the present troubles,* he sat down to celebrate his 32nd birthday with a large and elaborate luncheon. At 2 p. m., just when the sake bowls were succeeding the raw fish salad, the sound of dozens of clattering wooden geta disturbed the palace guards. Newsboys in checked kimonos were rushing bundles of extras to the kiosks with news of a great Japanese tragedy at Shanghai.

That morning in Shanghai 10,000 Japanese troops celebrated the Emperor's birthday with a grand military review in Hongkew Park. U. S. Consul General Edwin S. Cunningham, oldest, most experienced of Shanghai diplomats, warned Japanese authorities that such a celebration would be dangerous, but nobody paid attention. In massed squares battalion after battalion of Japanese infantry goose-stepped across the parade ground, each with its fluttering sunburst guidon. In the front of the reviewing stand were many of the highest officers in the Japanese Army & Navy: Vice Admiral Kichisaburo Nomura, Commander of the Shanghai fleet; General Yoshinori Shirakawa, Commander-in-Chief of the Army in Shanghai; Maj.-General Kenkichi Uyeda; Consul General Kuramatsu Murai; Minister to China Mamoru Shigemitsu. Behind them loomed the big foreign military attaches of Britain, France, Italy, the U. S. These white officials left the stand as soon as the review was over. The crowd pressed round to listen to speeches.

A Korean on the edge of the crowd threw a narrow tin box high in the air. In an ear-splitting roar, the grandstand flew apart like a mechanical toy. Minister Shigemitsu was blown into the air like a jack-in-the-box, his feet flung wide. Consul General Mural's face was unrecognizable with blood and torn flesh. Admiral Nomura's eye was blown out, General Shirakawa lost all his teeth. General Uyeda lost three toes. Kim Fung-kee, the Korean bomb-thrower, was beaten unconscious by Japanese soldiers. One W. S. Hibbard, a U. S. citizen, protested the detention of two Chinese photographers, was rushed to a police station as a suspect and questioned for hours.

Bravest that day were a group of little flat-faced Japanese nurses. Before the echo of the explosion died down they fought their way through the terrified crowd to the wreck of the reviewing stand, ripped the uniforms of the injured officers into strips to make bandages, saved Minister Shigemitsu's life with tourniquets on both thighs.

*Last week's ceremony was the first of its kind since 1906 when Emperor Hirohito's grandfather honored the victims of the Russo-Japanese War. The Tokyo War Office is still anxious to keep the full casualty list of the Shanghai gesture from the public; only those who died before Feb. 10 were honored. Another ceremony for several hundred more must soon take place.

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