Rowan Callick, in The Weekend Australian, 17-18 September 2011, under different title: “Manchurian ties bind ol’ blue eyes, blue lotus and boy king”
They are all linked with Manchuria in northeast China, which is the site of an important anniversary tomorrow that has prompted numerous films, conferences and speeches. On September 18, 1931, a Japanese army lieutenant, Kawamoto Suemori, laid dynamite near Liutiao Lake, along a line of the South Manchuria Railway owned by the Japanese government, and detonated it at 10.20pm. He did a poor job. Five minutes later, a train from Changchun steamed across the dynamited section of track, and arrived safely in Mukden, present-day Shenyang, at 10.30pm. But the pretext had been established for a war in which 25 million people, mainly civilians, died throughout Asia and the Pacific islands – and in Australia — before it ended in 1945. Continue reading
