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The bomb which blew up the Great World Amusement Palace, and 500 refugees with it, fell so soon after the Nanking Road explosion that apparently no Shanghai newsreel man got on the scene before the awful debris had been cleared. But Wong, Forman and Krainukov were once more on the spot to film the gore when a bomb from either the Japanese or Chinese shattered the roof of Sincere Co.'s department store nine days later. Somewhat surpassed by his competitors in both the explosions, MARCH or TIME'S Forman scooped the pair of them with three other remarkable shots of the Shanghai shambles. He filmed a Japanese plane dropping a bomb on the native quarter, was the only one permitted aboard the Augusta after she was struck by a one-pounder. Better than that, almost miraculously he happened to be taking a night view of the Augusta when she was hit.
All Far Eastern newsreel men have not had the amazing professional opportunities of Forman & colleagues. Paramount''s Henry Kotani, a 40-year-old Japanese, went north at the beginning of the hostilities, was last week marooned somewhere behind the Japanese lines. Paramount ordered a West Coast man to hop for Shanghai. Hard luck of a different kind befell Fox Movietone's Bonney Powell. The Japanese found he was an intelligence officer in the U. S. Naval Reserve, and have had him under surveillance ever since the occupation of Tientsin.
Last freak in a wildly freakish situation which made the Shanghai pictures available to the world was the fact that the Chinese censors, who are among the world's most vigilant and who do not like -""even so moderately seamy a subject as the city's houseboat dwellers to be filmed for export, were as demoralized as the rest of the population when the shooting began. Photographer Forman was able to throw his cans of film to a departing friend as her tender pulled away. A Clipper brought his pictures to the U. S. in time for the MARCH OF TIME'S current issue, released this week. Wong and Krainukov put their films on the Clipper a week later.