International photographer (Jan-Dec 1941)

belongings, stole or destroyed two of my motion picture cameras and equipment. Then the soldiers decided to gut the steamer. They came down in hundreds, but were "outfaced" by the thin, but grim line of armed Europeans that barred the way. So wrecking the gangway they proceeded to less dangerous spots. When they were satisfied with loot and killings, they commandeered all rolling stock in the yards, forced the railway employees to run the locomotives and proceeded to a point 15 miles from Pukow, where they entrenched and were displaced and broken up by loyal Nationalist Nanking troops a few days later. Meantime, Captain Peret had shifted to a safer point, going downstream and anchoring. For that experience a well-known Yangtse River Captain Joe Miclo ( who was a few years later killed and thrown overboard by the Yangtse river pirates) gave me a name of the Grand Duke of Pukow. Then came the Great Yangtze River Flood of 1931. There were more than 500,000 dead. A frantic rabble clawed itself to pieces to get out of stricken Nanking and I breasted that rush of water and humans to record the disaster. Having sent a call for help, I stuck in the flood area, taking my pictures until the water was up to my chest, even when I perched on the roof tops. My faith was justified. In far away New York, Mr. E. Cohen my editor had managed to charter a Chinese seaplane to find me amid the yellow waters of the Yangtze. It arrived in time to take me to safety and to speed the film toward the world's screens. The pictures were exclusive for the Paramount News. Many cinema-goers will remember news-pictures of the greatest disaster that had happened to China since the Yellow river changed its course. Millions of people were drowned, millions more rendered homeless and starving. Help poured in to China, mostly from America. Earthquakes in Formosa in 1935 provided another five exciting days. The NorthEastern region was being devastated, and after flying from Shanghai to Foochow and then by tiny coastal boat across the stormy sea to Tai Hoku, the capital of Formosa, I set out on foot, walking from town to town and taking pictures as I went. Roads and bridges disappeared after I had crossed them and I would never have gotten back to Tai Hoku but for the guides who accompanied me to each town or village, leaving me there in the hands of another guide who knew the immediate district. At night I slept in little hotels which were made of wood owing to the country's frequent earthquakes. The weariness engendered by my long daily walks can \ in;.' heavy equipment under the scorching sun made me immune to any shocks, and I slept soundly every night, whilst the earth rocked beneath me and buildings fell to hits in the village. My only fear was that the peculiar wide heavy mosquito netting in use there might fall on me, and envelop and strangle me. In 1931 I joined Universal Newsreel and from then on events were moving fast in China. Starting with the Mukden "incident"' that set the world ablaze, I photographed nearly every phase of the historic events which reached their climax with the fall of Shanghai, Nanking, Canton, Hankow and the continuous bombing of Chungking. But not all the credit should go to the cameramen; the major part should be given to our editors. They have to be able to set us down in a Mongolian famine or a first class war, and know that whatever the trouble is we go in and get the pictures. They've got to have confidence in us, and we've got to have confidence in them. We've got to know that they appreciate our trouble and our dangers. We've got to know that whatever jam we get ourselves into for them, our editors will work intelligently to get us out. One editor said: "You can't make your men burn incense before you. They've got to know they're working with you and not for you, if you get the results.'' And it is with this feeling that we cameramen dash into the thick of dangerous situations. Often I lived with Chinese and Japanese troops, camping with them, riding beside them, lying side by side with them, shooting the news whilst they were shooting each other. Then came the Sino-Japanese war of 1932 and the "Hongkew Park" bombing when several high Japanese Generals, diplomats and other officials were seriously wounded. One of them Admiral Nomura, now Ambassador to America, lost his eye in that bombing of which I got exclusive pictures. General Shirokawa, Commander in Chief of all Japanese armies in China, died of wounds; Shigemitsu, now Ambassador to Great Britain, lost his leg and others were severely wounded. The bomb was thrown by a patriotic Korean, who was caught at the spot. What happened after the bomb exploded, I leave to the imagination of my readers. And yet, I not only got the bombing, but took two hundred feet more of the pandemonium and was able to get out of the park with my precious film with the park surrounded by angered Japanese soldiers who would shoot anyone at the slightest provocation. The Sino-Japanese war that started from the "Marco Polo Bridge" or as Chinese called it "Luockochiao," brought a chain of important coverages during which I was twice wounded. Once when I walked from the Chinese lines to the Japanese through "NO MAN'S LAND." The second time was during the bombing of the Cathey and Palace hotels on Nanking road, the main street of Shanghai. The American magazine "Time," in its issue of September 13th, 1937, published a photograph of me. Underneath it was the rather pecu liar compliment: "George Krainukov's pictures were the most gruesome of them all." Once I was standing on the corner of the Bund and Nanking road watching two silvery objects dropping from a bomber. . . . A few seconds later the bombs struck. One hit the entrance of the Cathey hotel and the other hit the roof of the Palace hotel. I was wounded in the knee by a fragment of the bomb and hit in the back by the bloody mutilated body of a Chinese who had been killed. I was soaked all over in hot blood. This perhaps saved my life. I turned around and got the complete story. For this the editor of Universal Newsreel sent me a substantial bonus and in their caption sheet Volume IX, Number 595, called "The Scoops of Scoops," they wrote:" . . . George Krainukov wounded by a bomb fragment, Universal's intrepid cameraman stood up under fire and kept on grinding, so YOUR screen might be enriched by the most spectacular scoops of the century! The whole New Universal organization is proud of you George!" There are many interesting and fascinating things to write about that would fill the whole book. Suffice to say that I have been dozens of times under direct machine gun fire, bombings, explosions and what not. Press association once said: "George Krainukov, Universal Newsreel Staff Cameraman in China, is coming to be known as the luckiest man in China. And indeed he does seem to bear a charmed life. Universal Newsreel today shows the first scenes of the capture of Shanghai which Krainukov took under the most dramatic circumstances and at the eminent risk of his life. Two of his companions on the roof of a 75 foot water tower in French Concession were hit by machine gun bullets which probably were fired at Krainukov's camera, yet Krainukov escaped without a scratch and even filmed the removal of his killed companion the British war correspondent Pembroke Stephens." In Nanking when huge Japanese bombers droned over the Nationalist capital, dropping a hail of high-explosive missiles as Tokyo acted to execute its threat to destroy the city. I cheated death by inches as one of the Japanese raiders fell in front of my camera, damaging my car. I stood there by my camera, recording the most ruthless air raid in the history of the world up to that time. With me on the roof were famous and daring cameramen : Eric Mayell, Arthur Menken, who took the danger as a matter of fact. While another ace cameraman "Newsreel Wong" in Shanghai was covering his famous story of the bombing of the South Station. I have been shooting a news camera for the last nineteen years and have taken hundreds of thousands of motion pictures of Chinese life and Chinese strife, from Shanghai West to the far interior of Thibet, North China and Mongolia and to the French Indo-China. The distances to be cov