1938.01.28 “Run for the Cellar!”
By Newman S Sudduth (1898-1967)
11 x 12 in, ink and wash on board
Coppola Collection
Newman S. Sudduth, a Washington DC native, was a painter and illustrator. He designed the inaugural program covers for Franklin Roosevelt’s inaugurations in 1933, 1937 and 1941.
The Japanese storm is approaching, and it already has China by the neck. Run for the Cellar!... extols the press.
Japan’s brutal occupation of China, and the atrocities committed in Nanjing starting in mid-December 1937, started to become known in news reports that got out of China from two of the five US journalists who had remained. The first reported appeared in the US press December 13 and 18, and became more widely known during early 1938, as US alarm about Japanese expansionism dramatically increased. A report in the NYT appeared January 24.
One of the few Americans who remained, George Ashmore Fitch, left from Shanghai on February 20, smuggling 8 reels of film shot by a missionary during the Nanjing Siege. He was debriefed by the state department and went on a national speaking tour of the US with the films. The report of his visit to the West Coast appeared in the SF Chronicle on June 11, under the title that would forever represent the events, “The Rape of Nanking.”
