Press Release Issued by the Department of State on June 13, 194023
In response to inquiries from correspondents in regard to reports of the bombing of Chungking on June 12, the Secretary of State said that according to information which has reached the Department from official and unofficial sources, Chungking has been extensively bombed on each of several recent days and on June 12 was intensively and indiscriminately bombed by more than one hundred Japanese planes; that casualties of June 12 among the civil populace will probably number several hundred; that various buildings of the American Methodist Mission, including a church, were damaged by concussion; and that two groups of Japanese planes flew over the American Embassy premises but no bombs fell in the immediate vicinity of the Embassy. The Secretary added that the attitude and the position of the people and the Government of the United States toward ruthless bombings of civilian populations have been made abundantly and frequently clear and that we wholeheartedly condemn such practices wherever and whenever they occur.
- Reprinted from Department of State, Bulletin, June 15, 1940 (vol. ii, No. 51), p. 666.↩