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TITLE War Gum: "Tokio Marines Take Tsingtao without a Fight" DESCRIPTION War Gum: "Tokio Marines Take Tsingtao without a Fight" (no. 84) Text on reverse of card: "The Japanese Navy occupied the rich north China port of Tsingtao on January 10, 1938, without firing a shot. A contingent of marines first landed at Shatzekow, eighteen miles from Tsingtao, and marched on foot. Shortly afterward, Japanese troopships entered the harbor and began disembarking additional marines. Five Japanese destroyers lay off shore. The Japanese posted patrols and began lowering the white flags which had been hoisted on Flagstaff Hill and public buildings in token of surrender. It was on Flagstaff Hill that the German Imperial flag had been hoisted forty years ago on Tsingtao's first surrender to a foreign power. Since then it had been German, Japanese, and again Chinese territory. The only signs of Chinese hostility were the acres of dynamited, burned, and looted Japanese cotton mills which the Chinese military destroyed before abandoning the city. To know the HORRORS OF WAR is to want PEACE. This is one of a series of 240 True Stories of Modern Warfare. Save to get them all. Copyright 1938, Gum, Inc., Phila., Pa." CONTEXT "Bubble-gum cards emerged from their wrappers, smelling of powdered sugar, in comic-book colors with armies and soldiers, tanks and planes, blood and gore...There was a message on each to justify their acquisition to the parents who provided the pennies: "To know the HORRORS OF WAR is to want PEACE." We kids hardly noticed.... A curious, comic-book war survives on the cards, the dream visions of gum-company copywriters. Whether the scenes were gruesome or glorious, the colors were always as bright as the outlook for victory. The enemy was always vicious and often cowardly, while our side was always brave and fought like heroes." Stanley Weintraub, "The Bubble Gum Wars," in MHQ CREDIT Gum, Inc. Courtesy of Carl Sheeley DATE 1938 |
