Weekend Old Shanghai Reading: Liberty Magazine January 1944 – Exclusive: Inside Jap-Held Shanghai

This is the January 29th 1944 edition of Liberty magazine…including a report on life in Japanese-held Shanghai. It makes for good reading revealing the city at a time when things were about as bad as they could get. The correspondent is Bernard (or sometimes Bernhard) Covit (1907-1978), who’d been working as a correspondent for UP in Manila until captured by the Japanese and interned for 18 months. Before the war Covit, a Brooklynite I believe, worked for the New York Post among other papers and bureaus. He was in Shanghai on “Bloody Saturday”, August 14th 1937, when the city was bombed – he was close to the Great World Amusement Palc when two bombs fell on Thibet Road (Xizang Road) right outside the packed building.

I believe Covit went on to remain involved in Asian affairs – editing several books on the South Seas and Tahiti. After the war I think he also worked in radio with WPIX, New York, and the Mutual Broadcasting System. Anyway, here’s Covit in occupied Shanghai in 1944….