This home movie shows a trip to Asia in 1946. It is part of a group of 16mm movies shot by an unknown American who was working for the OMEA, or Officer’s Moral Endeavor Association, a sort of non-governmental, YMCA type group operating in post-WWII China. The group was probably a Catholic organization, and possibly the person filming this was a member of the clergy as many churches are shown in the film. It’s unclear where this footage was shot — but the first section is in Shanghai which suffered record flooding in 1946. There’s also footage that appears to have been shot in rural areas outside the city.

0:08 Rickshaws in the street

0:16 Flooded street. Flooding from rainwater and the Yellow River was very common in Shanghai before the installation of the rainwater sewers in mid-1980s. The period from 1937-1946 was historically some of the worst.

0:44 Kwang Hua University Gate, Shanghai, Kwang Hua was a former university, created by the alumni of Saint John’s Anglican College and then University (closed in 1952) in China, in 1925. In October 1951 Kwang Hua university and Daxia University were merged to form East China Normal University

1:00 Bombed-out Jiangwan Stadium in Pudong district, the collapsed hangar-like roof of the Jiangwan Swimming pool is visible to the side of it (possibly mirrored footage)

1:44 Someone digging a hole by the side of a footpath

1:50 irrigation canals in a pristinely rural Pudong district

2:05 A 5-level pagoda

2:19 A child runs after their mother, Women with children in front of a straw construction.

2:46 Reaping some buckwheat with a hand sickle.

3:21 Children playing and adults working, in a courtyard

3:39 A countryside street.

3:51 Two boys playing a rickshaw and a passenger, with a real carriage.

4

:16 Children at a hand-cranked water pump doing laundry and playing in the water

4:24 People washing themselves outdoors

4:29 Three men carrying a musical instruments box (for guzeng and possibly other instruments)

4:36 Straw huts by a wooden barrack or field-hospital-styled building

4:45 Children and adults Straw hut with painted-on signs in whitewash. These are loosely translated “Peace Corps” but have no affiliation with the American organization — they indicate this is a refugee camp. Possibly this is the one at Minghong, set up by the Catholic Refugee Council.

4:55 Nude toddler squatting and playing in an entrance of one such straw and junk hut.

5:02 Men on the camp grounds

5:10 Sign completely washed away except the « 第五… » or “the 5th” possibly meaning “Refugee camp #5”

5:16 Sampans

5:38 more straw huts under construction

5:51 Sampans and the river on the foreground, by a destroyed former nunnery or a villa, of which only the walls are standing, in the background.

6:00 Man, carrying baskets of food.

6:08 Girl, carrying baskets of fish, stopped to look at the cameraman, then a boy runs into the shot.

6:12 more sampans

6:59 People working on some sort of a wooden contraption, possibly to thresh grain

7:07 A young woman with her toddler

7:15 Rural area . A woman in a sports suit and a hat with a pompon is walking toward an elderly woman in a shawl and a boy with a rat toptail haircut.

7:33 People on a sampan, sampan is matriculated with a number (washed-out and unreadable letter)12174, which interestingly appears to be the French Indochina Customs (1883-1949) method of registration of the waterway vessels.

8:10 Entrance portal

8:14 A small Chinese-style gazebo

8:20 More footage of earthworks and sampan

8:45 Sampan going under a bridge.

8:58 A mausoleum-styled tomb , behind the canal where sampans circulate

9:18 Guandong-styled firewall houses.

10:00 Carrying a palanquin

10:09-10:51 American serviceman in uniform and a Caucasian woman visiting a kindergarten perhaps, a lot of children are wearing woven ski caps with pompons, the weather is visibly cold.

10:53 Flying over fields , winter, the bodies of water are covered with ice, filmed from a DC-3 / C-47

11:06-11:25 Aerial shot of a large village with a river and canals in the middle of it

11:41- More flyovers of the fields, villages and canals

13:15 The airplane shadow, it’s a DC-47

14:15 A previously overflown Catholic convent building in Shangdong.

14:56 A cathedral in a cloistered ground, possibly in, or around Jinan, Shandong, very probably demolished.

To the end of the video – flyover of buildings, possibly another demolished church (red-colored hall building).

This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com