China Seas

by John Harris

  Among them were the products of the Shanghai factories. As often as not the factories consisted of no more than two or three rooms crammed with machinery and operatives, many of them small boys, bought outright from their parents for twenty dollars, who worked up to fourteen hours a day, their only wages food and a sleeping place in a loft. In accumulator factories many of them showed the blue line in the gums which indicated lead poisoning, in the steamy silk winding mills the girls’ hands were white with a fungoid growth, while in the dusty air of the cotton mills tuberculosis was almost a certainty. If the young workers slackened the overseers plunged their elbows into hot water.

  But Shanghai had been developed in an atmosphere of a bar-room brawl on a charter that included no thou-shalt-nots, and tolerance had always been the watchword. Seeing his business associates gambling on the Stock Exchange, making money from fitting in with the plans of the aggressive Japanese, Willie was glad he had got rid of his interests in the city and was concentrating solely on shipping. His Chinese crews, he felt, were always better than they would have been trying to make a living as farmers or fishermen, and few of them seemed to want to leave his employ. He knew how they lived because he had shared their forecastles, long, narrow places with two tiers of bunks where the lean yellow torsos shone in the dim light as they played their endless games of mahjongg. He’d helped with coaling, working among the coolies, indifferent to the jeers of white men who thought he was belittling himself, and he knew the failings of the Chinese sailors, of the money they owed to the crimps and the secret societies, the way they gambled away their earnings for two years ahead. Once, when seven bells had been sounded and there had been no reply from the old seaman on look-out on the forecastle, he had gone down to see why not and found the old man had hanged himself by hitching the old-fashioned pigtail he still wore over a stanchion because he was so heavily in debt he could see no other way out.

  There were shipping lines and manufacturers who operated differently, however, and some of his associates were making money indecently quickly. Mason and Marchant’s, in particular, under the direction of Emmeline, her hand freed by the unexpected death of old Honeyford, had increased their holdings in the sweat shops ashore and were more than happy to co-operate with the little yellow men from across the East China Sea, who more and more were coming to be regarded as ‘the enemy’.

  Indignant at the resistance of the Chinese, the Japanese had taken a high moral stand, interpreting in their propaganda the objections to their attacks as rebellion against lawful Chinese authority which, out of the goodness of their hearts, they were supporting. But, as they had subjected Chungking to increasingly massive air attacks, America had, as Willie had heard, retaliated by granting Chiang an enormous loan while Britain had sent the trucks to transport the much-needed supplies along the freshly opened road from Burma, constructed by the bare hands of thousands of ant-like peasants.

  While recognising the Chungking regime and in favour of Chinese resistance, the coastal settlements were careful, nevertheless, to exercise a measure of censorship to avoid provoking the Japanese who surrounded them and, occupied as they were with their own problems and the everlasting chaos in China, the busy Shanghailanders barely noticed what was happening in Europe. They were largely unaware of, even indifferent to, the increasing brutality of the Nazis in Germany, and failed to see the drift towards a conflict. The British Prime Minister’s mission to Munich in 1938 – ‘a kow-tow to Hitler’, it was called in Shanghai – came as a tremendous shock. In the East, a long way from European tensions, it seemed impossible that Britain, which had won the war of 1914–1918, should be going down on one knee before the dictator of a humbled nation who, it was easy to see – especially from Shanghai – was clearly bluffing and was as mad as a hatter, anyway.

  The efforts to contain Hitler seemed pathetic when seen at a distance. Even the Anglo-French military delegation which had gone to Russia to try to stave off any pact between that country and Germany seemed totally ineffectual.

  ‘One monocle and at least two hyphenated names,’ Willie growled to his wife. ‘No wonder the Russians don’t like ’em. They’re still the men who made the revolution, and they’re the same political breed exactly as the Germans. They’re never going to see eye to eye with ’em.’

  Nevertheless, despite increasing tension, nobody believed it would come to hostilities. But it did and Chamberlain’s announcement of the fact to the country was lugubrious and far from likely to stir up any patriotic feeling.

  ‘He sounds as if he’s an undertaker whose hearse’s just lost a wheel,’ Willie said.

  Immediately, a few young men disappeared westwards to join the forces as they had in 1914, but most people remained firmly where they were, because memories of the last affair were still clear in the mind and, while it was known that European wars left the Far East untouched apart from an occasional sinking and a little loss of business, in Europe they meant disaster, mutilation and death.

  Besides, there was always the excitement of making money, of jockeying for power and prestige. The big firms remained untouched as they had for a hundred years, but the smaller ones, both foreign and Chinese, continued to change hands as someone guessed wrong or grew too ambitious. Old Honeyford, Emmeline’s latest husband, had disappeared from the scene just as Chamberlain had returned from Munich – ‘In disgust, I expect,’ Da Braga said – while the Balalaika closed once more and George Kee discovered that Zychov, still under Chiang’s protection, was working with the old man’s widow.

  ‘He wants Da Braga-Kee’s,’ he said. ‘He’s acting for her.’

  ‘I’m not sure which one to pity most,’ Willie observed. ‘I wouldn’t trust Zychov as far as I could throw him, but there’s a fair amount of venom in Emmeline.’

  From the beginning, the conflict in Europe seemed to follow the same pattern as the earlier one, with the opposing armies facing each other in France, though this time with none of the hideous slaughter of the first war. The Germans seemed to be matchlessly efficient, however, while the British bumbled through with their usual sporting amateurism and, inevitably, the first casualty at sea had been a British ship, the Donaldson liner Athenia, sunk without warning in the first hours of the conflict.

  ‘First blood to the Germans,’ Willie said.

  Within days of the war starting, Polly wrote from Singapore to say how relieved she was that Wissermann’s had moved there from the mainland of China, where the tensions were increasing every day. Thomas suggested that he ought to go to England to join up but was persuaded by Willie not to, and instead, considering that by this time he was more Chinese than European, decided he would remain where he was in case trouble flared up in the Far East. The only member of the family likely to be involved in any danger seemed to be Edward, who was now a senior commander, but since he was at the Admiralty, he also seemed unlikely to be involved with shot and shell.

  For the Sarth Line the pattern repeated itself. The German pocket battleship Graf Spee, which everybody thought was in the South Atlantic, turned up in the Indian Ocean, where, among other victims, she sank Willie’s latest acquisition, a small freighter called the Gentiana. She was a reasonably new ship, built in Hong Kong and bought to replace the ageing Sivrihisar, and he was proud of her; but she went down nevertheless under a scuttling party from the German battleship, while the elderly Lady Roberts, under Captain Yeh, steamed gaily past only fifty miles away to the east on her way from Bombay to East London.

  It was infuriating to lose his best ship while his oldest acquisition escaped scot free, but, having made sure the crew of the Gentiana were safe and that the ship was properly covered by insurance, Willie nevertheless felt a sneaking sort of pride that the Lady Roberts had got away with it again. She was old now, ancient in fact, and he had once again been thinking of getting rid of her, but had held on to her from sheer sentiment. Now, with the war, she was important again and with the Germans using U-boats which were likely to be just as much of a threat a
s in the earlier war, every ship, every scrap of tonnage, every vessel that could carry a cargo, was of value. The Lady Roberts had been saved by the bell.

  Everyone knew what war meant, because they had been experiencing it for years in China, but when the disaster in Europe came it was unbelievable. After six months of nothing happening beyond a few sinkings, a few aircraft shot down, a few men killed in patrol skirmishing (while a war between Russia and Finland had provided the only real casualties and when it seemed that the war in China against the Japanese was the only genuine war available), the bubble burst as the Germans unleashed their onslaught in France.

  At first it was hard to understand what was happening and the news that the British had been flung out of the Continent of Europe and that France had been defeated was hard to accept. The horizon seemed to be growing darker. Britain wasn’t beaten but she was reeling and it seemed immediately to Willie that her possessions overseas could hardly expect any help when she was fighting for her life at home. And then, in a diplomatic coup equal to the one he had pulled off with Russia to enable him to attack Poland, Hitler produced another – a pact between Germany, Italy and Japan in which each undertook to go to the aid of either of the others in the event of an attack by any state not yet at war. It was obvious Japan was afraid of finding herself at war with Russia, America and Britain all at once, and the net result was an open invitation for aggression in the Far East and, since Shanghai was too far away to be helped, the garrison was largely evacuated and the military hospital shut down. The feeling was that it could never hold out because it was virtually surrounded and even in parts, already actually occupied by the Japanese, and that the troops could probably he more sensibly used elsewhere.

  Britain was being outmanoeuvred all along the line and Willie could only assume that the politicians back home were still as much out of touch with events as they had been at the time of Munich. Once again he began to look at his holdings and contemplate shifting them, because the British government had clearly begun to regard Hong Kong, the base of the British China Squadron, as an indefensible outpost like Shanghai and were concentrating on Singapore.

  Still stumping round on his artificial leg, Da Braga had been thinking of the situation, too, and was equally uneasy. He wished to operate in a more compact way and had been trying for some time to get rid of Da Braga-Kee subsidiaries; there had been a court case involving Mason and Marchant’s in which an unfair conspiracy to block shareholders from accepting a share-all cash tender offer from another British company had surfaced and Da Braga was nervous of the future. He wanted to go public, to offer shares on the Shanghai stock market. George Kee was none too keen and they were constantly at loggerheads.

  ‘Why not sell and get out?’ Willie asked. ‘Like it or not, the war’s coming here.’

  ‘If it comes, it’ll come to Hong Kong,’ Da Braga pointed out. ‘The Japanese are at Amoy and Bias Bay, only thirty miles away.’

  ‘I haven’t failed to notice it, Luis.’

  Da Braga shrugged. ‘So where do you go from Hong Kong? The Japanese army virtually surrounds that place, too.’

  ‘They’re also so placed they can seize airfields in Indo-China any time they like for an attack on Malaya – which is nearer to Japan itself, anyway.’ Willie gave a wry smile. ‘And now the Navy’s had to withdraw ships from these waters for home defence, I don’t give us much longer before the bomb bursts out here. I’m going to get out of China, Luis.’

  He was still curious about Mason and Marchant’s activities, however, and placing a block of his shares on the market, he waited for them to be snapped up. Emmeline didn’t move and the shares went elsewhere.

  ‘Zychov,’ Da Braga said.

  ‘Anybody else interested?’

  ‘Satorelli-Wint’s were bidding.’

  ‘Keep ’em at it, Luis. Then let’s go while the going’s good. You could be a rich man. George, too. Go back to Goa, or Portugal even.’

  Da Braga gave him a sad smile. ‘You think I could? I’ve been in China most of my life.’

  ‘China won’t be the same when the war’s over. Britain will have to sell her possessions to pay for it as she did last time and she’ll be too weak to resist Chinese pressures.’

  Da Braga considered thoughtfully. ‘You may be right, Willie,’ he said. ‘But don’t forget I’m Portuguese and, with Portugal not in the war, I could stay here and look after your interests.’

  It was a point Willie hadn’t considered and George Kee’s view was roughly the same as Da Braga’s. ‘I’m more Chinese than European,’ he pointed out. ‘I’m already operating under Japanese control in many areas, anyway. Why don’t we start up a new firm and continue to work together? We always have. Then you’ll still have a foothold here to build on when the fighting stops.’

  The rest of the Da Braga-Kee shares went on the market. Satorelli-Wint’s were still interested because Da Braga-Kee’s had plenty of good will, but they were outbid again and Zychov ended as the new owner. It didn’t mean a thing, of course. The money had come not from a restaurant owner with no experience but from a woman who was manipulating Mason and Marchant’s, something that became obvious at once when their plate went up on the wall in place of Da Braga-Kee’s.

  ‘I hope she enjoys it,’ Willie said.

  The new firm, Shanghai Traders, was set up. George Kee wanted to put his name into the title because he was proud of what he had achieved, but Willie advised against it.

  ‘Play it quiet, George,’ he suggested. ‘You’re Chinese. Stay that way.’

  Willie’s share in the new firm was carefully hidden. The money was moved about between different banks in Hong Kong and Shanghai until it would have been hard to find where it had originated, and his name was kept out of all correspondence. Though there was still no sign of aggression from Japan and movement was still possible about the sea, there was a continuing sense of tension. When business took Willie to Tokyo, he made a point of looking up Shaiba, by this time a highly respected retired senior admiral.

  ‘What’s Japan after, Yuhitsu?’ he asked bluntly.

  Shaiba sighed. ‘Japan is following her destiny,’ he said.

  ‘I thought she’d followed it. I thought she’d reached it.’

  Shaiba’s sigh came again. ‘There are people who consider there is further to go.’

  He would say no more and the subject was dropped. It left Willie worried and thoughtful.

  1940 brought new disasters. With Britain under constant bombardment from the air, in Greece, Crete and North Africa she was thrown on the defensive, and it seemed clear to Willie that Japan was looking for an opportunity to snatch what it could from the spoils. Italy had already capitalised on Hitler’s victories and, with Britain reeling and France out of the fight, their possessions were up for grabs.

  The news that Hitler had gone into Russia came like a thunderclap. At first it seemed just another giant step of conquest, but Willie’s naval friends saw it differently. To them it meant that Hitler was fighting on two fronts, and they were quick to point out what had happened to Napoleon’s Grand Army in l812. It made Willie hold his breath. Now, surely, Hitler had made a mistake. He had never expected to see Britain beaten, but after the disasters of the previous year it had seemed the war might go on for ever. Now, victory seemed not only certain but nearer.

  On the other hand, it was also possible to see it as a spur to the Japanese. If Hitler were to be beaten, it made sense to grab what was going while it was still there. It was common knowledge that Japan was on a war footing and had bases from which she could launch attacks. Diplomatic moves were going on with the Americans, but they showed few signs of succeeding and Elliott Wissermann had it that Japan’s oil reserves were diminishing daily and that the time to find a solution to the differences between Japan and the United States was rapidly running out.

  Willie made his decision as he made all his decisions. He thought it through then made up his mind firmly.

  ‘We’re movin
g from Hong Kong,’ he told Nadya.

  ‘But I like Hong Kong,’ she said. ‘I’ve grown to love it.’

  However unwillingly though, she accepted his point and agreed to move when he decided. That other people were thinking the same way became obvious as he was constantly asked his advice – to go or stay?

  ‘Go,’ he said bluntly. ‘And don’t waste time.’

  Both soldiers and civilians came to ask whether they should send away their wives and children. ‘It’ll mean that things will be difficult for them,’ they pointed out.

  ‘They’d be more difficult in Hong Kong if the Japanese come. Go while it’s easy to do so.’

  ‘Will you go?’

  Willie paused. He had already explored Singapore and Penang as possible bases. Malaya produced half the world’s tin and there were always huge stocks of rubber to be carried, to say nothing of sugar, timber and other products. He had long considered either base as adequate as Shanghai or Hong Kong.

  ‘I’m already making arrangements,’ he said.

  There was still no sign of any Japanese movement against British or Dutch possessions in the Far East, but nobody was deluded that it wasn’t coming, and Willie made no attempt to make their stay in Singapore a permanent one. Watching the newspapers, keeping in touch with his friends in the Navy, he began now to transfer his headquarters in Singapore further on to Sydney, where his shipping office already provided a base. Surely to God, he thought, the Japanese would never reach Australia.

  In July, his Hong Kong office was contacted by one of the Governor’s aides. Would Mr Sarth care to call to discuss a few things?

  The Governor was a brisk man and made no bones about what was in his mind. Could Mr Sarth provide ships?

  ‘Of course,’ Willie said. ‘For what reason?’