Escape from Shanghai

by Paul Huang

  Copyright © 2014 by Paul C. Huang

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 0615970745

  ISBN 13: 9780615970745

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014903071

  Prologue

  Chapter 1 Escape from Shanghai

  Chapter 2 Canton

  Chapter 3 Governor-General Li

  Chapter 4 Gold

  Chapter 5 The Theft

  Chapter 6 Down the Mighty Yangtze

  Chapter 7 Shanghai

  Chapter 8 America

  Acknowledgements

  Author Biography

  World War II started on July 7, 1937 when Japan invaded China. Twenty-two days later, on July 29, Japan took Peking (Beijing). By November, they took Shanghai and in early December, they were in Nanking. The world watched the slaughter. The Japanese went through China faster than Germany through Europe.

  By the fall of 1938, the Japanese army was headed south toward Canton. Fearful of another defeat, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, the President and military commander of the Republic of China, ordered Governor Li Hanhun of Canton (Guangdong) Province to protect the gold bullion locked in the vaults of the Bank of Canton.

  Facing certain defeat, Governor Li moved his Provincial headquarters from Canton to Shaoguan, a city roughly 175 miles to the north. He took the gold bullion with him for safekeeping.

  This is the true story of how an educated, independent young woman joined the resistance, escaped from the clutches of the Japanese, and battled corruption at the highest levels of a male-dominated government.

  As usual, my grandfather had gotten up early on Monday morning, December 8, and left for his office. Unaware that the world had literally changed overnight, his chauffeur turned a corner and drove the car into the hysteria and confusion on this street in Shanghai. Japanese soldiers were everywhere. They had already taken over all of the American banks and institutions, including the embassy. Out of his car window, my grandfather saw what he thought was a group of American men, women and children. He studied the faces and recognized a few of the men. Shocked by the sight, he wondered why they had been rounded up and herded together, shivering with cold and fear in the middle of this residential street. Clearly, they had been given scant time to pack or ready themselves. Most carried a suitcase or a hastily bundled bag of warm clothing slung over their shoulders. These people looked frightened, forlorn and bewildered by what had happened to them. A scared, tearful girl hugged a doll to her bosom.

  The chauffeur slammed on his breaks. A Japanese soldier approached, inspecting the license plate as he walked menacingly at them. Kai Loh “Carlos” Sun rolled down his window and bowed subserviently. “Papers,” the soldier demanded as he looked inside the Packard.

  “This street is blocked. Go another way,” he ordered as he returned Carlos Sun’s papers.

  The driver backed down the street. “Turn on the radio,” Carlos said in a sad subdued voice, wondering what had happened.

  The bombing of Pearl Harbor had taken place while Shanghai slept. Eight in the morning of December 7, 1941 at Pearl Harbor was 2:00 AM December 8 in Shanghai. The Japanese Occupation Army in Shanghai sat and waited patiently for daylight to attack the International Settlement of the city. This was the only portion of the city that they didn’t already own because they weren’t at war with the rest of the world. But that changed on December 7. The Empire of Japan had decided to attack the United States of America and at the same time, they also struck Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaya and the Philippines.

  Clearly, the Japanese Army was sweeping across the International Settlement in Shanghai searching for and arresting American and British nationals. Surprise and speed was their standard strategy. Everything was happening in double time. Carlos turned to take one last look out the back window of his car. He knew that his American friends had suddenly become non-entities. All of their valuable possessions—money, rings, cars, cameras, radios, house and furniture—had already been looted by the Japanese. Terrible things were going to happen to these poor frightened people, especially the children. He knew that many of them would die this winter in the Japanese concentration camps.

  Sadly, he lowered his head as he listened to the radio. Carlos tried to focus on what he had to do. “Hurry,” he said with anguish in his voice. He knew it wouldn’t be long before the Japanese got to his house. Silently, he willed his driver to go faster knowing full well that the man was doing his best. Still, he urged the man on. “Hurry,” he said again. Carlos trembled at the thought of what they might do to his five-year-old American-born grandson. A Chinese-American would give the Japanese a double incentive to be brutal and barbaric. Now that Japan was at war with America, the killing of a five-year-old American with a Chinese face would be full of symbolism for the Japanese. They could kill an American civilian because they could claim that this little boy was just a worthless and insignificant Chinese. After all, no one had stopped the massacre of 300,000 Chinese in Nanking in 1937.

  They would be thumbing their noses at America by deliberately killing a Chinese who had happened to be born in America. The killing would be an insult to the Constitution of the United States. It would show that the Constitution was a weak and meaningless document.

  The Japanese liked these subtle symbolic acts because it showed how smart and superior they were. This little island nation of Japan was racially pure, while the United States was a mongrel nation of mixed and inferior breeds. At that time, the anti-American frenzy among the Japanese was at its peak. Their daily propaganda broadcasts filled the air with hatred for anything American.

  Jane Sun, Carlos’ 29 year-old daughter, was listening to the same radio broadcast at home. Near panic, she rifled through her passport and visas looking for her son’s American birth certificate. She hesitated for an instant, then brought all the papers to the charcoal brazier. Stoically, she watched the papers burn.

  My mother was fearful for my life. I had been born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which made me an American citizen. She knew what the Japanese were doing to the Americans—a five-year-old boy, separated from his mother, would not survive the brutal conditions of a Japanese concentration camp. She knew they would separate us because the Japanese had been ordered to take Americans living in Shanghai. My mother was Chinese.

  At the time, I didn’t know that I was an American citizen. My mother hadn’t told me because she thought the concept of citizenship by birth was too complicated for her to explain and too abstract for me to understand. So she hastily destroyed our passports, visas and any documents that connected us to the United States.

  Now, it would only be a matter of hours before the soldiers got to grandpa’s house.

  Three generations of the Sun family lived in grandpa’s Shanghai brownstone. There was my grandfather and grandmother of course; Mom, their oldest daughter; my Third Aunt by marriage and her two children (her husband, my Third Uncle had died recently from blood-poisoning because he stepped on a rusty nail at a construction site. The Japanese couldn’t spare the medicine to treat a Chinese. Third Uncle was an architect.); my Number Six and Seven Aunts; and my Eighth and Ninth Uncles: a total of eight adults and three children. (Growing up, I called my aunts and uncles by their family numbers. To this day, the only formal name I know is my Ninth Uncle’s and that’s because he emigrated to America.)

  My grandfather knew the risk he was taking, but he didn’t hesitate. After four years of living under Japanese rule, he knew the routine. He calmly gathered his family around him. “Japanese soldiers will be here soon. They are looking for Americans. There are no Americans here,” he declared firmly. “We are a Chinese family. When they come, do not look at the soldiers. Lower your eyes, be deferential. Bow to them in the Japanes
e manner,” he instructed. “If they decide to take anything, let them have it. Nothing is worth a life.” Then he turned to his grandchildren: “Stay by your mothers’ side and everything will be all right.”

  The family sat in silence, each person immersed in his own thoughts while waiting for the knock on the door. There was nothing else we could do. Talk would have been an useless waste of energy. In our own way, each one of us was mentally preparing ourselves for what’s to come. Foreign observers often labeled this inscrutable behavior to be “the Chinese sense of inevitability,” or “resignation to fate,” while others called this “Chinese patience.” I would call it the Chinese way. Even as a young child, I knew better than to act in a way that would make me lose face in front of the Japanese. I would not cry or show fear or give them any sense of satisfaction whatsoever. I would follow my grandfather’s instructions to the letter.

  What seemed like minutes later, fierce-looking soldiers with bayonets glistening on the ends of their rifles banged loudly on our door. They were doing a house-to-house search down our street. We lived at 131 Kashan Road, Shanghai, in the heart of the international concession.

  Grandpa bowed subserviently and invited the soldiers in. Everyone was in the living room, including the servants.

  “Here is my entire family. There are no Americans here. We are all Chinese,” he said respectfully, hoping to save the officer some time as he calmly announced the obvious.

  I hid behind Mom’s cheongsam or Chinese dress. But I couldn’t help sneaking a peek at those long fearsome bayonets. One quick peek at those sharp glistening points took all the courage out of me. Quickly, I retreated behind Mom’s leg. I had seen the bayonets that skewered Chinese babies.

  The fearsome-looking Japanese officer, with his long Samurai sword swinging from his waist, took a slow sweeping look at all of us. Seeing no white faces, he nodded his head in agreement with Grandpa’s statement, then officiously turned on his heels and marched his men out the door. He had not bothered to check our papers. He was looking for blue eyes and blond hair, just as grandpa had expected. We had passed the first of many tests to come.

  The Japanese hadn’t connected my Chinese face with my citizenship. But my mother knew that eventually they would. A copy of my entry visa was at the American Embassy along with a record of my American citizenship. It would only be a matter of time before they found my papers at the embassy. Then it would be all over. The question was how much time we had? The one positive note was that we had entered China in June 1937. The Japanese had nearly five years of paperwork to go through. That could take weeks; it could take months; or it could escape them altogether. But the Japanese bureaucrat was tenacious and thorough. We couldn’t take a chance. It was now a race against time.

  Mom had to find a way to get us out of Shanghai before they discovered my American citizenship. To protect the rest of his family, grandpa would send his children and grandchildren to live with relatives in the countryside.

  The brutal and barbaric reputation that the Japanese had garnered at Nanking drove the family to take these unnatural risks. We had no choice but to flee. My mother was horrified by the thought of a bayonet through my belly.

  I grew up listening to the reports of the atrocities that had been committed at the Rape of Nanking. I had a cousin who lived in the city at the time of the massacre. Ming and two of his best friends were out searching for potable water when he heard the marching boots of the Japanese. Instinctively he dove behind the rubble of what used to be a wall. He thought his friends were right behind him, but to his horror, they were not. They had been slow to react and a Japanese officer ordered them to stand where they were. His friends froze. The officer ordered them to drop to their knees and touch their foreheads to the ground in recognition of his power. His friends hesitated, unsure of what they should do. They looked at each with fear and bewilderment on their faces. When they didn’t obey fast enough, the Japanese officer impatiently drew his Samurai sword and with two quick, precise strokes decapitated them. Then, without so much as a backward glance, the officer meticulously wiped the blood from his soiled blade with a blood-soaked cloth tied to his belt. Clearly, he had been prepared for the day’s outing. Then he marched on haughtily as he sheathed his sword.

  Ming knew that he had to escape this madness. He buried himself in a pile of dead, mostly headless bodies; some were still warm. The heavy warm smell of blood and death curdled his stomach but he fought hard to stay still and silent. He clasped both of his hands to his mouth to keep himself from retching. For several hours, he did not move. He would let the wave of soldiers wash over him. Once they had passed he would be able to make his way through their lines and out of hell.

  When darkness came, he crawled from one mound of bodies to the next. There were so many bodies that the Chinese who had been forced to remove them could not keep up with the slaughter. Ming was able to cover a substantial distance while the Japanese soldiers were eating dinner and getting drunk on sake. He scurried from one pile of dead people to another like a rat in a sewer. Then he came across a series of dead, rotting bodies of school girls naked to the waist. They had probably been raped before they were killed. This abomination had been so terrifying that no one remained to bury the dead. This must have been the place where it all began, Ming thought. As if in confirmation, he suddenly broke into the relative quiet of the countryside almost as soon as he left the piles of victims behind.

  He knew now he had gotten through the front lines. He was behind the attackers. Relieved, but still frightened to his bones, he decided to make his way to Shanghai. Ming deliberately stayed away from the banks of the Yangtze River because the Japanese used it to transport troops and supplies to Nanking. He stuck to the countryside, keeping the river to his left as a guide to Shanghai.

  He ate grass until he came to a peasant’s house. Thirsty from dehydration, he begged for water. The farmer obliged and he even gave him some cold rice. Ming survived because he was young and in good condition. But he had lost ten of his one hundred and thirty pounds during his ordeal.

  When he reached the relative safety of Shanghai, all he could talk about was what the barbaric Japanese had done. He had heard that two Japanese officers held a contest to see which of them could behead one hundred Chinese first. (The Japanese newspapers published this account and even named the two men, not with condemnation, but with respect for their skill and zeal.) Ming knew that the Japanese paper’s report was all too accurate; while he had not seen it take place, during his escape, he had seen row after row of severed heads lined up neatly on the side of a road.

  And what was the justification for their barbarism? It was because the Chinese weren’t worth the price of a bullet. What’s more, we should be honored to die by the feel of the sacred Samurai swords against our necks. But the report that affected me the most was the one where the ordinary Japanese soldier tossed babies in the air and caught them on the ends of their bayonets. Like their leaders, soldiers held their own competitions, but not with Samurai swords. These enlisted men were not allowed to wield that sacred, ancient weapon. They had to use their modern-day bayonets.

  But, decapitation wasn’t quite as horrific as the sight of a sharp bayonet skewered into the belly of a baby.

  How can any human being do these things?

  “You know,” my mother used to say, “the worst thing that could happen to us is that we die.”

  It was that simple and final. Death was the worst thing that could happen to us. Her statement defined the limit. I felt comforted, even reassured by her answer. In comparison with death, all else in life was insignificant. I grew up on this philosophy.

  Still, I couldn’t avoid constantly thinking about these horrors. Japanese atrocities continued to be discussed even at the dinner table. At grandpa’s house, the men sat at one round dinner table while the women sat at another. We children sat at a miniature table and on chairs sized to suit our little bodies. Adult conversations flew around the large dining
room and between the tables. The children heard everything, but we were not allowed to talk.

  The adults no longer asked ‘how could they do these things’—now, they just described what the Japanese had done in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. Incredulity was no more; one accepted the magnitude of the reality—this is who they are, and this is what they do.

  The object lesson had been delivered at Nanking. Resistance was useless. The reign of terror had begun. In six short months, Japan had conquered nearly all of the industrial cities in China.

  The Japanese had captured and occupied Shanghai in November, 1937. Then they marched inland to Nanking, the capital of the Republic of China, and carried out a policy of indiscriminate rape and murder that December. Sadly, most of the world didn’t even know that Japan had massacred 300,000 people in that city—all within a six-week period. That’s roughly 7,000 people killed each and every day for 42 days. Among those killed were young girls who had been gang raped then split open at the vagina with a bayonet.

  What makes this 7,000 number so significant is that these were mostly individual, one-on-one killings with swords or bayonets. This means that during an eight-hour day, Japanese officers and soldiers were killing an average of 15 people per minute, or one every four seconds, non-stop, throughout Nanking for six weeks. These numbers sound unbelievably high, but when you consider the fact that 50,000 Japanese soldiers had participated in the Rape of Nanking, then that really works out to be six Chinese killed by each Japanese soldier during those horrendous six weeks—or one person killed each week by a Japanese.

  Intellectually, I’m sure we will never know the actual death toll because nobody counted all of the dead. What’s really appalling is not the numbers, but the fact that the Japanese could do these atrocious things to another human being.

  But the real measure of hatred that the Japanese had, and perhaps still have, for the Chinese was reflected in the rapes against our women. These rapes weren’t limited to young girls or pretty women; they raped and mutilated older women, too. One old woman had a stick shoved up her vagina and through her intestines. They left her to bleed to death. Their hatred was so profound that symbolically, the Japanese didn’t want us to have the ability to reproduce, hence the stick in China’s womb. And that the superior Japanese people should rule China because the worthless Chinese were clearly not capable of ruling themselves.