Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze

by Harmsen, Peter

  The 3rd Division faced different challenges in its sector. It was attacked relentlessly on the first day of the landing, and on the second day it had to repel two further major enemy assaults. Also, it was harassed by occasional shelling from Chinese artillery on the Pudong side. However, the biggest danger came from the division’s right flank. North of the landing zone was Wusong fortress, which had been guarding the approach to Shanghai since the wars against the British and French imperialists in the mid-19th century. From their safety behind concrete walls, Chinese infantry and artillery continuously aimed at the Japanese as they disembarked from their boats and moved inland. They also targeted small vessels sailing up the Huangpu River with supplies for the division.42

  As the 3rd Division expanded its bridgehead in the days that followed the landing, the Wusong fortress remained a menace, slowing down the build-up of Japanese forces on the shore. Adding to the Japanese sense of being hemmed in, the village of Yinhang to the south was also under Chinese control. This, combined with the steady increase of Chinese defenders in front of the landing zone, made for a difficult tactical situation. The Japanese casualties, which had initially been considerably lighter than the planners had feared, began to rise. As of August 25, the 3rd Division, or the “Lucky” Division as it was often called, recorded an accumulated total of more than 300 casualties. Two days later, the number had risen to 500, the majority of them killed in action.43

  The first thing many Japanese soldiers noticed when disembarking at Wusong was the strange stench that filled the air. It was, they would soon find out, the smell from large pyres near the river where the army was burning its dead.44 As in the 11th Division’s sector, it was difficult to process the bodies fast enough. Sergeant Miyoshi Shozo recorded how he arrived at Wusong a few days after the initial landing to discover heaps of unburied Japanese soldiers who had been killed in action. “All the bodies were swollen with putrefaction, due to the decay of the internal organs,” he wrote in his memoirs, “and the soft part of the bodies had burst through from the pressure. Even the eyeballs bulged six or seven centimeters out from their faces.”45

  Four days after the landings, both divisions seemed close to being bogged down. What eventually tilted the balance in their favor was the Japanese Navy. In the days immediately before and after the landings, it steadily built up its fleet in the Yangtze and Huangpu Rivers. This added extra artillery and, crucially, it boosted the air power available to the Japanese. On August 26, Japanese planes flew 16 individual sorties over the Chinese positions, on August 27, that number grew to 29 sorties, and on August 28, a total of 68 sorties were flown.46

  This reinstated momentum into the Japanese attack. On August 28, the 3rd Division was finally able to take the village of Yinhang and extricate itself somewhat from the tactical straightjacket it had experienced so far. On the same day, following intense naval bombardment, the 11th Division stormed Luodian. In the vanguard of the attack was Wachi Takaji, a 44-year-old regimental commander who led his men with his sword drawn, personally killing several of the enemy on the way. The Chinese defenders were pushed out of the town and fled down roads leading inland. By noon, Luodian was in Japanese hands. It was not, however, to be the end of the battle for the village. The Chinese would be back. It was after all a prize that Falkenhausen had said must be kept at all cost.47

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  Guo Rugui was chief of staff of the Chinese Army’s 14th Infantry Division, part of the newly formed 15th Army Group, and nominally he was one of the highest-ranking officers in the unit. Yet, he had one problem: He was a recent arrival and knew no one. That was a severe handicap in the Chinese Army, where personal networks always counted for much, and having no close allies could be fatal.48 Thus, when he tried to propose his plan for retaking Luodian, he faced an uphill struggle. Even though his superiors eventually decided to adopt his plan, those lower down the hierarchy procrastinated. That might be what doomed the attack in the end.49

  Up until the Japanese landings, the 14th Infantry Division had been involved in guarding the banks of the Yangtze further upriver. That remained the division’s primary responsibility, so when the order to march for Luodian arrived, it could only spare two of its regiments, the 79th and 83rd, while the other two stayed on guard duty. Guo Rugui arrived with the troops in Jiading, west of Luodian, on August 29. Learning that Luo-dian had just fallen, Guo suggested to his divisional commander that no time should be wasted and that they should strike that very night while the Japanese were still not fully settled in their new positions, catching them off balance. The 83rd Regiment was to launch a frontal attack, while the 79th was to march in a long arc around Luodian and attack the enemy from behind.

  The division chief agreed, but Guo Rugui still had to persuade the officers who were to carry out the attack. The 79th Regiment’s commander made excuses, asking for clear boundary lines to be specified between his regiment and the 83rd. The deputy commander of the division shrugged off the request, arguing boundary lines were completely unnecessary, since the two regiments were not going to attack alongside each other anyway. It was an obvious attempt to delay the operation, or perhaps to have it canceled altogether. It did not work, and the 79th Regiment set out into the night, with its disgruntled commander at the head.

  The 83rd Regiment had to cross a bridge over a creek in order to enter the western part of Luodian. The Japanese had placed light and heavy machine guns at the far end of the bridge, and despite several attempts the Chinese regiment was unable to cross, mainly due to their lack of artillery. Meanwhile, the 79th Regiment’s commander followed his instruction halfheartedly. Approaching the town from the east, his soldiers encountered a creek. They constructed a floating bridge from pieces of wood requisitioned from farm buildings nearby, but only one of the regiment’s three battalions was ordered across, while the other two stayed on the safe side. The soldiers of the lone battalion sent into the town could hear intense shooting where the frontal attack was taking place. Their officers decided against moving forward and instead ordered them to take cover in a bamboo grove on the edge of the town.

  The 14th Infantry Division had set up its forward command post in a Daoist temple not far from Luodian. When 15th Army Group commander Chen Cheng arrived he was not happy. “This command post is way too far in front,” he said. “The Japanese planes are no joke. By dawn, they’ll see you and smash you to pieces. You should pull back at once.” The divisional commander saw no other option but to call off the attack. He phoned the 83rd Regiment performing the frontal assault, ordering it to withdraw, but he was unable to get in touch with the 79th. Ignoring pleas from his staff not to abandon the unit, he got into a vehicle with his deputy and rode off, heading for Jiading. After the commanders arrived at Jiading they again called the frontline for news about the regiments. It was bad. The 83rd Regiment had lost 200 men. The 79th Regiment reported two battalions had withdrawn, while the third, the one that had crossed the creek, was still missing.

  Only around midday did they hear from the missing third battalion. It had spent the night in the bamboo grove, but by daybreak it had been spotted by the Japanese. A fierce artillery bombardment had commenced, followed by air raids. Finally, machine gun crews had deployed outside the grove and fired into the dense bamboo. Those of the Chinese soldiers who were still able to move had run for the creek, but there they had discovered to their dismay that the floating bridge had started falling apart, planks and boards floating down the stream. With the enemy in hot pursuit, a mad rush for the other side had followed. Some had been cut down by enemy bullets. Others had drowned because they could not swim or because they were dragged down by their equipment. Less than half the battalion had survived.

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  All Quiet on the Western Front—in the first days after the Japanese had landed at Wusong and Chuanshakou, Liu Jingchi, one of Zhang Zhizhong’s top aides, was reminded of the title of the famous novel. After seeing so much bloodshed at the st
art of the battle, an eerie, almost surreal silence had fallen over downtown Shanghai. The opening up of new fronts north of the city had put the Chinese on the defensive everywhere, and as they had to allocate more troops to the new threats emerging in the countryside, they were no longer able to sustain their offensives inside the urban area.50

  As the days passed, the fighting picked up, but the tables had been turned. Only the 88th Division, half of the 36th Infantry Division, and an independent brigade remained at the old Shanghai front, while the rest of the Chinese troops were dispatched to face the enemy outside the city.51 These units now came under severe pressure as they were targeted by repeated Japanese attacks. However, the tactics were surprisingly similar to before. China often had to make up for its inferiority in material terms by relying on its superiority in sheer numbers, and its soldiers’ willingness to sacrifice themselves.

  Xiong Xinmin, a staff officer with the 36th, witnessed the bloody battle that erupted when a column a Japanese tanks approached the division’s positions near the ruins of a university campus. “This means trouble,” was all he had time to think before a tall soldier next to him grabbed a cluster of hand grenades and ran straight for the tanks. Seconds afterwards there was a loud explosion, and a dense cloud of smoke spread from under the lead tank. The Chinese soldier had blown himself up in order to stop the attack. It had worked. The other tanks made a U-turn and retreated to their lines.52

  It was only at this time, after the battle in central Shanghai was already past its first frantic peak, that Zhang Fakui was able to make a difference from the 8th Army Group’s positions east of Huangpu River. The fact that his men had played next to no part in the battle up till this point had been criticized vehemently by the German advisors, but in retrospect it is hard to imagine how they could have joined the fight much earlier. During the initial days after the outbreak of hostilities Zhang had spent time inspecting the Pudong side of the river searching for good artillery positions. Then the dreary work of transporting the artillery pieces followed. Mountain guns were cumbersome, but they could be disassembled and carried by small groups of men. Horses were needed to draw field guns. Heavy guns were out of the question because there were no good roads in Pudong. When the Chinese were finally able to fire their artillery, the war in Shanghai was already a week old.53

  Even after his artillery was in place, Zhang Fakui had to use it sparingly to avoid detection and inevitable air attack. The guns, hidden in bamboo groves, could fire at targets in Hongkou across the river for only ten minutes before having to hastily move to new positions. In practice, this meant they could be fired only once a day, at dusk, since it was easier to transport the guns under the cover of darkness.54 Secrecy was the artillery’s only real defense and, therefore, it had to be maintained aggressively. This was not what happened one day, some time after Zhang’s troops had taken up their positions, when one of his battalion commanders invited a journalist to his position. He even had his picture taken, in a heroic pose in front of an artillery piece. The following day the photo was in the local newspaper. Zhang was alerted and immediately ordered the battery to change its positions. He was only just in time. The Japanese also read the newspapers, and their planes bombed the area shortly afterwards. Zhang ordered the arrest of the careless battalion commander.55

  Among Zhang Fakui’s targets were the marine headquarters and the Japanese Consulate across the Huangpu River. The soldiers under his command also carried out mock cross-river attacks against the Japanese. They would board motor boats or sampans and head for the other side, yelling “Charge! Charge!” as artillery shelled the Hongkou riverbank, only to turn back at the last moment. Actual assaults across the river were never seriously considered, as the Japanese defenses remained too formidable.56

  The main prize, however, was the Izumo, and it was one Zhang Fakui pursued with the same zeal as Captain Ahab hunting the white whale. He had no success, as it constantly shifted anchorage. This was noticed by a senior British official in the Shanghai Customs who contacted the Chinese military offering to smuggle a Chinese artillery observer to the Customs building across the Huangpu, closer to the Japanese cruiser. In the following days, the observer, dressed in civilian clothes, reported on the changing positions of the vessel along hastily laid telephone wires.57 Even this failed to put an end to the old cruiser’s string of lucky escapes. All told, the Izumo was not hit even once. The big white whale remained afloat.58

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  For some foreigners, the war raging around them was still a source of detached amusement. “Guests at the swank Park Hotel,” wrote American correspondent Edgar Snow, “could gaze out through the spatial glass facade of its top-story dining room, while contentedly sipping their demitasse, and check up on the marksmanship of the Japanese batteries.”59 Even so, the central belief—that the war had nothing to do with Shanghai’s western residents and would never really affect them—was getting harder to maintain as shells kept falling indiscriminately and killed and maimed everyone unlucky to stand close enough to the blasts, regardless of nationality. “I was terrified by the artillery fire from Zhabei,” wrote Liliane Willens, the nine-year-old daughter of the Russian Jewish emigres, “but nevertheless took the elevator to the roof of our apartment building and saw in the distance dark gray smoke floating skywards.”60

  The shock of “Black Saturday” was still working its way through the community when tragedy again struck in Shanghai. At noon on Monday, August 23, while rumors were circulating around the city about Japanese landings downriver, a shell crashed through the side of Sincere Department Store, an exclusive multi-storey building on Nanjing Road in the city’s busiest shopping district. The explosion gutted the lower three floors and hurled shrapnel and debris through the air with such force that the Wing On Department Store across the street was also severely damaged.61

  It was a scene of carnage that had become drearily familiar. Dead customers were everywhere in Sincere Department Store—huddled in aisles, sprawled across stairs and buried under piles of merchandise. Some had died at the instant they had reached for their purses to pay. One elevator was crowded with people, and not a single one of them was alive. On the second floor, a water main had broken and sent a steady stream of water splashing to the sidewalk, where it mixed with growing pools of blood and perfume from a shattered window display. The stench was unbearable in its sickening intensity.

  A Sikh police officer conducting traffic from a post elevated above the street was killed immediately and hung over the side of his booth, his turban still wrapped tightly around his head. A rickshaw puller was also hit and almost pushed into the passenger seat, his open-mouthed expression making him seem as if he were only taking a nap. A Chinese boy was wandering around in a daze, blood spurting from the side of his head where his ear should have been. The shock wave had sent pedestrians flying across the street to the sidewalk outside the Wing On Department Store. There the bodies lay mingled with wrecked toys. A ghostly sheet of white dust was covering the entire spectacle.

  Disasters like this far exceeded anything the city’s fire and ambulance workers had encountered during peacetime, but since the events on “Black Saturday,” they had established new routines with amazing haste, helped also by civic groups. Red Swastika, the local equivalent of the Red Cross, flew its flag over the scene, as its members mingled with Chinese boy scouts with broad-brimmed felt hats to help the injured. The street was cleared and hosed down, and the wrecked shops were boarded up against looters, within just four hours.62

  Death continued to rain down from the sky. Three days after the bombing of the department store, the British ambassador to China, Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, was attacked by a low-flying airplane as he was traveling from Nanjing to Shanghai in a car carrying a large Union Jack on its radiator, with about 50 miles left of the journey. The ambassador was hit in the stomach during the first run of the Japanese aircraft. The occupants of the car got out and hid in a ditch when the plan
e made another run dropping two bombs, which did no damage apart from showering them with dirt and debris. Once the plane had left, the other passengers swiftly transported the ambassador to a hospital in Shanghai. The following day doctors said his condition was satisfactory.63

  Japanese officers did not rule out that one of their planes might have been the culprit, but at the same time they were of the view that anyone traveling through a war zone must have known that he was exposing himself to considerable danger. This cavalier attitude manifested itself again only two days later. At 2:00 p.m. on August 28, five Japanese planes attacked the area around the South Railway Station as hundreds of civilians were standing on the platform. They had been waiting for the 1:30 p.m. train which was to have taken them to the safety of the countryside. The train was late, which sealed their fate.64

  This attack was followed the day after by a similar raid on the North Railway Station. A small group of Japanese seaplanes dropped a total of 12 bombs. Some of them started fires that kept burning until late in the day.65 In both cases the Japanese justified the attack by claiming that the Chinese Army was using the train stations continuously to pour in more troops. Little more than two weeks after the start of the battle, the bombing of civilians had become a matter of course. Most of it was accidental, but in cases where it was deliberate, it was explained away as the unfortunate, but necessary, byproduct of war.

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  August 29 was a day of triumph for Chinese diplomacy. Chiang Kai-shek’s government announced a non-aggression treaty with the Soviet Union, which had in fact been signed eight days earlier in Nanjing. Non-aggression treaties would later get a bad reputation because of their uselessness when inked by ruthless dictators in the mold of Hitler. In the 1930s, they were comprehensive agreements marking strategic cooperation between two nations. The pact between Nanjing and Moscow prepared the ground politically and diplomatically for Soviet military aid to China, while at the same time ensuring that the Soviet Union would not reach an agreement with Japan as long as hostilities were still going on.66