Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze

by Harmsen, Peter

  An advance outpost had sent word back at 7:30 a.m. that it had seen Japanese marines near the North Train Station, and 45 minutes later it reported that the enemy’s flag was flying over that building. The Chinese soldiers were ordered to engage the advancing Japanese, and over the following two hours they made a fighting retreat back towards the warehouse. A brief pause ensued, which the Chinese defenders used to get ready, some taking up positions on the different floors of the warehouse, others crouching behind an outer wall surrounding the building. At 1:00 a.m. a Japanese column approached the warehouse, proudly and confidently marching down the middle of the road behind a large Rising Sun banner. It looked more like a victory parade than a tactical maneuver. Once they were close enough, the Chinese officers ordered their men to fire. Five Japanese soldiers went down, while the rest of the column scrambled for cover.36

  Within an hour, the Japanese had gathered enough troops to attempt to take the warehouse by storm. A sizeable force moved in on the building, and put up so much firepower that the Chinese had to abandon the outer wall and withdraw to the warehouse itself. Despite the solid defenses, the crisis was not over, and the attackers seemed to have gained dangerous momentum. At this point, Yang Ruifu, the second-in-command, ordered a dozen soldiers to run to the roof and lob hand grenades at the Japanese from there. This stopped the attack. As the Japanese withdrew, they left behind seven dead.37 Much of the fighting was followed by excited Chinese on the other side of the 60-yard Suzhou Creek. Every time word spread that yet another Japanese soldier had been killed, an unpitying cheer rose from the crowd.38

  Foreign correspondents also witnessed the battle from the safe side of Suzhou Creek. They had a front-row seat to the bitter reality of urban combat. One of them noticed how a small group of Japanese was slowly and carefully approaching the warehouse, picking their way through the broken masonry and twisted metal. Crawling from cover to cover, it took them 50 minutes to cover 50 yards. Apparently the Chinese defenders, watching from hidden vantage points, had been monitoring them all along, and once the Japanese party was close enough, they rained hand grenades on them. After the dust had settled, they used their rifles to finish off those who still moved. Several Japanese who crept up to rescue wounded comrades were killed too. It was a war without mercy.39

  Even after darkness had fallen over the warehouse, there was no time to sleep. All soldiers were set to work repairing damages and further bolstering their positions. At 7:00 a.m. the following morning, October 28, large numbers of Japanese planes appeared overhead, but they did not drop a single bomb on the warehouse. The defenders told themselves this was because of the machine guns they had placed on top of the building due to a lack of genuine anti-aircraft guns. The proximity of the warehouse to the International Settlement was probably at least as important as it made the Japanese wary of engaging in aerial bombardment, fearing that they could cause a disaster on the scale of “Black Saturday.”40

  Shortly before noon, Xie Jinyuan climbed to the roof with his lieutenant, Yang Ruifu. All around them, Zhabei was burning. Dense black smoke rose from thousands of fires, covering the sun entirely. As the two officers were watching the scene in awe, they noticed a group of Japanese soldiers lingering in the street some distance away. Xie Jinyuan ordered a sentry to hand him his rifle. He lifted the weapon to his cheek, aimed carefully, and squeezed the trigger. As the lone shot echoed across the ruined cityscape, one of the distant silhouettes collapsed to the ground. “Good shot,” a smiling Yang Ruifu said to his commander.41

  At 3:00 p.m., the Japanese attempted a second major attack on the warehouse. This time they pulled up five artillery pieces and also posted machine guns on the roofs of adjacent buildings. The defenders came under even greater pressure than the day before, and only after two hours of intense fighting did they succeed in beating back the enemy. Not long after the shooting had died down, bad news arrived. The Japanese had managed to find the water supply and cut if off. Yang Ruifu ordered strict rationing. Each company was to place its water reserves under guard and collect urine in large barrels for use if fires needed to be extinguished.

  The number of wounded had started growing, and there was little that could be done for them in the primitive conditions at the warehouse. Through the last remaining phone link, Yang Ruifu organized their transfer across nearby Lese Bridge, through the International Settlement to hospitals in the Chinese part of Shanghai. As a party of medics prepared to leave with the injured, Yang Ruifu had a last order for them. “If anyone asks how many soldiers are inside the Four Banks’ Warehouse, say there are 800,” he told them. “Under no circumstances let anyone know how few we really are. That would embolden the Japanese.” A legend was born—the legend of the “800 Heroes” of Shanghai.42

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  The battle of Shanghai had arguably always been unwinnable for the Chinese. It was only a matter of time before the Japanese would gain the upper hand by virtue of their material and technological advantage. As the fighting dragged on, and the Japanese gained stronghold after stronghold in the countryside around the city, invariably exacting an immense toll on the defenders, a growing number of Chinese generals started questioning the wisdom of hanging on to a city doomed to fall in the end anyway. They were pushing for a more comprehensive withdrawal, rather than the tactical retreat from Zhabei and Jiangwan that had taken place. Otherwise, thousands more would die in vain. Just as seriously, morale could suffer a devastating blow, and China’s ability to continue the fight would be compromised.

  This was a very real concern. The Chinese troops, who had entered the battle in an upbeat and patriotic mood, had gradually lost their fervor as they suffered huge numbers of casualties fighting a hopeless battle. Once a division was down to one third of its original strength, it was sent to the rear for reorganization and replenishment, and then returned to the frontline.43 Most soldiers saw the odds of survival heavily stacked against them. But in spite of frequent visits to the front, Chiang Kai-shek knew very little about this. Officers who were aware of the real conditions in the trenches also were familiar with the supreme commander’s stubborn character and his determination to stick to the defense of Shanghai to the bitter end. Under the circumstances, they found it inadvisable to break the truth to him. It was a charade which could not go on forever. In some units the situation was getting so desperate that it was only a matter of time before the soldiers would simply leave their positions.44

  With mutiny an increasingly likely scenario, senior commanders sought to convince Chiang Kai-shek that a complete withdrawal of all Chinese troops from the Shanghai area to a fortified line from Suzhou to Jiaxing, a city about 35 miles to the south, was the only option available. In early November, Bai Chongxi told Chiang that the officers at the front could no longer control their men and that a pullback would be a face-saving measure, forestalling open rebellion in the ranks. Nothing they said made any impression on Chiang Kai-shek. Li Zongren, another general who had previously tried to make the case for retreat, knew that it was pointless to argue with the man at the top. “War plans were decided by him personally, and no one else was allowed to say anything,” Li said in his memoirs.45

  Even so, at times Chiang seemed tantalizingly close to actually being swayed by the views of his lieutenants. As early as the first days of October, he appeared to have decided for a withdrawal of the front, but subsequently changed his mind. A similar situation emerged late in the month when Chiang had called a meeting with his frontline commanders in a train carriage at Songjiang Railway Station southwest of Shanghai. Before Chiang’s arrival, the generals discussed the battle and concluded that they could do nothing against the enemy’s superior firepower.

  Once Chiang had arrived, Zhang Fakui, the commander of the troops in Pudong, suggested moving ten divisions to lines further in the rear, where the positions had been well prepared and defense would be easier than in Shanghai. The majority agreed. At this point, Madame Chiang Kai-shek, as belligerent as eve
r, made her entry dressed in an expensive-looking fur coat, fresh from a visit to the Shanghai front. “If we can hold Shanghai for ten more days,” she declared, “China will win international sympathy.” She wasn’t any more specific than that, but it appeared to those present that she was referring to the upcoming Brussels conference. That did it for Chiang. “Shanghai must be held at all cost,” he declared with firm conviction in his voice, as if that was what he had felt all along.46

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  By the first week of November, Shanghai’s refugee problem had become close to unmanageable, and a humanitarian catastrophe of unprecedented scale was in the making. Hundreds of thousands of homeless had crammed into the diminishing parts of the city that remained more or less untouched by war. At the same time the frontline moved closer and threatened to eventually sweep over the entire municipal area, leaving no district unscathed. If that situation were to become reality, the stage would be set for unimaginable suffering, as civilians squeezed into narrow alleys would be exposed to the modern instruments of war.

  Incidents were already accumulating showing that non-combatants could expect no mercy. As the Chinese defenders withdrew from Zhabei, the civilians who still remained north of Suzhou Creek rushed to escape with whatever possessions they could carry before their homes were overrun by the Japanese Army. They took the same route as the troops, pouring over the Zhongshan and Jessfield bridges to the safety of the international zones. Some of them were not fast enough. While they were still making their way across the partly destroyed Jessfield Railway Bridge, a Japanese vanguard caught up with them. A machine gun swept the entire bridge, cutting down men, women and children.47

  To the south, Brenan Road stretched parallel with the creek and led to the British outposts guarding the entrances to the International Settlement. This, too, was turned into a killing ground by the advancing Japanese. A number of silver-colored Japanese monoplanes were bombing nearby railway carriages when three of them suddenly broke formation and started strafing civilians walking along the road. An eyewitness estimated that 200 were killed or injured. “I saw six ambulance loads taken away,” he said. “A large number of others, wounded to various degrees, stumbled into the Settlement or were helped along by others to safety.”48

  Desperate cries could be heard as far away as the north bank of Suzhou Creek, where children and old women were unable to move any further, exhausted after a long trek and nervous about stepping onto the railway bridge, having seen what happened to the others. In the end, British soldiers watching the carnage taking place right on their doorstep decided to intervene. Rolling up their shirtsleeves, they moved out to assist them that final short distance to safety. “Once, twice, endless times they patiently helped the refugees in the same manner as they would have treated their own family members,” said a Chinese witness.49

  As rumors spread that civilians were being machine-gunned at the Jess-field entrance to the International Settlement, the refugee streams soon started moving to other areas, which were already under severe stress after taking in large numbers of people from the war zones. The Catholic settlement around St Ignatius Cathedral on the edge of the French Concession was one such place. By early November, the monks and nuns were taking care of 7,000 civilians. A large number were children or elderly who had been separated from family members they depended on. “Many come to the camp in dying condition and, especially among the small children, resistance to disease is so small that they become easy victims of common ailments,” the North China Herald reported. “Often are the priests called to the side of a dying child whom the devoted nursing sisters cannot possibly save.”50

  Much worse was in store for the future unless a more comprehensive solution was found. The Jesuit priest Jacquinot, who had been appointed one of the vice chairmen of the recently established Shanghai Red Cross, decided that the time was right to move more decisively on his vision for a safety zone for non-combatants. Three intense days of negotiations with Chinese and Japanese authorities followed. After securing Shanghai Mayor Yu Hongjun’s agreement to a zone adjacent to the French Concession, he moved on to the difficult part, dealing with the Japanese. Consul General Okamoto Suemasa was favorably disposed, in principle at least, but he would have to consult his government back home. Everything was now up to Tokyo.51

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  Yang Huimin’s curiosity had been getting the better of her as the sound of the late-night fight around the Four Banks’ Warehouse was carried across Suzhou Creek into the International Settlement. Hoping to watch the battle from up close, she had followed the creek west until she had been stopped by a British soldier pointing his rifle at her. “Boy scout,” the foreigner said, half contemptuously. He had been fooled by the 22-year-old woman’s tomboy looks and by her uniform. Since her factory had been closed down due to the hostilities, she had devoted most of her time to the Girl Guides, helping refugees holed up in the International Settlement. The soldier had led her pass, however, and from a British bunker she had been able to follow the combat that raged around the warehouse across the creek until dawn.52

  After sunrise, she had noticed how all of Zhabei was covered in Japanese flags, while on her side of the creek, over the bunker, the Union Jack was hoisted. “Where was the Chinese flag,” she thought to herself. The red banner with the white star on a blue background was missing in all this—and after all, this was Chinese territory. She had gone home, and after some consideration, she had decided what to do. She had wrapped a large Chinese flag around herself under her uniform and returned to the British bunker, and there, on the evening of October 28, she waited for an opportunity to make the dangerous trip across the Lese Bridge to Zhabei.

  Taking advantage of a brief moment when the British sentries were not paying attention, she snuck onto the bridge and rushed across to the other side. Once there, she lifted her face to see the warehouse with its empty windows staring down at her like a many-eyed giant. The most dangerous part still remained—crossing the street without being shot by either British or Japanese sentries. While she was waiting for a chance to move, gun fire started all around her. For a few seconds, she thought she had been detected, but anxiety was overtaken by relief when she understood that the shooting was directed at the warehouse. She had ended up in the middle of yet another Japanese attempt at taking the building.

  When the fire had died down, she quickly ran over to the warehouse, entered through a hole in the barbed wire surrounding the building, and soon stood face to face with Xie Jinyuan, commander of the “Lost Battalion.” Yang Huimin took off her scout’s coat and unwrapped the flag, now soaked in her sweat after the exertion and the danger. There was no flagpole anywhere in the building, and instead the soldiers jerry-rigged one from two bamboo poles. They climbed the stairs to the roof and hoisted the flag in a quick and low-key ceremony, performed by a dozen soldiers shortly before dawn. Yang Ruifu, the second-in-command, made a short speech. “Now that our flag is flying over the warehouse,” he said, “no one can dispute the fact that Zhabei is sovereign Chinese soil!”53

  Yang Huimin had noticed a large number of injured lying on the floor of the warehouse and offered to stay in order to help look after them, but Xie Jinyuan declined. As the sun was rising on October 29, he sent her back, urging her to choose a different route for the return trip. “Jump into the creek,” he told her. She followed the advice, dashing to the bank and leaping into the foul water. Immediately, she heard Japanese bullets whizz over her head. She was a good swimmer, and did most of the trip under the surface. When she emerged on the other side, a crowd was standing along Suzhou Creek, cheering and clapping. They were not celebrating her, but the Chinese flag, flying over Zhabei again for the first time since the withdrawal.

  Inside the warehouse, fatigue was now widespread. The defenders had been fighting for three days, and the nights had been spent improving their positions. Yang Ruifu had been walking from platoon to platoon after dark, kicking everyone who
was slumbering. “If we don’t do everything we can to prepare the positions, the enemy will kill us,” he shouted angrily. “What do you want, to sleep or to live? Anyone caught sleeping from now on will be severely punished!” The privates quietly cursed the officer behind his back, as they got up and set to work on their positions.

  Everything indicated that the Japanese wanted October 29 to be the last day in the embarrassing battle for the warehouse. The first warnings started arriving early in the afternoon from across Suzhou Creek, where sympathetic Chinese civilians were secrety spying on enemy troop movements. The battalion was informed by telephone that a major force, consisting of hundreds of soldiers, had been put together and was marching towards the warehouse. Minutes later, it got a similar warning from British soldiers who were guarding the exits from Zhabei and who had no special love for the Japanese military after one of their numbers had been killed in an air raid in late October. Then the attack started. The Japanese had rolled up numerous artillery pieces and shelled the warehouse for more than an hour. However, the defenders crouched behind ten-foot-thick defensive walls, and escaped with only minor injuries. They also succeeded in beating back the following infantry attack. But it was obvious that they could not hold out for much longer.

  By this time, the Chinese Alamo-style battle in Zhabei had been a resounding propaganda victory. The “Lost Battalion” had captured the imagination of the world, and for a few days, journalists paid intense attention to its fate. Zhang Boting, the 88th Division’s chief of staff, had been sent to Shanghai’s foreign districts to keep in touch with Xie Jinyuan and his men. He felt that after four days of fighting, the battalion had made its point and the next step for it was to disengage from the enemy and withdraw. The only escape route was across Lese Bridge to the International Settlement, and hopefully from there to the suburbs and the Chinese positions there. There was one obstacle to this move. It would require the agreement of the western powers.54