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The Origin of the Hostilities

Although a most intensive and effective boycott of Japanese trade by the Chinese had been going on for over four months, and although the occurrences in Manchuria had resulted in tremendous feeling against the Japanese on the part of the Chinese population, it is fair to say that surprisingly little personal violence had resulted. Property had been destroyed probably by illegal methods and the Chinese courts had been lax in giving redress to Japanese claimants, but I believe there was no reported loss of life until January 18th, when a clash occurred in front of a Chinese factory in Chapei, in which two Japanese were seriously wounded, one of them subsequently dying from his wounds. Two days later some fifty members of one of the Japanese societies proceeded to the factory, set it on fire and clashed with the municipal police. In this clash three Chinese policemen and three Japanese were injured, one on either side subsequently dying¹³.

On January 20th the Japanese Consul General presented to the Chinese Mayor of Greater Shanghai (that is, the chief Chinese authority of the entire urban area) the following demands:

1. Formal apology by the Mayor.
2. Immediate arrest of those responsible for the attack on January 18th.
3. Payment of damages and hospital bills.
4. Adequate control of the anti-Japanese movement.
5. Immediate dissolution of all anti-Japanese organizations engaged in fostering hostile feelings and anti-Japanese agitation.

It will be noticed that these last two demands virtually amounted to a demand for a dissolution of the boycott organization. The next morning the Mayor replied that he was ready to consider the first three demands but would have difficulty in complying with the last two. Thereupon that same day, January 21st, the Japanese Admiral in command of the forces at Shanghai, Koichi Shiozawa, gave a public notice in the press that

should the Mayor of Greater Shanghai fail to give a satisfactory reply to the Japanese and fulfill their demands without delay, the Admiral was determined to take the necessary steps in order to protect Japanese Imperial rights and interests.

Moreover, heavy Japanese reёnforcements were at once ordered to Shanghai. These arrived partly on the 24th and partly at dawn on the 28th. They consisted of two cruisers, an aircraft carrier and sixteen destroyers, and brought the number of marines under Admiral Shiozawa’s disposal for landing purposes up to about three thousand men.

A force of about thirty thousand Chinese troops, known as the Nineteenth Route Army, had been for some time regularly quartered in and near the Chapei district of Shanghai. Its mission was the national defense of the Nanking and Shanghai districts of China. This unit was composed of Cantonese troops and was one of the most experienced fighting forces of the Chinese army. Its presence in Shanghai was in no way connected with the boycott controversy in which its members apparently had taken no part. Moreover, after Admiral Shiozawa’s warning, the Mayor of Shanghai announced that he would make every possible concession to avoid clashes and began trying to induce the leaders of the local Chinese to put an end to the anti-Japanese boycott association. He made a public statement to this effect on January 27th and, as a result of his efforts, various offices of that association were seized by the police during the night of January 27th-28th. On the side of the Chinese authorities therefore there was apparently no further provocation, but on the contrary efforts were being made to accede to the full Japanese demands.

But on January 24th the Japanese Consul uttered a further warning and again on January 27th he notified the Mayor that he would expect a “satisfactory reply to the demands by 6 P.M. next day, failing which the Japanese would take the necessary steps in order to enforce them.” On January 28th at seven-thirty in the morning Admiral Shiozawa notified the commanders of the other national defense forces in Shanghai that he proposed to take action on the following morning (the 29th) if no satisfactory reply had been received.

As a natural result of these repeated threats, the apprehension of the Chinese and the other nationals in Shanghai became intense. If the Chinese failed to make satisfactory answer to these drastic demands, the community was faced with Japanese action of a nature not specified, but which, if measured by what had happened in Manchuria, might be expected to be of the most serious character. On the other hand, if the Chinese authorities yielded, there might be angry reactions from the Chinese population.

Under these circumstances the Municipal Council of the International Settlement met at 2 P.M. on January 28th and declared the existence of an emergency, and at about 4 P.M. all of the international forces, except the Japanese, began to take up their allotted positions in their respective defense sectors. The sector allotted to the Japanese was in the northeastern portion of the Settlement. More than that, the defense line of the Japanese sector had been extended outside of the Settlement northward in a sharp salient so as to include the so-called Hongkew district where a large number of Japanese nationals resided. This Hongkew salient lay east of the Shanghai-Nanking Railway, which ran north from the North Station. The main portion of Chapei lay west of the railway, in some portions overlapping the railway. Somewhere in Chapei it was known that the Nineteenth Route Army was quartered. This, moreover, was the first time that such an extension of the Japanese sector outside the Settlement to Hongkew had ever been made; and no notice of the extension had been given to the Chinese authorities of the city by the Defense Committee—perhaps owing to the confusion and excitement of the moment. Therefore if the Japanese moved into that portion of their sector without ample warning on their part, it was morally certain that they would come into immediate proximity and perhaps into contact with the Nineteenth Route Army.

Early that same afternoon the Mayor of Shanghai finally transmitted to the Japanese Consul a reply accepting entirely the Japanese demands, and at 4 P.M. the Consul informed the other national consuls of the receipt of this reply, stating that it was entirely satisfactory.

After nightfall of the same day and at least five or six hours after all of the other national forces had taken their stations, the Japanese marines assembled at their naval headquarters in the International Settlement. At II P.M. Admiral Shiozawa sent proclamations to the Mayor notifying him that he had decided to send out troops to protect the Japanese nationals in Chapei and asking the Chinese authorities speedily to withdraw the Chinese troops now stationed in Chapei to the west of the railway and to remove all hostile defenses in that area. The Mayor received the message at 11:15. The Japanese forces began their movement at 11:45. It of course would have been quite impossible in the short time at their disposal after the notification from the Admiral for the Chinese authorities to have arranged for the actual withdrawal of the Chinese troops in the area mentioned.

The Japanese force consisting that night of approximately two thousand marines and sailors, together with armored cars, trucks and light artillery, advanced along the North Szechuan Road running north out of the Settlement parallel to and east of the railway. At the entrances to streets running westward they dropped parties of troops. At midnight on a given signal these separate detachments advanced westward towards the railway and the main section of Chapei and very shortly came into conflict first with Chinese police and later with the soldiers of the Nineteenth Route Army who were quartered in that section.

In defending themselves for the responsibility of this initial clash, the Japanese rest their case upon the claim that they were doing no more than they were authorized to do by the International Defense Committee and the Municipal Council of the Settlement, and that their troops, while moving out to their allotted sector, were first fired on by Chinese troops and civilian snipers. But even if one should admit these assertions, which are not at all undisputed, such a technical defense does not go to the bottom of the matter and reach the basis of ultimate responsibility. Any fair criticism must take account of a far broader situation for which the Japanese themselves were responsible. In the first place the September aggression in Manchuria in which their troops, on a similar pretext of protecting Japanese nationals, in forty-eight hours had overrun all of Southern Manchuria and scattered and destroyed all the organized Chinese forces of that region, was in everybody’s mind. Now in Shanghai on the similar pretext of a comparatively trivial incident, they had at once mobilized a disproportionately large naval force in the harbor of Shanghai and were rapidly augmenting that force with new reinforcements. Thirdly, the warnings of the Admiral had given no accurate measure of what he intended to do except that he proposed to compel the Chinese to abandon their national boycott by an act of force. Finally, instead of marching his forces out to their sector in daylight as the other national commanders had done, he had assembled them under cover of night and made his movement with a notice so insufficient as to amount to no notice at all and had covered his operation with a veil of secrecy which was bound to excite alarm.¹⁴

Even in the minds of the foreigners resident in Shanghai this series of Japanese actions had excited the most lively apprehension as to what the Japanese intended to do. In the minds of the Chinese against whom it was directed such apprehensions were necessarily infinitely accentuated. Their Mayor had yielded to demands which seemed beyond any justification and was doing his best to prevent further outbreaks. In spite of this they saw the Japanese commander proceeding with his threat and carrying out movements which had no reasonable relation to any justifiable protective purpose.

Against such a background and bearing in mind such an atmosphere on the part of the Chinese, the fair-minded historian must reach the conclusion that when Admiral Shiozawa began his movement, he, to put it mildly, was not at all reluctant at the prospect of having an armed clash with the Chinese forces in the district into which he was moving. In fact he was courting such a clash and he must have known it.¹⁵

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13 Compare, for instance, this modest casualty list with the anti-Chinese riots in Korea in the preceding July which the Japanese authorities failed to control and where more than one hundred Chinese were killed, over five hundred injured, and a great amount of Chinese property was destroyed.

14 Press reports emphasized this secrecy. An Associated Press correspondent, learning late in the evening of the 28th that the Japanese were about to begin armed action, motored through the northern districts of the city and the areas outside the Settlement limits. Part of his account reads as follows:

In the darkened streets almost deserted by civilians, Japanese bluejackets and marines were lined up rank upon rank, awaiting the order to begin the invasion. … The secrecy which was maintained over the Japanese plans was indicated by the fact that I saw Chinese police in the native city patrolling the streets as usual to the corners of their beats up to the very edge of the Japanese residential section. As the Japanese bluejackets deployed down these streets, the Chinese policemen stared open-mouthed and paralyzed in surprise. They stood transfixed while their rifles were taken away from them and some of them were marched to Japanese headquarters. Just previously I had visited some of the streets of the Chapei section which was burned today. I found everything completely quiet and peaceful there. Even the railway station was deserted. Within half an hour these same streets were echoing with the rattle of machine guns and rifles and the great battle of Chapei had begun.

A Reuter correspondent touring the same area at about the same time substantially corroborates the above statement.

15 Press reports stated that the Cabinet at Tokyo on January 26th had authorized the naval forces at Shanghai to “take positive action” in the event of no satisfactory reply being returned to the Consul’s demands. See London Times, January 27, 28, 1932.