A state of emergency: the International Settlement in the fighting of January–May 1932, as the Council recorded it

The short answer. For five weeks in early 1932 the International Settlement was a neutral enclave with a war on two of its sides and a belligerent inside it. The Municipal Council declared a State of Emergency at 4 p.m. on 28 January 1932, called out the Volunteer Corps and asked the consuls to land the foreign troops; a few hours later Japanese marines marched out of the Settlement’s own Hongkou district into Zhabei, and the Council spent the rest of the war protesting that it had no power over them. Its report for 1932 counts what it could count: 2,300 Volunteers, 312 shells and two bombs inside its limits, 262 buildings damaged, 277 casualties, 837 people missing, 70,000 refugees in 85 camps, 7,671 corpses removed in three months, 390,590 taels of rates remitted. This is the war of 28 January from the Council’s side of the wire.

January 1932: the towel factory and the ultimatum

The Council’s own account begins with the boycott. Through the autumn of 1931 “Chinese residents of the Settlement suspected of dealing in Japanese goods were illegally arrested, fined and imprisoned in various places, particularly in the Temple of the Queen of Heaven”, and the Special District Courts gave no redress; the chairman later called this “one of the contributing factors in the cumulative causes which led to actual warfare”. The spark came on 18 January 1932, “when a party of Japanese monks were set upon by a mob of Chinese near the San Yue Towel Factory situated near to but outside the Settlement boundary in the eastern district”; one monk died. On the night of 19/20 January “between forty and fifty Japanese, members of the Youth Protection Fraternity, in reprisal set fire to the San Yue Towel Factory, and came into conflict with members of the Shanghai Municipal Police. Three Chinese constables were assaulted and wounded, one being fatally stabbed, and three Japanese were shot, of whom one subsequently died.” The Japanese consul-general expressed regret, a Japanese mass meeting marched on the consulate and naval headquarters and scuffled with police on North Szechuen Road, and five demands went to the mayor. On 21 January Rear-Admiral Shiozawa published his warning: “should there be no satisfactory reply forthcoming, I will resort to appropriate action in order to protect the rights and interests of the Japanese Empire.” By 24 January Japanese reinforcements had arrived, units of the Chinese 19th Route Army had taken up the North Station, the railways and Jukong Road “on the northern boundaries of the Settlement”, and the Japanese mill owners threatened to close mills “employing some 60,000 Chinese labourers”.

28 January: four hours to mobilise

The Council had a defence scheme and a committee: the commanders of the American, British, French, Italian and Japanese forces, the chairman, the Volunteer commandant and the Commissioner of Police, whose job was to divide the Settlement “into sectors”. On 26 January it had already thought “it might be advisable to proceed with the erection of barbed wire defences”. On the morning of 28 January the Japanese gave Brigadier Fleming 24 hours’ notice; the Defence Committee met at 9.30, the Council at noon, and “the Council unanimously decided to declare a State of Emergency”: “from 4 p.m. on Thursday, January 28, 1932, a STATE OF EMERGENCY exists”. The chairman wrote to the senior consul that “the Shanghai Volunteer Corps and the Municipal Police have been mobilized” and asked him “to arrange forthwith for the landing of the International Forces”. “On January 28, with four hours’ notice, the Russian Detachment took over the sector of the defences allotted to the Corps in the International Defence Plan and within six hours the Corps was completely mobilized”; in ten days “the Corps expanded from 1,500 to 2,300”, with its infantry “at least 50% deficient” and recruits without uniform or boots. The Specials “were mobilized at 6 p.m. on January 28 and remained under mobilisation till March 24”, 150 extra police were enlisted, and the Public Works Department’s labour went to “the preparation and erection of barbed wire fences and entanglements on the perimeter of the Settlement”. At 6 p.m. a Japanese officer told the Council that the consul-general had a satisfactory reply from the mayor and “it was not intended to take the action which had been contemplated”. The British and American troops and the Volunteers moved to their sectors that evening, the Italians the next day.

The sector that mattered was the Japanese one. In the League of Nations report the Council later quoted, “the Japanese sector consisted of the whole North-Eastern area of the Settlement, limited on the Western side by North Honan Road”, and included Hongkew Park, North Szechuen Road and Dixwell Road, which “although outside the Settlement, are properties of the Shanghai Municipal Council, and normally policed by it”. At 11 p.m. the Japanese admiral proclaimed that his troops would move into Chapei “where Japanese nationals resided in great numbers”, and “Japanese bluejackets, reinforced by armed civilian reservists, commenced their movement shortly before midnight and advanced along North Szechuen Road, westwards along Range Road as far as North Honan Road”; the police logged their departure at 11.35 p.m. “The North Station and neighbourhood were strongly occupied by Chinese troops and an armoured train which patrolled the Woosung railway line took an active part. Fighting continued on January 29 and great damage was caused in the neighbourhood of the station by bombing and fires.” That night the Chapei Fire Brigade abandoned its station, and the Settlement’s Hongkew division, with Japanese permission, fought the Jukong Road fire of 30 January for twelve hours until “its nearest approach to the Settlement boundary being approximately 180 yards”. “The business of most of the factories, mills, banks and shops came to a standstill on January 29.”

February: “solely responsible”

The Chinese protests arrived at once. Various Chinese bodies complained that “the Japanese, in pursuing their hostile acts, had made use of a district the safety and good order of which they were under an obligation to safeguard as a base of their operations”, and the mayor, Wu Te-chen, wrote on 30 January that “since the Japanese forces attacked Chapei on the night of 28th January, 1932, the Settlement has constantly been used as a base of operations”, asking the Council to “introduce measures of repression”. The Council’s answer, from the chairman on 6 February, became its position for the war: neutrality “can only be maintained and guaranteed by these same Powers and States”, and “the Japanese Government and not the Municipal Council is solely responsible for the acts of the Japanese armed forces in the Settlement.” Its published statement of 15 February put it formally: “it is the duty of these Powers and States and not of the Shanghai Municipal Council to prevent by collective measures, if necessary, any breach of the neutrality of this area by the armed forces of any country”; the Japanese sector had been allotted “purely for defensive measures”, and the Council “has no authority or control whatever over the international forces”.

Behind the formula the Council was losing its own district. From 1 February a curfew required everyone but police and troops “to remain indoors within the hours of 10 p.m. and 4 a.m.”; 6,228 passes were issued. On 2 February the Defence Committee itself protested at “the posting of Japanese detachments in mills out of all proportion to the requirements of security, and of active patrolling in sectors allotted to other national troops”, and the Council told the senior consul that “members of the Municipal Police and Police Watchmen have been forcibly deprived of their arms and ammunition and prevented from executing their duty; members of the Fire Brigade, whilst on duty and in uniform, have been obstructed and assaulted” by “Japanese armed forces and armed civilians in the northern and eastern areas of the Settlement”. The consuls backed the Council: “it is not our understanding that a landing force is in any sense to interfere with the police and police watchmen but rather to strengthen them.” The Japanese consul-general replied that his naval authorities had “lost no time in issuing an emergency order for the stoppage of the activities of the Japanese vigilance men”, and that the absence of liaison “would appear to have been unavoidable in time of emergency”. The Council’s narrative is blunter than its letters: “the Japanese naval authorities took complete control of the district and organised barricades, defences and war zone activities to the almost complete paralysis of the civil power.” Reports of Chinese “missing and summarily executed” produced a consular committee; the Japanese “handed over to the Municipal Police 117 Chinese, including a number of women”, all later released. The police put it in their own words: “Japanese marines assuming more or less complete control, acting independently of the Police, arresting and detaining suspicious Chinese, making house to house searches”. When the mayor complained on 6 February that “a great number of Japanese troops yesterday landed in the Settlement and immediately proceeded to various parts of the Settlement to prepare an attack”, and the Japanese consul-general complained the same day that Chinese troops “have repeatedly bombarded the Hongkew district within the Settlement”, the Council told both that “the political status of the Shanghai Municipal Council is not that of an independent State or sovereign Power” and it could “take any direct measures, either forcible or diplomatic”. It asked only that the aeroplanes stop: “the consequences of bombs falling or a bomb-laden aeroplane crashing in the Settlement would be calamitous.”

They did fall. On 11 February a bomb hit the Wing On Cotton Mill in Markham Road, “killing six and wounding fourteen Chinese workers”; the Japanese said “mechanical trouble”, and the Fire Brigade, which counted two bombs of which one exploded, recorded one man and four women killed and sixteen women injured. The next day a four-hour truce arranged through Father Jacquinot and Lieutenant-Colonel Hayley Bell let “a party of thirty” reach “the first line of the Japanese defences” and help “the evacuation of thousands of refugees from the war area”. Then the Settlement became a port of entry for an army: the Ninth Division’s “main body would disembark on Wayside Wharf in the Settlement”, billeted in “Japanese residences and Japanese owned buildings located in the Settlement area to the north of the Wayside Wharf”; disembarkation was complete on 16 February. “At 7.30 a.m. on February 20 the Japanese army commenced operations. From this date severe fighting continued along the whole line from Chapei and Kiangwan to Woosung until March 3.” On 21 February shell fragments injured two foreign officers, three Chinese firemen and a British volunteer at Magnolia Terrace, and “more than one hundred shells of various calibres fell in the neighbourhood of” Hongkew fire station.

The refugees and the dead

The Council counted people as it counted everything. “Hundreds of residents of Paoshan Road and North Szechuen Road entered the Settlement on January 28, and a general exodus of the population from this district and other parts of Chapei began on the following day. By the end of the month some 50,000 refugees had found shelter in the Settlement”; at the end of February “about 70,000” were “cared for by public organizations”, “while tens of thousands of others had found accommodation with friends or in lodging houses and hotels”; “on March 31 the number dependent on public organizations was reported to be 53,470, at the end of April 19,705 and at the end of May 436.” “85 refugee camps are reported to have been established, besides 26 temporary hospitals,” exempted from the general rate; the Council “did not directly encourage movements into the Settlement”. Work stopped with the fighting: “at the end of January the number of operatives affected, including employees locked out of Japanese mills, was about 79,000. By February 10 the number of unemployed in the Settlement had risen to about 162,000 who with their dependants totalled about 486,000.” The Health Department vaccinated “about 130,000 persons in the streets and camps” in six weeks and 60,000 more at its branch offices, inoculated 200,210 against cholera, moved “the staff and patients of the five municipally administered hospitals” into “six different establishments, the largest of which was a godown”, and found “the sanitation of 85 camps housing 44,000 refugees threw a very heavy burden on a staff inadequate for this purpose”. Its grimmest figure is the dead: “arrangements were made for the removal of 2,898 corpses (Feb.); 3,153 corpses were removed during the month of March, and 1,620 during April, a total of 7,671 in 3 months.” On 8 March the chairman wrote that “in those portions of Chapei abutting on the Settlement, and in the area adjoining North Szechuen and Dixwell Roads, any further delay in restoring sanitary conditions constitutes a grave menace to the health of the Settlement and of the whole of Shanghai”, and from 14 March the Council’s own gangs cleansed Chapei at about 5,000 taels a month until mid-June, which it believed limited the cholera that summer.

March to June: the fires, the armistice, the bomb in the park

“On the same afternoon huge fires broke out in Chapei which rapidly spread and caused enormous damage. It is not known to what extent these were attributable to Japanese fire or to incendiarism,” the Council wrote of 1 March; the Chinese withdrew on 1 and 2 March, “no less than forty-one separate and distinct fires were reported” on the night of the 2nd, a fire float moored in Suzhou Creek pumped water into western Chapei, and on 3 March the Japanese commanders “decided to order their forces to halt for the time being at the points actually held and to stop fighting”. “Chapei was left without any police or administrative authority and the Japanese forces occupied the area for the time being”; the Settlement’s brigade kept a skeleton service for Chapei, Paoshan and Kiangwan “until conditions therein became more or less normal early in May”. “Barbed wire and other defence constructions behind the perimeter, however, were gradually dismantled so as to allow of the speedy restoration of trade and business.” “The municipal schools and the foreign Isolation Hospital re-opened on Monday, March 7. On March 10 the curfew regulations were relaxed, substituting 11.30 p.m. for 10 p.m.” “Finally a Sino-Japanese conference was opened at the British Consulate-General on March 24”, and “negotiations were ultimately concluded at the British Consulate-General on the morning of May 5, when it was agreed that the cessation of hostilities should be considered definite as from that day”, the Japanese “to withdraw to the International Settlement and the extra-Settlement roads in the Hongkew district as before the incident of January 28, 1932”. In between, on 29 April, a bomb at the Emperor’s birthday celebration in Hongkew Park killed “Dr. Kawabata, Chairman of the Japanese Residents’ Corporation, and General Shirakawa succumbed later to his injuries”; the Council had written the day before asking that the troops’ route through Settlement streets be changed. “It was not, however, until June 13 that the State of Emergency was declared at an end.”

What it cost, and what the chairman said

The police totals are the Settlement’s casualty list: “during the fighting two aerial bombs and 312 projectiles are known to have fallen in the Settlement and on extra-Settlement roads resulting in damage to 262 buildings and in 277 casualties of which 61 proved fatal.” “Number of persons resident or employed in the International Settlement reported missing 837”, of whom 489 were “reported arrested by Japanese” and 643 “still shown as missing”; a Missing Persons’ Section had opened on 8 February. “A total number of approximately 21,000 passes were issued by the Police to bona fide residents” of the closed areas; 404 looters were arrested for the Chinese authorities, and “a large amount of looting took place in ‘C’ Division, Dixwell Road areas”. The Fire Brigade listed its stenographer Carson Chow and carpenter Zung Foo Loong “missing since January 28 and 30 respectively”, “victims of the local hostilities”. The schools “had to close for several weeks, some schools being within the actual area of hostilities”, the Northern Primary School “handed over to the Defence Forces”; the abattoir’s “functions … were rudimentary for more than one month”; five northern dairies evacuated and “two were badly damaged by shell fire”; the open-air swimming pool “could not be opened until July 24”. The ratepayers of the war zone got their rates back: two months’ remission in North Hongkew, Kashing Road, Wayside and Yangtszepoo, “44,720 claims for abatement of rates and licence fees” and “relief … to an amount of Tls. 390,590”, with 144,838 taels for “Emergency Measures” in the extraordinary budget.

The chairman faced the ratepayers at the Carlton Theatre on 13 April 1932. The outgoing Council, Brigadier-General Macnaghten said, “has endeavoured to observe impartial neutrality between the opposing forces and to maintain its administrative authority to the fullest possible extent”, and “the retiring Council has successfully piloted the municipal ship of state through a veritable hurricane, without alienating either the Chinese or Japanese sections of the community. (Applause).” He also said what the war had shown: “the recent conflict has disclosed other and less obvious anomalies … which stress the imperative need that the political status of the Settlement both present and future receives the immediate and careful consideration of the interested Powers.” He and G. W. Sheppard did not stand again, “in view of their departure from Shanghai on leave”, and A. D. Bell took the chair on 14 April. Two years later the Council had a mobilisation scheme and stores “to mitigate some of the discomforts suffered by volunteers in previous mobilizations”, the Armoured Car Company was practising “the patrolling of the Hongkew District perimeter”, and the negotiations over the extra-Settlement roads and a special police force, which the 1932 fighting had made urgent, were still “temporarily interrupted”.

What the sources disagree on

The report gives the Emergency from 4 p.m. on 28 January in its narrative, while its police, health and markets sections say 29 January. The Council’s letter about the Defence Committee’s protest is dated 8 February in the OCR but was sent before the consuls’ replies of 4 and 5 February, so 2 or 3 February. Macnaghten “resigned on February 6, 1932” from the Defence Committee in one sentence but signs as chairman until April; the report does not explain. The Wing On bomb killed six by the Council’s count and five by the Fire Brigade’s. The curfew was relaxed on 10 March in the narrative and “in force from February 1 to March 31” in the police report. The fighting ended on 3 March in the narrative, 2 March for the police and the Fire Brigade. The refugee figures (50,000, 70,000, 44,000 in camps) count different things on different dates, and the corpses, 7,671 for February to April, sit beside 9,036 exposed corpses buried by the Shanghai Benevolent Society for the whole year. The Japanese sector’s western limit is North Honan Road in the League’s report and in the police description. No total cost of the emergency is given anywhere in the report, and the French sector is never described.

What to look for

The North Station of 1909, where the armoured train stood and the fires began, is now the Shanghai Railway Museum on Tianmu Road East; the open ground south of it was the Settlement’s boundary line. Henan Road North is the street the marines reached just before midnight; walking north from Suzhou Creek you cross the line that separated the Japanese sector from the rest of the Settlement. Wayside is the Huishan wharf frontage on Yangshupu Road, now the cruise terminal, where a division landed inside a neutral city. In Lu Xun Park the bomb of 29 April is remembered by the Yun Bong-gil memorial pavilion on the spot. The Wing On mill on Markham Road, today’s Huai’an Road, is gone under housing. The Carlton Theatre where Macnaghten spoke is the Changjiang Theatre on Huanghe Road, rebuilt. The San Yue towel factory stood beyond the eastern boundary near Yinxiang, in what is now the Yangpu industrial belt; nothing marks it.