JAPAN-CHINA: Sailors Ashore

(See front cover)

While violent jingos in the Japanese Army have been controlling the country for years and keeping it on the verge of bankruptcy, the Japanese Navy by & large has played conservative. Worried Japanese businessmen have generally been able to count on the navy’s support in efforts to moderate army extravagance and truculence toward China. It was largely the quiet influence of the navy that saw proper punishment meted out to the hysterical young army officers who last year murdered famed Finance Minister Korekiyo Takahashi and captured Tokyo’s magnificent Metropolitan Police Building (TIME, March 9, 1936, et seq.). In the 1931 invasion of Manchuria Japan’s navy did its duty but tepidly. Yet last week in Shanghai the Japanese Navy was fighting one of the greatest battles since the World War, and fighting it almost alone. Many times during the week Japanese army reinforcements were reported on their way to Shanghai but almost all the Japanese reinforcements actually seen were on their way north to strengthen the forces around Peiping where bullet-headed General Fu Tso-yi, Chairman of Suiyuan Province, has been holding up the Japanese advance for nearly the past fortnight in the narrow gorges of Nankow Pass. With other northern warlords coming to help him last week, a general Chinese offensive was about to be attempted.

In Shanghai, however, the navy was not only doing most of the fighting but at least half of Japan’s navy was in it. Flagship of the combined fleet was the 37-year-old British-built Idumo with lynx-eyed Vice Admiral Kiyoshi Hasegawa in command. The Idumo was moored opposite Shanghai’s International Settlement, and ten days of bombing, shelling and one attempted torpedoing had so far damaged her but slightly. Sixteen miles downstream, where the Whangpoo River joins the yellow muddy estuary of the Yangtze lay the mass of the Japanese fleet, over 50 warships, including four battleships, six battle cruisers, 38 destroyers and one of Japan’s four aircraft carriers. Most were slowly steaming back & forth to avoid almost constant sniping from Chinese on shore. At times there were as many as 20 Japanese warships in the Whangpoo which discharged and reloaded swarms of airplanes, swung their heavy guns to shell first one section of Shanghai and then another, and ferried every available sailor and marine ashore, for in such a battle, as the Japanese soon found, even the navy fights in town.

Shanghai. At the mouth of the Yangtze is commercially and financially the New York City of China. North of Shanghai coolies eat wheat and speak an approximation of Mandarin. South of Shanghai coolies eat rice and speak Cantonese. Until 1842 the Manchu emperors refused foreigners the right to trade at Shanghai, but in that year a British fleet sailed menacingly up the Yangtze and by a treaty signed at Nanking five Chinese cities were opened for trade and settlement. Subsequently most important of them was Shanghai.

Supercilious Mandarins set aside for the foreign devils of Shanghai a separate area, eventually enlarged to a long strip of mud flats and pestilential swamps on the elbow bend of the Whangpoo River. Here separate concessions were established by Britain, the U. S., France. The French Concession has remained a separate entity, the other two combined in an International Settlement governed by a mixed commission to which other nations, including Japan, were later admitted.

On that swamp land there has risen the sixth largest city in the world. Around the international kernel has grown a Chinese city of nearly 4,000,000. souls. Just outside the city at Hungjao airdrome (see map) occurred the incident which started the war. There two Japanese sailors were reported murdered early this month, whereupon Japanese Admiral Hasegawa promptly demanded indemnity and the withdrawal of Chinese troops to a distance of 20 miles from the International Settlement. When the Chinese expressed distaste at being ordered out of their own country, the Japanese piled sailors ashore to reinforce their permanent garrison and the fighting began.

At the corner of the famous Bund which skirts the Whangpoo, and Nanking Road, heart of the section where Americans congregate, the sky fell fortnight ago when a Chinese air bomb intended for the Idumo fell, plunk!, into the Palace Hotel (No. 10 on the map). Another, a mile away, snuffed out 500 lives when it plunked into the Great World Amusement Palace, crammed with gibbering Chinese.

Concentrating their forces last week in the Hongkew section, the Chinese drove down towards the river through the eastern extension of the International Settlement, until the Japanese warships opened fire to support their forces on land. Across the river on the right bank other Japanese troops tried to push back Chinese defending forces. Down from the Bund through this crossfire Americans were ferried to the mouth of the Whangpoo where ships picked them up to carry them to sea and safety. Meantime Admiral Harry Ervin Yarnell placed the U. S. S. Augusta (see map) so as to give maximum protection to the western half of the International Settlement where the remaining Americans and British were seeking safety. And the battle went on: a major engagement with approximately 100,000 Chinese and 60,000 Japanese troops involved, with the Japanese fleet of 50 vessels swollen this week to 82, not counting scores of transports arriving almost hourly at the mouth of the Yangtze.

There was good reason to believe that it was no part of the original Japanese plan to become involved in this desperate Shanghai engagement. Their original land-grabbing intentions were confined to the Peiping area and they had every reason not to waste ammunition and divide their strength by taking on another battle in Shanghai. Whether the navy’s Shanghai move was a blunder, or whether the Japanese demands were a bluff which the Chinese called—perhaps more out of excitement than shrewdness—the result was a war big enough to endanger Japan’s precarious economic structure. For the longer the war lasts, the greater, almost inevitably, will be Chinese defeats, but the greater also the danger of economic collapse in Japan.

Yonai. Smack next to the Prime Minister of Japan on such dress-shirt occasions as the formal opening of Parliament, sit the Minister of the Navy and the Minister of War. Other Cabinet officers form no more than a decorative background of gold lace. Since last February Japan’s Navy Minister has been Admiral Mitsuniasa Yonai, or more formally Yoniuchi—a descendant of the samurai, member of the blue-blooded Satsuma clan and grandson of the extremely wealthy Baron Kentaro Okuma, developer of the South Manchuria Railway.

A giant for a Japanese, Admiral Yonai stands 5 ft. 10 in his big-toed socks and is filling his first big political post. All his life a sea officer, shrewd enough to avoid political squabbles, 57-year-old Mitsumasa Yonai received the flag of a Taisho or full admiral only last December, though he had been a Chui or sublieutenant under the great Togo at the Battle of Tsushima Strait. Affable with junior officers he is extremely popular in the service. More important for the present war, there is probably no Japanese flag officer who knows more about China and the China coast. Admiral Yonai drinks, but sparingly, even at the Gargantuan drinking bouts for which Japan is famous. His chief hobby is calligraphy; drawing intricate Chinese characters on rice paper with a camel’s hair brush, a sport that requires great steadiness of hand. His fine Japanese hand had its work cut out fortnight ago when Emperor Hirohito called him in and handed him the problem of Shanghai

Mayor Yui. The potent figure of Chiang Kai-shek had last week not yet appeared directly on the Shanghai front Chinese commander at Shanghai was a little known war lord named Chang Chi-chung. More important politically was the mayor of greater (Chinese) Shanghai, Yu Hung-chun who prefers to Americanize his name to Mr. O. K. Yui. Nothing so simple as a direct municipal election is possible in the China of Chiang Kaishek. Shanghai’s mayoralty with the administration of a budget of $3,000,000—one of the most important jobs in the East—is a direct appointment from Generalissimo Chiang. For five years Shanghai’s mayor was suave General Wu Te-chen who became a national hero in the Japanese invasion of 1032 Last March Generalissimo Chiang decided that Mayor Wu might be getting to be too much of a hero, kicked him upstairs to the difficult post of Governor ot Kwangtung and gave this rich job to O. K. Yui, a toothy highly-Americanized graduate of St. John’s University, Shanghai who had been Secretary General and busiest executive of Shanghai since 1930.

Pride of O. K. Yui was the city’s $8,000,000 Civic Centre, a group of white marble buildings as imposing as anything in the International Settlement. Last week they were shelled to pieces by the guns of art-loving Admiral Yonai. Nearly half of Mayor Yui’s great city was in flames and many thousands of his citizens were dead, but O. K. Yui has a chance of becoming a far greater hero than Mayor Wu ever was.

Death of Freddie John. For a day or so a crisis that might have brought on U. S. and British intervention threatened aboard the U. S. S. Augusta, flagship of Admiral Harry Yarnell of the Asiatic Fleet. While bombs and high explosive shells rained down on the native city, while Chinese and Japanese soldiers and civilians died like flies in the oily glare of burning buildings ashore, a group of 40 seamen off duty assembled on the well-deck of the Augusta to see a movie. From somewhere a single 36 mm. pompom shell weighing about a pound dropped in their midst and exploded. Eighteen men were wounded, one Freddie John Falgout, 20, of Raceland, La., was killed.

At Raceland, in Louisiana’s trench speaking Acadian community, Freddie John’s fiancée, Waitress Louise St. Germaine of Napoleonville was heartbroken. His father showed the boy’s last letter:

“The flagship carries six captains and one rear admiral but the officers are a nice bunch. China is a pretty nice place. I ought to have a good many smackers saved by the time I get back. How is the crop?

Shouting hard to make themselves heard above the blasting of six and eight inch guns the bursting of 100-lb. bombs, the Augusta’s officers held an investigation to decide whether the one pounder that killed Freddie John came from a Chinese or Japanese muzzle. Prudently they decided that proof was impossible.

Line Broken. A crisis for the Japanese occurred two days later when Chinese soldiers plunging in wave after wave against the street barricades of Japanese marines, broke through the line to the north river bank held for many hours about five full blocks of Whangpoo dockyards. Promptly the Japanese warships in midstream upped anchor and steamed slowly past the broken line Too close to depress the muzzles of their big guns sufficiently, they passed in review pouring a hot stream of fire from every machine gun and light cannon into the Chinese lines.

Ward Road Jail. What claims to be the largest prison in the world, the Ward Road jail, capacity 8,000, stands on the edge of the Japanese part of the International Settlement under crossfire from both sides for over a week. Shells crashed right into the building last week, killed eight prisoners in the cells, wounded 70, drove several others insane. Volunteers from the International Settlement last week finally arranged for the prisoners to be evacuated in busses to the outskirts of the Chinese city. A morning’s load of 500, guarded by British and U.S. armored cars got safely through. The rest, 6,500 were held by Japanese troops. Though many of the prisoners were juvenile offendors 12 to 16 years old, many of the others were dope addicts, Japan insisted that almost all the prisoners were being pressed into the Chinese ranks.

Torpedo Sleds. Because the great battle of Shanghai was being fought in the midst of a modern city under the eye of dozens of foreign warships, it has been one of the most accurately observed engagements since the War. Because the International Settlement has its own wires direct to the world, it is the first major engagement of modern times to be reported without censorship. Yet military observers and reporters both missed one event that all navies have been waiting for. Over the week-end long-awaited Japanese army transports arrived off the Whangpoo-Yangtze juncture and, protected by the bulk of Japan’s navy, attempted to land an estimated 50,000 troops in the face of withering Chinese artillery fire. Quickly word came from Chinese headquarters that speedy sea sleds 45-mile-an-hour motorboats, each carrying two torpedoes and a light machine gun, had sunk an indefinite number of Japanese ships. No foreigners saw them, all foreign naval officers wanted to, for such torpedo sleds have been a heavy investment of Germany, Britain, and in particular Italy, and this was their first test in active service. Nationalist China has at least twelve, six of British and six of German make, waiting to be tested against larger future orders.

Wing On & Sincere. Eleventh day of the battle of Shanghai shoppers in the International Settlement crowded into the two leading department stores on Nanking Road: Wing On & Co., and Sincere Co., Ltd. across the street, all anxious to lay in stores against the continuing siege. Shopping together went the New York Times’ veteran Far East reporters, Hallett Abend and Anthony James Billingham, 35,* Correspondent Abend waiting on the curb in his car while Correspondent Billingham purchased a pair of field glasses. With a warning shriek like an express train, a huge naval shell burst just above the street. Both storefronts crumpled like paper, over 300 people in the two stores were horribly mutilated and killed. Limping on a torn foot Correspondent Abend was able to make his way into the Wing On building. He found Correspondent Billingham, who had just forced open the elevator doors, spouting blood from a torn artery in a shattered left arm and with three shell splinters in his chest. A.P. Correspondent Morris J. Harris, passing on the sidewalk, wrote:

“Hundreds of bodies lay in piles. It seemed as if the force of the blast had gathered them up and rolled them together. . . . Pools of blood glistened in the streetcar tracks and gutters. Fragments of heads, legs and arms plastered building fronts. Some were scattered in the street two blocks away.”

First Aces? Not spared the war was Capital Nanking, 170 mi. away, but repeated Japanese bombing raids caused little damage. Here at least U. S. observers credited China with definite air superiority, and General Mao Peng-tsou, field commander of the air force, gave to the world the names of China’s first air heroes: Lieutenant Loi Chong, 23, credited with shooting down four Japanese light bombers in one morning; Lieutenant Wong Sun-sui, age unknown, credited with shooting down two twin-motored bombers near Nanking. Both men were trained in the U. S., used U. S.-built planes. Said Lieutenant Wong: ”American-made pursuit planes can easily outrun Japanese bombers. Shooting them down is comparatively easy because Japanese pilots seem to be mesmerized as soon as they find an attacking plane behind them.” Added General Mao:

“We believe most of these destroyed planes belong to an air unit normally stationed near Tokyo. It had originally 52 heavy bombers made of German metal, equipped with American 14-cylinder engines, British machine guns and Japanese radio. . . . We believe the unit has lost half its planes.”

Weak Yen. Fortnight ago, Japanese Government bonds were quoted. at 90. Last week they had dropped to 76 and the yen was in a precarious position. Pessimists insisted that Japan had funds for only three months of warfare, must collapse financially after that period. Realists pointed that bankruptcy seldom stops wars, but pointed out too that China’s finances, almost as precarious, have been in general improving as Japan’s declined. Busily touring Europe recently, drumming up loans has been rotund Dr. H. H. Kung, China’s Minister of Finance. Loans he got, both in Switzerland, The Netherlands and Britain but just how much no one could say. They were enough at least for him to visit Vienna where he trotted about happily in a green Tyrolean hat complete with feather, placing munitions orders. From Vienna he retired to famed Bad Nauheim to rest. But there was no rest for Japanese financiers. Last week they were desperately ordering from abroad not scrap iron but finished steel (more quickly convertible into war materials) and to pay for it they were already beginning to ship abroad quantities of Japan’s small store of gold. Internally the Government launched 200,000,000 yen of deficit bonds, announced it would be necessary “to readjust [private] investment capital,” presumably a euphemism for a capital levy. The Knife of War was about to slit China’s throat but it was also about to slit Japan’s purse.

“Object Sublime.” British business, with over $1,000,000,000 invested in Chinese property, and British sentimentalists for once united in their backing of the underdog in a modern war last week. Lightest touch was delivered by Cartoonist Orr in the Glasgow Daily Record. Referring to numerous statements in the Japanese press that the time had come for China to be “punished,” he drew a scene from Gilbert & Sullivan’s Mikado showing a wretched Chinese coolie, head on block before the Lord High Executioner, while beside him the spectacled Mikado, finger a-wag sings:

My object all sublime

Has changed in course of time;

The punishment now precedes the crime;

It now precedes the crime.

* Co-authors of Can China Survive? (TIME, Nov. 9).