Thursday 1 August 2013

1937: Shanghai Under Japanese Occupation


"Goodbye to all the night life: the gilded singing girl in her enamelled hair-do, her stage makeup, her tight-fitting gown with its slit skirt breaking at the silk-clad hip ... the hundred dance halls and the thousands of taxi dollars; the opium dens and gambling halls ... the sailors in their smelly bars and friendly brothels on Sichuan Road; the myriad short-time whores and pimps busily darting in and out of the alleyways ... gone the wickedest and most colourful city of the old Orient: goodbye to all that."

-Edgar Snow

The Japanese invasion led to severe changes in the lifestyles of the Shanghai residents. Freedoms which had heretofore been a given were now only available to those who could offer something in return, usually cash, information, or favours – sexual or economic - to the representatives of the new regime. This system of barter and favouritism was a slippery slope: the Japanese had vested interests in keeping the Shanghai population off-balance and the terms of their various arrangements shifted constantly and unpredictably. Military matters were largely in the hands of the Japanese Naval Intelligence and the implicit threats of their shadowy military police – the Kempeitai – enforced their decisions.

The Germans initially expected to get along quite well with the Japanese: historically, neither country had made much headway in gaining extraterritorial status in China and they both lacked many of the legal and economic benefits extended to other countries. As united Axis powers they rubbed along quite nicely at the start: Nazi military efforts were co-ordinated by a secret organisation known as the Siefken Bureau which worked well with the German Embassy, held the Gestapo excesses mainly in check and established a good working relationship with the Japanese; this happy arrangement was overturned in favour of a new order, called the Ehrhardt Bureau, which set free the Gestapo dogs, estranged the German diplomats and began alienating the Japanese with its loud declamations on the superiority of the “white races”. Nazi intelligence-gathering in the city became a farce and an embarrassment to the Nazi high command; what successes they did obtain were largely due to the ineptitude of the Allies.

US Intelligence in the form of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) were given an entree to China by the Generalissimo, Chiang Kai-shek. They had bases in Shanghai and Chungking and were continually jollied along by the Kuomintang. As in the previous century, the Americans were not easily convinced to take a hand in Chinese affairs: the Asian-Pacific theatre was not seen as strategic or vital to the War effort and it took a lot of convincing by KMT leaders to get them motivated. Once in the game, the Americans – already floating on a sense of self-importance instilled by Chinese flattery – became disheartened by the relative power and resources held by the British; cables relayed to Washington accused the British of being ‘entrenched and divided, due to vested economic interests’, ‘unwilling to cede control’ and with an ‘attitude of entitlement’. It was decided that information and resources would not be shared with the British agents.

This was a blow to the English. Whatever the truth of the Americans’ assessment of their capabilities, the British were counting largely upon the fact that the Americans were an unknown quantity in Shanghai and the rest of China; the cosy alliance they had reached with the Kuomintang meant that British economic interests in Shanghai and elsewhere were now under threat: those resources had been weighed up and greedily targeted as much by KMT troops as by the Communists and it began to look as though the US was going to wrest them away from Britain and hand them to Chiang Kai-shek. In response, the British decided to set up their own intelligence networks and run them by and for themselves. The SOE (Strategic Operations Executive) opened its Oriental Mission and set about intelligence-gathering.

To undertake these efforts was bad enough without being able to count on Allied support; however, the establishment of the Oriental Mission was fraught with disasters due to a lack of experience and communication. The original head of the intelligence network in Shanghai was sacked and sidelined to Singapore, a state of affairs that meant the Mission could never quite be sure of support from that quarter. The new head of the Mission had little experience in his new role and his efforts were routinely seen through by the Axis powers and their spies. It would not be until much later in the War when clearer and wiser heads took over that the Allies began to work together and make inroads against the oppressors.

So what did all this mean to the ordinary Shanghai dweller? In a continuing spirit of hedonism and money-making, many Shanghailanders and Shanghainese became informants, paid by various factions to uncover useful truths about the opposition. Of course, information was seen as merely a commodity and it was only handed over to the highest bidder. Consequently, informants became double- and triple agents, working exclusively for no-one but themselves. Ironically, especially given the resources committed to Shanghai by the various official spy networks, they were also the best and most adept intelligence-gatherers in the region.

An abandoned Chinese baby cries amidst the ruins of Shanghai’s North Station after a Japanese bombing attack

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