Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze (36 page)

At noon on October 30, the Japanese renewed their attack on Nanxiang, this time with a greater force than the day before, spearheaded by 30 tanks. They gained little ground and suffered heavy casualties, as Chinese units equipped with anti-tank weapons were waiting for them along the few roads that allowed armored movement.
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It was evident that continued attacks west would be extremely costly, and Matsui Iwane decided to temporarily halt the advance and instead focus on the more important crossing of Suzhou Creek. Time was of the essence, as he believed the Chinese defenders south of the creek were temporarily weakened after the withdrawal from Zhabei and were still waiting for resupplies of weapons and ammunition.
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In preparation for crossing Suzhou Creek, for several days the Japanese had been assembling a small fleet of vessels commandeered from Shanghai’s civilian population, ranging from motorboats and sampans to simple bamboo barges.
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As early as October 31, the 3rd Japanese Infantry Division, at the eastern end of the Suzhou Creek front, launched several crossings. In one of the attacks, carried out late in the afternoon near the village of Zhoujiaqiao, Japanese soldiers were able to reach the southern bank. They were immediately met by enfilading fire from Chinese machine guns and suffered serious losses. They also had to defend themselves against Chinese reserves, which had been summoned after a few hours to eliminate the threat. Nevertheless, they were able to keep their narrow foothold.
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A parallel attempt by the same division a little further downstream, closer to the edge of the International Settlement, failed miserably despite an impressive display of Japanese material superiority. Engineers laid a mile-long smokescreen across the creek, while a dozen three-engine bombers protected by fighters constantly hovered over the battlefield, keeping an eye out for targets.
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A small landing party was able to cross the creek, but the moment it set foot on the other side, it was met by a strong artillery barrage, and a Chinese counterattack pushed them back into the creek. Foreign military observers speculated that this attack was recon
naissance in force rather than a serious attempt at crossing the creek in this sector. It seemed unlikely that the Japanese would seek battle so close to the International Settlement, since they would have been forced to carry out operations in heavily built-up areas.
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On November 1, three battalions of the 9th Japanese Division attacked in small boats across Suzhou Creek near the place where the Chinese frontline bent north, and succeeded in establishing a bridgehead on the other side. That day and the following two days, the division managed to pour a large number of troops across, and eventually controlled an area stretching about half a mile along the south bank of the creek. On the following day, the Chinese made a determined effort to eliminate this growing threat. They made significant gains, but even so, failed in their mission to completely wipe out the Japanese landing party. This was in part because the Chinese were unable to use their significant artillery resources to their full extent. At the start of the day’s battle, 60 feet had separated the trenches of the opposing forces, and a barrage targeting the Japanese was just as likely to hit Chinese lines.
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“Poison gas!” The horrified cry was passed down the Chinese ranks. The dense white cloud drifted lazily across the creek, towards the lines of entrenched defenders, who had no equipment to protect themselves against chemical agents. It was just before dawn on November 3, the start of the fourth day of the battle for Zhoujiaqiao. The exhausted Tax Police Division troops had been engaged in numerous battles with the Japanese, but in spite of appalling losses, they had not succeeded in wiping out the bridgehead. Rather, the Japanese had built a pontoon bridge across Suzhou Creek, and had been able to take and hold a small two-storey building near the bank known as “the red house.”
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The Tax Police Division’s commander, Huang Jie, had become a nervous wreck, weighed down by fatalism after Chiang Kai-shek had threatened to court-martial any officer who allowed the Japanese to move to the south bank of the creek. The sight of the ominous cloud was the last straw, and even after it was established it was not poisonous gas but a smoke screen, Huang Jie was a spent force. Yet another Japanese assault was just minutes away, and he was in no shape to lead the defense. “It’s over. It’s all over,” he
said matter-of-factly. He grabbed his sidearm and lifted it to his temple. Sun Liren, another senior Tax Police officer, was standing nearby and stopped him. “General, please go back,” he urged him. “We’ll take care of this.”

The battle lasted until 4:00 p.m. By then, the battalion which had taken the brunt of the Japanese onslaught was no longer a coherent unit. Its commander had died, as had all but one of its company commanders, and more than half its platoon commanders. Out of an original strength of 600 men, 200 remained. This was not what the Tax Police Division had expected when it was pulled out of the area south of Wusong Creek late the previous month. They had thought the Dachang position, with its strong defenses, could hold for at least a month or two, more than enough time for the fatigued troops in the rear to rest and get back in shape. Warnings from some concerned officers that the enemy could be at Suzhou Creek within three days and that proper care should be taken to deploy the troops along the creek had fallen on deaf ears.

Therefore, when the Japanese did take Dachang and then marched to the banks of Suzhou Creek, many units of the Tax Police Division were taken by complete surprise. One of the regimental commanders had been so confident that nothing would happen that he had gone to the International Settlement to enjoy life in the dancehalls. When word had reached him of the attack, he had not been able to find his own regiment. Disorganized shooting, more a confused melee than an actual fight, had continued near Suzhou Creek long after dark. A regiment held in reserve had been sent towards the bank to intercept the attackers, only to lose its way and wind up in the crossfire between Chinese and Japanese lines. For a few terrible hours, in near-complete darkness where no one could distinguish friend from foe, the regiment had suffered massive casualties, many due to friendly fire.

On the evening of November 3, after the latest Japanese attempt to cross the creek, the Tax Police Division’s commander ordered Sun Liren to rest. However, Sun Liren felt he had one task left to do. The pontoon bridge that the Japanese had built across Suzhou Creek was still largely intact, even though the Chinese had tried repeatedly to destroy it. They had launched a frontal attack. It hadn’t worked. An attempt to send a swimmer downstream with explosives had also ended in failure. In the end, they
had prepared large rolls of cotton, readily available form nearby textile mills, soaked them in gasoline and rolled them downhill towards the bridge, but they had been stopped by Japanese barbed wire.

For his last attempt, Sun Liren had requisitioned a number of sea mines. He planned to float them downhill and detonate them when they were level with the bridge. If this plan was to have any chance of succeeding, he needed the cooperation of engineers. Unfortunately, the engineers he ordered to participate in the late-night mission had not been trained by him, and even though they were below him in rank they felt no inclination to exert themselves for the sake of an officer they did not know. They worked slowly, and by dawn they still had not pushed the mines into the water. In the faint morning light, they made visible targets standing near the bank. A Japanese position nearby spotted them and opened fire. Sun Liren was hit, but he was one of the lucky ones. When soldiers from the Tax Police Division found him later, they had to drag him from under a pile of dead bodies. Doctors found 13 bullet wounds in his body. The battle of Shanghai was over for him.

In the struggle for Suzhou Creek, the Chinese committed the same error over and over again, according to their German advisors. With a few exceptions, lack of independent thinking on the part of junior Chinese commanders prevented them from immediately reacting aggressively to Japanese crossings. This gave the Japanese time to dig in, and subsequent Chinese counterattacks only succeeded after several costly failures, if at all. In addition, the Chinese artillery lacked flexibility and was not trained to adjust plans at short notice, or to choose the ordnance most suitable for the situation at hand. As a result, the Germans argued, “the enemy was given sufficient time to set up a good defense, and even if later Chinese attacks with better support did result in significant successes, they never ended in the complete annihilation of the enemy force that had crossed the creek.”
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The Japanese, however, were equally frustrated, and no one more so than their commander Matsui Iwane. Even if the 9th Division had made significant advances, the 3rd Division remained stuck in a narrow strip of land south of the creek. Hopes of a quick, decisive push southeast to trap the remaining troops in Shanghai and Pudong had not materialized. Not for the first time, the Japanese general was left to ponder how his lofty
ambition had collided with harsh reality in the battlefields around Shanghai.

November 3 was the birthday of Emperor Meiji, the 19th-century ruler who had brought greatness to modern Japan. Matsui reminded himself of how he had originally hoped he would be able to celebrate the festival as the conqueror of Shanghai. That had turned out not to be the case, and the long, drawn-out battles west of the city had come as an especially unpleasant surprise. “Now we’ve finally won a small piece of land south of Suzhou Creek, but the south of Shanghai and all of Pudong remains in enemy hands,” he wrote. “That the festival is happening under conditions such as these is a source of boundless humiliation.”
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Japanese planners in Tokyo had long been concerned that operations in the Shanghai area were not proceeding at all as they had expected when they first started sending troops to the city in August. Even the dispatch of three extra divisions had resulted in only limited progress, and the Army General Staff had started considering whether a more fundamental strategic change was needed in China. The basic question was whether to prioritize the campaign in the north or the battles in the Shanghai area. Japan did not have resources for both, and it had to make a choice. In early October, the officers in the Japanese capital decided that Shanghai must be dealt with first.

This conclusion was partly triggered by fears that the Soviet Union would attack Japanese possessions in northeast Asia, perhaps even before New Year. If this were to happen at a time when a large portion of Japan’s military was still bogged down in the Shanghai area, the result could be catastrophic. It was preferable to resolve the situation near the city in a speedy fashion and be ready to meet the Soviets if they did decide to attack. An extra bonus, as far as some Japanese officers were concerned, was the chance to wipe out once and for all dozens of Chinese divisions, the core of Chiang Kai-shek’s army, at a time when they were helpfully amassed in and around Shanghai, lined up for elimination.
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In an order issued on October 9, the Army General Staff established the 10th Army, the unit designed to tilt the balance in Shanghai. It consisted of the 6th Infantry Division, on deployment in north China at the
time, as well as a brigade of the 5th Infantry Division, referred to as the Kunizaki Detachment, and finally, from the home islands, the 18th and 114th Infantry Division.
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To command the new army, Tokyo picked General Yanagawa Heisuke, a 58-year-old veteran of the Russo-Japanese War who had retired from active service a year earlier, but was called back to active duty. He was particularly suited to the job, since two decades earlier he had been a military attache in Beijing and an instructor at the city’s army college.

The 10th Army was a formidable force, and while it was being formed, the Japanese planners discussed where to deploy it. They agreed it would have to land behind Chinese lines. Therefore, there were only two possible landing sites: either the south bank of the Yangtze, roughly in the same area where the landing in late August had taken place, or the north bank of Hangzhou Bay. The problem with landing on the Yangtze was that the Chinese had expected a move like this ever since the hostilities of 1932 and had built up robust defenses on both banks, including coastal batteries that could cause serious problems for any landing force, no matter how well protected.
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Hangzhou Bay posed other difficulties. The area was not at all suitable for a large amphibious operation. The flat shore meant there was a broad inter-tidal zone and a fast-running tide, and there was no quiet period when flow changed to ebb. In other words, there was nothing approaching a fixed coastline, and disembarking the troops, a difficult maneuver at the best of times, would be rendered even harder. The terrain beyond the beaches was also far from ideal for a large, modern army. Like other areas near Shanghai, it was crisscrossed by rivers and creeks, and there were hardly any good roads. Still, all this was made up for by one consideration: a landing here would come as a near total surprise to the Chinese. That settled it. Hangzhou Bay was their choice.
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Once the decision to land in Hangzhou Bay had been made, representatives of the army command arrived in Shanghai to consult with local officers. The information they received was that the area was heavily fortified and that there would be significant logistical problems. Even so, they insisted on going ahead with their plan. Matsui Iwane was his usual contrarian self, at least when communicating with his diary. “It would probably be much easier if they landed on the banks of the Huangpu and Yangtze
Rivers,” he wrote.
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He thought the operation depended on too many uncertain factors, dismissing it as the typical product of staff officers with no idea about the real conditions in the field. “This plan gives me the impression of a bunch of young people at play,” he wrote in his diary.
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