Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze (37 page)

If Matsui ever voiced his doubts, they were ignored. The 10th Army was to land before dawn on November 5. The Kunizaki Detachment was to lead the way, taking possession of a stretch of coastline east of the town of Jinshanwei in the middle of the night. It was to be followed by the 6th Division, with the 18th Division on its right flank and 114th Division on its left. All units were to move north to the Huangpu River at a brisk pace and cross it. A major objective north of the river was the city of Songjiang, a transportation hub for both rail and road. Finally, in the flat countryside west of Shanghai they were to link up with Japanese units marching south, sealing off as many Chinese soldiers as possible.
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Success hinged on catching the Chinese unawares, and therefore secrecy was paramount for the 10th Army as it prepared for its mission. The commanders remembered an old saying, “if you want to cheat the enemy, first you must fool your own men,” and they decided to follow it. Prior to the embarkation of the 6th Division, they handed out maps of Qingdao, a port city in northern China, to give the impression that this was the target of the operation. If there were a leak anywhere, the information that would be passed on would be wrong.
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The convoy carrying the 6th Division left waters off the Korean peninsula on November 1, heading south. The next day it linked up with another convoy carrying troops of the 18th and 114th Divisions from Japan. It had become a sizeable fleet of nearly 200 vessels, and even greater care had to be taken to avoid detection. There were strict bans against turning on any light, and radio silence was enforced at all times. As the ships approached Shanghai they sailed in a long arc out to sea, only steering back towards land as they were level with Hangzhou Bay. The soldiers, who were now informed of their real objective, were filled with excitement, and more than a little apprehension. As they crowded the dark decks, they could see the vague, looming silhouette of the great continent they had set out to conquer.
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T
AMAI
K
ATSUNORI
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WISHED TO BE A GOOD-LOOKING CORPSE
. I
F HE
were to die in battle, he did not want to be found with an ugly, black fringe around his chin. The stubble he was carrying was the result of days on board the transport headed for the China coast, during which the 30-year-old corporal and other soldiers of the 18th Japanese Infantry Division had let their beards grow. Those who had shaved had been forced to pay a penalty of 50 yen. It had just been a silly game to kill time that would otherwise have been spent needlessly on thoughts about what was ahead. Now he no longer wanted to play the game. It was hours before dawn, and an officer had just been to the quarters he shared with his 13-man squad informing them that the landing was imminent. As he got to work with his razor, others did the same. They all wished to be handsome in death.
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“In the boats!” Tamai and his men had ascended to the deck when the order was passed around in lowered voices. As they stared into the night, all they could see was complete darkness. Still, they knew the coastline was just a few miles away, and that a well-armed enemy might be lying in wait. It was important to maintain the element of surprise right until the last moment. Despite their efforts to avoid any sound, the metallic ring of swords, rifles and helmets could be heard as the soldiers, weighed down by their equipment, scrambled clumsily into the landing craft. They sat
down uncomfortably, almost on top of each other, in the cramped space. It was so dark that Tamai could not make out any familiar faces. Each soldier was sitting, blinded and mute, all alone with his own overpowering fears.

As the boat started making its way towards the shore, two red lights indicating the landing zone shone out to sea, like malevolent eyes. The faint light of day intermingled with the complete darkness and revealed dozens of other boats moving slowly through the black water. The soldiers felt how the current coming in from the ocean to the right constantly threatened to throw them off course, and how the landing craft operator was struggling to keep steering for the predetermined target area. They were wondering when the enemy would hear the noise of their engines and start firing, and they knew the thin-skinned boat would offer no protection. However, nothing happened. “There is no one in there!” someone exclaimed.

Long before the vessel had reached the shore, it hit the shallow ground. Tamai’s squad jumped over board, landing in knee-deep, ice-cold water. They started a long cumbersome slog in sticky mud, feeling grateful that the enemy remained absent at the moment they were at their most vulnerable. As they crossed the water’s edge and walked onto the wide, flat beach, they suddenly were surprised by a salvo from the left. All fell flat on the ground and continued the advance, wriggling through the gray muck towards the bank, which they could see ahead of them. As they slowly wormed their way forward, the fire from the invisible enemy grew more intense, and a soldier was hit through the thigh. Suddenly, the company commander appeared from behind, walking briskly with drawn sword as if on a parade ground. Tamai and his men felt silly, lying flat on their stomachs. They got up and followed him.

They made it to the bank and took cover behind it. The Chinese defenders who had been shooting at them appeared to have been in positions just above them, but they had fled at the sight of the mass of soldiers appearing out of the morning mist. Only then did Tamai notice how strange they all looked. Covered in mud from top to toe, and with anxiously rolling, bloodshot eyes, they resembled demons. They moved inland in a loose formation across treeless fields, before again taking cover behind a small elevation in the ground. A soldier handed around a bottle of carbonated cider. It tasted so good it almost hurt. The heightened danger sharpened the senses. The colors became brighter.

They heard gunfire ahead and moved up, joining a group of Japanese soldiers that had surrounded a cluster of houses on a hilltop, occupied by the Chinese. The defenders fired furiously, apparently directed by an observer standing behind one of the windows. Tamai ordered his machine gunner to fire. He raked the houses, which disappeared in a cloud of dust and splintered wood. When the dust settled, the Chinese were no longer firing and the soldier in the window had disappeared. “It is odd how the sound of one’s own guns can be such sweet music,” Tamai thought. “When the enemy is firing, the explosion and the whistle of the bullets seem ugly and vicious in the extreme. But when it is your own fire that you hear, it sounds pleasant, almost friendly.”
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The rest of the day went by in a confused succession of events, as the soldiers moved around with no precise idea of what they were heading for; marching down narrow paths, around small plots of cultivated land and across creeks and canals. When they passed undamaged houses, they set them ablaze to ensure that they were not used to hide snipers or store ammunition. Sometimes the burning buildings burst in huge explosions, showing them that their fears had been well founded. Yet the only Chinese soldiers Tamai saw up close during the first day of fighting were the corpses of infantrymen, lying where they had been killed.

All the civilians had left, almost. In the middle of the day’s ceaseless activity, Tamai passed a farm building with an old woman sitting in front. Near her was a wrinkled old man, and in her lap she had a small girl, possibly her grandchild. As the old woman saw Tamai point his bayonet at her, she trembled with fear. The girl pressed her face to the woman’s bosom. “I’m sorry, but why didn’t you run away in time?” Tamai asked in Japanese. She did not know his language, but he felt she somehow understood. Then he saw what was behind her—wide fruit fields and sheaves of freshly harvested rice stacked in tall piles. The old couple had stayed behind to protect their home and their land. Tamai could not bear the sad expression on the woman’s face. He walked on.

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The landing on the north shore of Hangzhou Bay, which Tamai had participated in, was a success. The surprise was as complete as the Japanese planners could have possibly hoped. They transported a fully equipped
invasion force of thousands of infantrymen to China’s doorstep and remained unseen and unheard until the last moment. The Kunizaki Detachment, the advance unit, moved into its landing craft as scheduled at 3:00 a.m. on November 5 and headed towards its appointed portion of coastline. Meanwhile, the rest of the 10th Army waited in tense anticipation on board ships anchored two miles from the coastline. The lack of any sound from the shore suggested that the detachment had met no resistance, but no one could know for sure, as radio silence was maintained to the last. Then finally, the detachment signaled with light projectors that the landing had gone according to plan.
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The soldiers of the second wave waiting in their vessels could start the approach. Navigation was difficult, because of the mist and the current. As a result, several units got mixed up in the first confused hours after the landing. The rough sea also meant that landing craft took longer than expected to make the return trip to the transport vessels to pick up more soldiers. This was a problem, since speed was essential. The 10th Army had planned for the invasion force to move quickly from the landing zone and occupy the area beyond before the Chinese had time to launch a counter-strike. Each Japanese soldier brought rice for one week and as much ammunition as he could carry. They were not going to be slowed down by a long and cumbersome supply train. Mobility was the key.
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Every man in the invasion force was wearing shoes, or rather thick socks with rubber soles. This even including the officers who had been ordered to leave their tell-tale high boots behind on the transport ships, along with any decorations revealing their ranks. The danger posed by Chinese snipers was simply too great, and it was deemed much safer for them if, from a distance, they looked indistinguishable from the men they commanded.
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However, on the first day of the landing, it hardly mattered. Apart from scattered resistance near the shore, the Chinese attempted only two minor counterattacks. One took place on the left flank and did nothing to delay the march to the north. The other, on the right flank, had similarly limited success, and the Chinese were forced to pull back ahead of the Japanese.
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The need to remain undetected for as long as possible had prevented the Japanese ships from launching artillery barrages in preparation for the landing. Still, their absence was not significant as the Japanese did not
encounter major opposition at the coastline, and once they moved inland, they were able to count on the navy’s heavy guns dealing with the scattered pockets of resistance they came across. As the morning progressed and the mist over the shore cleared, aircraft from offshore carriers also started bombarding the Chinese defenses.
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A Chinese air squadron appeared over the landing site, seemingly by coincidence, and repeatedly flew at low height over the troops and their transport vessels, but did not strafe the Japanese or drop any bombs. It appeared that they had just been on a training flight, and none of the planes carried ammunition. One of them was even shot down while leaving the area.
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The lack of a decisive Chinese response was the result of several factors. Just as had happened two and a half months earlier at the Yangtze estuary, the Chinese commanders had not arranged air reconnaissance over Hangzhou Bay, and therefore failed to detect the Japanese naval buildup. And even if the Chinese defenders had received a few hours’ extra warning, it is not clear what they could have done. Preliminary defenses had indeed been prepared along the shore during the course of the preceding months, as the Japanese landing parties found out, but they were nowhere near the more robust state of the fortifications up north closer to Shanghai. It was easy to get the impression that the troops had been lulled into a false sense of security after months of inaction. Zhang Fakui, who was nominally in command of the defending units, was criticized by the German advisors for not having done enough to ensure they stayed alert. The Chinese troops had become “a sleeping army,” as the Germans dismissively stated.
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On top of this, the Japanese attacked at a time when the defense of the area was particularly weak. Throughout the previous months, troops had been continuously moved from Hangzhou Bay closer to Shanghai, where all the actual fighting had been taking place. In the late fall, the defense of the bay area had been in the hands of just two Chinese divisions, the 62nd and 63rd, and even that meager force had been reduced to half its size. In the last days of October and first days of November, Zhang Fakui had moved the 62nd Division to the Pudong area, leaving the task of covering the entire stretch of coastline to the 63rd, assisted by three artillery batteries
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and a few underwhelming units from the local militia.
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The Japanese struck so soon after the coastal defense had been thus weakened that years later the Chinese commanders still did not rule
out the possibility that traitors in their midst had informed the Japanese about the changing conditions in the landing zone.
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By mid-morning of November 5, more than 3,000 Japanese soldiers had already landed, and the number increased by the hour. From early on, the situation was so serious that only swift and decisive action gave the Chinese generals any hope of preventing disaster. However, just when they should have thrown everything behind an all-out effort to push the Japanese back into the sea, they decided to play the waiting game. The consensus at the Third War Zone command center in Suzhou in the early hours of the day was that the landing had been carried out by weak forces in an attempt to divert attention away from more important operations that would take place elsewhere in the near future.
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Albert Newiger, one of two senior German advisors attached to the Third War Zone staff, immediately saw the grave danger posed to the Chinese flank by the new development and argued that the threat should be eliminated immediately. He explained how a failure to do so would jeopardize the entire Chinese Army in Shanghai. As he knew the area around Song-jiang, the immediate Japanese objective, from tactical walks with students from the Central Military Academy prior to the war, he offered to help lead a counterattack with the available Chinese forces in the area. The response that Newiger received was not at all encouraging. The staff officers in Suzhou sought to give an exaggeratedly upbeat interpretation of the situation on the north shore of Hangzhou Bay, hinting that the German might be overreacting. Even if he were not overreacting, they argued, the Chinese troops present in the area were not of a good enough quality to carry out an attack.
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