Read Escape from Shanghai Online
Authors: Paul Huang
Escape from Shanghai
Copyright © 2014 by Paul C. Huang
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0615970745
ISBN 13: 9780615970745
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014903071
Chapter 1 Escape from Shanghai
Chapter 6 Down the Mighty Yangtze
World War II started on July 7, 1937 when Japan invaded China. Twenty-two days later, on July 29, Japan took Peking (Beijing). By November, they took Shanghai and in early December, they were in Nanking. The world watched the slaughter. The Japanese went through China faster than Germany through Europe.
By the fall of 1938, the Japanese army was headed south toward Canton. Fearful of another defeat, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, the President and military commander of the Republic of China, ordered Governor Li Hanhun of Canton (Guangdong) Province to protect the gold bullion locked in the vaults of the Bank of Canton.
Facing certain defeat, Governor Li moved his Provincial headquarters from Canton to Shaoguan, a city roughly 175 miles to the north. He took the gold bullion with him for safekeeping.
This is the true story of how an educated, independent young woman joined the resistance, escaped from the clutches of the Japanese, and battled corruption at the highest levels of a male-dominated government.
As usual, my grandfather had gotten up early on Monday morning, December 8, and left for his office. Unaware that the world had literally changed overnight, his chauffeur turned a corner and drove the car into the hysteria and confusion on this street in Shanghai. Japanese soldiers were everywhere. They had already taken over all of the American banks and institutions, including the embassy. Out of his car window, my grandfather saw what he thought was a group of American men, women and children. He studied the faces and recognized a few of the men. Shocked by the sight, he wondered why they had been rounded up and herded together, shivering with cold and fear in the middle of this residential street. Clearly, they had been given scant time to pack or ready themselves. Most carried a suitcase or a hastily bundled bag of warm clothing slung over their shoulders. These people looked frightened, forlorn and bewildered by what had happened to them. A scared, tearful girl hugged a doll to her bosom.
The chauffeur slammed on his breaks. A Japanese soldier approached, inspecting the license plate as he walked menacingly at them. Kai Loh “Carlos” Sun rolled down his window and bowed subserviently. “Papers,” the soldier demanded as he looked inside the Packard.
“This street is blocked. Go another way,” he ordered as he returned Carlos Sun’s papers.
The driver backed down the street. “Turn on the radio,” Carlos said in a sad subdued voice, wondering what had happened.
The bombing of Pearl Harbor had taken place while Shanghai slept. Eight in the morning of December 7, 1941 at Pearl Harbor was 2:00 AM December 8 in Shanghai. The Japanese Occupation Army in Shanghai sat and waited patiently for daylight to attack the International Settlement of the city. This was the only portion of the city that they didn’t already own because they weren’t at war with the rest of the world. But that changed on December 7. The Empire of Japan had decided to attack the United States of America and at the same time, they also struck Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaya and the Philippines.
Clearly, the Japanese Army was sweeping across the International Settlement in Shanghai searching for and arresting American and British nationals.
Surprise and speed was their standard strategy. Everything was happening in double time. Carlos turned to take one last look out the back window of his car. He knew that his American friends had suddenly become non-entities. All of their valuable possessions—money, rings, cars, cameras, radios, house and furniture—had already been looted by the Japanese. Terrible things were going to happen to these poor frightened people, especially the children. He knew that many of them would die this winter in the Japanese concentration camps.
Sadly, he lowered his head as he listened to the radio. Carlos tried to focus on what he had to do. “Hurry,” he said with anguish in his voice. He knew it wouldn’t be long before the Japanese got to his house. Silently, he willed his driver to go faster knowing full well that the man was doing his best. Still, he urged the man on. “Hurry,” he said again. Carlos trembled at the thought of what they might do to his five-year-old American-born grandson. A Chinese-American would give the Japanese a double incentive to be brutal and barbaric. Now that Japan was at war with America, the killing of a five-year-old American with a Chinese face would be full of symbolism for the Japanese. They could kill an American civilian because they could claim that this little boy was just a worthless and insignificant Chinese. After all, no
one had stopped the massacre of 300,000 Chinese in Nanking in 1937.
They would be thumbing their noses at America by deliberately killing a Chinese who had happened to be born in America. The killing would be an insult to the Constitution of the United States. It would show that the Constitution was a weak and meaningless document.
The Japanese liked these subtle symbolic acts because it showed how smart and superior they were. This little island nation of Japan was racially pure, while the United States was a mongrel nation of mixed and inferior breeds. At that time, the anti-American frenzy among the Japanese was at its peak. Their daily propaganda broadcasts filled the air with hatred for anything American.
Jane Sun, Carlos’ 29 year-old daughter, was listening to the same radio broadcast at home. Near panic, she rifled through her passport and visas looking for her son’s American birth certificate. She hesitated for an instant, then brought all the papers to the charcoal brazier. Stoically, she watched the papers burn.
My mother was fearful for my life. I had been born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which made me an American citizen. She knew what the Japanese were doing to the Americans—a five-year-old boy, separated from
his mother, would not survive the brutal conditions of a Japanese concentration camp. She knew they would separate us because the Japanese had been ordered to take Americans living in Shanghai. My mother was Chinese.
At the time, I didn’t know that I was an American citizen. My mother hadn’t told me because she thought the concept of citizenship by birth was too complicated for her to explain and too abstract for me to understand. So she hastily destroyed our passports, visas and any documents that connected us to the United States.
Now, it would only be a matter of hours before the soldiers got to grandpa’s house.
Three generations of the Sun family lived in grandpa’s Shanghai brownstone. There was my grandfather and grandmother of course; Mom, their oldest daughter; my Third Aunt by marriage and her two children (her husband, my Third Uncle had died recently from blood-poisoning because he stepped on a rusty nail at a construction site. The Japanese couldn’t spare the medicine to treat a Chinese. Third Uncle was an architect.); my Number Six and Seven Aunts; and my Eighth and Ninth Uncles: a total of eight adults and three children. (Growing up, I called my aunts and uncles by their family numbers. To this day, the only formal
name I know is my Ninth Uncle’s and that’s because he emigrated to America.)
My grandfather knew the risk he was taking, but he didn’t hesitate. After four years of living under Japanese rule, he knew the routine. He calmly gathered his family around him. “Japanese soldiers will be here soon. They are looking for Americans. There are no Americans here,” he declared firmly. “We are a Chinese family. When they come, do not look at the soldiers. Lower your eyes, be deferential. Bow to them in the Japanese manner,” he instructed. “If they decide to take anything, let them have it. Nothing is worth a life.” Then he turned to his grandchildren: “Stay by your mothers’ side and everything will be all right.”
The family sat in silence, each person immersed in his own thoughts while waiting for the knock on the door. There was nothing else we could do. Talk would have been an useless waste of energy. In our own way, each one of us was mentally preparing ourselves for what’s to come. Foreign observers often labeled this inscrutable behavior to be “the Chinese sense of inevitability,” or “resignation to fate,” while others called this “Chinese patience.” I would call it the Chinese way. Even as a young child, I knew better than to act in a way that would make me lose face in front of the Japanese. I would not cry or show
fear or give them any sense of satisfaction whatsoever. I would follow my grandfather’s instructions to the letter.
What seemed like minutes later, fierce-looking soldiers with bayonets glistening on the ends of their rifles banged loudly on our door. They were doing a house-to-house search down our street. We lived at 131 Kashan Road, Shanghai, in the heart of the international concession.
Grandpa bowed subserviently and invited the soldiers in. Everyone was in the living room, including the servants.