The onset of World War II ended a golden age in Shanghai, with hostilities changing the city and the lives of millions of its residents forever.

With war looming, many of Shanghai’s foreign residents had been evacuated by the time fighting came to the city. But some expatriates chose to stay behind, either for work or loved ones. Others believed the fighting would be brief and things would soon return to normal.

Among those who remained — and had their fate irrevocably altered — was American journalist John B. Powell, editor-in-chief of English-language newspaper The China Weekly Review, published in Shanghai.

As one of seven foreign newspapermen “black-listed” by the invading Japanese for deportation or assassination, Powell remained in the city for the sake of his loyal Chinese assistants, whom he feared the Japanese would take vengeance on after he departed. And he also directed a clandestine radio station under the noses of the Japanese censors.

“Although the State Department and the navy had provided means of transportation for many of the women and children and others whose work was not regarded as ‘essential,’ a majority of the Americans, both businessmen and missionaries, remained,” Powell wrote in his biography “My Twenty-Five Years in China.”

According to historian Xiong Yuezhi from the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, the city was home to a total of over 13,000 British and American nationals in 1936. This number dwindled to just over 7,200 by the end of 1942.

“Many expatriates remaining in Shanghai participated in the anti-fascist war in various ways,” says Xiong at a seminar entitled “Shanghai Expatriates and the World’s Anti-Fascist War,” held at the academy on July 25.

“C.S. Franklin, chairman of the Municipal Council, announced the International Settlement’s neutral stance in November 1937 but later acknowledged Chiang Kai-shek’s Chongqing government rather than the Japanese puppet regime. The settlement actually supported anti-Japanese activities and concealed over 20 such organizations. Some expatriates joined or helped the Chinese New Fourth Army or even set up refugee areas that saved hundreds of thousands of Chinese, such as Father Robert Jacquinet from France. It’s also noteworthy that some Japanese in Shanghai also strongly opposed the war. And some foreign journalists who continued to report the war truthfully were prosecuted by the Japanese, such as Powell,” Xiong adds.

Powell was arrested by the Japanese in December 1941. He was then starved and tortured over the next four months. When released in a prisoner exchange, he suffered from gangrene in both feet: the result of malnutrition, exposure and poor circulation caused by being forced to sit on his feet “Japanese fashion” for prolonged periods. He eventually lost major portions of both feet. When he returned to the United States in 1942, he became a symbol of Japanese brutality. He passed away in 1947.

Powell is one of many foreign residents who committed their first-hand experiences of the war in Shanghai to paper. American writer Emily Hahn, British author J.G. Ballard and New York Times correspondent Hallett Abend all left riveting accounts of the conflict.

This year marks the 70th anniversary of World War II. In commemoration, the Chinese public is being flooded with a barrage of war-themed movies, exhibitions, concerts and forums — which will climax with a spectacular military parade on September 3.

Shanghai Daily presents six excerpts from the memoirs of expatriates who happened to be in Shanghai between 1937 and the early 1940s, including a Japanese. Their records of war-time Shanghai offer a vital contribution to the city’s historical record. Their writings reflect three major local events in the conflict, including the Japanese bombings of major urban areas in mid-1937, the occupation of the city’s Hongkou and Yangshupu areas, and the seizure of the International Settlement in late 1941.

I: Bombings on August 14 and 23, 1937

Liliane Willens

Born in Shanghai to Russian Jewish parents who fled the Bolshevik Revolution, Willens lived in the city’s former French concession until 1952, including during the Japanese occupation of the city from 1941 to 1945. She later moved to the United States and became a PhD lecturer.

“I saw Japanese warships bristling with cannons and their planes bombard Chapei. Chinese planes appeared on August 14 over Shanghai with the intention of bombing the Idzumo, the Japanese flagship anchored close to the Japanese Consulate. That day I was playing with my classmate Alla Rabinovich in her garden in the French Concession when we heard the muffled sound of anti-aircraft fire and extremely loud explosions. I was very scared, and, feeling that I needed the security of my family, I quickly jumped on my bicycle and sped home, accompanied by the boom of detonating bombs. That evening I heard from my parents, who did not know that I had ridden my bicycle during the bombardment, that many people had been killed in the International Settlement.”

— “Stateless in Shanghai” (2010)

Hallett Abend

As China correspondent for the New York Times, Abend began covering the country in 1926. He was severely attacked by two Japanese agents on July 19, 1940 in his apartment at the Broadway Mansions. He left Shanghai in October under constant Japanese threats.

“In Shanghai I have seen a single bomb kill 600 people and wound and cripple 400 more. When a 750-pound bomb lands in a busy street, all life and movement seems to be halted for a period of three or four minutes. Nothing stirs except the eddying dust, drifting smoke and the occasional crumbling of jarred masonry. The air is filled with the smell of hot blood and choking gas. Then, after what seems an eternity of suspended motion and silence ... the wounded begin to moan or scream and struggle to their hands and knees and crawl about aimlessly. Then came the clang and wailing of sirens of ambulances and fire-fighting apparatus, and life begins once more.

I have a prejudice against these things. I have a deep prejudice against nations which glorify aggression and slaughter. I have a conviction that they must first be disarmed and made powerless to resume their evil ways, and a conviction that then they must be re-educated in honor and in decency and in a new respect for the rights of fellow men and weaker nations.

I make again my frank plea in favor of prejudice. I urge the American people to keep burningly alive their prejudices against Japanism and Nazism and Fascism, and their determination to wipe these evils from the earth.”

— “Pacific Charter” (1943)

II: Japanese-occupied Hongkou and Yangshupu areas after 1937

Rewi Alley

Renowned New Zealand writer and poet Alley moved to Shanghai in 1927 and lived in China until he died in Beijing in 1987.

“When I arrived back in mid-October (1937), the fighting around Shanghai was still going on. Steaming in the Huangpu River past the Japanese warship, I could smell the burning from both sides of the river. The factory areas in Yangshupu and Hongkou where I spent years as an inspector were now a ruin ... By the time I at last was able to get to our new house in Jiangwan, I found it had already been used as a Japanese staff officers’ headquarters. The beautiful refrigerator was thrown out on a rubbish heap with the guts all torn out of it by looters. The grass grew up through the strings of the remains of the piano. Beds and furniture were in use, but all the good stuff had been removed, including every book and all the bookcases, which were of oak. Still, the worst losses were not these. My entire store of documents and papers, the product of my ten years’ work and study, were gone.”

— “At 90, Memoirs of My China Years” (1986)

Emily Hahn

Author of the best-selling book “Soong Sisters,” Hahn resided in Shanghai from 1935 to 1940. She used her American identity to help her Chinese publisher and lover Sinmay Zau move his library of valuable Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) books out of his home in Yangshupu.

“It was my first view of the after-effects of war and I was nauseated at the wicked cruel waste of it — the slashed family photographs, the smashed toys, the bureau drawers chopped to bits in disappointment. All the houses that I saw were the same. The Japs controlled the process of salvage thus: a guard on Garden Bridge inspected my permit and gave me a Japanese marine to come along and keep an eye on me. I was not allowed to bring in any Chinese coolies to help with the loading, but Russian workmen, being whites, were permitted to pass with me. I hired a truck and 10 workmen, and all day we loaded furniture and carted it out, past the bridge, and came back for more. The ticklish part of it was that bridge, because the guards there were often nasty and temperamental ... It was a bitter cold day but I sweated a lot. I felt very much like a heroine when I came home at last to the anxiously waiting Zaus. They had been sitting in front of my fire, but then ran out into the street as we rolled up triumphantly, and there was a little dance of rejoicing, and afterward Chin Lien brought me a dish of his own famous meringues, of which there were never quite enough. Today I had enough and more. We spent happy hours in the following weeks, sunning the books and looking them over for silver fish, the tropical insect that is the scourge of libraries.”

— “China to Me” (1944)

III: Shanghai on December 8, 1941

John B. Powell

One of the most influential American journalists in China of his time, Powell came to Shanghai in 1917 to work for the English weekly Millard’s Review of the Far East (later named The China Weekly Review).

“I was awaken about four o’clock on the morning of December 8, 1941, by what I thought was the explosion of three or four large firecrackers outside my window. I did not realize that the explosion marked the end of International Shanghai as it had existed for almost a century since 1842.

The explosion seemed to come from the street just outside my window in the American Club, about two blocks from the Bund, the street which runs along the Whangpoo River, Shanghai’s harbor.

When the blasts were followed by several more, I realized something had happened which I as a newspaperman should investigate. Hurriedly putting on my clothes, I ran downstairs. As I reached the front door the watchman, a white Russian, exclaimed, ‘Japanese come!’

I ran toward the Bund, overtaking on my way two other newspaper correspondents, who also lived at the club and had been awakened by the bombs. Our way to the Bund was blocked by a Japanese sailor in full war equipment. He pointed a rifle at us, with bayonet fixed. We turned back to the next cross-street, only to find that all of the streets leading to the Bund were barred by armed Japanese, who were gradually extending their lines into the business section,

Our curiosity was stimulated by the fact that the whole waterfront was suddenly illuminated by a large fire. Someone suggested we climb to the roof of one of the buildings back from the Bund, which we did, and discovered that the fire came from a ship which had been anchored almost directly in front of the International Settlement.

Two smaller fires, which seemed to be floating about the harbor, turned out to be launches. Near the burning ship was anchored the USS Wake, a river patrol boat which the US Navy had used for several years on the Yangtze.

The Wake was brilliantly illuminated and appeared to be a hive of activity. We were joined by other newspapermen connected with the press associations, who told us news had just been received that Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor, had destroyed the American Fleet, had declared war on the United States and Britain, and was in the process of occupying Shanghai ...

Thus the Japanese moved in on one of the world’s largest and richest cities, and the leading port on the continent of East Asia.”

— “My Twenty-Five Years in China” 1945

Nishikawa Hikaru

The Japanese journalist worked for a Japanese military newspaper and published a book named “Shanghai on December 8” about wartime in China in 1941.

“What happened? Facing roaring guns and artillery from the river, I was puzzled and stunned ... The river has been colored red by the fire and shades of fleets began to emerge. The thundering gun cracks crossed the surface of the river and disappeared like fireflies ... Upon the reflection of fires, a white flag was dropping on the mast head of US Navy boat Wake ... All of a sudden the fierce cracks of guns and artillery stopped and the river was sealed with a kind of deadly tranquility ...

Glancing through the crowds (congregating in front of a shop’s window), I saw the note ‘(Released at 6am, December 8) Royal army and navy entered battle state at dawn with the US and UK in West Pacific.’ The handwriting seemed to be telling an exciting story so the ink lines were so strong and powerful that I finally came to understand about the bombardment this early morning. My messy mind was enlightened immediately and I could even feel an impulse to cry out. All of a sudden, warm things, perhaps tears, passed through my cheeks and my enlightened heart was swarming like boiling water ...

Today we are entering the International Settlement! Was there any greater morning in Japanese history than this? Japan had decided to fight with the US and UK. Right on this important historical moment, I happened to be in Shanghai.

In an imposing way, we will enter Shanghai’s International Settlement — the base of Americans and British invading East Asia and the frontline of the Chongqing government’s resistance again Japanese.

We are going to eliminate all the enemy forces from the settlement.

... Tanks painted with American flags near the banks of Jiujiang, commercial ships patterned with British and American flags at the wharf in Hankou and those churches topped with sharp points and crosses all around China appeared in front of my eyes. I saw them all burning.”

— “Shanghai on December 8” (1943)

(Discovered in Japan’s National Library of Congress by Shanghai Library researcher Zhang Yi, who translated the text from Japanese to Chinese)