The Distant Land of My Father (19 page)

In November of 1941, the last American troops in Shanghai vacated their barracks on Haiphong Road and left for Manila. They were Marines, and my father was one of the spectators who lined the streets to watch the troops march to the Bund. Afterward he walked along the Whangpoo. By that time, only one American and one British ship were left, both of them, Will Marsh had said, small river gunboats formerly used to patrol the Yangtze, now there only to provide direct radio communication between their consulates and their home governments. The HMS
Peterel
had a crew of twenty-seven reporting to an officer who was sixty-three years old. Its only weapons were a couple of machine guns. The USS
Wake
had a crew of twenty-five. That November morning as my father walked along the river, the
Peterel
and the
Wake
were surrounded by Japanese cruisers, destroyers, gunboats, and the
Idzumo,
the Japanese Imperial Navy’s flagship.

A few days after the Marines left, my father marked another departure. On the first of December, Dr. McLain and his wife and son left Shanghai on the Dutch ship
Tjisdane,
which sailed for Java. My father saw them off, but he said almost nothing. It was yet another in a long series of good-byes, and he was beginning to wonder if the time had finally come to leave.

Shanghai is to the west of the international dateline, so for those living there the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor took place on Monday, December 8. Sunday, the seventh, was a quiet winter’s day. That morning my father drove out to the country. He couldn’t go far; foreigners were no longer allowed to venture beyond the city limits. He stopped at the Hungjao aerodrome for the Japanese guards, and after showing them his papers, he parked the car at the gate as required, then walked into the country. The gardens were beautiful and calm, a respite from the grim and crowded closeness of the gray Shanghai winter, and nothing had seemed out of the ordinary. It was on his return that he saw something odd: a thin line of lime drawn at the junction of Tsinpu and Hungjao Roads, as though a boundary were being set.

That evening he met friends for dinner at D.D.’s in the Little Russia section of the French Concession. He mentioned the chalk line he’d seen in Hungjao, and how odd it seemed, but his comment was dismissed as inconsequential and of no pressing interest. After dinner he went alone to see
Lost Horizon
at the Lyceum. He’d seen it before, but he went again because my mother had loved the book. After the movie he went home. Tomorrow was a business day.

And then the world changed. At around four o’clock Monday morning, he was awakened by several huge explosions, with flashes of light that lit up the sky. The noise was terrific, like firecrackers just outside the window. He’d brought Jeannie, his German shepherd, with him and she huddled under his bed, trembling and whining softly.

When those first bangs were followed by several more, my father decided there must be some kind of Chinese celebration that included fireworks, and he got dressed and went out to see what was what. Outside, it was still dark and just starting to rain. There were no firecrackers or celebrating Chinese in the streets, so my father headed toward the Bund. But when he reached the end of Foochow Road where it met the Bund, he found the intersection blocked by a Japanese sailor dressed for war, his rifle and bayonet ready. My father strained to see the other intersections in both directions. Every street he could see was barred by armed Japanese soldiers.

Suddenly the entire Bund was lit up by fire. My father followed others as they hurried to the roof of the Palace Hotel, and from there they saw that the fire came from the HMS
Peterel,
which was anchored directly across the Whangpoo. Two smaller fires burned nearby, the launches alongside the
Peterel.

And then someone had the news, which spread instantly: Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor, sinking the American battleships
Arizona, California, Oklahoma,
and
Utah,
and damaging others. Thousands of Americans had been killed, and it was rumored that the Philippines, Wake Island, and Guam had been attacked as well. Japan had declared war on the United States and Britain, and was now in the process of occupying the International Settlement, starting with the takeover of the
Peterel
and the
Wake.
The
Peterel
’s crew had scuttled their ship rather than surrender to the Japanese. The
Wake
’s crew had wanted to do likewise, but had not had time before the Japanese demanded surrender.

My father was stunned. He stayed at the Palace waiting for more news. An hour later when he walked back to the American Club, the sky was filled with leaflets falling from a plane. He watched them float gently toward him and reached out and caught one in the air. He unfolded it and read an announcement of a Declaration of War by His Imperial Japanese Majesty on the United States of America and Great Britain. For the residents’ protection, the leaflet said, the Japanese military would enter the International Settlement at 10 a.m. Residents were to pursue their “normal avocations” and should not cause any kind of disorder. They should remain calm and trust in the benevolence of the Imperial Japanese forces.

At the American Club, my father found most of the club’s residents in the lobby, some in bathrobes pulled on over pajamas, others, like him, in wrinkled trousers and sweaters and coats grabbed hurriedly in the dark when the explosions had started. My father listened to the others’ frantic talk and to a British announcer on the radio in the corner. He understood that he had hugely misjudged his situation. He understood that his life might now never be the same, that staying in Shanghai had probably altered his future forever. And he understood that this day was only the start of bad fortune, and that he had to act.

He went upstairs and put Jeannie on her leash, then went back outside with her and hurried to his office on Yuen Ming Yuen Road. The streets were frantic. The air on and near the Bund was thick with smoke, the ground covered with a thin layer of ash from businessmen and government officials burning whatever documents they thought necessary before the Japanese could get them. Japanese sentries were everywhere, but my father had at least some good luck that morning, for when he reached his office, he found it unguarded. The building had not yet been sealed off.

In his office, he settled Jeannie in the corner and filled a bowl with water. In his safe, he had eight hundred dollars in U.S. currency that he’d put aside as emergency cash. He wrapped the bills in newspaper, and loosened a section of one of the wooden floorboards. In a small compartment there, he placed it with the other things he wanted to protect: his chop, and an ivory comb that my mother used to wear in her hair. Then he replaced the floorboard and nailed it down.

In the sink in the men’s washroom, he burned every receipt from Nationalist supporters, figuring those could get him into trouble with the Japanese. On his desk, he left out receipts from the Japanese military. He stroked Jeannie’s fur and told her that he would return for her soon; he was sure she was safer here until he knew more about what he would do next. The dog whined once and put her large head on her paws. My father locked the door behind him and went back to the lobby of the American Club.

At a few minutes after ten, Japanese Naval Party soldiers arrived and announced that the American Club was now Japanese Naval Head quarters. Residents were required to leave within two hours; they were allowed to take only what they could carry. My father was lucky. He’d moved to the club only a few months earlier, and for him packing would be straightforward. Many of the residents had lived there for years, and would have to choose what few belongings to take.

My father went upstairs immediately to pack. Shortly after noon, two Japanese sailors, armed with rifles and bayonets and loaded down with bottles of Chefoo beer from the bar downstairs, knocked at my father’s door. They were drunk. They let themselves in and made themselves comfortable, laughing and joking, looking through my father’s things and keeping what they wanted as he packed.

When he’d finished, he was escorted out of the club with the rest of the residents. He caught a tram to the Medhurst, a twelve-storey hotel and apartment building on Bubbling Well Road near the Race Course, where he and my mother had stayed in their early days in Shanghai. He took a room there, but he didn’t bother to settle in. The next problem was money. Apart from the cash he’d hidden in his office, he didn’t have much, so he figured the first stop was the bank. But when he reached the Shanghai office of the National City Bank of New York, a line of foreigners and Chinese wound around the block and overlapped itself. He was told that the Japanese had taken control of the Allied banks, and that funds belonging to Allied nationals were now frozen.

It was nearly one o’clock in the afternoon, and the air was freezing. My father got in line and tried to ignore the cold, which seemed to grow worse by the hour. Four hours passed before he reached the front of the line, where armed Japanese guards admitted people in groups of five. But he was lucky; the bank closed at five, and he was one of the last to be admitted. Those who didn’t make it were told to return the next day, with no guarantee of their place in line.

Inside, two Japanese officials stood with the bank’s books open before them and explained how things were. First, Allied currencies were now outlawed, so you could not withdraw funds in U.S. dollars or British pounds. Second, the amount of money you could withdraw was limited to five hundred Chinese dollars a week. My father nodded to all the explanations, then withdrew his five hundred Chinese dollars, the equivalent of fifty U.S. dollars and not nearly enough to live on.

At a street vendor on Nanking Road, he bought a plate of shrimp and sausage with noodles, coolie food, then headed back to the Medhurst. It was six o’clock in the evening, fourteen hours after those early-morning explosions, and as my father walked through the city, he was amazed how much had changed in those few hours. The winter air was thick with paper ash, and huge signboards repeating the information in the morning’s pamphlets were posted all over the city. Japanese soldiers were everywhere. They patrolled the streets and stopped passersby, demanding to see their passports. They stood guard at the Allied Consulates and the Municipal Building, at the largest banks and trading firms, at Shanghai’s top hotels and clubs. And above doorway after doorway hung the Rising Sun—the “poached egg” was the term foreigners used—to which all were required to bow as they passed.

That night and the next few days, my father and other foreigners talked in hushed voices about what had gone on, pooling what they knew. The Shanghai Club had been taken over by the Japanese navy, and the British Country Club and Race Course on Bubbling Well Road by the Japanese army. Allied officials had been sent to the Cathay Mansions, an apartment building on Rue Cardinal Mercier, across from the French Club in the Concession. The German Consulate advocated the immediate internment of all Allied nationals, and even offered to take charge of the camps, an offer that the Japanese declined. The Japanese had taken control of the cable and radio offices, the telephone exchanges, and the newspapers. No messages of any kind were allowed to be sent, and the
North China Daily News
was closed and sealed. Communication with the outside world had stopped. The
Peterel
lay at the bottom of the Whangpoo, despite efforts of the Japanese to save it. The Japanese were able to get the
Wake
’s radio equipment, as well as the ship itself, a feat they considered a triumph. They renamed it the
Tatara Maru
and immediately made it part of the Japanese Imperial Navy.

On December 10, notices appeared all over the city informing “enemy nationals”—British, American, Belgian, and Dutch citizens—that they were required to register within three days. They were to do this by presenting themselves at Hamilton House, a modern building near the Bund, on the corner of Kiangsi and Foochow Roads. My father went as soon as the notices appeared, knowing that another long line awaited him. He was right. The line went on for blocks. As people waited in the cold, a Japanese soldier with a movie camera walked up and down the pavement and motioned for them to smile.

The process lasted most of the day. The registration office was small, the Japanese staff inadequate. Inside, my father presented his passport and a photograph, filled out various forms with long lists of questions about himself, his family, his income. When he had finished with the forms, he was given a registration card and told to carry it with him at all times. He was also informed that he was no longer allowed to change his place of residence without a permit. Watching over the process were several Japanese officials eating delicate cakes and sipping jasmine tea.

Afterward my father walked through a city he didn’t know. Enlarged photographs of the American ships sunk at Pearl Harbor and military installations ablaze were displayed on walls around the city. Confiscation notices were everywhere, posted by the Japanese army and navy, informing the public that this land, this building, the contents of this house or apartment, were now under Japanese control and belonged to the Japanese government. Even the sidewalks of Japanese-claimed buildings were Japanese territory; to pass, you had to walk in the street or cross to the other side. Either way you had to raise your hat and bow to the Rising Sun that hung in the doorway. Like many, my father quickly stopped wearing a hat so that he wouldn’t have one to tip to the Japanese flag.