Hey guys,
During my trip to Shanghai, I made a point of visiting The Waibadu bridge.
Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945)
During the Battle of Shanghai, the Waibaidu bridge had an important role. On August 12, 1937, thousands of refugees, "a milling mass of humanity", from Greater Shanghai streamed into the foreign settlements through the Garden Bridge to escape the Japanese. Journalist Rhodes Farmer recorded:
Word had been passed back that barbed wire and Japanese sentries blocked all the approaches to Shanghai save Garden Bridge and the twenty-foot wide crossing that led to it over the stinking, garbage-filled [Suzhou] Creek. The mid-day sun scorched down pitilessly, for it was still the season of tahsu — the Great Heat ...the mass pressed on at snail's pace toward what was becoming the bridge of life."
At the end of August 1937, the Japanese military restricted foreigners from crossing the Garden Bridge: "There is much local criticism of the Japanese naval authorities who, still persist in their refusals to permit foreigners to cross the Garden Bridge."[54] After August 1937 the Waibaidu Bridge was the de facto border between the International Settlement and Japanese occupied Hongkew (now Hongkou) and Zhabei.
As Mark Gayn recalls: "The creek became the boundary between two worlds. To the north was the world of fear, death, and the Japanese bayonet. To the south, law was still supreme and life remained as normal as it could be with bombs exploding....Of all the bridges, the Garden Bridge alone remained open to traffic, and on its narrow roadway the two hostile worlds met and glared at each other."
The west end of Garden Bridge, was guarded by members of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps.
Harold Rattenbury recalls: "Japanese and Scottish sentries face one another on the Garden Bridge. To the Japanese all Chinese must remove their hats; so I took pleasure in removing mine to our Scottish sentries also." Kemp Tolley indicates:
"A Japanese sentry stood on the Garden Bridge, over odoriferous Soochow Creek, which separated Honkew from the rest of the International Settlement. Foreigners were expected, on pain of a possible slap in the face, to bow gently from the waist when passing the sentry. Chinese coolies grunted, groaned and yei-hoed, pushing heavily loaded carts up the bridge's steep approaches. An occasional bayonet thrust into a bale or a prick in some tender part of a coolie's anatomy reminded everyone who was boss. Although Honkew was a part of the International Settlement, the Settlement taxis and rickshas were not allowed there. One had to hire a ramshackle vehicle especially licensed — or walk across the bridge, bowing en route, and pick up a conveyance in Japanese "territory."
Rickshaws were not permitted to pass the Japanese sentries on the Garden Bridge.
Japanese soldiers on both sides of the bridge would stop any Chinese, humiliate them and punish them if they hadn't shown proper respect.
Foreigners were also expected to bow to the Japanese sentries, with some men and women forced to strip to the waist.
Rena Krasno, a Jewish refugee remembered: "Everyone crossing the Garden Bridge is compelled to remove their hat and bow....The tram halted in front of the Japanese guards, all the passengers bowed and the bayonet-clasping soldiers waved us on with their free hand."
For the Japanese, "the sentry was the personification of the glory and power of the Japanese army, and woe befall those who did not pay proper respect to him."
According to Clark Lee, the sentries "considered themselves representatives of Emperor Hirohito, and many foreigners had been slapped or clubbed for 'disrespectfully' smoking in front of Imperial Representatives."
In August 1937 Admiral Harry E. Yarnell, Commander-in-Chief of the US Asiatic Fleet, was "deliberately and grossly insulted by Japanese naval sentries on the Garden bridge."
On 27 December 1937 Japanese authorities announced that foreigners would be permitted to cross the Garden Bridge without passes.
In late February 1938, the Garrison Commander of the Japanese Expeditionary Forces in China released a list of regulations and inducements to encourage foreigners to return to the Hongkou District to live, shop or do business: "Foreigners returning to districts North of the Creek are especially requested to respect the sentry on point duty at the Garden Bridge and at street corners by giving him a gentle bow, and wishing him 'GOOD MORNING.' Foreigners must realize that the Japanese soldier doing such duty represents the EMPEROR OF JAPAN."
In June 1938 an American physician Dr J.C. Thompson was slapped by Japanese sentries on the Garden Bridge.
In early July 1938 bombs were thrown at a Japanese sentry post on the Garden Bridge as part of a co-ordinated attack by Chinese resistance fighters on Japanese businesses.
From 20 July 1938, the bridge was again referred to as "The Bridge of Sighs", as a result of handing Jiang Haisheng, a nineteen-year-old student who had been apprehended with a grenade in the International Settlement, to Japanese military authorities at the Garden Bridge.
Later that month Miss Dorothea Lintihac was "rough housed" by Japanese sentries because she and her mother crossed the Garden Bridge on the wrong side of the street to avoid both dangerous traffic and barbwire entanglements. Subsequently they were arrested and detained later. The British Consul General Herbert Phillips protested the incident and the "increasingly belligerent attitude" of the Japanese sentries.
In the early hours of 8 December 1941, as Pearl Harbor was being attacked, the International Settlement was occupied by Japanese military forces. Now that "they controlled all of Shanghai, the Japanese removed the hut on the Garden Bridge that used to mark the border between Hongkew and the International Settlement."
Additionally, "there was now a barrier at the Garden Bridge over the Soochow Creek, sealing off the Japanese quarter from the rest of the Settlement. Barbed-wire barricades were set up throughout the city, and Japanese sentries posted at all bridges."
An American resident, Edna Lee Booker, recalls: "The arrogance and possessiveness of the Japanese began at the top with the Gendarmerie and the inquisitors, and carried down. The Garden Bridge, which leads north into Hongkew, was the scene of many slappings and strikings and jabbings by the Japanese guards."
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