Disaster in Shanghai, Part 2

By Peter Harmsen
16 September, 2018
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On August 23, 1937, Shanghai was only getting used to war when a bomb, probably dropped by accident, hit a busy part of Nanjing Road, gutting Sincere Department Store and causing severe damage to Wing On Department Store. An official count said 173 people were killed in the explosion, while another 549 were injured.

An even bigger tragedy had hit the center of Shanghai nine days earlier, with hundreds of fatalities, and the city’s rescue workers were rapidly becoming accustomed to dealing with death en masse. “The efficiency of the services was most remarkable,” The North China Daily News reported, saying ambulances arrived within five minutes of the blast around noon. “By 3.30 both stricken buildings had been boarded up against looters, the streets had been washed free of blood and pieces of flesh, and trams were running, the wrecked wiring having been repaired. Only the scarred walls gave evidence of the holocaust of three and a half hours before.”

The photos on this page are by one of the most prolific foreign photographers during the three-month battle for Shanghai in 1937, American-born Malcolm Rosholt. This article reproduces a small selection of Rosholt’s huge output of photos. They are brought with the kind permission of Historical Photographs of China, a project based at the University of Bristol. All photos are courtesy of Historical Photographs of China, Mei-fei Elrick and Tess Johnson.