Shanghai Diary (Part 2)

 

 

In October 1937, the young American sailor Earl Jackson Clanton was in Shanghai on board the USS Augusta, which was keeping a vigil in the port while Chinese and Japanese troops were engulfed in vicious fighting over the fate of the city. Clanton completed a fascinating journal, providing a day-by-day account of the dramatic events, brought to you here courtesy of Clanton’s grandson, Adam Clanton. The photos, including the one below showing a plane falling to the ground after being hit by anti-aircraft fire, is also kindly provided by Adam Clanton.

Oct 26, 1937:

Watching the shelling of Pootung Point with shrapnel flying on all sides gives one a very peculiar feeling. You can almost feel a piece of the stuff striking you. On being ordered below decks when one of these shelling skirmishes begins – most everyone will either go up on the foc’sal, foretop, boat deck – in fact they go everywhere except below decks. We took many pictures of war from planes cracking up after being shot full of machine gun lead, to sinking picket boats. All the firing on Pootung Point was caused because of Chinese snipers. Chinese snipers would start after 4 or 5 o’clock P.M. and try to pick any Japanese sailors off that happened to come to top side. Once they did the Japanese would commence to fire at the whole of Pootung Point. It would cease for perhaps one half hour, then the sniper would take another shot and it would all begin again. It would invariably start just in the middle of our movies and we would have to leave the movies and go below. Sometimes this would happen two or three times during one movie. We wanted to open our big 8 inch guns up on the Japanese and blow them clear off of the river. If we would have fired one salvo from one of our 8 inch guns it would have broken every window in Shanghai besides driving every Jap in China out of the country.

Oct 27, 1937:

Chinese planes fly over (The Mysterious Mr. Woo), drop a load of bombs and escape without serious injury. It usually happens at night and the Jap ships all turn on their searchlights and open up their anti-aircraft guns, but seldom hit. This happens every nite – sometimes we get up to watch it – but of late it is becoming so regular that we don’t even wake up let alone get up to watch it.

Oct 28, 1937:

Chinese can be seen on Pootung Point and very active, but they can not be seen by the Japanese from their ships. By climbing up to the foretop or machine gun nest on the Augie we can see them in their machine gun nests and dug in their trenches. The only way the Japanese can run them out is by planes dropping bombs on them. The Japanese admiral and high commander came aboard to have a conference with the admiral (Yarnell). The Jap admiral was in uniform and covered with gold and the high commander in top hat. Very striking!? The Japanese are very polite.

(To be continued.)

Categories: War, Witnesses

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