This html article is produced from an uncorrected text file through optical character recognition. Prior to 1940 articles all text has been corrected, but from 1940 to the present most still remain uncorrected. Artifacts of the scans are misspellings, out-of-context footnotes and sidebars, and other inconsistencies. Adjacent to each text file is a PDF of the article, which accurately and fully conveys the content as it appeared in the issue. The uncorrected text files have been included to enhance the searchability of our content, on our site and in search engines, for our membership, the research community and media organizations. We are working now to provide clean text files for the entire collection.
D on’t tell the "China Marine” of the Fourth Marine Regiment that ’37 was 37 years ago. For him, it is only yesterday. He has but to close his eyes and it becomes "Summer Routine”-—June through September—in Shanghai once again. It is payday—”$21.00 a day (once a month)”—and his spitshined shoes clatter along Bubbling Well Road and his heart sings as he reminds himself that he is one of the 75% of the regiment for whom liberty began at noon and will continue all night.
In another part of the world, vaguely remembered, his country is still fighting its way out of the depression. Law and order is being enforced on the streets of New York by a police force that is larger than the entire Marine Corps.
But none of that was real to the Shanghai Marine. Reality in the summer of ’37 was guard duty and liberty. For ten years, the Fourth Marines had been protecting American lives and property in Shanghai’s International Settlement, jointly occupied by the French, British, Italians, Japanese, and Americans since the Boxer Rebellion.
But, when the daily drudgery of duty ended, the Shanghai Marine entered a kind of oriental Valhalla. Chinese civilians did his mess duty and police work, and a "roomboy” was assigned to each four men.
The roomboy shined shoes, pressed clothes, blancoed the packs, and did everything for the Marine but clean his weapon. The weapon, be it rifle, BAR, pistol, or Thompson submachine gun, was the responsibility of the individual Marine.
For recreation, there was dancing with the ballerinas at the Majestic, betting on jai alai at the Fronton (and trying your own hand at that insane sport when the professionals had completed their practice). There were ball games at the Race Course- cricket, lawn bowls, rugby, and soccer. All these international games were played in the huge infield of the sprawling course. So intent on their own sport were the spectators and players that the Chinese ponies racing around the oval, spurred on by long- legged gentlemen jockies, seemed to be only incidental to the scene.
The monetary exchange was three "Mex” to one dollar gold, American money. A quart of good beer cost about two cents; Haig and Haig pinchbottle scotch whiskey sold for less than a dollar a fifth, and the best steak at the club cost about 30 cents.
This splendid cycle of duty and liberty had been interrupted in 1932 when fighting broke out between the Japanese and Chinese in the Shanghai suburb of Chapei. The Fourth Marines had taken up positions along Soochow creek and the fighting had ended.
But now, in this bright summer of ’37, there were new, ominous signs and the tempo of Marine training picked up. There were conditioning hikes with heavy marching order packs, spit-and-polish parades down Bubbling Well Road to the Race Course where the Regiment passed in review for visiting dignitaries, as well as endless drills with machine guns and mortars. And there was qualifying for record on the British rifle range where a cart with cold beer was available on the line to give shooters the same kind of inspiration the hot rum had given them on the line during the winter qualifications.
Then, in July 1937, the war came again. The Marines stowed away their liberty clothes, donned their flat tin hats, and took up their round-the-clock watch on the U. S. sector boundary along Soochow Creek. From their sandbagged emplacements along the creek, they had a box seat at a war.
Just across the creek, 150 feet away, heavy fighting took place as Japanese troops sought to dislodge the well-equipped and trained Chinese Nationalist forces led by Chiang Kai-shek. Naval gunfire rained down from the Japanese task force in the Whangpoo River; both Chinese and Japanese air force planes bombed the area and dogfights raged above the city.
Chinese planes attacked Japanese ships in the Whangpoo and their errant bombs dropped in the Settlement on the Cathay and Palace hotels, inflicting many casualties. The Japanese retaliatory antiaircraft fire added realism to the conflict when the Marines’ defensive positions became part of the impact zone.
In the Chapei sector just across the creek the Chinese "Doomed Battalion” holed up in the Joint Savings Society’s godown to fight it out to the last man. When the shooting and bombing ended,
Chapei was a blackened heap of rubble.
But, in spite of the excitement and the tense situation, the day-on-stay-on duty began to pall on the Marines and a few of them started to get trigger- happy and take up sides with the Chinese. Just in time, the USS Chaumont steamed up the Whangpoo with the Sixth Marines aboard under the command of Brigadier General John C. Beaumont. The Sixth moved up on the line and relieved the Fourth, whose Marines by this time were more than ready for a return to the monotony of garrison duty.
The fighting went on for seven months and ended with the Japanese in firm control of the city. In March 1938, the Sixth sailed back to the States and left the Fourth Marines to the dull routine of guarding American lives and property—and all the bittersweet benefits that went with it.
JJ. S. Marines, foreign nationals who lived and worked in the International Settlement, and Bluejackets—five of whom, upper left, wear USS Panay hatbands—await the start of a football game between Fourth Marine Regiment teams in 1936. A year later, Japan was at China's throat, Japanese aircraft ’’accidentally ” sank the Panay, and it seemed that the Fourth might be the first to fight.
In January 1932, Japanese naval forces had used the International Settlement as a base for military operations against Chapei, a suburb of Shanghai separated from the U. S. sector only by narrow, malodorous Soochow creek. The Marines, by setting up strong points and emplacements along Soochow creek and by their no-nonsense demeanor, reestablished and reinforced the neutrality of the International Settlement.
By the summer of 37, the troubles of 32 were receding from memory as Japanese naval units stood at parade rest with Dutch and Scottish units. Colonel Charles F. B. Price presented pistol trophies and welcomed mufti-clad Admiral Harry Yarne/l ashore. And then there were the parades, such as the one on the race course for Admiral Yamell, or the one, led by four Sikh police officers, which marched through downtoum Shanghai.
Suddenly, there was new trouble in the wind and Admiral Yarnell, CinC, Pacific Fleet, wanted his Marines ready. The mortarmen were a credit to the Corps, but who wants to pitch pup tents while laughing Limeys look on? And, while machine guns, left, might pass inspection, their gun crews often seemed on the verge of falling asleep on each other’s knees while waiting for the inspecting party.
89
In July 193 7, confronted by a rising tide of Chinese nationalism and a hostile new leader, Chiang Kai-Shek, Japan attacked China. Once again, the Fourth Marines had an unwanted ringside seat as Japanese bombs demolished crowded trams and cars, and as Japanese infantrymen ended the heroics of the "Doomed Battalion ’’ in the rubble of the Bank of China Godown.
The bitter fighting continued on into 1938, with off-duty Marines keeping to themselves in sandbag-buttressed barracks or venturing out in riot control formations. And then it was over. Admiral Thomas C. Hart decorated those who had displayed heroism under fire. A semblance of normality returned for the Marines but, as a grim Colonel Price left in November 1938, it was the Japanese whose word was law in China's largest city.
This pictorial is the result of efforts by Professor Robert M. Leventhal. Unless otherwise credited, the photographs on these pages were taken by the late Sergeant Major Albert C. Marts, U. S. Marine Corps, who served with the Fourth Marine Regiment in China during the 1920s and 1930s. The Marts photographs are published through the courtesy of Mrs. Michelle Reed.