Shanghai’s “Bloody Saturday” #2 – August 14, 1937 – Evacuations

Saturday, August 14, 1937 – that summer Shanghai was expecting to be hit by a typhoon of ‘violent intensity’. The typhoon passed, but what did strike Shanghai was a man-made typhoon of bombs and shrapnel that brought aerial death and destruction such as no city had ever seen before. The clock outside the Cathay Hotel stopped at 4.27 p.m. precisely as the first bombs landed on the junction of the Nanking Road and the Bund; the second wave of explosions struck the dense crowds outside the Great World amusement centre in the French Concession. Bloody Saturday reconstructs the events of that dreadful day from eyewitness accounts. Read my Penguin Special on the events of that day – amazon.co.uk or amazon.com

In the wake of Bloody Saturday although the order to evacuate all foreign nationals from the Settlement and Frenchtown was never formally given many did leave on ships for Hong Kong as well as further afield, to Australia and other destinations. Though many of the husbands, in the police, fire service, ambulances and Shanghai Volunteer Corps, had to stay…