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20 Sequels to the Shanghai Incident It was surely inevitable that there would be numerous postmortems, explanations, and apologies by which the various parties at Shanghai would attempt to exonerate themselves, sometimes at the expense of others . As we have seen, the Chinese protested that those responsible for the International Settlement were allowing the Japanese to use the settlement as a base of operations against China, while the Japanese insisted that they were protecting the settlement against attack. The foreign consuls apparently hoped to protect their nationals by protesting against the actions of both the Chinese and the Japanese. In an interesting statement to the British-owned North China Daily News that was probably designed to clear the Municipal Council, Stirling Fessenden, the secretary-general of the council, pointed out that in the past the council had adhered to the principle that the International Settlement was neutral and had avoided involving the settlement in complications between the powers. In the light of the incident, however, Fessenden doubted whether the settlement could be regarded as a neutral area. If the settlement had been neutralized by the powers with interests in the area, then it was the duty of those powers, not of the Municipal Council, to prevent infraction of the neutrality by the armed forces of any third country. Perhaps for the first time, Fessenden revealed in public that months before the outbreak on 28 January the commanders of the foreign powers had divided the settlement into sectors ; the northern sector, where numerous Japanese residents and interests were located, was assigned to the Japanese. Fessenden denied that the Municipal Council was responsible for assigning particular sectors to the different nationalities. Nor in his opinion should the council or the foreign commanders, rather than the Japanese, be held accountable for any Japanese action beyond the defensive measures contemplated in the International Defense Scheme. Fessenden failed to note that among the signatories of the Defense Scheme were the chairman of the Municipal Council and the heads of the settlement police and the volunteers.1 Choy Jun Ke, the financial commissioner for Greater (Chinese) Shanghai, took quite a contrary position in conversation with Nelson Johnson. After studying the Shanghai Defense Scheme, Choy had concluded that the foreign powers “were not without responsibility,” since they had assigned Chinese territory between North Szechwan Road and the Shanghai-Woosung railway to the Japanese, thus providing the Japanese with a “legal excuse” to invade Chinese territory. Johnson responded that he knew nothing of the Defense Scheme, that he could not understand how any power could authorize the Japanese to occupy Chinese territory, and that responsibility for occupying Chinese territory should lie with the powers taking such action. Johnson claimed that American forces in Shanghai were there solely for the protection of American lives and property against “mob riots.” Should Chinese forces attack Americans, then, according to John- Sequels to the Shanghai Incident / 313 son, it would be the duty of American forces to evacuate the Americans to a point of safety. Choy recognized Johnson’s position, but he persisted that the Chinese people held the foreign powers responsible for attacks by the Japanese “using the International Settlement as a base of operations.”2 To Johnson’s deep concern, Lieutenant Colonel Walter S. Drysdale, the American military attaché, discovered that there had indeed been a Defense Scheme prior to the outbreak on 28 January that might provide legal cover for the Japanese action that evening. The most troubling point in the plan was the provision for the defense perimeter to extend beyond the International Settlement into Chinese territory in two areas, one west of the settlement, which had been occupied by the British, and the other the salient along North Szechwan Road and bordering the Woosung railway, where the Chinese and Japanese had clashed. The delicate question was whether the Japanese had thus sought to carry out a plan of which the Americans were a party. When Drysdale asked Colonel Hooker about the matter, the Marine commander responded that his men had been assigned a sector of the settlement and that the British and the Japanese had moved beyond the settlement into Chinese territory on their own initiative. Hooker claimed that he could not authorize movements by either the British or the Japanese into Chinese territory. When Drysdale questioned Brigadier Fleming, the chairman of the Defense Committee and commander of British forces ashore, Fleming responded that the Japanese had been authorized to hold the line of the railway, a...

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