Thirty-two-year-old Colonel Xie Jinyuan was a graduate of China’s Whampoa Military Academy (later renamed the Central Military Academy), and the men of his battalion were some of the best troops the Chinese military had to offer. Kitted out with top-of-the-line German helmets, rifles, and other gear, these guys had been hand-trained by General Alexander von Falkenhausen, an awesome-looking old German military commander who had fought against the British in World War I and had earned his country’s highest award for military bravery. Xie knew he was outnumbered and outgunned and had no hope of reinforcement, resupply, or survival. But he didn’t even flinch—he went right to work, preparing to give the Japanese the fight of their lives. He ordered his men to clear out the areas around the warehouse so they’d have open lines of fire. He looted surrounding warehouses and shops for food, ammo, and medical supplies. He rigged nearby buildings with explosives so he could blow them up if the Japanese tried to set up snipers or machine guns inside them. He had his men cut holes in the ten-foot-thick walls of the warehouse so they could shoot through them while staying behind cover. Sure, this was an unwinnable battle, but Xie Jinyuan and his soldiers were determined to show the world that China wasn’t going down without a fight.
The Japanese arrived on the morning of October 27. The attack began at dawn.
The job of kicking down the warehouse fell to the soldiers of Japan’s elite Third Division, who rolled up with mortars (potato-gun-looking tubes used to launch bombs short distances), machine guns, and armored cars. As the men of the Third Division approached the warehouse, they were greeted by a high five of Chinese bullets all up in their grills. Colonel Xie’s troops were battle-hardened warriors, and they had spent the past three months defending a train station in the northern part of town. That battle had reduced their forces from 800 to 414, but the soldiers who remained were excellent marksmen and weren’t about to freak out just because the Japanese were raking their warehouse with a nonstop stream of machine-gun bullets and other deadly objects.
The battle lasted most of the day, with the Japanese attacking many times. Colonel Xie ran up and down, screaming for his men to hold the line. At one point he even had to run downstairs with a bucket of water and a rifle because a couple of Japanese dudes broke into the warehouse and tried to set a fire in the room where Xie kept some of his bullets and fuel (which would have been pretty bad for him).
The Japanese attack halted that night, and Xie used the break to have his men rebuild the defenses and move their guns to different hiding spots. He even snuck a couple of his wounded men across the bridge to the British side so they could get medical attention.
The next morning, Xie looked out the window and saw an interesting sight—all along the British side of the river were people standing and watching the fight. British soldiers, international journalists, and even Chinese residents of Shanghai who had escaped to safety in the International Settlement were lined up to watch and cheer on the brave defenders of Sihang Warehouse.
One of the people lining the banks of the river was a girl named Yang Huimin. She watched in awe as the defenders spent yet another day fighting off nonstop attacks from the Japanese, shooting apart attempts to storm the building and raining down grenades and mortar fire on Japanese tanks that tried to roll up on the structure.
For Yang, only one thing was missing: The Chinese defenders didn’t have a flag over their building. So that night, when the fighting stopped, she wrapped a Chinese Nationalist flag around herself, swam across the Suzhou River, and snuck into the building. By the next morning, Yang had already escaped back to the British side of the river, and the Japanese woke up to a giant Chinese flag staring them in the face. This made them even crankier.
For an incredible four days, the brave warriors of Sihang Warehouse held out against pretty much everything the Japanese Third Division had to offer. The 414 men (known to the international press as “the Eight Hundred Heroes” because Xie lied about how many guys he had with him) fought day and night, with no break from the constant Japanese onslaught. When the Japanese turned off the building’s running water, the Chinese collected their pee in big gross buckets and used that to put out fires. When the Japanese put mortars and machine guns on opposing roofs, Xie blew them up with accurate mortar fire. When the Japanese drove tanks up to the front door of the warehouse, guys laid their lives on the line to attack them with hand grenades. When enemy teams broke into the lower floors of the structure, Chinese troops met them head-on with bayonets and face punches until the Japanese got out. For seventy-two seemingly endless hours, the Eight Hundred Heroes struggled for their lives, firing so many bullets that the barrels of their guns turned orange from the heat.
Xie had been ordered to defend to the death, but on November 1 his commanders told him to go—the city was evacuated and the mission was complete. So in the very late hours of the day, Xie had his men make a break for the river, leaving behind a few badly wounded soldiers to lay down covering fire with heavy machine guns. Xie and the 376 survivors of the battle reached the British side, where they would end up being confined for the next three years. For the first heroes of World War II, the war was over before it had really gotten started.
The Eight Hundred Heroes became superstars overnight. Despite the defeat at Shanghai and the destruction of the main Chinese military, the tale of Colonel Xie and his brave men inspired the Chinese people to carry on the battle and resist the Japanese takeover in any way they could.
HIROMICHI SHINOHARA
