893.20/629: Telegram
The Consul General in Shanghai (Gauss) to the Secretary of State
[Received October 4—9 a.m.]
805. It is an open secret here that American aviators with experience in handling long distance transport planes and heavy bombers have repeatedly been approached from the Chinese side with offers of 25,000 United States dollars to fly over Tokyo at a safe height whence bombs would be released by Chinese accompanying them. In this connection, refer to the statement of Martin81 submitted in my No. 779 of September 29, 1 p.m.82 While the Chinese are making much of Japanese bombing raids in China, and I am in full accord with the protests made at Tokyo, I am convinced that the Chinese have been and are ready to carry on equally inhumane operations over Japan if they can induce foreign pilots to take their bombing planes over that country. There are no Chinese aviators capable of piloting such planes over Japan, but foreign airmen may be expected to be recruited for that purpose. Experienced airmen tell me the conduct of recent Chinese air raids over Shanghai give every indication that they are not being conducted by Chinese aviators but by more experienced pilots. A Russian pilot was found in one plane shot down over the Japanese occupied area at Shanghai. In conducting the raids over Shanghai the Chinese planes usually approach over the neutral foreign areas and imperil the safety of foreign and Chinese noncombatants not only from the Japanese antiaircraft fire which they draw but from a possible duplication [of] the sequence of what is known as [Page 579] bloody Saturday August 14th, if one of the bomb-laden Chinese planes should be hit and crash or drop its bombs in the closely populated neutral areas. I believe it is an honest statement that the Chinese raiders in approaching over the neutral areas are taking advantage of “shelter” of such areas since Japanese fire must be more carefully directed in that direction to avoid incidents involving the safety of foreign lives.
- 2.
- Japanese naval bombing planes also reconnoitering over the foreign areas at times but there is at least some noticeable indication of a disposition so far as possible to avoid such areas. The Japanese were willing at one time to undertake not to fly naval bombing planes over the neutral foreign area provided as [that?] similar undertaking was forthcoming from the Chinese side which declined to give it and asserted its “air sovereignty” over the areas.
- 3.
- It is rather an anomalous situation, it is true, which finds a so-called neutral area protected by foreign troops and warships in the center of a field of major hostilities, but with no declaration by either side of war or of the existence of a state of war, I believe that we may justify the effort to exclude hostilities in and over this area notwithstanding China’s protest against the use of a part of the Settlement by the Japanese as a military base and notwithstanding the Chinese claim to “air sovereignty” over the foreign areas. This is what I had in mind particularly in paragraph 4 of my No. 762, of September 25, 4 p.m., in which I emphasized the importance of having both sides respect the so-called neutral areas south of the Soochow Creek protected by foreign forces. While the Chinese may complain of the use of the Settlement by the Japanese as a militarized base, it is a fact that the right wing of the Chinese forces rests on and is against the Japanese by [sic] the so-called neutral foreign area, and if an examination is made of the map of the foreign defense lines at Shanghai it will be observed that the portion of “B” sector in West Hongkew, north of the Soochow Creek, now held by the British troops, effectually prevents the Japanese from driving the Chinese out of Chapei and out of Chinese territory between the railway and Soochow Creek west of the north station.
- 4.
- I share the view held by a number of disinterested foreign observers that China has deliberately made Shanghai the main theater of her war of resistance against Japanese aggression hoping thus to focus world attention on China through Shanghai and to bring about foreign intervention or involve foreign powers to the disadvantage of Japan.
Repeated to Nanking.