Life under Japanese occupation: Hongkew ghetto

While the United States battles Japan in the Pacific theater of the war, Fred and Semmy settle into their life in Shanghai. Although their circumstances are considerably more modest than they had been in Berlin, they are happy to be safe. They manage to stay afloat by selling some of the valuables they were able to bring with them, and Semmy pursues various business ventures to bring in income, including importing buttons from Japan.

Their situation changes after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The Japanese military launches an offensive on Shanghai and manages to gain control of the harbor and the International Settlement. Japan’s alliance with Axis powers Germany and Italy creates an uncertain situation for Jewish refugees in Shanghai.

On February 18, 1943, at the urging of its Nazi allies and echoing the U.S. policy of internment of Japanese Americans, Japan issues the “Proclamation Concerning Restriction of Residence and Business of Stateless Refugees.” This orders all stateless refugees in Shanghai–most of whom are Jewish–to move to a designated area. Some 23,000 refugees move into an area officially known as the “Restricted Sector for Stateless Refugees” that covers about one square mile in Hongkew, a neighborhood of Shanghai. They share this space with approximately 100,000 Chinese residents already living in that area.

While their Chinese neighbors may come and go freely, refugees’ movement in and out of Hongkew is restricted, cutting off their access to jobs and income. Living conditions for refugees in Hongkew are poor: makeshift housing is densely overcrowded with insufficient heating and sanitation; access to medical care is limited; and many refugees suffer from poor nutrition, all of which causes disease and hunger.

Soup kitchens operating with funding from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee continue to provide three daily meals to refugees until financial transfers to enemy countries are restricted under the Trading with the Enemy Act. These restrictions cut off this essential source of support to refugees in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. Thereafter, meal rations for refugees are cut down to only one meal per day.

They did not need to establish any fences or walls to keep us prisoners, because it was very simple to recognize that every Caucasian leaving the area was a refugee. (The Chinese in the area could come and go as they pleased.) All the Japanese had to do was to place signs at the intersections leading out of the Designated Area with the words: “Stateless Refugees Are Prohibited to Pass Here Without Permission.” It was a rather fiendish scheme on the part of the Japanese that they did not put us in a camp. They simply restricted our freedom, our liberty, and our mobility, without assuming responsibility for feeding or clothing us, or for providing us with medical care. We were on our own.