1937 Shanghai to Nanjing: Civilian Flight and the Nanjing Massacre

This 1937 newsreel captured Shanghai and Nanjing as the guns closed in the darkest days, when civilians were displaced and left at the mercy of others, preserving the struggle of ordinary people to survive before the massacre,

and reminding us that the Japanese invaders were far more ruthless than imagined.

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The footage takes us to November 1937. Shanghai has fallen, and more than 300,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians have died.

More than half the buildings have been reduced to rubble by the war.

At this moment, Japanese soldiers on tall horses ride around arrogantly, parading and swaggering like victors.

The helpless people mechanically wave the Japanese flag.

In the distance, civilians cautiously peek out and secretly watch it all, humiliation written in their eyes.

Yet there are also heroes. Printing worker Sun Jinghao bravely steps forward, and assassinates Japanese commander Iwane Matsui.

Though his attempt fails and he dies a hero, he deals a heavy blow to the invaders' arrogance, and proves to everyone that the Chinese spirit has never been extinguished.

The Japanese army keeps advancing. After occupying Shanghai, their main force turns its guns toward Nanjing.

The Central China Area Army and Navy join forces and advance on three fronts, swiftly capturing Nanjing.

The sprawling Jiangnan countryside is hit first, the first place crushed by the flames of war.

With the enemy at their gates, civilians between the two cities flee west with their families, carrying what little they have left and holding their children, trudging along muddy roads, daring not to stop for a moment.

As the Japanese army advanced, it entered village after village, and the first thing they did was loot.

Cattle painstakingly raised by farmers were led away, and sheep were lifted from their pens and carried off on soldiers' shoulders.

All the grain and valuables in the homes that could be taken were ransacked.

The soldiers in the footage even had smiles on their faces, as if this were not an invasion, but a harvest.

An even grimmer scene: unarmed civilians were driven from their homes and fields, herded together in an open area, surrounded on all sides by soldiers with loaded guns.

No one knew what awaited them. Historical records show that the Japanese army committed widespread looting and atrocities along its advance toward Nanjing.

When they captured Suzhou, the Japanese army set up mass killing sites, and when they captured Wuxi, two Japanese officers even launched a beheading contest, agreeing that whoever first beheaded one hundred Chinese people would win.

In just over a month, the Japanese army had killed more than 100,000 civilians across southern Jiangsu.

At the same time, within the city of Nanjing, the Japanese army ordered indiscriminate bombing.

Hospitals, schools, residential areas, and everything else became Japanese targets.

Thick smoke billowed across the city, as civilians fled for their lives.

Some prominent figures and high- ranking officials sensed danger in the air, and rushed to flee.

But many more ordinary people still clung to hope, and chose not to leave.

The scene shifts to the banks of the Yangtze in Nanjing, after Shanghai fell.

A huge number of civilians boarded small private boats and rushed toward passenger ships anchored in the river.

With the Japanese army blockading the city on three sides, all rail and road routes were cut off, leaving only the waterway as a possible escape route.

A single boat ticket could cost its weight in gold, enough to break a family’s back.

Some sold their family’s belongings to buy a ticket, yet still couldn’t get onto passenger ships that were already full.

Even more infuriating, to show his resolve to defend Nanjing to the last, Tang Shengzhi, commander of the Nanjing Garrison, had the large ferries at Xiaguan moved away and confiscated civilian ferries, blockading the route from Nanjing to the north bank of the Yangtze.

This decision effectively cut off the military and civilians’ last means of escape.

Not long after this footage was filmed, Nanjing fell on December 13, 1937, followed by the Nanjing Massacre, which shocked the world, in which 300,000 compatriots perished.

Looking back at these scenes of Japanese troops on the march, they were never isolated incidents, but the prelude to the same catastrophe.

From Shanghai all the way to Nanjing, looting and pillaging, the invaders’ atrocities escalated step by step, as they sank deeper and deeper into the abyss.