Eastern Starlight ~ A British Girl's Memoir of China in the 1930s: Volume 2

By Jean Elder with Reg Mitchell

Set against the backdrop of Japan's seizure of China's entire northeast, Eastern Starlight, a British Girl's Memoir of China in the 1930s is the second of a trilogy by Jean Elder, born in Hwangkutun village near Mukden, Fengtien Province, Manchuria, in 1912, year of the fall of the last Manchu Dynasty. The story continues as Jean and her mother survive the fearsome night assault on Mukden by the Imperial Japanese Army in September 1931, but are forced by the invaders to leave Manchuria.

Jean accepts her brother Jim's offer to settle in Peking, intellectual crossroads and cultural oasis of the Orient, safe from China's expanding civil war and continuing clashes with the Japanese in Jehol. We meet her charismatic friends in L'Hotel de Pekin--Italian Count Galeazzo Ciano and his wife, Edda, daughter of Mussolini; Julius Barr, famed American aviator; the playwright George Bernard Shaw; William Henry Donald, referred to by historians as Donald of China; and the acclaimed March of Time photographer "Newsreel" Wong--and become a part of her intriguing social life with them.

Chang Hsiao Liang (the Young Marshal), close to Jean and the Elder family, must take a self-imposed year-long exile from China to save face, after which he will be forgiven for the loss of Manchuria. Jim departs with the Marshal for Europe, and during her own leave of absence, Jean shares with us her straight-from-the-heart impressions of America during the Depression and her fascinating life at sea aboard the great liners of the era including Olympic, sister ship of the Titanic. She must defy cannon-firing brigands and snipers along the Yangtze River in order to reunite with Jim in Hupei Province, where the Marshal has reestablished command of his troops.

Jean provides an unvarnished insight into the "anything goes" world of China in the 1930s including her harrowing escape in the dark from a pirate vessel while aboard a passenger steamer in the Yellow Sea. In Hankow, she is a frequent guest of the US Navy aboard USS Luzon (PR-7) and USS Tutuila (PR-4) during the swashbuckling days of inshore gunboat diplomacy in scenes much like those portrayed in the movie, Sand Pebbles. After a whirlwind courtship, she marries the love of her life, US Vice Consul Reginald Mitchell.

This is the story of a British girl who grew up in China in the hands of an Amah with the good fortune of gaining dual perspectives of life, Chinese and Western, forever loyal to family and friends, compassionate toward others, true to her values, and humble as a person.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9781685269159

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

The Eastern Starlight Trilogy

Author's Notes

Prologue: Mukden, Liaotung Province, Manchuria, Northeast China, 1931

The Fall of Manchuria

Chapter 1: Samurai Swords Unsheathed; Departure from Dairen

Chapter 2: Sparrows in Flight; A New Beginning

Chapter 3: The Legation Quarter; Twenty and Young at Heart

The Exile and the Return

Chapter 4: Beyond the War Junks; Blue Horizons Out of Shanghai

Chapter 5: In Search of a Dream; Silver Streamliners and White Stars

Chapter 6: The Letter of Offer; SS Conte Rosso to China at War

Courtship and Marriage

Chapter 7: Perils along Inland Waterways; Wuhan Up the Yangtze

Chapter 8: Hankow after Dark; Gunboat Diplomacy and Dinner Parties

Chapter 9: China, the Last Farewell; Look Back and Pray for the Dragon

After Words

Glossary of Terminology

Acknowledgments

About the Author

About the Co-Author

Endnotes

cover.jpg

Eastern Starlight ~ A British Girl's Memoir of China in the 1930s

Volume 2

Jean Elder with Reg Mitchell

ISBN 978-1-68526-914-2 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-68526-916-6 (Hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-68526-915-9 (Digital)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021921383

Copyright © 2023 Reg Mitchell

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books

11661 Hwy 707

Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

www.covenantbooks.com

The Eastern Starlight Trilogy

Eastern Starlight: A British Girl's Memoir of Warlord China

Eastern Starlight: A British Girl's Memoir of China in the 1930s

Eastern Starlight: A British Girl's Memoir as the Wartime Wife of a Diplomat (2024)

Author's Notes

Eastern Starlight: A British Girl's Memoir of China in the 1930s is the second book of a trilogy, the first two of which are about my China years. The third is about my life as the wife of a US diplomat, by his side representing American interests abroad prior to and during WWII. The timeline of all three occurs from the fall of the last Manchu dynasty in 1912, year of my birth in China, to my arrival back in the States in 1945.

In this second book, I describe my experiences being exiled by the Japanese from my home in Mukden following Japan's seizure of Manchuria—making a new life in Peking, intellectual crossroads of the Orient; world travel, including a firsthand view of America during the Depression; returning to China to settle in Hankow in the middle of China's civil war; my whirlwind courtship with an American Foreign Service Officer stationed at the US Consulate General in Hankow; our close friendships with the naval officers aboard the gunboats of the Yangtze River Patrol (YANGPAT); and our final few months in China following our marriage in Hankow.

My purpose in writing Eastern Starlight was not to try to see the past through a different lens. Instead, I wanted to acknowledge what China generously offered me and how I reacted to it, remember those who were there for me along the way, and, most of all, honor the accomplishments of my family. For those reasons, it was important to me that the narrative, particularly one set in early twentieth-century China, be backed up by scholarly research, be true to the story, be humble in the telling of it, and be accurate with facts.

Since my China years occurred well before the present Chinese government came to power in 1949, references made to names of cities in China as well as names of Chinese persons use the old and no-longer-in-use Wade-Giles method of spelling and not the Pinyin method or other contemporary names as changed by the Chinese government established after 1949. Examples include (WG) Tientsin / (P) Tianjin, (WG) Yangtze River / (P) Changjiang River, (WG) Mukden / (P) Shenyang, and (WG) Peking / (P) Beijing. Furthermore, the names of cities are spelled as they would have been in the specific year that I've made reference to them in the story (i.e., Petrograd, Russia, in 1916). The terms the Chinese people or the Chinese are used herein to refer collectively to all who comprise the population of China and are Chinese by ancestry and by birth regardless of religion, ethnicity, or dialect spoken.

Although Chang and Chiang sound and appear in print to be closely similar, the two names as mentioned in this book refer to two entirely different and nonrelated Chinese leaders. Chiang is the family name of the Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek. Chang is the family name of Marshal Chang Tso-lin, also known as Old Marshal, and his eldest son, Chang Hsiao Liang, also known as Young Marshal. Over the years, the Young Marshal changed his name to Chang Hsüeh-liang and eventually to Peter Chang.

Prologue

Mukden, Liaotung Province, Manchuria, Northeast China, 1931

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

—Confucius

China's civil war against the Red Army had distracted Chiang Kai-shek from keeping a close eye on the rapid deterioration of relations with the Japanese in Manchuria beginning in the spring of 1931. By early September, rogue elements of Japanese Army in Mukden were poised to create an incident that would be an excuse to take matters in their own hands to attack and take possession of China's northeast known as Manchuria. The US and Britain refused to take sides, and the League of Nations, of which Japan is a member, was powerless to act.

The story continues during the early hours of September 19, l931, my nineteenth birthday, with Mukden under assault, siege gun shells raining from the sky, and China suddenly thrust into a one-sided war that it was unprepared to fight.

Sheltered in our townhouse with my mother and our faithful Number One by my side, we are eyewitnesses to the infamous Mukden Incident by Japan's Imperial Kwantung Army. Disobeying the wishes of their emperor, their government, and even their own command in Tokyo, they unleashed the full force of their infantry, armor, and artillery in the dark of night to ensure the utmost shock and awe to a civilian population that had never seen anything like it.

Facing grave danger from this shameful aggression, the three of us were never more united to fight to our last breath to defend each other from harm.

Part 1

The Fall of Manchuria

Chapter 1

Samurai Swords Unsheathed; Departure from Dairen

Mukden Before Dawn; September 19, 1931—That one was close, Number One remarked, crouching down quickly next to my mother and me as the concussion force of an exploding shell shook the walls of our house with a violence. I was fortunate to be with the two bravest persons I've ever known, but we were defenseless against the crazed foreign army attacking Mukden that night. The situation had become desperate with no way out and no guarantee of our safety in surrendering.

In the pitch-black darkness, the enemy was invisible, but the artillery bombardment, the screaming in the streets, the clanking of tank treads, and the sporadic sound of automatic weapons gave proof of his terrifying presence. I held back my own fear by taking deep, slow breaths and gripping my fists tight, but nothing could suppress the rush of adrenaline, the sick feeling in my stomach, or my heart pounding at an alarming rate. Amah couldn't teach me to be unafraid when all else failed, but I learned from her as a child how to act unafraid and to let it show on my face.

The time had come to be British, as my father, God rest his soul, would have expected of me. If I had no choice but to stand and fight, those words were my real chain mail armor to rely on, not the might of our monarchy on the other side of the world. China had existed in a perpetual state of war long before the Japanese started this one a few hours ago.

Courage in ourselves and faith in God are available to all of us, but in this country, it was a good idea never to doubt it and to keep both within arm's reach. Convinced that we were facing a brutal foe who gave no quarter in battle nor expected one in return, I wouldn't have hesitated to give my life to save the other two by my side. In these early hours of my nineteenth birthday, as surreal a moment as any young girl could imagine in a lifetime, I was never prouder of that decision or of the kind of resolve that it took to make it.

I was there at the window of our stairway when the morning sun made its merciful appearance. The chattering voices belonged to a contingent of Japanese soldiers busy dragging away dead bodies caught in the gunfire or trampled to death, some of them on the sidewalk in front of our townhouse at 84 Ehr Ching Loo. Uniformed troops, however, were the lesser of two evils, the greater being looters who typically appeared in the aftermath of the carnage of all wars for their share of the spoils, not the least of which included young girls.

With their mission accomplished, the conquering Kwantung Infantry, under the command of rogue IJA officers, commenced a wild and jubilant celebration of their victorious Invasion of Mukden, as history would record it. For the next few hours, I watched as mounted cavalry clopped past our house followed by trucks transporting troops firing their rifles in the air, shouting, Banzai, at the top of their lungs. Mukden and the metropolitan region were now under Japanese military rule.

As expected, the attackers were careful to spare the sacred area of Qing tombs, the Young Marshal's Peiling Palace, and foreign Consulate General facilities. The loss of life among the Chinese, however, was considerable according to friends of our family, but the true numbers were downplayed by Japanese propaganda as negligible.

The Mukden radio station, back on the air almost immediately and under Japanese censorship, announced brazenly, Japan has established law and order by disciplined means, and stability has been restored. When phone lines and power were back on line, our first order of business was to get word to my brother, Jim, in Peking, that we were safe. Our Consul General, as well as numerous Chinese and foreign friends, including Japanese officials of their conglomerate, Mantetsu, were all concerned about our family's safety and wanted verification of that by phone calls to us for most of the day.

On Sunday, the 20th, British Vice Consul Andrew Lynch sent a telegram to our Minister in Peking stating:

"This morning Mr. Sugden, the British Works Manager of the Peking-Mukden Railway shops, endeavored to reach his office in his car driven by a Chinese chauffeur and draped with the British flag. The car was stopped, the chauffeur beaten, and the British flag spat upon. A city of some 400,000 people changed from Chinese to Japanese hands literally overnight."¹

The business and financial pulse of Mukden didn't even miss a heartbeat beginning at 9:00 a.m. on Monday, the 21st, when civil service employees reported back to work. By then, bulldozers and dump trucks were everywhere to be seen. The ingenious Japanese, assisted by Chinese labor, were already well along in clearing up the rubble and commencing the effort to repair damaged buildings and construct new ones. Public services resumed, and commerce flourished as if nothing had happened. In the weeks to come, Japanese troops consolidated their gains by seizing the industrial heartland of China, their strategic objective.

The assault had been made by a mere six thousand soldiers, a regiment of the Second Japanese Division, against minimal resistance. Historians would later refer to this act of war against China as The Mukden Incident, precursor of WWII in the Pacific. The Kwantung Army, under General Honjo Shigeru, had been poised at the ready to settle the Manchurian problem if their military headquarters in Tokyo failed to act. Most shocking of all, Shigeru and his local commanders were acting independently of the wishes of their nation's own Prime Minister, Wakatsuki Reijirō, as well as Emperor Hirohito, thus rendering Japan's Foreign Office impotent in matters pertaining to China.²

Those responsible for orchestrating the ignominious act were Colonel Kanji Ishihara and Lieutenant Colonel Seishirō Itagaki.³ The attack had been initiated three days before the British were to suspend the gold standard, critical to the Japanese-owned Bank of China, the Central Bank of Manchuria that underpinned Mantetsu. The Japanese had learned the lesson that starting wars on weekends worked to their advantage in catching their enemies off guard.

Extensive preparations had proven to be one of the key elements in the surprise attack on Mukden including the prepositioning of several 9.5-inch siege guns brought up on South Manchurian Railway (SMR) flat cars from Port Arthur. Among the major military targets to come under fire was the Young Marshal's East Pagoda Airdrome including the runways and as many aircraft as possible. Other objectives were to isolate and render ineffective elements of the Young Marshal's rearguard army in the Mukden area and to deny Chinese troops access to the Marshal's weapons arsenal nearby.

The Japanese mission was easily accomplished since Chiang Kai-shek's intent all along was not to contest Manchuria in the event of Japanese aggression. The real hero was the Young Marshal's commander in Heilongjiang Province, General Ma, who showed incredible courage in resisting the Kwantung Army in direct violation of Chiang Hsiao Liang's stand-down order as directed by Chiang Kai-shek.

Mother had dismissed the Old Marshal's death in 1928 as the work of deranged assassins, albeit members of the Japanese military. But by any definition, including hers, the shelling of Mukden followed by the conquest of Manchuria could only be defined as a declaration of war against China by Imperial Japan, a member of the League of Nations and still an ally of Britain and the US.

Britain won't sit back and do nothing, my mother told me, neither will the Americans. But she was wrong on both counts.

It's a fait accompli for Japan, I replied, adding, short of military action against Japan, something that the West is in no position to carry out given Japan's military capability, there'll be nothing more that verbal condemnation, if that. Then it's back to considering Japan as an ally.

Grim assessment, Jeannie, is it not? she remarked.

An honest one in political terms, Mother, I took no satisfaction in answering.

The Shameful Finger-Pointing—Chiang Kai-shek remained preoccupied with his own immediate agenda—his image. Avoiding blame for disastrous political and military errors always influenced his thinking, and to that end, the Young Marshal served as a convenient piñata to point the finger at for the loss of China's three northeastern provinces.

The net effect of Chiang's don't fight back orders had resulted in Manchuria being sacrificed and the Young Marshal crippled in a political sense, naturally with loss of face. By contrast, after the smoke cleared, Chiang Kai-shek looked even more like China's steady hand to contest the Reds under Mao and by being anti-Communist garnish the support and blessing of the West. As to be expected, the new rulers of Manchuria began a systematic process of replacing former government officials loyal to the Young Marshal with their own Chinese cronies to the chagrin of China and the League of Nations.

To provide an all-important last straw incident to cite as the cause for military action, the Japanese created one of their own as the reason why the Kwantung Army had launched the full-scale assault on Mukden that they had been planning for months. Japanese soldiers dressed as Chang Hsiao Liang's troops detonated a small explosive device that damaged less than three feet of SMR rail track. Repairs were made in time for use by an arriving train within a few hours as this almost laughable amateurish scenario played out.

As one would expect in the aftermath, Tokyo busied itself issuing a deluge of propaganda using the attack on Mantetsu property to justify its actions to the League of Nations and to the US. The Peking and Tientsin Times published a photo showing the damaged track and some soldiers in the background the Japanese claimed were Chinese, but the idea that the Young Marshal would have ordered such an act defied all reasonable credulity.

Remarkable, my brother, Jim, observed, that people who pride themselves in their creativity, ingenuity, and intelligence would have conceived of such a ‘keystone cops' type of easily disproven incident.

Our idea of ‘shameful' is not the same as theirs, I replied.

No doubt about it, Jean, Jim agreed. The satirical image of short-statured Japanese troops dressed in ill-fitting Chinese uniforms barking out orders in their own language according to numerous eyewitnesses among the local population, will go down as one of history's crudest and perhaps most deplorable attempts at deception.

Where do the Great Powers stand on this act of war by a League of Nations member? I asked.

The usual impotence, he answered, adding, sanctions by the League are not deemed enforceable without cooperation of the US, not a League member and mired in its own economic crisis deep in the Depression.

To my utter shock, British public opinion back home tended to be lenient and even sympathetic toward Japan, disapproving of Tokyo's act of naked aggression but accepting the reasons for their actions. Our government had its own problems to deal with rather than worry about China. Britain's Labour Party had suffered a disastrous defeat, and Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald was arousing mistrust with his lack of policies and conviction. The timing had been perfect for Japan to make its move particularly with the Young Marshal hospitalized.

Japan is a bulwark against both Mao and Stalin, our European friends claimed, just as they would later claim with the same tortured logic that Germany was a bulwark against Stalin and therefore our friend. But Japanese action violated the Nine Power Act of 1922 and the Kellogg Briand Pact of 1928, both of which involved the US on the signature lines, and by not standing up to Japan, Chiang Kai-shek now had a second enemy to deal with.

Neither our obligation to China nor our own national interest nor our dignity requires us to go to war over questions that arise about Japan's aggression in Manchuria, declared the isolationist US President Herbert Hoover, sweeping aside the matter as if it didn't exist.

Western governments, ours in London included, are well informed of the situation here in China by reports being provided by their local diplomats, according to Jim, and yet Japan could expect nothing more severe that a scolding for its seizure of a fourth of China.

The so-called Mukden Incident provided the first test of the collective resolve of democracies to defend their interests, and the concept proved a failure. The cutting edge of Japan's military juggernaut, their Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, had been exposed for the world to see, leaving little doubt that the Japanese government had no leverage over its own military command. Events in Manchuria couldn't be helped, according to the Japanese press.

By now, my mother had lost faith in the new face of Japan, even if not her close Japanese friends. In this aptly named year of the sheep, 1931, China had no choice but to deal with the situation in her own way, and to China's leader, that meant doing nothing that would dislodge him from power.

Mukden Under Occupation—Things calmed down around us as if by mutual consent between the local population and Japanese troops. The Japanese patrols were intensified, and the curfew more strictly enforced, but other than Chiang's pictures and Nationalist flags having been removed, the press remained free, businesses operated without interference, and human rights were maintained. I wasn't aware of Japanese mistreatment of Chinese people or foreigners. The poor would always be poor, and the wealthy would always prosper. That disparity would be a constant. But in terms of the geopolitical landscape, Japan could count on a source of food and raw materials to support the economy of its home islands for the foreseeable future.

I adopted our little neighborhood as my own and made the most of my contacts with local merchants and their families in a diversity of cultures side by side with the Chinese.

Mother seems to be getting over her melancholy, my sister, Agnes, mentioned to me.

Much of it because of the comfort you give to her, Ag, I replied.

You as well, Jean, but in Mother's heart, I do believe she would love to have a home of her own someday in Coatbridge, Scotland, near her sister, our dear Aunt Aggie.

Our Japanese Mantetsu civilian friends continued to treat us as they always had in the past—with cordiality, respect, and friendship. In reality, however, Mother and I were now living in what only could be called occupied China in financial peril without Father's Will. To cast their seizure of the northeast in a different light, Japan's intent was to create a Chinese puppet state, Manchukuo, under the reinstated former boy emperor, Pu Yi, with a Chinese look to it but entirely owned and controlled by Japan.

Hagihara has invited us to tea, Mother announced on a morning in early October, pleased to be reading me the invitation and adding, I wonder what he'll have to say about his country's militarism?

He won't have anything to say about it, I responded. We'll all be friendly and pretend that it never happened, but he'll know that we're ashamed of Japan just the same.

There's no doubt of that, she replied, still we must go and be sweet.

Of course, Mother. The doctors at the SMMC remain close friends of ours and were not a part of this aggression.

Our relations with the Japanese had always been moving on a different time line in the best-of-all-possible worlds we were living in, one sprinkled with optimism, free of complication, but never free of uncertainty. The Japanese seizure of Manchuria, even if initiated by rogue commanders, erased any question I had of Japan as a freedom-loving ally to the West. In every sense of the word, Japan was about conquest, but I agreed with my mother that the respect we had for our close Japanese civilian friends here in China would always be there.

As Minister Overs had intoned in many a sermon here in Mukden, Friendship is the one constant in life that must never fluctuate. Once again, we mingled with the Japanese doctors we'd known for years, sipped tea together, and smiled and spoke softly in rice-papered rooms where we enjoyed being together as though we had no differences between us. Appearances were extremely important to our hosts. Mother was born to do this sort of thing under these sorts of conditions, and she even knew how to savor the experience. I knew how to hold resentment in check like she did, but I wasn't as good at getting rid of the lasting side effects.

On November 14, China issued a proclamation to the world pledging full support to the sanctity of treaties and urged signatories to the Nine-Power Treaty and Anti-War Pact to fulfill their respective obligations undertaken therein so that peace in the Far East may not be endangered by Japan. This action led to an eventual League of Nations investigation and report on the Mukden Incident. In Washington, Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson was the lone voice with the courage to call for collective action against Japan, but I knew the US government had no intention of getting involved.

The Last Days in Manchuria—Wednesday, November 18, a typical winter day in Mukden arrived with a howling wind, overcast sky, and a temperature of well below zero. Mother and I had been relaxing after breakfast in the warmth of our sitting room by the fire when we were alerted by the sound of our front gate creaking open. As I drew back the curtain, I recognized the tall distinguished-looking man in a heavy black wool long coat, black gloves, and black fedora.

Consul General MacNaughton is here, Mother, I remarked out loud, never taking my eyes off him as he took carefully measured steps toward our door, leaving behind a trail of deep tracks in the snow, even the holes where his signature polished maple cane had been inserted.

Only in the direst of circumstances would His Majesty's Consul General to Mukden and ranking British diplomat in Manchuria be making an unannounced personal visit to someone's home with attaché case in hand. For years, the British way of dealing with matters of the utmost importance having to do with those in her distant colonies and concessions remained the same: One of our government officials would convey the message in person to each family. I had an idea that this day would come, but I assumed we had more time, perhaps until the spring.

Some sort of trouble, no doubt, Mother noted as she scurried to fluff the sofa cushions and arrange curios, but we both knew the reason for his visit.

Whatever it is, we'll deal with it, I answered her.

I welcomed CG and ushered him into the sitting room without wasting a moment. Mother and I sat up straight, knees together with our hands clasped in our laps presenting our most formal appearance and steady composure in his presence. Years in China had given him a reddish face, well-weathered in this brutal climate, but