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Chapter 8

Shanghai, China

October 1942

Sarah “Chankoro” Macneil was living in a comfortable but small apartment in the International Settlement of Shanghai.

She lived alone, although Colonel Kazuo Ishihara was a frequent visitor, occasionally staying all night.

Her Chinese amah-san, Mrs. Chang, had basement quarters and came every day. Sarah’s job was special assistant to Ishihara, who had been transferred to staff duty under Major General Kenji Doihara, commander-in-chief of the Imperial Japanese Army for the Shanghai area. Besides his other duties, Ishihara was in charge of the 16,000 Jewish refugees in Shanghai.

The largest assembly area for the Jews was Pootung Civil Assembly Center. The Pootung Jews were stateless refugees or were carrying passports of enemy nations: America, Great Britain, and others. Jews with Russian or Iraqi passports, for example, were still free to move about Shanghai. All the Manchurian Jews had been brought to Pootung.

About 3,000 of the Jews had been German, but many of these had left their homeland without proper documents and the rest did not want to identify themselves as German, fearing what might be done to them by an ally of the Nazis. They sought safety in statelessness.

Germany’s “final solution” to the Jewish question had begun in January 1942. Japan was well aware how “final” the German “solution” was. For all their resentment of the West, the Japanese were not prepared to go as far as the Germans.

The Blums’ Far East Zion plan came apart late the previous year, right after Pearl Harbor. War obviated any hope that American Jews, under the guidance of Rabbi Stephen Wise—who soon condemned any Jew who supported Japan’s aims—would invest in an industrial base in Manchuria to nurture Wise’s coreligionists. Nor would the Japanese, with all-out war confronting them in the Pacific, consider the expending of their own resources to establish a prosperous and stable alien population there.

Japanese who had favored the Blums’ FEZ concept—including Colonel Ishihara and, to a lesser extent, General Doihara—were ordered to halt all such grandiose machinations as FEZ and to assemble forthwith the refugee Jews then in Manchuria and move them to a central camp in occupied China where they could be watched. Refurbishing the Pootung barracks and the mass movement had taken seven months.

Sarah was pleased the Pootung buildings had roofs, the water supply was adequate, and garbage was collected. Sewage facilities, however, were primitive, medicines were in short supply, and the inhabitants would soon, she thought, begin to show signs of malnutrition as the supplies of food they had brought with them began to run out. There were already a few cases of beriberi, malaria, dysentery, and some heart infections.

Sarah’s problem was how to do as much as she could for the Jews in obedience to her vow to the dying Nathan Blum, without arousing the suspicions of Colonel Ishihara.

Kazuo Ishihara was actually a decent man, although Sarah’s true feelings toward him were not anything at all like those she pretended. He had a wife and family at home in Fukuoka, Japan, and was twenty-one years older than she. Fanatically clean, he wore glasses and a trim moustache and was an inch shorter than Sarah, who was herself quite short. How he performed as a lover, Sarah was not qualified to judge since she had little basis for comparison. To be sure, Ishihara was hardly the equal of Nathan Blum, but Sarah could not believe anyone could equal him in any way.

As Ishihara’s Girl Friday, Sarah Macneil—who went by Lin Hsiao-mai—had been given numerous administrative assignments involving the Pootung Center. Ishihara seemed satisfied with her work and was gradually giving her more responsibility. How much of that trust derived from her work and how much from his sexual satisfaction, Sarah could not say. Probably both.

Kazuo Ishihara was no anti-Semite. In fact, he had come to regard himself as a kind of guardian of the Pootung Jews. With Sarah’s encouragement, he had done much for them, although the Jews voiced acrid complaints about their treatment at the hands of the Japanese administrators.

Jewish complaints Ishihara could handle. His real problems came on one hand from Colonel Gerhardt Kahner, the recently arrived Gestapo chief for the Shanghai area. At Kahner’s first interview with Ishihara, the German had wasted no time coming directly and bluntly to the point.

“My mission here, Colonel Ishihara, is to urge you to let us help you with a solution to the Jewish problem in Shanghai.”

Since the two colonels had no language in common, Sarah was present to interpret the German’s English and Ishihara’s Japanese.

An unconscious grimace appeared on Ishihara’s face. “I have heard of your ‘solution’ to the problem of the Jews.”

Kahner pressed on eagerly. “Then I am certain you can see how much assistance we can offer you, what with our broad experience in these matters.”

“I don’t think we have quite come to that yet, Colonel Kahner. And whatever solution—as you call it—we arrive at will, I am sure, be a purely Japanese solution. We have our ways, Colonel, and you have yours. I fear we will seldom find them in harmony with each other.”

Kahner’s face—with a Schmiss or dueling scar—mottled with suppressed anger. “We were led to understand by your ambassador in Berlin that we would be accorded an advisory role in this matter.”

“Tell me, just why is this a matter of such concern to the Third Reich? We are, after all, thousands of miles from Germany. There are no German forces in the Far East and very few of your nationals. For my own curiosity, I would like to know why a pocket of Jews here in Shanghai is of so much concern to you.”

Kahner sputtered, “For one thing, many of your Jews have—or had—German nationality, even though they won’t admit it.”

“Would you like to send them back to Germany? I believe we have about three thousand German Jews. How do you propose to transport them? Overland? Across Mongolia and through Russia? By sea? You would have to fill several passenger liners and move them around the Cape of Good Hope and finally through the English Channel. And who would pay for all this, Colonel Kahner? I can assure you, even without referring the question to General Doihara, my country will not.”

Kahner rose with a curse in German. “Does your country intend to coddle these vermin?”

“I will gladly allow you to spend a week in one of the Pootung barracks, Colonel. Then you can tell me if we are coddling them.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Kahner spun around and snarled over his shoulder, “We will see about this.” The thud of his boots was the only sound of his departure.

Ishihara smiled at Sarah. “We haven’t seen the last of him, I’m afraid.”

Ishihara’s second difficulty was with his superior, General Doihara, which did not concern the Pootung Jews since the general was content to entrust their affairs to his subordinate. It was, rather, Ishihara’s girl Friday in whom Doihara was more keenly interested.

Coming from behind his desk, the diminutive colonel sat beside Sarah and took one of her hands in his. The office door was closed, so no one dared enter without invitation.

Ishihara spoke in Japanese. “Has the general made any more overtures to you? I must know. To speak the truth, I lose much sleep over you. I don’t want to give you up, but I’m afraid if I don’t, he will ruin my career. Has he said anything? Have you given him any encouragement?” There was a puppy-like pleading in the colonel’s desperate eyes. Of course, as a Japanese man, he would never say he was desperately in love with her, although those words would do more to bind Sarah to him than any others.

“Nothing has happened since that meeting I told you about three weeks ago.” Actually, that was not the truth. More had happened, but Sarah was not going to tell her patron about it. She was playing a dangerous game. There might well come a time—and not too far off, at that—when the general could do more, given his rank, to save her Jews than the colonel. She refused to ignore any possibility to save them.

Ishihara was still an officer of the Special Political Police—Tokko Kmatru-—although on detached duty with Doihara’s staff. He maintained relations with the agents he had recruited in Manchuria. If he ever learned of Sarah’s secret rendezvous with General Doihara, she was uncertain how far Doihara’s protection of her would extend.

Nevertheless, that was a chance she was determined to take. Even now the Pootung Jews were in desperate straits. How much worse would their situation become if Tokyo decided to let the Gestapo take a hand in the administration of Pootung was a nightmarish possibility that terrified Sarah.

She thought of herself as the Kakure Tenrhi—the Hidden Angel—of the Pootung Jews and wanted to keep all the allies she could enlist.