Corpses Outside Chongqing Shelter

On the night of June 5, 1941, large numbers of people had crowded into the air-raid tunnel shelter serving a busy downtown section in the central district of Jiaochangkou. After more than three hours of continuous bombardment, crowded conditions and inadequate ventilation eventually combined to provoke mass panic. In the ensuing pandemonium to escape the tunnel, countless occupants were suffocated, crushed, or trampled to death. While the official government report counted 992 people dead and 151 people hospitalized for serious injuries, eyewitnesses contradicted these figures and claimed death tolls as high as ten thousand. Although the actual tally may never be known for certain, the tragedy exposed a more problematic aspect of the government’s air defense initiatives: namely, that despite the implementation of elaborate air raid procedures since mid-1939, such plans could not always fully account for — or preclude — the practical problems that arose from crowding people into shelters for extended periods under extreme stress.

Circumstances quite apart from Chongqing’s air defenses —but nonetheless closely affiliated — also served to frustrate Japan’s objectives. For all of the havoc that Japan’s air raids caused, they were never able to cut off the wartime capital from the outside world, nor were they successful at interdicting China’s supply and communication lines. Throughout the war, Chiang Kai-shek and Kuomintang officials, private individuals, and foreign visitors could travel to and from Chongqing. From the wartime capital, it was possible to fly directly to Hong Kong and Rangoon before 1941, and from there, one could secure air passage to the United States. After these cities fell to Japanese forces, Kunming and Lanzhou served as the air transfer points. Correspondingly, the conflict as a whole disrupted the supply chains for basic commodities. While Japan’s air campaign undoubtedly contributed to this state of affairs, it did not cause a wholesale breakdown of the flow of goods and foodstuffs to the city. This was largely because the Chinese government tended to view wartime shortages as a distinct management problem and instituted specific measures to address them, including establishing a rationing system and prohibiting war profiteering.

The Japanese high command’s assumption that concentrated air bombardment would destabilize the Chinese establishment accounted for neither China’s continuing defiance nor the thoroughgoing measures adopted by the Nationalist government to counter air attacks. Thus, the expected result of Japan’s aerial campaign — China suing for peace — did not materialize.