Secret War in Shanghai by Bernard Wasserstein

Author:Bernard Wasserstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: World War II / Shanghai
Publisher: I.B.Tauris
Published: 2017-03-29T04:00:00+00:00

Over the next few months Nathan repeatedly boasted to Japanese officials and to the Swiss consul in Tientsin that he had ‘completely discharged the responsibilities I assumed in virtue of the undertaking I gave to Generals Shiozawa and Tanabe in August 1941’.33 In February 1943 Nathan was replaced by a Japanese manager. Upon his resignation, the Japanese embassy in Peking wrote to him: ‘General Shiozawa appreciates your good faith in carrying out the obligations which you had undertaken and fully understands the army-controlled Kailan Mining Administration must attribute its present smooth operation to your great devotion which you have made [sic] since December 8th 1941.’34

Unfortunately for Nathan, the British Foreign Office had a similar understanding of the value of his services to the Japanese war effort. In February 1942 the Foreign Office wrote to the British parent company, objecting to Nathan’s conduct in giving ‘certain undertakings which appear difficult to reconcile with the duty of a British subject to abstain by all means in his power from giving aid or assistance to the enemies of his country’. The letter went on to point out that ‘these undertakings are only explicable on the assumption that they were extorted under pressure’.35 The directors of the company wrote back, attempting to justify Nathan’s behaviour, but the Foreign Office was unconvinced and returned to the charge:

His Majesty’s Government do not regard as unpatriotic the participation of British subjects in such maintenance of essential services as is for the benefit of the civil population of the occupied territory, but … they do expect patriotic British subjects to refrain from assisting the war effort and … as the production of coal is clearly essential to the Japanese war effort, His Majesty’s Government cannot but regard assistance given voluntarily by British subjects to this end as [un]patriotic and reprehensible.36

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