Japanese naval aircraft and troops moved against the densely populated Chapei district of Shanghai amid rising tensions between Chinese nationalists and Japanese forces occupying parts of the city. The clashes foreshadowed the January 28 Incident, a brutal month-long battle that killed thousands of civilians and previewed the devastation Shanghai would suffer again in 1937.
By January 1932, Shanghai was a tinderbox. Japan had seized Manchuria months earlier, and anti-Japanese boycotts organized by Chinese merchants and students had crippled Japanese businesses in the international city. Japanese Marines and naval units stationed in the International Settlement grew increasingly aggressive, patrolling neighborhoods and clashing with Chinese civilians and soldiers.
The skirmishing around Chapei in mid-January was a prelude to catastrophe. Within two weeks, Japan would launch a full assault on the district, one of the most densely populated urban areas on Earth, using naval bombardment and aerial bombing against a city with no real air defense. The fighting killed an estimated 6,000 Chinese soldiers and thousands of civilians, and reduced parts of Chapei to rubble.
The episode drew international attention because Shanghai was a treaty port with significant American, British, and French interests, and photographs of the bombardment, including the haunting image of a baby crying alone in the ruins that would come five years later in 1937, shocked Western audiences. It was an early, largely ignored warning of the total war Japan would wage across China through the 1930s and into World War II.