[CHINA -- SINO-JAPANESE WAR].Biblio.com
Shanghai under fire. July -- September 1937. A pictorial record of Shanghai’s undeclared war as photographed by Shanghai Evening Post & Mercury Staff photographers.
193760087Shanghai China: Post-Mercury Co. 17-21 Avenue Edward VII Shanghai Evening Post & Mercury 1937. 4to. 9 x 12 in. xv 1 88 pp. With 100s of text photo illustrations on gray-blue tinted paper. Colour-illustrated softcovers cover art photo of red & black tinted smoking skyline of Shanghai w/ bomb bursts illustrated on front cover “Shanghai Area War Maps†on endpapers -- surprisingly light interior toning to the XV pp. of text on light-gray tinted paper bumping & wear at covers some dustsoiling chipping head & foot of spine still G copy stapled as issued. First edition 1st printing of this scarce illustrated pro-China work documenting the opening campaigns by the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force and Navy during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Hostilities had increased throughout the 1930s following the first Sino-Japanese War in which Japan had conquered and absorbed Manchuria into the Japanese Empire. Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist forces joined with the warlords of Hunan and Szechwan provinces to fight the Japanese after a number of provocations in the summer of 1937. Chiang Kai-shek believed that by initially attacking and bombing Japanese naval installations and troops in and around Shanghai he would force the foreign powers to ally with China to fight against Japan to protect their enormous investments in southern China. The Nationalist Chinese armies held out for three months against ferocious bombardment and shelling by the Japanese from planes based in Taiwan and ships on the Huangpu River inflicting huge numbers of casualties on the Chinese and eventually forcing the Chinese to retreat from Shanghai to Nanking with Japanese reinforcements constantly decimating them. These images show victims at the South Station bombings caring for Chinese wounded Chinese women training as soldiers and nurses in the aftermath of the North Station Area shelling and bombing bitter retreat by Chinese soldiers the advances and marching of Japanese forces in Shanghai and beyond. This would later be revised and reissued in March 1938; See: Dorothy Perkins Japan Goes to War: A Chronology of Japanese Military Expansion 1997 pp. 127-135; Crittall in Shanghai -- Some Photos Unearthed December 22 2008. Post-Mercury, Co., 17-21 Avenue Edward VII, Shanghai Evening Post & Mercury, paperback
Zephyr Used & Rare Books · États-Unis650,00 $US≈ 549,97 €
