Foreign soldier stands watch

Shortly after the onset of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, the cosmopolitan Shanghai city fell under the control of the Japanese forces. This photo shows a policeman standing guard outside a heavily barricaded “Ewo Hong” building. Caucasian policemen like the one in the picture were a common sight in Shanghai back in the days when the British, French and the Americans held extraterritorial concessions, which maintained their own police force that recruited many British and European policemen. During the Japanese Occupation, a large number of British officers were arrested as 'political prisoners' and interned, while most others had no option but to stay in their posts.

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