The Jewish Company of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps

By Bernis M. Frank, Chief Historian of the U.S. Marine Corps
[Extracts from a Presentation at the Conference: "China and the Jewish Diaspora: A Comparative Historical Perspective on Acculturation, Economic Activity, Assimilation, Anti-Semitism"]

The Jewish Company of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps existed in the midst of a war in which it had no part - active or otherwise. When Great Britain handily defeated the Manchus in the first Opium War in 1842, one of the elements of the Treaty of Nanking signed between England and China was to open Shanghai to foreign trade in 1843. Merchants from all over the world flocked to Shanghai's International Settlement to open what became thriving businesses. In this group were Jews, mostly Sephardim who came from Cairo, Baghdad, and Bombay, among them the Sassoon, Kadoorie, Hardoon, Ezra, Shannon, and Baroukh families, which were to succeed and prosper in the years following their arrival. The Russian pogroms and the 1917 revolution brought to Shanghai waves of Russian Jews, and between 1932 and 1938, German-Jewish refugees from Nazism enlarged Shanghai's Jewish population to approximately 25,000 by the time World War II began.

On 8 April 1853, when the international Settlement was in its infancy, two meetings were held in Shanghai - one under British and the other under American chairmanship - to consider the establishment of a defense force in the Settlement. That, essentially, was the birth of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps (SVC). Its first challenge came on 3 April the next year when two British residents were assaulted by Manchu troops. On the following day, an ultimatum was sent to the commander of the Manchu forces, giving him until 4 pm that day to move his troops away from the borders of the Settlement. When the ultimatum was disregarded, the Westerners comprising the SVC attacked the Chinese, routing them. This whole event was over in half an hour. It is celebrated as The Battle of Muddy Flat, the first of the battle honors of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps. Some 50 Chinese casualties resulted, with the SVC losing 2 men killed and 15 wounded - two of whom died later of their wounds.

In succeeding years, as the international population of the Settlement grew, the SVC grew larger also, with an international flavor added to its composition. Early on, the Municipal Council of the international Settlement subsidized the SVC, and in the annual reports of the Council are the annual reports of the Corps, which not only provide an annual chronology of the activities of the SVC, but also provide the names and dates the various units joined over the years. In 1938, which is a particular handy date to use, a now-rare book, I.I. Kounin's Eighty Five Years of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps, was published and contains a complete history of the SVC to that date. As of 1938, the Corps had 19 different units, including American, British, Scottish, Portuguese, Filipino, Russian, and Jewish.

The story of the Jewish Company would not be complete without first talking about Noel Jacobs, the first and only commander of the Company. He was born in England to a Methodist family. He grew up in Hong Kong, and was a founder-member of the first Boy Scout Troop to be formed in the city. He later served with the Hong Kong Defence Force before moving in the early 1920s to Shanghai, where he was employed by the British-American Tobacco Company. In Shanghai he met a young Russian-Jewish girl, Dora Bogomolsky, whom he married after converting to Judaism. Although he was not a practicing Jew, from that time on, until he left Shanghai in 1949, he was deeply involved with Jewish community affairs.

Jacobs took over the 5th Shanghai (Jewish) Boy Scout Troop as Scoutmaster in 1923. Under his leadership, the troop flourished and was successfully competitive with the other Scout troops in Shanghai. In the summer of 1932, a group of young Jews in Shanghai, some of them former Scouts as well as members of the Shanghai branch of Betar, met at an obscure address on Bubbling Well Road to consider the possibility of forming a Jewish unit in the Shanghai Volunteer Corps. The commander of the SVC was approached and he proposed the formation of such an organization. It was decided that the Jewish unit should start out as a platoon in an already existing company. The commander of H Company proposed to take the proposed platoon under his wing.

Noel Jacobs, who was already well-known in Shanghai for his business as well as community activities, was commissioned and designated the platoon commander. RB. Bitker, who had belonged to one of the American units of the SVC and was a decorated veteran of service with the Russian army, and M. Talan, who had been a member of the SVC artillery battery, were appointed as sergeants in the platoon, which was activated on 22 September 1932. Two months later, a second platoon was activated.

On 22 May 1933, the non-Jewish personnel of Company H were transferred, thus making it an all-Jewish unit, the Jewish Company. It adopted as its motto, "No advance without security." The chaplain of the Jewish Company was Reverend Mendel Brown, who was the spiritual leader of the Sephardic community in Shanghai. A photograph of him taken in the mid-1930s shows him wearing the British officers' uniform of that period, and wearing a Roman collar. The Company's uniform was the same as the one worn by the British army in the pre-World War II period except that officers and enlisted wore the appropriate Shanghai Volunteer Corps cap and uniform badges. The Jewish Company wore on the uniform collar metal Magen David ornaments with the letters "SVC" superimposed.

In June the next year, Jacobs was promoted to captain. The company drilled in a building on Foochow Street which the Municipal Council designated for use by all the units of the SVC. Markmanship training was conducted at a range located in the northern limits of the city next to Hongkew Park. Here there were whitewashed, one-story stone buildings, which served as barracks for the various companies of the SVC which came out to fire their weapons for record. The members of the Jewish Company drilled arduously to ensure that it was professionally competent and able to take up their places alongside their SVC comrades when the Corps was called up for active service. Such training consisted of familiarity with their weapons, setting up sand-bagged and barbed wire defensive positions, bayonet drill, and, most importantly for Shanghai, mob control.

Each of the major powers which had concessions in Shanghai as a result of the Treaty of Nanking - Great Britain, France, the United States - also had military contingents stationed in their concessions. As the Sino-Japanese War surged around Shanghai, the military representatives of these foreign services met, together with officials of the international Settlement Municipal Council, to draw up plans for the defense of the Settlement against Japanese incursions. Included in these plans were options concerning the control of the masses of Chinese who, it was anticipated, would try to enter the Settlement for the protection it would offer. Each of the major powers held extraterritorial rights in their concessions, which meant that invading them would be the same as invading the home country and considered an act of war. Because the Settlement was too large for all the foreign contingents to defend it, the SVC was incorporated into the overall Settlement defense plan and assigned to assist the British troops in defending Sector B, which was rather large and more than the British could handle.

When the fighting in the Chinese section of Shanghai in 1937 threatened to spill over into the Settlement, the foreign units took up their assigned defensive positions, and the Shanghai Volunteer Corps was mobilized on 17 August, as was the Jewish Company, for a period of three months, taking up predesignated stations. For thus period of active service, 85 members of the Company were awarded the Municipal Council's Emergency medal. In August 1938, the SVC was again mobilized for three days, and Jewish Company personnel reported to their appointed posts.

The two mobilizations were the last times that the SVC was to be called out in defense of the Settlement. In February 1942, the SVC commander issued a special order to all contingents notifying them that by order of the Municipal Council, which was now governed by the Japanese occupation authorities, SVC training was suspended until further notice and that the Corps would not be called upon to function in any way. Later, in September that year, a special order was published by the Corps headquarters notifying its units that "the Council has decided that there is no further necessity for the retention of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps and has approved its immediate disbandment." All weapons had been turned in earlier, and now, after an 89-year existence, the SVC was no more. Foreign nationals, including now-Major Jacobs were interned until the end of the war. His wife and three daughters had earlier been evacuated to the United States.

In 1949, Jacobs left China to return to England to continue working for the British-American Tobacco Company. He retired in 1956 and he and his family finally settled down in New Milton, England, where, as was his wont, he became deeply involved in community affairs there. In 1967, his former Scouts and members of the Jewish Company who had emigrated to Israel sponsored a trip to Israel for Noel and Dora Jacobs, so that they could see their mentor and friend once more and have him see how they had flourished since leaving Shanghai. Reportedly, it was an extremely emotional and happy reunion. Noel Jacobs died in England in 1977 at the age of 79; his wife a few years later.

To honor their former Scoutmaster and Commander of the Jewish Company, volunteers and friends the world over sponsored a memorial forest in Mod-in, Israel, in his name. A stone marker was unveiled on 18 May 1980 in the presence of a group of these admirers, who had 3,500 trees planted to commemorate the life of Noel Jacobs. There are still a number of former members of the Jewish Company living in various parts of the world. Undoubtedly they recall the China and the Shanghai that once was, and which remains only in their memories.