Shinpachi wrote: ".... ROC announced that they had bombed the Shanghai International Settlement "mistakenly".
They did not mind the zone from the beginning IMO..."
Shanghai was 'opened' as a second front to relieve the Kuomintang army from the Japanese to the north where the fighting was open country and the IJA was prevailing everywhere. By selecting Shanghai as a battleground the Kuomintang was reckoning on the international reaction/outrage to witnessing urban warfare day-in-and-day out .... (imagine that there were 'spectators' living protected in Stalingrad in September, 1942 ... through to January, 43 ...)
The world saw what it wanted to see ... in Shanghai people just stepped around the bodies .. or their bearers did .... and the war dragged on. This was China, brutal as the Japanese were in Western eyes, the Japanese conducted themselves by the exact same rules/tactics that Chinese Generals had used in wars with their own, since the Han dynasty.
When the Emperor spoke on the radio, August 1945, and the Japanese forces put aside their arms, IJA comprised 1.25 million in China + 900,000 in Manchuria + 1.75 million civilians. (numbers edited).
That it ended thus is, in my mind, nothing short of miraculous.
My sources here "The Search For Modern China" JB Spence; "Shanghai: Stalingrad on the Yangtze"