During the First Shanghai Incident that broke out on January 28, 1932, the bodies of Chinese soldiers who died in battle were scattered beneath the embankment of the Yangtze River, which stretched out flat across a desolate, yellow earth plateau.

 　　　On January 28, 1932, the First Shanghai Incident erupted, and the bodies of Chinese soldiers who were killed in action were scattered across the barren, flat expanse of yellow earth along the Yangtze River embankment. The terrain of Shanghai was deeply cut by numerous canals, whose banks were filled with bottomless mud and subject to tidal fluctuations.

　　The Japanese army advanced through the difficult terrain amid continuous rain during the First Shanghai Incident, which erupted in January 1932, and approached the main stronghold of the Chinese 19th Army. At the summit, bullets flew from Chinese trenches. Each canal, each embankment, and each village had been fortified as Chinese strongholds, surrounded by strong barbed wire, with traps, firing holes, and dugouts behind them, and even supported by fighter planes, resulting in the complete failure of the Japanese army's breakthrough attempts. It was impossible to swim across the canals, and mud from the Yangtze River had accumulated to a depth of several meters everywhere. Above, intense gunfire from Chinese troops firing from elevated positions rained down relentlessly.

　　The Japanese attack was halted for hours by the dense barbed wire, and attempts by infiltration units armed with hand grenades and scissors to cut through the wire were thwarted by machine gun fire. On February 22, 1932, three engineers whose names would become famous throughout Japan volunteered to throw explosives they had pre-lit at the obstacles. Though their lives were inevitably lost, the plan succeeded. Amidst intense artillery fire, the three approached the barbed wire, and the long bombs exploded. Through the gaps, infantrymen who had prepared to charge burst into the Chinese positions. The mothers of the fallen heroes were granted an audience with the Emperor, and their bodies were buried with solemn ceremony in Japan. In the alleys and schoolyards of Japanese cities, children played a game called “The Three Bomb Heroes.”

　　At the start of the battle, 3,000 Japanese soldiers faced a Chinese force ten times their number, and the course of the battle changed dramatically. The First Shanghai Incident ended on March 3. The Chinese army suffered 4,086 killed and 9,484 wounded, while the Japanese army had 769 killed and 2,322 wounded.