Many American jazz musicians traveled to Shanghai during the city's golden age in the 1930s, when "the Paris of the Orient" was the newest horizon on an increasingly international jazz music scene. For Black musicians, who were often excluded from white musicians' unions in the U. S. and subjected to other forms of segregation, Shanghai provided steady, well-paid work, and greater respect than they received in most American venues outside the Black community. Shanghai’s golden age ended on December 8, 1941, when Japanese forces occupied the International Settlement shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Many musicians were among the foreigners stranded in Shanghai and incarcerated in camps until the end of World War II in 1945.

Bandleader and sax player Earl Whaley moved to Seattle around 1930 and formed one the first West Coast swings bands with mostly local black musicians. Whaley's Red Hot Syncopators were popular with the small Black population of Seattle, performing successfully at the Broadway and Finnish Halls in 1932. In 1934, Whaley took his band to China, where they played in Shanghai clubs from 1934 until 1937, when many musicians shipped out after the Japanese occupation of Shanghai. Earl Whaley stayed on, with a mix of old and new band members, and continued to perform until he and others from his band were imprisoned by the Japanese Army between 1941 and 1945.

This photo shows Whaley with members of his band and other jazz musicians in Shanghai. The men are identified in blue pen on the photo as, top row, from left: Baby, Taylor, Fate [Williams], Me [Wayne Adams], Bumps, Earl [Whaley], Jimmy [Carson], [Earl] West, [Reginald] Jones, Palmer [Johnson], Buck [Clayton], Andy. Bottom row: Parker, Happy, Billy, Eddie, Couchy.

Caption information source: "Earl Whaley Band" at http://www.blackpast.org/aaw/earl-whaley-band
Caption information source: "Jazz in Occupied China: Black Jazzmen at the Japanese Prison Camp in Weihsien, China during World War II" by Desmond Power at blackpast.org.