Broadway Mansions
After the Japanese surrender in August 1945, and the subsequent evacuation of its Japanese tenants and occupants, the Shanghai Municipal Council assumed ownership of the Broadway Mansions. The Council leased part of the Mansions to the foreign correspondents and the remainder to the United States military, where it became the headquarters for the American Military Mission that advised Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist government of the Republic of China. The first five or six floors of the Broadway Mansions was occupied by officers of the U.S. Military Aid Group in China (MAGIC) and their dependents, with 400 billets being provided at the Mansions. The ground floor hosted a small American army hospital. American fighter pilot Bill Dunn, one of the first to occupy the Mansions in August 1945, recalled: "In Shanghai we were billeted at the Broadway Mansions, a beautiful European-style hotel. There was only one problem: the rooms had no beds. Japanese officers had been billeted there, and they didn't use our type of bed, just sleeping mats. We got in touch with the hotel manager, who soon had a flock of Chinese setting up beds for us." About this time the manager was Michael Alexis Melgunow, a White Russian émigré, who had previously been the head chauffeur. After the alleged rape of two Chinese girls by American marines, approximately 5,000 anti-American Chinese university students marched on 1 January 1947 on the Broadway Mansions, at that time home for 200 U.S. servicemen and their dependents, demanding the American military (which they likened to the British imperialists and the Japanese aggressors) leave China.