During the Battle of Shanghai, the Waibaidu bridge had an important role. On 12 August 1937, thousands of refugees, "a milling mass of humanity", from Greater Shanghai streamed into the foreign settlements through the Garden Bridge to escape the Japanese. Journalist Rhodes Farmer recorded:Word had been passed back that barbed wire and Japanese sentries blocked all the approaches to Shanghai save Garden Bridge and the twenty-foot wide crossing that led to it over the stinking, garbage-filled Creek. The mid-day sun scorched down pitilessly, for it was still the season of "tahsu" — the Great Heat ...the mass pressed on at snail's pace toward what was becoming the bridge of life."