 In this crowded and officially neutral enclave, the SMP struggled to maintain order in the face of a wave of increasingly violent terrorist bombings and reprisals between the Chinese and the Imperial Japanese Army and their collaborators.With the occupation of the Settlement in December 1941 the police came under Japanese control.Although a number of British officers were arrested as political prisoners and interned in Shanghai's Haiphong Road camp, most British staff in the SMP's Foreign Branch had no choice but to stay in their posts until their eventual dismissal and internment in February/March 1943.