Unable to serve static files with Nginx proxy and multiple containers

Question

I have multiple node js apps running in Docker containers that is able to serve the static files which are bundled in the Docker image. So for example if I go directly and load the container (without going via nginx) http://app01.local:8001, everything loads fine.

Once I bring in Nginx to proxy multiple containers, this is where the problem begins. I want to proxy pass 2 containers as is and let the node js serve the static files but the requests for the files return 404. To workaround this issue, I created volumes so that nginx is able to see the static files from the nodejs containers.

What I want is something like this to work:

upstream app01 {
  server app01:8001
}

upstream app02 {
  server app02:8002
}

server {
  listen 80;
  server_name myapp.local;

  location / {
     proxy_pass http://app01;
  }


   location /abc/def {
     proxy_pass http://app02;
   }
}

Doing something like this snippet below of course works and static files load but I need it to proxy to multiple containers:

upstream app01 {
  server app01:8001
}

server {
  listen 80;
  server_name myapp.local;

  location / {
     proxy_pass http://app01;
  }
}

When I use a prefix location, then I have to specify location for my static files.

My nginx config actually looks like this:

upstream app01 {
  server app01:8001
}

upstream app02 {
  server app02:8002
}

server {
  listen 80;
  server_name myapp.local;

  location / {
     proxy_pass http://app01;
  }

  location /static {
    alias /opt/app01/static;
  }

  location /abc/def {
    proxy_pass http://app02;

  # I'm not sure what to do here, as app02 also has static files which is also served as myapp.local/static
  }
 
  # If I add this, I'd get /static is outside of /abc/def error
  #  location /static {
  #    alias /opt/app02/static;
  # }
   
}

If I go to myapp.local/abc/def, it route to the correct app02 container but none of the static files will load. If I can get away from using the volumes and specifying aliases, then that would be ideal (see first code block).