The China Mirage

by James Bradley

  It is reasonable, moreover, to believe that a policy of non-cooperation now would involve far less risk of war than a continuation of the support, which we are rendering to Japan.38

  In late 1938 the interests of the China Lobby and Henry Stimson merged. Harry Price approached the First Wise Man about his joining the committee and becoming its marquee name. Stimson agreed and was made honorary chairman. This was a fantastic coup for Mayling; now the First Wise Man, perhaps the most powerful and articulate American voice opposing Japan, was fronting the China Lobby. On January 19, 1939, the New York Times ran an article headlined “Group to Ask Curb on Aid to Japan; Stimson Heads Committee That Will Fight American Sales of Iron, Steel and Oil.”

  Stimson’s name was on the committee’s masthead, along with the names of others from the cream of American society. Members included the former heads of Harvard University, the Union Theological Seminary, the Church Peace Union, the World Alliance for International Friendship, the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, the Associated Boards for Christian Colleges in China, and the Christian Medical Council for Overseas Work. Stimson’s honorary vice chairmen were the former top admiral of America’s Pacific Fleet and a former president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

  The Stimson Committee pumped out press releases and slickly designed pamphlets to inject the China Lobby line into editorials and sermons across the country. The Manhattan missionaries disseminated the message through the mouths and pens of individual supporters. Prominent and prestigious citizens—professors, government officials, bankers, judges, and others—provided what appeared to be their personal opinions in the traditional outlets: local newspapers, magazines, radio interviews, Rotary Club speeches, and church sermons. As Donald Friedman, author of The Road from Isolation, wrote, “It became a principle of operation that whenever possible members should continue to work through their customary channels, using the medium of the national office only when needed. This decentralization was stressed partly in order to preserve and foster a kind of spontaneity that would have a deeper effect upon the government and upon the public at large than if an obviously organized series of releases were given out solely by an agency whose function was to promote the embargo.”39

  The American Committee for Non-Participation in Japanese Aggression poured out thousands of copies of pamphlets, leaflets, flyers, memos, and direct mailings. One mailing targeted over one hundred thousand Protestant ministers. The committee provided newspapers with a steady stream of “factual” stories and editorials by Stimson. Radio listeners heard Stimson and other committee members challenge the morality of American sales of oil and steel to Japan. Friedman observed, “In terms of the range of its publicity and information efforts, [the committee] was certainly the most active nongovernment organization dealing with the Far Eastern situation, and perhaps, with America’s role in international affairs in general.”40

  The Stimson Committee affiliated with local committees in “Boston, Baltimore, Richmond, Durham, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Toledo, Chicago, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Denver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles,” and other cities. Hundreds of small towns had ties to the committee through “church groups, business associations, civic and professional clubs, labor unions, women’s organizations,” and other groups.41

  With notes cribbed from Stimson Committee propaganda, American commentators with no experience in Asia or with Asians were suddenly experts on Asian affairs. The committee proudly reprinted the New York Post’s assurance that there would be no trouble with Japan after an American embargo: “Military experts in Europe and the United States have declared that Japan would have to withdraw her troops from China if American imports to Japan were stopped.”42 Among many other publications, Atlantic Monthly repeated the widespread assumption that the United States “had” China in some way and fretted about its possible loss:

  It would be the most disastrous defeat in the history of America’s participation in world affairs if, just as we are coming within reach of the evolutionary, non-revolutionary liberation of China foreseen by John Hay and guarded as an article of faith in our Far Eastern policy ever since, we should bring it to abortion by lending our money, our industry, and our political influence to the uses of Japan.43

  Protesters demonstrated in front of Japanese consulates, Boston hosted a conference on the boycott of Japanese goods, and religious leaders sent resolutions to President Roosevelt calling for a “policy of nonparticipation in aggression.”

  This China Lobby propaganda juggernaut had a profound and immediate impact on how the majority of Americans viewed the conflict across the Pacific. Chiang’s directive to his China Lobby had been for them “to win sympathy from the American public,” and with the Stimson Committee, he achieved his goal. By February 1940 an incredible 75 percent of Americans supported the First Wise Man’s plan to embargo Japan.

  The China Lobby, with assistance from Henry Stimson, had made an American embargo against Japan politically viable for President Roosevelt. The second half of Chiang’s directive was to “prompt the U.S. government to put sanctions in place.” Now the First Wise Man would see if FDR would wave a Theodore Roosevelt–like big stick.

  Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau swallowed Stimson’s version of the China Lobby argument hook, line, and sinker, and he wanted FDR to embargo Japan’s oil. Roosevelt didn’t buy it. FDR reasoned that Japan had only two gas pumps available: California and the Dutch East Indies (today’s Indonesia). As early as 1938, the Department of State had opined: “Any attempt by the United States, Great Britain and the Netherlands to cut off from Japan exports of oil would be met by Japan’s forcibly taking over the Netherlands East Indies.”44 Joseph Grew, a lifelong friend of Roosevelt’s and now his ambassador in Tokyo, wrote that economic sanctions would not work “unless the United States is prepared to resort to the ultimate measure of force.”45 In early June of 1940, State again warned that an oil embargo would “impel Japan toward moving into the Dutch East Indies… therefore… no restrictions should be placed at this time on exportation of petroleum products to Japan.”46

  FDR agreed. California was supplying the vast majority of Japan’s oil, and he was confident that if he cut off that supply, Japan would be forced to go south. Getting there would require massive Japanese military operations, and because the path lay through several European colonies, it would inevitably involve Britain, France, and the Netherlands (and quite possibly America) in an unwanted Pacific war.

  In his right hand/left hand manner, Roosevelt went around the State Department to get more information about what was going on in China, working through private emissaries like his friend William Bullitt, who met with Chiang. Bullitt reported secretly to FDR, “Chiang Kai-shek’s will to fight and the courage of the Chinese people remain unbroken; but there will be just no money to buy anything.”47

  Money. It seemed there was agreement on the need for it, if not on how it would be used. Chiang wanted money so he could fight Mao; FDR believed that Chiang needed money to fight Japan. Soon a Treasury Department proposal to give Chiang twenty-five million dollars—“a highly publicized loan”—circulated throughout the Roosevelt administration. Hull thundered no from the State Department, judging that giving any funds to the incompetent and passive Chiang would be throwing good money after bad. Morgenthau thought differently:

  We are talking about the future of the Pacific for the next 100 years. Here’s the fate of the Pacific at stake. Do we want to do something? Do we want to show these people our friendship and do we want to do it in a substantial way? Personally, I am very keen to do it.48

  Morgenthau wanted to give Chiang the proposed sum, which would be repaid by ten years of tung oil exports to the United States. (Tung oil was used widely in the paint industry.) Hull continued to oppose the loan, and in mid-October Morgenthau sent an emotional plea to Roosevelt:

  I am taking the liberty of pleading China’s cause so earnestly because you have three times
told me to proceed with the proposals for assistance to China. All my efforts have proved of no avail against Secretary Hull’s adamant policy of doing nothing which could possibly be objected to by an aggressor nation. I need not tell you I respect Secretary Hull’s integrity and sincerity of belief that his course is the right one, but the issues at stake go beyond any one of us and do not permit me to remain silent. It is the future peace and present honor of the United States that are in question. It is the future of democracy, the future of civilization that is at stake.49

  More sober was an internal State Department memo:

  To adopt a course of assistance to China now, after Japan has almost completed its positional warfare, would be of no decisive aid to China and would be a profitless irritant to Japan, unless the United States is prepared to give really substantial and long-continued assistance to China. And if that decision be made, it should be made with realization that that course may lead to armed conflict with Japan.50

  Morgenthau told his Chinese counterparts that the U.S.-China relationship should now be based on “business, not diplomacy.” As a way to work around the State Department, he suggested that the Chinese form “an American corporation and deposit your money in this corporation to be used for the purchase of supplies in the United States.” Morgenthau added, “I don’t want to get in diplomatic channels. The State Department, if they heard me talk like this, would be very excited.”51

  The Soong-Chiang syndicate founded the Universal Trading Corporation and based it in New York’s Rockefeller Center. Roosevelt suggested several officials currently serving in his administration for the UTC’s board of directors and its staff. Thus, this China Lobby front company, located in midtown Manhattan, was run by the president’s men. While Morgenthau and FDR discussed the UTC a number of times, nobody informed Secretary Hull.

  In October of 1938 Morgenthau wrote a note to Ailing’s husband, H. H. Kung: “We here are watching with the deepest interest and sympathy the unfolding events in the Pacific. It is indeed reassuring that the Chinese nation is actuated by ideals which we are proud to think have so much in common with those of the United States.”52 But still no loan. The State Department continued to make the case that the United States had no vital interests in China, that Japan was America’s biggest customer in Asia, and that Japan would eventually exhaust itself militarily in China’s vastness.

  On Friday, November 25, 1938, Secretary Hull left Washington for a conference in Lima, Peru. While Hull was aboard ship, far out to sea, FDR and Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles met and approved the twenty-five-million-dollar loan that Morgenthau had been pushing to help save New China.

  Morgenthau would later tell friends of the coup he’d carried out while Hull was at sea. Roosevelt never directly informed his secretary of state about this change in China policy; Hull learned that Morgenthau had done an end run around him four days after FDR had given his approval.

  Roosevelt’s assumptions about China would now guide United States policy. Like Theodore Roosevelt’s Japanese Monroe Doctrine for Asia, FDR’s plans regarding New China were a secret from the American public, undebated and unannounced.

  For American consumption, the Soongs and Chiang assured FDR and Morgenthau that China would use the U.S. aid to fight Japan. But a dispatch from a Soong-Chiang representative in Washington to Ailing’s husband in Chungking illustrated the Chinese perspective:

  The $25 million is only the beginning… further large sums can be expected. This is a political loan. America has definitely thrown in her lot and cannot withdraw. We will have two years [of a] sympathetic Washington administration, possibly six. Our political outlook is now brighter.53

  Chapter 7

  WASHINGTON WARRIORS

  China’s principal need is not that something should be done by outside nations to help her, but that outside nations should cease helping her enemy.

  —Henry Stimson1

  In 1940, war raged around the globe as Adolf Hitler and Emperor Hirohito rained bombs on London, Chungking, and Yan’an. Millions of Europeans and Asians had already been killed in the fighting, but many Americans—stung by World War I—wanted no part of foreign wars and would not allow their government to once again send troops to fight overseas.

  The American debate regarding events in Europe was multilayered. America was then mostly a mixture of European immigrants with loyalties to the old countries. No significant organization advocated that the U.S. join in the fighting. (The Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies argued that material support of Britain was the best way to keep the United States out of the conflict.) There were few Asians in the United States to contribute to government deliberations or counteract the China Lobby line. While American opinion was divided over policy toward Europe, it was relatively united about policy in far-off Asia.

  Japanese propaganda skills had fallen into disuse since the days when Prince Ito dispatched Baron Kaneko to canoodle with Teddy. There were few Ivy League–educated Japanese who spoke American English, and the Japanese diplomats in Washington seemed stiff and formal. Many fewer missionaries had toiled in Japan than in China, and Tokyo spent much less than the Soong-Chiang syndicate did on public relations in the United States.

  In contrast, sympathy for the Noble Chinese Peasants reached into nearly every American home, including the president’s. Sara Delano Roosevelt was the honorary chairwoman of both the China Aid Council and the American Committee for Chinese War Orphans. Eleanor Roosevelt became honorary chairwoman of Pearl Buck’s China Emergency Relief Committee.

  In January of 1940, Henry Stimson wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times in which he asked Americans to “discriminate between right and wrong” and take a “first step toward an affirmative foreign policy.”

  Both the press and the Gallup polls overwhelmingly show that there is no international question on which our people are more thoroughly united than as to the Japanese aggression against China.… More than four-fifths of those who have expressed their opinion in a recent Gallup poll are in favor of stopping the evil with an embargo.

  The very last thing which the Japanese Government desires is a war with the United States.… [Japanese] leaders desire strongly to subjugate China, but they also clearly recognize that a head-on quarrel with us would be fatal to that project.…

  [The Japanese army]… has succeeded in obtaining domination over the civil authorities of Japan.… It is highly desirable in the interests of the United States that the Japanese military organization should become discredited in the eyes of the Japanese people.…

  The course of action easiest and most practicable for the United States would be to discontinue the assistance which some of our people are now rendering to the efforts of the Japanese to destroy the independent sovereignty of China.2

  In April 1940, the Stimson Committee blanketed the country with thousands of professionally produced copies of a slick booklet with the provocative title “Shall America Stop Arming Japan?” Like all of the committee’s publications, this one argued that an embargo against Japan would “leave China free to achieve her own independence, which she doubtless can and will do against an unaided Japan. No outcome could contribute more to the peace and well-being of all Pacific nations.”3

  The risk of a military conflict was perceived to be so slight that the brochure never spoke of what the United States would do if an embargo incited the Japanese military to retaliate. Instead, a fund-raising letter for the committee proclaimed, “We have laid out a program which, if it can be put through, will probably take America out of this war.”4 Dr. Walter Judd, a China missionary and Stimson Committee member, testified before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations that embargo legislation against Japan “will have minimum cost and almost no risk to ourselves.”5 The chairman of the Stimson Committee wrote, “No person with real experience in the Far East during the last 10 years has any fear that an embargo would lead to war.”6

  Henry Luce’s New China came to
life in American movie theaters with the March of Time newsreel entitled “China Fights Back!” It opened with a dramatic crisis: scenes of Japanese killing Noble Chinese Peasants as the narrator explained that Chungking was “the most intensively bombed spot in the world.” Then the narrator identified the hero: “Symbol of the New China and Chinese determination is lean, hard-bitten fifty-two-year-old Chiang Kai-shek, undisputed ruler and idol of China’s four hundred million.”

  The China shown in the film would have bewildered the Four Hundred Million: American-style row houses and libraries, mothers pushing children in prams on neat sidewalks, knitting sessions on American-style porches, factory smokestacks, department stores, “coolies… learning the ways of the modern machine,” Chinese kids frolicking in chlorinated swimming pools.

  The shots of uniformed, orderly soldiers would also have been a surprise to the Chinese, so different were they from Chiang’s diseased, straw-sandaled real-life locust troops. American viewers learned that Chiang’s army was “lacking only modern armaments to turn them into a military machine of the first rate [and] China awaits weapons from America, which alone will allow her to take the offensive and drive out the invading Japanese.” The narrator closed with words sure to have warmed the Time Inc. chairman’s heart: “To help the Chinese is to help ourselves. They are fighting the battle of freedom and of free peoples on what is literally our western front.… The responsibility which China has borne alone in the Far East is one free men everywhere must accept. The responsibility of upholding freedom as an ideal.” The finale featured Chinese schoolchildren in Western clothes sitting at American-style school desks and copying from the blackboard: