The China Mirage

by James Bradley

  After Pearl Harbor, Ailing, Chiang, T.V., and Mayling strategized. As had long been their wont, they didn’t discuss how to confront the Japanese but instead planned how to extract money from FDR with the promise of fighting Japan. On December 30 Chiang asked U.S. ambassador Clarence Gauss for a cool half a billion dollars, to be handed over with no strings attached. The ambassador scoffed at the idea, apparently not aware of the China Lobby’s pull in Washington. On January 9, 1942, FDR wrote Morgenthau, “I am anxious to help Chiang Kai-Shek… I hope you can invent some way of doing this.”36

  Morgenthau thought of how he could ensure this huge sum was used effectively; he wanted to pay part of the money directly to Chiang’s soldiers with a new currency called the D-E-M-O (short for democracy). Morgenthau told his staff, “I was trying to think of some way so that while the boys fight they get their money, and if they don’t fight, no money.”37

  But Chiang didn’t want to fight the Japanese, and Ailing wanted her big chunk of dough, pronto. Word leaked from Chungking that without American aid, Chiang wouldn’t be able to continue his valiant resistance against the Japanese and would be forced to make a separate peace with them. On January 30, T. V. Soong met alone with Roosevelt in the White House. Following the meeting, the president summoned his secretaries of State, Treasury, and Commerce, “ordering immediate action be taken to grant China the $500 million loan with no strings attached.”38

  When Congress approved it, Roosevelt wrote Chiang that the loan “testified to the wholehearted respect and admiration which the government and people of this country have for China.”39

  On Saturday, December 20, 1941, a week and a half before the signing of the Declaration by the United Nations, which pledged the signatories to the war effort, ten Japanese twin-engine Kawasaki bombers took off from Hanoi to attack Kunming, China. The squadron brought along no fighter escorts as they expected no opposition, and so they were defenseless in the air. Near Kunming, they were surprised by Claire Chennault’s fighters, who shot down four of the Japanese bombers and killed at least fifteen Japanese airmen at the cost of one of Chennault’s planes, which crash-landed when it ran out of gas. To celebrate, Soong-Chiang propagandists released Chennault’s name to United Press International.

  At that moment, the United States was on its heels, reeling from the Japanese onslaught; the Japanese were hammering General MacArthur’s besieged soldiers in the Philippines, and U.S. Navy warships were still being fished out of Pearl Harbor. Now, suddenly, from deep in the hinterlands of China, came news of an American fist striking Japan’s chin. U.S. newspapers published the account on December 21, running it as a small-fry story about a militarily insignificant clash over a distant city no one had ever heard of; their front pages were dominated by stories of major cities in flames around the globe. The New York Times ran the story on page 27. Henry Luce read the New York Times daily; it was his major source for news. Thus alerted, Luce put Teddy White on the case, and on December 29, Time magazine published a breathless story subtitled “Blood for the Tigers”:

  For three years the Japanese had been bombing China from the coast. Their bombs had crunched through the masonry of every major provincial capital in Free China. They had laughed at the ineffectual popping of Chungking’s worn anti-aircraft guns, had shot down fledglings of the Chinese Air Force like wounded ducks.

  Last year lean, hard-bitten, taciturn Colonel Claire L. Chennault (U.S. Army, retired), adviser to Chiang Kai-shek’s Air Force, left Chungking for the U.S. He rounded up U.S. volunteers to fly 100 new P-40s purchased from the U.S. If U.S. aid were to flow in over the Burma Road, U.S. flyers would have to protect it. All through the summer months Colonel Chennault whipped his volunteers (dubbed the “Flying Tigers”) into shape. By the time he was ready to fight, he had an added incentive: the Japanese were now the enemies of his own country.

  Last week ten Japanese bombers came winging their carefree way up into Yunnan, heading directly for Kunming, the terminus of the Burma Road. Thirty miles south of Kunming, the Flying Tigers swooped, let the Japanese have it. Of the ten bombers, said Chungking reports, four plummeted to earth in flames. The rest turned tail and fled. Tiger casualties: none.40

  Flying Tigers! Luce and White had taken an obscure and insignificant air battle deep in China’s interior and turned it into a sensation. Claire Chennault and the other CAMCO employees didn’t style themselves as tigers; they had decorated their airplanes with shark teeth painted on their noses. But realizing the value of a good brand, Tommy the Cork and China Defense Supplies asked Walt Disney to design a snappy logo, which he did, an insignia consisting of a winged tiger flying through a large victory V. The mythologizing of the Flying Tigers would reach Hollywood—a John Wayne movie was based on their daring adventures, and they became a part of American military myth from then on.41

  When Charlie Soong, North Carolina’s first Chinese Christian, had promoted the China mirage to the men of the Old Club in Durham, he had compared Abraham Lincoln’s “Of the people, by the people, and for the people” to Sun Yat-sen’s “Nationalism, Democracy, and People’s Livelihood.” Thirty-seven years later—in 1942—the most prominent Chinese Christian in the U.S. was Charlie’s son T.V., who whispered his father’s pitch into Warren Delano’s grandson’s ear. He, in turn, put the Lincoln/Sun Yat-sen comparison on a U.S. postage stamp. Meanwhile, across the Pacific, blood flowed.

  Five-cent U.S. stamp, 1942: Abraham Lincoln and Sun Yat-sen. “Of the people, by the people, for the people.” With the politically powerful China Lobby influencing him, FDR equated China with the United States. (CPA Media / Pictures From History)

  President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, U.S. Postmaster General Frank Walker, and T. V. Soong examining the new Lincoln/Sun stamp. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

  Chapter 11

  THE MANDATE OF HEAVEN

  We are in the process of throwing away a nation of people who could and would save democracy with us.

  —Pearl Buck1

  What will the American people say when they finally learn the truth?

  —General Joseph Stilwell2

  On February 9, 1942, General Joseph Stilwell went to the White House to meet with the president. Secretary of War Stimson and General Marshall had recommended Stilwell as commander of the China theater because he had served there, spoke Chinese, and was a top-tier Army tactician and strategist. Today was the meeting in which Stilwell would receive FDR’s orders, but once in the Oval Office, Stilwell learned that his commander in chief had nothing definite to say:

  Call at White House. 12:00 to 12:20. F.D.R. very pleasant, and very unimpressive. As if I were a constituent in to see him. Rambled on about his idea of the war… “a 28,000 mile front is my conception,” etc., etc. “The real strategy is to fight them all,” etc., etc. Just a lot of wind. After I had enough, I broke in and asked him if he had a message for Chiang Kai-shek. He very obviously had not and talked for five minutes hunting around for something world-shaking to say. Finally he had it—“Tell him we are in this thing for keeps, and we intend to keep at it until China gets back all her lost territory.”… He was cordial and pleasant… and frothy.3

  Chiang Kai-shek, Mayling Soong, and General Joseph Stilwell (Getty Images)

  Once Stilwell arrived in China and met with Chiang, he told a reporter off the record, “The trouble in China is simple: We are allied to an ignorant, illiterate, superstitious, peasant son of a bitch.”4 In his diary, Stilwell referred to Chiang as “Peanut” and constantly criticized him: “Chiang Kai-shek has been boss so long and has so many yes-men around him that he has the idea he is infallible on any subject.… He is not mentally stable, and he will say many things to your face that he doesn’t mean fully or exactly.”5 Stilwell understood that he was dealing with two realities:

  We were fighting Germany to tear down the Nazi system—one-party government, supported by the Gestapo and headed by an unbalanced man with little education. We had plenty to say against such a system. Ch
ina, our ally, was being run by a one-party government and supported by a Gestapo and headed by an unbalanced man with little education. This government, however, had the prestige of the possession of power—it was opposing Japan, and its titular head had been built up by propaganda in America out of all proportion to his deserts and accomplishments.6

  The War Department required American correspondents reporting from China to sign an agreement that they would submit their work to War Department censors. In her Pulitzer Prize–winning book Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–1945, Barbara Tuchman explained why the American press was unable to break through the wall of China Lobby propaganda:

  Owing partly to censorship but more to voluntary reticence, the press up to 1943 published nothing realistic about the brave and favorite ally. Probably never before had the people of one country viewed the government of another under misapprehension so complete.7

  A February 1942 Gallup poll showed that 62 percent of Americans favored focusing the major military effort against Japan to save New China; only 25 percent thought the priority was to defend England against Germany.8 For more than a year after Pearl Harbor, the Chinese were the Americans’ favorite allies. Chungking’s Ministry of Information fed America fables about how U.S.-Chinese interests were aligned in the fight against Japan and told brave tales about valiant soldiers and Noble Peasants who yearned to be like Americans. Ministry of Information scribes—many with American educations—wrote convincing press releases about Chinese victories over the Japanese in battles that had never occurred. In the U.S., these stories were heralded as fact by China Lobbyists in Washington, in the press, and in the pulpits.

  Many outside the U.S. cultural box understood that China was not destined to evolve into a Christianized and Americanized nation. Winston Churchill wrote to one of his generals, “I must enlighten you upon the American view. China bulks as large in the minds of many of them as Great Britain.… If I can epitomize in one word the lesson I learned in the United States, it was ‘China.’ ”9 Americans had long been sold on Chiang Kai-shek as a valiant warrior and Southern Methodist democrat, but in England the more realistic British enjoyed a radio comedy program that featured a Generalissimo character named General Cash My Cheque.

  The China Lobby continued to surround Roosevelt. His cousin Joe Alsop, on T. V. Soong’s payroll, wrote newspaper columns praising Chiang and Chennault and criticizing Stilwell. T. V. Soong and Tommy the Cork constantly complained to FDR about Stilwell and wanted him ousted in favor of Chennault, who had become a Flying Tiger folk hero in the U.S. but who now had to serve under Stilwell. In October of 1942 Chennault wrote a letter to Roosevelt that Barbara Tuchman called “one of the extraordinary documents of the war… the self-annunciation of a military messiah.”10 Chennault promised Roosevelt:

  Japan can be defeated in China. It can be defeated by an Air Force so small that in other theaters it would be called ridiculous… I am now confident that given full authority as the American military commander in China that I can not only bring about the downfall of Japan but that… I can create such good will that China will be a great and friendly trade market for generations.11

  This was great news to Roosevelt. And the price was cheap—Chennault requested only one hundred and forty-seven airplanes, and in exchange, FDR would get everything he wanted: the China Lobby off his back, the defeat of Japan, and China’s everlasting friendship.

  In his letter, Chennault employed the word simple four times, as in “The military task is a simple one.” FDR’s eyes must have popped over Chennault lines like this: “I can accomplish the overthrow of Japan… within six months, within one year at the outside.… It will make China our lasting friend for years after the war.”12

  Roosevelt, Hopkins, Currie, and Corcoran loved Chennault’s plan and were enthusiastic about getting rid of Stilwell and replacing him with Chennault. FDR forwarded the memo to the War Department, where both Chennault’s bucking of the military chain of command and his ideas were met with icy derision. General Marshall judged Chennault’s plan “just nonsense; not bad strategy, just nonsense.”13

  Chiang was frustrated with Stilwell, who constantly prodded the unwilling Generalissimo to confront the Japanese. Chiang much preferred his yes-man Chennault and their plan for a barbarian air force. Chiang wrote Roosevelt and asked him to call Chennault to Washington once again so he could pitch the dream. The War Department ordered Chennault and his superior Stilwell to Washington. Recalled Chennault about a meeting in the Oval Office,

  The President asked if a China-based air force could sink a million tons of Japanese shipping a year. I replied that if we received 10,000 tons of supplies monthly my planes would sink and severely damage more than a million tons of shipping. He banged his fist on the desk and chortled, “If you can sink a million tons, we’ll break their back.”14

  Stilwell, who lived in the real world rather than in Chennault’s world of mirage, had no chance with FDR. As Chennault wrote in his memoirs,

  At one Trident conference when Stilwell was expostulating on the poor quality of Chinese leadership, the President interrupted him.

  “What do you think of the Generalissimo?” he asked.

  “He’s a vacillating, tricky, undependable old scoundrel, who never keeps his word—” Stilwell growled.

  “Chennault, what do you think?” the President interrupted, turning to me in the corner.

  “Sir, I think the Generalissimo is one of the two or three greatest military and political leaders in the world today. He has never broken a commitment or promise made to me,” I replied.15

  In his notes, Stilwell says he tried to warn Roosevelt that the Chiang-Chennault air-war plan was a hoax, a military joke:

  Any increased air offensive that stung the Japs enough would bring a strong reaction that would wreck everything and put China out of the war.… The first essential step was to get a ground force capable of seizing and holding airbases, and opening communications to China from the outside world. Overruled.… But what’s the use when the World’s Greatest Strategist is against you.16

  Sixty-two years after Julian Carr picked up Charlie Soong at the Durham train station, Franklin Delano Roosevelt greeted Mayling Soong at the Washington train station and took her to the White House, where she slept down the hall from FDR.

  The U.S. House of Representatives was packed on February 18, 1943, to witness the China mirage incarnate. Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn introduced her as “Madame Chiang Kai-shek, one of the outstanding women of all the earth.”17

  Mayling was confident that she could make her case because, as a U.S.-educated Chinese, she grasped the hall-of-mirrors quality of America’s China mirage. In his last book, David Halberstam described it:

  The China that existed in the minds of millions of Americans was the most illusory of countries, filled as it was with dutiful, obedient peasants who liked America and loved Americans, who longed for nothing so much as to be like them. It was a country where ordinary peasants allegedly hoped to be more Christian and were eager, despite the considerable obstacles in their way, to rise out of what Americans considered a heathen past. Millions of Americans believed not only that they loved (and understood) China and the Chinese, but also that it was their duty to Americanize the Chinese. “With God’s help, we will lift Shanghai up and up, ever up until it is just like Kansas City,” said Senator Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska.…

  Franklin Roosevelt and Mayling Soong, Washington, D.C., February 18, 1943. Mayling brought her own silk sheets to sleep at the White House. (Courtesy Everett Collection)

  There were two Chinas. There was the China in the American public mind, a China as Americans wanted it to be, and the other China, the real China.… The illusory China was a heroic ally, ruled by the brave, industrious, Christian, pro-American Chiang Kai-shek and his beautiful wife, Mayling, a member of one of China’s wealthiest and best connected families, herself Christian and American-educated, and who seemed to have been ordered
up directly from Central Casting for a major public relations campaign. The goals of the Generalissimo and his lady, it always seemed, were exactly the same as America’s goals, their values the same as ours as well.18

  From the floor of the U.S. Congress, Mayling delivered the China Lobby’s well-rehearsed myth:

  You, as representatives of the American people, have before you the glorious opportunity of carrying on the pioneer work of your ancestors [who] braved hardships to open up a new continent.… You have today… the immeasurably greater opportunity to implement these same ideals and to help bring about the liberation of man’s spirit in every part of the world.… If the Chinese people could speak to you in your own tongue, or if you could understand our tongue, they would tell you that… we are fighting for the same cause, that we have identity of ideals.… I assure you that our people are willing and eager to cooperate with you in the realization of these ideals.19

  “Goddam it,” one emotional congressman said. “I never saw anything like it. Madame Chiang had me on the verge of bursting into tears.”20 Clare Boothe Luce—now a Republican representative from Connecticut—said Madame Chiang was “too proud to beg us for what is China’s right and too gracious to reproach us for what we have failed to do.”21 Eleanor Roosevelt wrote, “She was a person, a great person, receiving the recognition due her as an individual valiantly fighting in the forefront of the world’s battle.”22 Fortune magazine called Mayling “the most effective ambassador ever to represent a foreign power in the U.S.… She came to offer us a way—a way that would benefit us as much as the Chinese—a deal in which Chinese manpower would use American equipment.”23