by Toland, John
Chiang had since offered $80,000 for Chou’s head and was understandably pale and apprehensive. But Chou was all affability. He swore that the Communists would not exploit the situation if Chiang joined them. All they wanted was an end to civil war, and a joint effort against the Japanese.
Hostile at first, Chiang listened with growing interest but still refused to commit himself. Within a week, however—according to the Communist version—Chou persuaded him to lead the fight against the Japanese on his own terms. In any case, he was flown back to Nanking on Christmas Day. Surprisingly, the Young Marshal went along with him and once there the two went through a typically Oriental face-saving game. It was like a stylized duel in Chinese opera. First Chang abased himself, confessing that he was “surly and unpolished” and had acted impudently and illegally: “Blushing with shame, I have followed you to the capital in order to receive from you appropriate punishment. Whatever is best for the state I will not evade, if I have to die ten thousand deaths.” Then it was Chiang’s turn: “Due to my lack of virtue and defects in my training of subordinates, an unprecedented revolt broke out.” Chang was tried, sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment, and pardoned within twenty-four hours.
At the same time Chiang was publicly proclaiming that despite stories from Sian, he had been freed “without having to accept any conditions.” It was undoubtedly a version contrived to appease those in Nanking much more violently opposed to any dealing with the Reds than he, because within weeks he was dickering with Mao. The negotiations went so well that early in 1937 the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee wired the Kuomintang that they would abandon their policy of armed uprising against the Nationalist government and place the Red Army under Chiang’s full control. The terms were informally accepted and once more, as in the honeymoon days of Borodin, the Kuomintang and Communists were united.
This brought China her first semblance of tranquillity in more than ten years. “Peace is achieved,” declared Chou En-lai in an interview. “There is now no fighting between us. We have the opportunity to participate in the actual preparations for the defensive war against Japan. As to the problem of achieving democracy, this aim has only begun to be realized.… One must consider the anti-Japanese war preparations and democracy like the two wheels of a rickshaw, for example. That is to say, the preparation for the anti-Japanese war comes first, and following it, the movement for democracy—which can push the former forward.”
A few months later, on July 5, 1937, a formal Kuomintang-Communist agreement was signed and both sides made preparations to drive the Japanese out of Peking and the rest of North China.
• • •
2.
In Japan, the increasing influence of the military over the government had become an issue. In the name of law and order, Prime Minister Hirota was now so obviously subservient to the generals that liberal members of the Diet denounced them. One aroused deputy told the War Minister he should commit hara-kiri. This was greeted by such enthusiastic shouts and applause that the minister resigned in anger. And of course, with his resignation, in February 1937, came the end of the Hirota Cabinet.
Without hesitation Prince Saionji advised the Emperor to name another general, Kazushige Ugaki, to succeed Hirota. This choice infuriated almost everyone in the Army, since Ugaki was a moderate who had once reduced their number by four divisions. Consequently the Big Three said they simply couldn’t find anyone who would serve with Ugaki. He was compelled to report to the Emperor that he was unable to form a cabinet and gave vent to his indignation in a statement to the newspapers: “What I see is that only a few men in authoritative positions in the Army have formed a group [the Control clique] and are forcing their views on the authorities, propagandizing as if their action represents the general will of the Army. The Army belongs to the Emperor. Whether their action during the last few days represents the general will of the Army of the Emperor or not is not too clear. The selection of a war minister by the Big Three of the Army is too formal and lacks sincerity.… I believe that Japan stands at the crossroads between fascism and parliamentary politics. I am partly responsible for the present condition in the Army, which has become a political organization. I feel sorry for the Emperor because of this state of affairs. Moreover, I greatly regret that the Army, which I have loved so long, has been brought to such a pass.…”
A general named Senjuro Hayashi who was sympathetic to the Control clique was selected as prime minister, but he ran into such opposition from the Diet that his government, nicknamed the “eat-and-run cabinet,” lasted just four months. Hayashi was succeeded by a civilian, Prince Fumimaro Konoye, a descendant of the Fujiwara family, which had ruled the land for several centuries. A disciple of Saionji’s, he had long resisted the last genro’s efforts to get him involved in politics. In the harrowing days following the 2/26 Incident, the old prince had concluded that Konoye alone could lead the new government and recommended him formally to the Emperor. Konoye had refused—he preferred to remain as President of the House of Peers and besides was in poor health—causing Saionji’s “most embarrassing moment.”
But Konoye considered the present crisis so critical that he was persuaded to accept the position hitherto reserved for old men. At forty-six years of age he was a popular choice to lead the country, since the people had little confidence in politicians and feared a continuance of military rule. For their part, most military men trusted him because he was above political greed. The zaibatsu counted on him to bring stability, the intellectuals to stem the tide of fascism. Ordinary people were impressed by his comparative youth and good looks and his very reluctance to be prime minister. Any man with such an utter lack of ambition had to be sincere.
“Evolutionary reforms and progress within the Constitution must be our watchdogs,” he promised upon assuming the premiership in June, “but the country demands national reform, and the government, while neither socialist nor fascist, must listen to its call. The impetus of the great [Meiji] Restoration has carried us thus far with honor and success; but now it is for the young men to take up the task and carry the country forward into a new age.”
The new age came sooner than he expected and was not at all what he had envisaged. It was ushered in on the night of July 7 at the ancient stone bridge named after Marco Polo. A Japanese company stationed near this historic landmark was holding night maneuvers about a mile from a large Chinese unit. Just as a bugle signaled the end of the operation, bullets came whistling from the Chinese lines. The Japanese returned fire, but within minutes the skirmish was over. There was a single Japanese casualty—one man was missing. The company commander reported the incident to his battalion commander, who phoned regimental headquarters in nearby Peking. A second company was sent to the bridge, as well as a staff officer who began arranging a truce with the Chinese. Both sides had just agreed it was an unfortunate mistake when a second fusillade poured into the two Japanese companies.
The first shots had probably been accidental. The second volley was suspicious, particularly since relations between the Chinese and Japanese troops in the area were so good. This had come about through a close friendship, between General Sung Chi-yuen, commander of all Chinese troops in North China, and General Gun Hashimoto, chief of staff of the North China Garrison. The question was who had fired the second volley, if not the Chinese troops. Cohorts of Doihara trying to aggravate the incident into an excuse to invade China in force? Or Communists hoping to start a full-scale war between Chiang Kai-shek and the Japanese that would probably end in the communization of China?§
Whoever it was, the Japanese counterattacked, and it wasn’t until the next morning that the negotiators agreed that both sides should peacefully withdraw. While the Japanese were pulling out, they again drew fire, retaliated and the fight was resumed.
Though it should have seemed obvious by now that a third party was trying to keep the skirmish going, each side accused the other of breaking the truce and the negotiations floundered. When the news
arrived in Tokyo, the Army Chief of Staff cabled a routine order to settle the trouble locally. Later in the day representatives of the War, Navy and Foreign ministries agreed on a policy of “nonexpansion” and “local settlement.” This was approved by Prince Konoye and his cabinet, but at a special meeting of the Army General Staff, the expansionists argued that more troops should be sent into China to teach Chiang a lesson, otherwise he might use this incident as an excuse to retake Manchuria; this would endanger Japanese-controlled Korea and eventually put Japan at the mercy of Russian and Chinese Communists. They promised to make the military action brief and come to a quick agreement with Chiang. Then all Japanese troops would be withdrawn into North China, which would be used purely as a buffer against Russia.
The greatest opposition came from Kanji Ishihara, now a general and head of Operations. He argued for hours but finally had to admit that the poorly disciplined Chinese troops in North China were bound to start massacring the Japanese traders and settlers in the area. This would arouse the Japanese public and bring about what he feared and abhorred the most, an endless war of retribution.
That was why the man who once said, “The first soldier marching into China will only do so over my dead body,” approved the reinforcement of North China with two brigades from the Kwantung Army, one division from Korea and three from the homeland. And on July 11 Prince Konoye, who had so recently pledged international integrity, gave his consent to the flood of troops into another country. But there was little else he could have done, according to his private secretary, Tomohiko Ushiba, “in the face of the War Minister’s assurance that it was merely a troop movement to stop local fighting.”
At the Marco Polo Bridge, after hours of wrangling, the negotiators had just arranged another truce. But as both sides pulled back, a loud crackling like machine-gun fire broke out (it turned out to be firecrackers) and the battle was on again. This time the two friendly generals, Sung Chi-yuen and Gen Hashimoto, personally stepped in and before the day was over a firm local agreement had been signed. In it Sung apologized for the entire incident. He promised to punish the officers responsible, rigidly control any Red elements in his forces and withdraw troops from the bridge area. On his part Hashimoto, acting for his dying commander, agreed to bring no more reinforcements into North China.
Chiang Kai-shek ignored the truce and sent Sung orders to concentrate more forces in the troubled area. Instead Sung kept his promise and began withdrawing troops. It looked as if the crisis was over, but unfortunately communications were so bad that Tokyo had no idea the problem was being solved, and on July 17 peremptorily demanded that the Chinese stop sending troops into North China and recognize the puppet government Doihara had helped set up. This so incensed Chiang that he issued a defiant proclamation from Nanking: “If we allow one more inch of our territory to be lost or sovereign rights to be encroached upon, then we shall be guilty of committing an unpardonable crime against our Chinese race.… China’s sovereign rights cannot be sacrificed, even at the expense of war, and once war has begun there is no looking back.”
The Japanese military attaché in Nanking, General Seiichi Kita, told his old friend, Chinese War Minister General Ho Ying-chin, himself a graduate of the Japanese Military Academy, that if Chinese troops were not withdrawn at once from North China, the “situation might get out of hand.” Ho was not averse to some co-operation with the Japanese but said, “If war breaks out, both Japan and the Chinese Republic will be defeated and only the Russian and Chinese Communists will benefit. If you don’t believe it now, you will in ten years.” He asked Kita to pass this warning on to his government with a promise that the Chinese would “fight to the last man.”
Already concerned by exaggerated reports of the large number of Chinese troops flowing up into North China, the Japanese public was indignant at Chiang’s proclamation; and one paper, the Nichi Nichi, declared editorially that the Chinese reply left Japan no choice but “to cross the Rubicon.”
Only then did the long-delayed information from Hashimoto reach Tokyo that all was quiet at the Marco Polo Bridge and that it was not necessary to send any reinforcements to North China. The transfer orders were canceled and even the expansionists in the Army high command were relieved that a crisis had been averted. It was assumed that Chiang would agree to the terms signed by Sung, and peace return to China.
Sung continued to do his part by removing all sandbag barricades from the streets of Peking and relaxing martial law. Passenger trains from the south at last began entering the ancient capital. But there was still no word of reconciliation from Chiang Kai-shek, and what the negotiators on both sides feared came about: Japanese and Chinese troops, at trigger’s edge for almost three weeks, began firing at one another in earnest. It happened on the night of July 25 at the railroad station of Langfang, some fifty miles below Peking. Within an hour a skirmish turned into a major conflict. Heavy Japanese reinforcements were dispatched to Langfang and at dawn seventeen planes bombed a Chinese barracks. A few hours later the city was occupied.
The friendship between Sung and Hashimoto was now of little avail. The latter’s commander had died and a new one, Lieutenant General Kiyoshi Katsuki, had arrived. He was strictly a military man who felt he had been sent “to chastise the outrageous Chinese.” He cabled Tokyo that he had done everything to bring about a peaceful settlement and asked for permission to “use force” wherever necessary to protect Japanese lives and property. The Army leaders approved and one division was ordered to Shanghai and another to Tsingtao.
Again Prime Minister Konoye, assured by the military that the Chinese problem could be “solved in three months,” felt constrained to go along lest his cabinet fall. The following day, July 27, he announced in the Diet that the government must now achieve a “new order” in East Asia. To patriotic Japanese it seemed proper and equitable. Japanese lives and property had to be protected and Communism contained; it was time for firmness, not weakness. Nobody realized that it was a declaration of total war with China. The Army leaders were truly convinced they could force Chiang to negotiate before fall.ǁ
It bore no resemblance to the Manchurian coup. In 1931 the Kwantung Army had deliberately provoked the incident at Mukden, but in 1937 the North China Army neither sought nor organized the confrontation at the Marco Polo Bridge. In 1931 the Army General Staff sanctioned the seizure of Manchuria; in 1937 they did their utmost to forestall operations in North China. In 1931 Prime Minister Reijiro Wakatsuki’s failure to execute a diplomatic settlement satisfactory to the Control clique brought about the fall of his government; in 1937 there would be no change of cabinet.
With approval from Tokyo in hand, General Katsuki issued a proclamation that he was going to “launch a punitive expedition against the Chinese troops, who have been taking acts derogatory to the prestige of the Empire of Japan.” Copies of this proclamation were dropped from planes at dawn on July 28. Bombers struck at three cities and shelled others as ground troops attacked Chinese forces all over the Peking area except in the city itself.
The Rubicon had, in truth, been crossed. The rhetoric of the China conflict had evolved into action without benefit of credible strategic calculations, and Japan had taken the first giant step to war with America.
3.
“Crush the Chinese in three months and they will sue for peace,” War Minister Sugiyama predicted. As city after city fell, patriotic fervor swept through Japan, but almost the entire Western world condemned Japan’s aggression, and even Germany (because she feared for her interests in China) was critical. China appealed to the League of Nations, and while the world awaited its report, a bold attack came from another quarter. On October 5, 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt made a forceful speech in Chicago condemning all aggressors and equating the Japanese, by inference, with the Nazis and Fascists.a “When an epidemic of physical disease starts to spread, the community approves and joins in a quarantine of the patients in order to protect the health of the community,” he said a
nd explained that war was a contagion, whether declared or undeclared. “We are adopting such measures as will minimize our risk of involvement, but we cannot have complete protection in a world of disorder in which confidence and security have broken down.” There was no mistaking Roosevelt’s meaning when on the following day, after the League of Nations had censured Japan, the United States, although not a member, quickly concurred.
At home, Roosevelt’s action was largely applauded but Secretary of State Cordell Hull was unhappy about the “quarantine” clause, feeling that it set back “for at least six months our constant educational campaign intended to create and strengthen public opinion towards international co-operation.” Ambassador Joseph Grew also felt it was a grievous mistake. No American interest in China justified risking a war with Japan and it was futile to hurl “moral thunderbolts” at a country which respected force above all; it would create bitterness between the two countries and destroy the good will he had been building. Aware that his staff members shared his shock and resentment, he warned them two days later not to express their opinions outside the embassy. That night he wrote in his diary:
This was the day that I felt my carefully built castle tumbling about my ears and we all wandered about the chancery, depressed, gloomy, and with not a smile in sight. That afternoon Alice, Elsie and I went to the cinema to see Captains Courageous … And then I sunk myself in Gone with the Wind—which is precisely the way I felt.
Japanese reaction, of course, was quick and bitter. “Japan is expanding,” retorted Yosuke Matsuoka, a diplomat whose sharp tongue and ready wit was winning him many followers. “And what country in its expansion era has ever failed to be trying to its neighbors? Ask the American Indian or the Mexican how excruciatingly trying the young United States used to be once upon a time.” Japan’s expansion, like that of America’s, was as natural as the growth of a child. “Only one thing stops a child from growing—death.” He declared that Japan was fighting for two goals: to prevent Asia from falling completely under the white man’s domination, as in Africa, and to save China from Communism. “No treasure trove is in her eyes—only sacrifices upon sacrifices. No one realizes this more than she does. But her very life depends on it, as do those of her neighbors as well. The all-absorbing question before Japan today … is: Can she bear the cross?”b