China and Japan
Page 43
Guangxi to fight in other parts of China, proved to have some of the most
effective soldiers among the Nationalist forces, and they earned special
praise for their contributions to the battles of Xuzhou and Taierzhuang.
Japa nese Civilians in War time China
Once war broke out in 1937, Japa nese civilians who remained in China
during the war felt the enmity of the Chinese people, and in many locali-
ties the Chinese carried out attacks on Japa nese residents. Some Japa nese
companies sent employees and their families back to Japan. The Japa nese
who remained in China turned to the Japa nese military for protection. Ex-
cept in Taiwan and Manchuria, relations between the Japa nese and Chi-
nese became tense and the cooperative and even friendly contacts between
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The Sino- Japanese War, 1937–1945
them in business, religion, education, and culture largely ended. Japa nese
residents who felt unsafe in smaller communities moved to larger cities, to
Harbin, Shenyang, Changchun, Tianjin, Qingdao, Beiping, Hankou, and
especially Shanghai, where they sought protection in larger Japa nese
communities.
Shanghai had the largest Japa nese community in China, with about
20,000 Japa nese residents at the outbreak of the war, mostly in the Inter-
national Settlement. As Japa nese refugees from smaller towns began flowing
into Shanghai, the Japa nese population increased to about 90,000. The
Japa nese in Shanghai felt protected by their troops, and the Japa nese Resi-
dence Association, described by Joshua Fogel, looked after their needs.
However, relations with the local Chinese in Shanghai had been tense ever
since the 1932 air raids and fighting.
In smaller Japa nese communities, such as that in Tianjin, the Japa nese
residents had been more integrated into the local community than they were
in Shanghai, but when war broke out they became more separated from the
Chinese living in the same city because they had their own military protec-
tion and their own stores and other facilities. Just as the Chinese became
more nationalistic and anti- Japanese in war time, so the Japa nese residents
who remained in China worked more closely with fellow Japa nese residents
and tended to become suspicious of the Chinese and insulated from the sur-
rounding Chinese community.
The Unoccupied Areas
Japa nese troops, worn out after taking Wuhan and stretched thin across
northern, central, and southeastern China, never penetrated into the south-
west where the Nationalists were located, or into northern Shaanxi and
other mountainous areas where the Communists were based. They also
never penetrated the border areas (including Gansu, Suiyuan, Qinghai,
Xinjiang, and Tibet) that were peripheral to the Sino- Japanese War and the
Civil War that followed. The Japa nese did carry out massive air raids on
Chongqing, where Chiang and the Nationalist government and army were
located, as well as a few air raids on Yan’an, in Shaanxi province, where
Communist headquarters was located, but they never sent troops to attack
either the Communist or Nationalist base areas.
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china and japan
The Communists
For Communists, resisting the hated Japa nese was far more popu lar than
their earlier strug gle against Nationalist landlords and businessmen, and
they made good use of the opportunity to publicize their patriotism. The
core group in Yan’an were the 8,000 soldiers who had arrived in late 1935
after the Long March, having escaped the Nationalist Army’s Fifth Encir-
clement Campaign. There, in northern Shaanxi province, a very poor area,
they lived simple lives but their movement thrived. An estimated 100,000
newcomers arrived in Yan’an during the war. Some were refugees fleeing the
Japa nese and others were young intellectuals moved by a desire to serve their
country, attracted by the idealism of the Communists and disillusioned
with the Nationalists. In Yan’an, with no immediate pressure from the out-
side, the Communists had time to develop their under lying ideology, their
organ ization, and their military, and to devise strategies for taking over the
country. They expanded the Communist Party, regularized rules about
membership, and carried out a rectification campaign to establish party
unity and achieve a clear chain of command. They or ga nized the Anti-
Japanese University, where they trained military and po liti cal officers. They
also developed art and lit er a ture to use for propaganda among the broader
Chinese public. In 1937 there were roughly 40,000 members of the Chi-
nese Communist Party, but by the end of the war in 1945 there were 1.2 mil-
lion. The Eighth Route Army, the Communists’ main force, had grown
from 80,000 to more than 1 million, and its New Fourth Army had grown
from 12,000 to 269,000.7
The Communists made one major thrust to fight the Japanese— the
Hundred Regiments Campaign, led by General Peng Dehuai, the com-
mander of the Eighth Route Army. From August to December 1940, Peng
Dehuai led more than 100 regiments in attacking Japa nese troops and de-
stroying railway tracks and bridges in Hebei and Shanxi provinces. When
the Japa nese realized the effectiveness of the Hundred Regiments Campaign
and expanded their forces dedicated to fighting it, Peng Dehuai pulled back.
The Communist forces suffered some losses, and leader Mao Zedong de-
cided that from then on, large- scale Communist units would preserve their
strength for fighting the Nationalists. The Communists did not engage in
any more major attacks on Japa nese forces; instead they used their guer-
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The Sino- Japanese War, 1937–1945
rilla forces in vari ous places to harass the Japa nese and damage their
facilities.
After the Hundred Regiments Campaign, Peng Dehuai and other
military leaders, including Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping, moved east
to the Taihang Mountains in eastern Shanxi province, where they formed
another base in the border area between Hebei, Shanxi, Shandong, and
Henan ( Jin- Ji- Lu- Yu). There they could get enough food in the fertile
areas of Shanxi province and the troops lived in the mountains, making it
difficult for the Japa nese to reach them. Yet they were close enough to Japa-
nese troops that they could use their guerrilla forces to attack them and
disrupt their railways.
In addition to the Eighth Route Army in northern China, the Commu-
nists had a large military presence, the New Fourth Army, in Central
China, in Jiangsu and Anhui provinces, and there were smaller groups of
guerrillas based in other areas. According to Communist publications, by
the end of the war there were fifteen Communist bases located throughout
the country, most of them relatively small and situated primarily in moun-
tainous areas.
As Lucian Bianco has shown, Chinese peasants on the eve of the fighting
between the Communists and Nationalists did not have a class conscious-
ness. They were concerned about taxes, rents, and the collection of special
/> fees. Ever since Chiang Kai- shek established his Nanjing government, he
had raised taxes to cover the cost of his government and army. In contrast,
the Communists’ publicity stressed that they did not support a large bu-
reaucracy, and that their armies were basically self- sufficient. They appealed
to the peasants by forcing landlords to reduce their rents. The Communists
also publicized their efforts to train their troops to treat peasants with re-
spect, to pay for what they took, and to clean up the places where they stayed.
The Nationalists in Sichuan and Yunnan Provinces
When the Nationalists settled in Chongqing, which quickly became the
largest city in Sichuan, they brought with them a large bureaucracy and a
sizable military, which turned out to be a burden on the local economy. Large
numbers of refugees followed. It has been estimated that the population of
Chongqing at the end of the war was five times what it had been prior to
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china and japan
the war. Chiang had to collect substantial taxes to support his large bureau-
cracy and his military forces, and the troops, like the other refugees who
fled to Chongqing, had to rely on local people to supply their food and other
goods. The local people found it hard to be welcoming to the outsiders
because of the burdens they created. The incoming population also oc-
cupied some areas formerly used for growing rice. With the massive
number of refugees, Chongqing was chronically short of goods. The short-
ages led to runaway inflation that all residents, already burdened by high
taxes and overcrowding, found frightening. None of the mea sures de-
signed to control inflation succeeded.
The high tax burden on the local populace made it difficult to provide
adequate salaries for the many officials and soldiers so that they could live
comfortably. Many civil servants who tried to find ways to increase their
income were accused of corruption. The Japa nese troops were far away, and
it was difficult for those in Chongqing to feel that they were performing
useful work. Those who had come from the cities in the east found the living
conditions, with limited housing, inflation, a shortage of supplies, and swel-
tering summertime heat, difficult to bear, and as a result, morale suffered.
Some of the Chinese, along with the Americans in Chongqing, criticized
Chiang’s authoritarian style and his readiness to torture and kill his oppo-
nents. Westerners found Chiang’s American- educated wife, Soong Mei ling,
charming, but many saw the taciturn, reserved generalissimo as lacking in
moral as well as po liti cal leadership. Military commanders considered
Chiang too detail oriented and excessively controlling. Yet no one ques-
tioned his commitment to China’s future, and his diary shows that he was
thoughtful and even self- critical in assessing his own judgments and his
ability to solve the prob lems he faced.
The territory ruled by the Nationalists extended beyond Chongqing to
all of Sichuan and much of Yunnan. Refugees fled to vari ous places in these
two provinces from all parts of China. Some industries were relocated to
Yunnan as well Sichuan, making use of workers from Shanghai and else-
where. Faculty and students escaping Peking University, Tsing hua Univer-
sity, and Nankai University united to set up Southwest Associated Univer-
sity (Xi’nan Lianda) in the Yunnan capital of Kunming.
One of the most popu lar foreigners in Chongqing was Major General
Claire Lee Chennault, who, after retiring from the U.S. Air Force in 1937,
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The Sino- Japanese War, 1937–1945
went to China to help train Chinese pi lots. He led the Flying Tigers, a vol-
unteer squadron of American military pi lots, in attacking Japa nese planes,
and he and Chiang Kai- shek hit it off well. To bring supplies to the Nation-
alists from the outside, the British and the Chinese cooperated in building
the Burma Road, which was completed to Kunming in 1938. In 1942, after
the Japa nese succeeded in closing the road, the United States helped by
flying in goods from India over “the hump,” the mountainous areas of
Burma, to the Nationalist forces in Yunnan and Sichuan.
In February 1942 President Franklin Roo se velt, considering how to help
the Chinese war effort, sent a Chinese- speaking general, Joseph Stilwell, to
work with Chiang Kai- shek. Within a week, Stilwell, known as “Vinegar
Joe” for his sharp personal style, was publicly referring to Chiang as “peanut,”
and Chiang reciprocated with disdain for Stilwell. They had a stormy rela-
tionship that continued until October 1944, when Roo se velt fi nally recalled
Stilwell at Chiang’s insistence. Stilwell tried to get Chiang to send his troops
to fight Japan aggressively, but Chiang resisted. Under lying their personal
bitterness were their diff er ent approaches to fighting the war. Chiang was
worn down by two years of fighting the Japa nese without success and by
the years in Chongqing. He requested that the Americans supply more
goods and planes to assist China, and he expressed disappointment that the
United States was doing so little to help him. Roo se velt, preoccupied with
fighting the war in Eu rope as well as in the Pacific, did not consider the
China theater his highest priority until the end of the war in Eu rope. Later,
as the United States began producing more bombers, Roo se velt, to Chiang’s
disappointment, placed a higher priority on directly bombing the Japa nese
islands than on bombing Japa nese troops and facilities in China. For a brief
time, at the Cairo Conference in November 1943, Chiang was elevated
to the position of a partner, meeting with Roo se velt and Churchill, but
Stilwell’s view of Chiang strengthened Roo se velt’s perception that Chiang
was refusing to fight the Japa nese and saving his strength in case he later
had to fight the Communists.
The American officials and analysts sent to work with Chiang during
World War II, including John Fairbank, Theodore White, and early postwar
writers such as Barbara Tuchman, general y sided with Stilwell and had a low
opinion of Chiang Kai- shek and the Nationalists in Chongqing, whom they
saw as corrupt and de cadent. Later scholars, including Yang Tianshi, Jay
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china and japan
Taylor, and Hans van de Ven, while acknowledging the corruption and de-
cadence in Chongqing, have a more sympathetic perspective, recognizing the
difficulties Chiang confronted and his per sis tence in trying to deal with them.
By 1944, some of the Americans assigned to Chongqing, disappointed
with the discouraging scene there, expressed hope in the Chinese Commu-
nist forces, though they allowed that they really knew very little about
them. In 1937 the Chinese Communists had been a small band struggling
to survive, while the Nationalists, after a de cade of bringing improvements
to the country, were a large national party leading the government. But from
1937 to 1944 the Communists had gained on their Nationalist rivals. Though
they had limited military power, they had a message. They
were carry ing
out guerrilla attacks on the Japa nese, they were living simply, and they ad-
vocated reducing rents, all of which had considerable appeal to those in
Yan’an and to patriotic youths in the occupied areas. They had a spirit of
optimism that was lacking among the Nationalists. In 1944 the Japa nese
launched a huge military campaign that tipped the scales even more in the
direction of the Communists.
The Ichigo Campaign
By 1944, U.S. air and submarine attacks had put Japan on the defensive in
the Pacific War. In response, Japan launched the Ichigo Campaign to wipe
out U.S. air bases in China that could be used to launch bombing raids on
Japan and to provide an unimpeded transport route for bringing supplies
to Chongqing from India and Southeast Asia that could replace the sea
route then controlled by U.S. submarines. The campaign lasted from
April 1944 to January 1945. It was the largest campaign of the Sino- Japanese
War, carried out on a scale comparable to the Normandy invasion in Eu-
rope and the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Of the 820,000 Japa-
nese troops then in China, some 510,000 took part in the campaign. They
had at their disposal 100,000 horses and 240 planes. Chiang Kai- shek,
under pressure from his own supporters and from the United States to do
more to stop the Japa nese, mobilized more than one million men to respond
to the Japa nese attacks. Japa nese troops in this campaign adopted a scorched-
earth policy; as they moved southward, they destroyed granaries and
farmland to weaken China’s capacity to resist.
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The Sino- Japanese War, 1937–1945
In Hengyang (Hunan province), in one of the largest battles of the war,
even larger than the battles around Wuhan in 1938, Nationalist troops
fought valiantly for three months. In the early stages of the Ichigo Cam-
paign, the Chinese lacked good intelligence. Believing signs of Japa nese
movements toward Hengyang were a feint, they initially failed to send ad-
equate numbers of troops to the battle. General Stilwell’s view was that the
Chinese soldiers fought bravely, but the officers were not well trained. Chiang
Kai- shek would sometimes call on his commanders directly, giving orders
that they could not disobey even if they thought that local conditions war-