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17. China Refuses to Be Conquered

At the beginning of 1938, Japanese armies occupied most of north China to the Yellow river and central China to the vicinity of Nanjing. Between the two forces lay about 300 miles of Chinese-held territory.1

Although a Chinese force ably defended Taierzhuang, a walled city about forty-five miles northeast of Xuzhou in northern Jiangsu, destroying half of a 40,000-man Japanese force, the Chinese command timidly withdrew from the region between the Yellow river and Nanjing.2 This opened up Wuhan, a major industrial city and the new Nationalist capital 480 air miles west of Shanghai on the Yangzi. The capture of Wuhan would insure Japanese control of the most developed and populous parts of China and would force the Nationalists, the Japanese hoped, to sue for peace. Otherwise they would have to withdraw deep into the interior of China.

In an attempt to slow the Japanese advance, Chiang Kai-shek committed an atrocity against his own people which compared with the horrors visited by the Japanese. A little west of Zhengzhou, the Yellow river, "China's sorrow," comes out of deep ravines and mountains into a vast, flat alluvial plain that stretches eastward to the Yellow sea. In reaching this plain, the river travels through regions covered with a fine, yellow-brown, wind-deposited loam called loess, picking up a large burden of the loess which partially settles out of the water as its velocity drops on the flat plain. This soil gradually raises the bed of the river above the surrounding countryside. To restrain the river, peasants for centuries have built earthen dikes or levees. Thus the Yellow river flows over the terrain like a raised aquaduct.

Chiang's engineers found a suitable point just northeast of Zhengzhou where the river's bed stood about twenty-five feet above the plain. On June 11, 1938, the engineers dynamited a breach 200 yards wide in the southern dike. The Yellow river burst out of its banks, changed its course completely, rushed over the low rise, spread out in a sixty-mile-wide swath of destruction for 240 miles to the Huai river and eventually merged with the Yangzi river near Shanghai. The deluge flooded eleven large towns, four-thousand villages, made two million Chinese homeless, destroyed crops and property in three provinces and drowned an unknown number of people. The Yellow river followed the new course until 1946, when peasant workmen rebuilt the old levees and returned the river to its former bed.

Chiang tried to blame the diversion on stray bombing by Japanese planes and for years the Nationalists denied they had deliberately broken the dike.3

The flooding held up the Japanese advance against Wuhan for a while but did not halt thrusts up the Yangzi valley and over the Dabie mountains northeast of Wuhan. The Chinese contested the Japanese advance and both sides suffered heavy losses. Whereas in the Shanghai and Nanjing battles the Chinese had lost five men to Japan's one, in the Wuhan campaign the losses on both sides were about equal.4 In addition, the Japanese began to find their supply system greatly strained. By the time Wuhan fell on October 25, Chiang Kai-shek already had pointed out the direction the Nationalist army was to go: up through the narrow Yangzi gorges which cut through the 6,500-foot Wu-shan mountain barrier to Sichuan province. There Chiang had established the new Nationalist capital at Chongqing, 450 air miles west of Wuhan. In the west, where few roads and no railroads ran, the Nationalists could establish a bastion that the Japanese could not penetrate with large forces.

The heart of the huge mountain-girded western hinterland of China was the province of Sichuan ("Four Rivers"), large as France and with 50 million people, nearly 10 million more than France in 1938. The heart of Sichuan was the great mild fertile breadbasket of western China, the Red basin in the eastern part of the province, watered by generally reliable rain and frequent fogs, sheltered by mountains and graced in the cool months by terraced "winter water-storage fields" which mirrored the sun in mosaics of reflected light. In the basin and on lower slopes citrus and palm trees grew along with rice and other food crops. As the mountains rose, the climate turned progressively colder. On the slopes flourished a spectacular variety of plants and animals: rhododendrons, bamboo, pines, oaks, the giant panda and much else.

Chongqing was the first large city upstream from the gorges. In the winter a pall of rain and fog hung over it. In the summer heat and humidity made the city unpleasant. But Chongqing was the strategic focal point of western China: where navigable rivers and a web of improved roads came together.5

* * * * * * * * * *

Four days before they captured Wuhan, other Japanese seized the Guangdong capital of Guangzhou (Canton), the metropolis of the south, in a campaign during which the KMT commander put up no substantial resistance. The capture sealed off all possibility of China sustaining a modern war effort with imported supplies and armament. The only reasonable route left was by way of a railroad that ran from Hanoi in French Indochina (Vietnam) to Kunming in Yunnan province.

With few exceptions the campaigns in the China war from this point on became little more than foraging expeditions by the Japanese. Imperial headquarters, recognizing that the army already was stretched beyond its capacity, undertook no major effort to rout the Nationalists out of western China. Such a move would have ultimately diluted Japanese strength to such a degree that the columns would have disappeared into the vast reaches of China. The war, however, did not end. The Japanese commenced "rice-bowl campaigns" to instill terror, sack fields and towns, keep the Chinese off balance and train recruits.6

* * * * * * * * * *

The root cause of nearly all wars is economic. In the year 1938, people saw the terrible truth of how man's economic desires can endanger the peace of the world. Ever since the great depression after 1929, many of the most advanced nations had sought prosperity by autarky, or economic self-sufficiency within their own spheres, empires or borders.

The great casualty of the depression was international trade. Although industrial output by 1938 had risen in most countries to the level of 1929, world trade still was less than half its value before the depression.7 In this period, a group of world leaders

recognized that a race for autarky by the relatively have-not advanced states of Italy and Japan already had brought on two wars, against Ethiopia and China, and much of Germany's aggression was similarly rooted in a quest for economic independence.

Instead of this precipitating a resolve to eliminate the need for autarkic aggression by opening the world to trade, appeasers in Britain, France and, to a degree, the United States, adopted the opposite policy of catering to the empire-building desires of Germany and Italy (but not Japan, thus demonstrating their Eurocentrism). They hoped illogically to entice Germany and Italy back into a cooperative international trading and diplomatic relationship by making territorial concessions.

The purpose of autarky was to close portions of the world to outsiders, whereas the real need was to open the world to trade for everyone. The appeasers preferred giving other peoples' lands to the aggressors rather than ending their imperial trade preferences or renouncing their high tariffs. Germany, Italy and Japan needed access to raw materials at reasonable prices and access to foreign markets. Yet none of the appeasing nations was willing to make such concessions.

Japan was a prime example of a country that needed assistance. In 1936 Japan bought 30 per cent of its imports from the United States but sold only 20 per cent of its exports there.8 Although Cordell Hull pushed through a reciprocal-trade act in 1934, progress toward more open trade was painful and slow. For example, President Roosevelt complained in late 1934 about "the Japanese avalanche of cotton goods into the Philippines during the past six months."9

London as well turned thumbs down on appeasing Japan for purely autarkic reasons. In 1938 at the height of the appeasement of Germany, the foreign secretary, Lord Halifax, said: "China is fighting the battle of all the law-abiding states and she is incidentally fighting our own battle in the Far East, for if Japan wins, our interests there are certainly doomed to extinction."10

Thus the Western powers offered Japan no internationally sanctioned territorial concessions like they offered Germany and Italy and no opening through which to gain prosperity by trade. Although this closed door did not justify Japanese aggression, it intensified the militarists' demand for it.

President Roosevelt fell in with British and French appeasement. He was mute throughout the Czechoslovak crisis, which began in April, 1938. He supported the Munich conference and accepted the conference's decision to destroy the integrity of Czechoslovakia by ceding the Sudetenland to Germany, a prelude to the destruction of the Czech state.11

Immediately after the German Anschluss or union with Austria, the Soviet Union had called for an international conference to stop Germany but France and Britain had shown little interest. Throughout the Czechoslovakian crisis, the Soviet Union had indicated a willingness to defend the Czechs if Britain and France would do likewise. Again the two Western democracies refused to act.12 Joseph Stalin gave up hope for a coalition with the capitalists and began moving away from the popular front. Instead, he sought an accommodation with Germany, which he knew could only be temporary. Despite the huge purges of the Soviet leadership he was simultaneously carrying out to consolidate his dictatorship, Stalin began a rapid and immense buildup of Soviet armament in preparation for the showdown with Hitler.

* * * * * * * * * *

The Japanese had expected Chiang Kai-shek to sue for peace once they had captured Wuhan. When he refused, the Japanese leaders realized the war had entered a long siege stage with no foreseeable end. This hardened Japan's policy and Konoe issued a statement on "a new order in East Asia" on November 3, 1938. He called for cooperation of Japan, Manchukuo and China to safeguard the region. He repudiated the open-door policy of equal access of all countries to China and expressed Japan's determination to establish an East Asian bloc to insure the same sort of self-sufficiency enjoyed by the U.S. and Britain. Efforts to squeeze Americans and other foreigners out of trading in China already were under way and they continued.13

* * * * * * * * * *

Japan got a severe scare in July, 1938: Soviet troops moved sharply against Japanese forces to control strategic heights along the Tumen river which separated extreme northeastern Korea from Russia's maritime province. Fighting continued for two weeks. Although the Soviet Union agreed to negotiate and the dispute ended, the incident sobered Japan and it held its fourteen divisions and two strong air groups in Manchuria and Korea to defend against any other Soviet threat. This meant there was no likelihood that the million troops Japan had in China could be reinforced. Japan's only other army reserves were seven divisions garrisoning Taiwan and Japan itself.

Japan now faced a frustrating situation: because of China's enormous size, it had to commit all available troops to hold the principal cities and strips on each side of the major lines of communication. Thus, as one observer remarked, Japan's occupation was like "stretching a few clotheslines across a yard."14

This situation gave the Chinese enormous opportunities. Japan could not adequately counter the guerrilla units which both Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists sent into areas nominally held by Japan.15 If strong Japanese forces moved to one area, the guerrillas moved somewhere else. The greatest strength of the guerrillas was the behavior of the Japanese themselves: by burning, raping and slaughtering without regard for the Chinese as human beings, they alienated all but the most callous collaborationists. The Communists provided leadership for the aroused peasants, craftsmen, small merchants and petty landlords who remained in occupied areas, since most of the traditional leaders, the big landlords and gentry, had moved away.

The guerrilla forces were often able to mine roads or rail lines, ambush forces or cut off small detachments and destroy them. These assaults brought savage reprisals against the civilian population, actions which turned the Japanese into such objects of hate that the Chinese began to regard them almost as vicious wild animals. After one guerrilla attack on enemy troops in eastern Hebei, Japanese soldiers surrounded a village before dawn, drove all 1,035 of its people to a nearby ravine and killed them with machine-gun fire. On another occasion, Japanese troops aided by Chinese puppet forces systematically slaughtered 1,500 people in a north China village that had been helping Communist Chinese guerrillas. The hatred of the Japanese became so intense that Nationalist army intelligence officers found it difficult to get Japanese prisoners for interrogation. Although they offered bounties, they seldom got them, not only because few Japanese surrendered but because Chinese soldiers reported that "the prisoners died along the way."16

The Chinese Communists began as early as November, 1937, creating "base areas" in north China territory ostensibly occupied by Japan but difficult of access.17 The Reds were less successful in central and south China, where local administrations still continued to function. In north China Red groups possessed fifty or more small "safe" core areas, each with only a few square miles, scattered over six provinces. In these, the Reds created fairly stable administrations and were able to make reforms. Beyond these cores were larger but ill-defined spheres. In these, all sorts of forces might be moving: Reds, Nationalist troops, local militia, bandits and puppet troops. Beyond these two regions were areas under more or less permanent Japanese control.18

The Reds built their power by making the peasants aware of exploitation and by helping to alleviate bad conditions, sometimes only moderately. The principal ways in which peasants were exploited were through high rents, excessive interest on loans and unfair taxes. The Reds occasionally deprived a notorious landlord of property in a public "struggle session."19 They sometimes "persuaded" avaricious landlords to reduce rents and interest. In Red-controlled areas the cadres assigned tax quotas to villages and allowed the local peasants to recommend an individual share to each family. Since peasants knew the economic status of every family, the method insured that landowners and rich peasants paid their proportionate shares.20

The Communists avoided Marxist rhetoric. They discussed matters openly. This Red propensity gave rise to a local saying in a Shanxi area that changed hands several times: "Japanese, too many killed; Kuomintang, too many taxes; Communists, too many meetings."21 The Reds enforced the Nationalist law of 1930, ignored by the Nationalists themselves, setting a limit of 37½ per cent on crops as rent. The usual rate was much higher. But the Communists had a difficult time reducing taxes. Local governments got little or no help from the Nationalist government and had to rely on local revenue. However, the Reds often were able to abolish unfair surtaxes, halt some of the corruption of public officials, divide the tax burden based on each person's capacity to pay and prevent landlords and rich peasants from passing their taxes on to tenants.22

The Reds promoted confidence by insisting that no more than one-third of a local governing council be Communists. The able and articulate Reds, of course, generally gained peasant support but everyone had a chance to voice his opinion. Nevertheless, the Communists represented the only party with an active organization and the army was wholly in their hands.23

To thwart the Communists, the Japanese tried to separate guerrilla forces into "cages" and deprive them of mobility by fortifying the main rail and road lines with blockhouses, moats, ditches and military patrols. The tactics restricted Red movements and encouraged landlords, moneylenders and other anti-Communits to inform the Japanese of Red activities.

The shaky alliance between Nationalists and Communists also soon came apart. In 1939 Chiang Kai-shek, without declaring an end to the united front, halted his subsidy to the Reds and blockaded the major Shaanxi base area with 400,000 of his best troops. The blockade stopped further Red expansion and nearly closed off all trade, forcing the people to rely almost wholly upon their poor resources.24

* * * * * * * * * *

Although most Chinese were repelled by Japanese cruelty, callousness and aggression, there remained a few collaborators who were willing to sell out to the Japanese. One of these was Wang Jingwei, the former leftist leader and rival of Chiang. On December 18, 1938, Wang defected from Chongqing to start a peace movement. Four days later, the Japanese premier, Konoe Fumimaro, declared Japan was going to destroy the Nationalist government and adjust relations with a "new" Chinese regime.25 Wang Jingwei spent the next year negotiating with the Japanese before setting up a "reformed national" government in Nanjing in March, 1940, under Japanese dominance.26

* * * * * * * * *

On January 5, 1939, the Japanese prime minister, Konoe Fumimaro, swapped places with Hiranuma Kiichiro, president of the privy council, but the change had no effect on foreign policy.27

The Japanese now tried to cut off foreign aid to Chiang Kai-shek and reduce the British and French presence in China.28 The Nationalists had two major supply routes leading into western China: the rail line from Haiphong to Kunming and the Burma road, an immensely long and tortuous route, opened in the fall of 1938, which stretched north by rail from the Burmese port of Rangoon to Mandalay, then northeast to Lashio, thence by road over immense ranges of mountains and deep gorges of the upper Salween, Mekong and Red rivers to Kunming. There was also a minor route from the Soviet Union through the northwestern provinces of Xinjiang and Gansu but it supplied only a few humdred tons a month. The major route was the Haiphong-Kunming rail connection. It provided about 12,500 tons a month and dwarfed the 2,000 tons which came through Britain's colony of Burma.29 Both Britain and France increased their flow of supplies after Japan asked them to stop aiding Chiang.

In February, 1939, Japanese troops occupied the Chinese island of Hainan off the coast of French Indochina to intimidate France.30 In March Japan seized the small Spratly islands in the South China sea between Indochina and Borneo. The Spratlys were within striking distance of the Philippines, southern Indochina, Singapore and the oil fields of northwest Borneo. The moves into Hainan and the Spratleys were clear threats and confirmed that Japan intended to dominate the western Pacific. Even so, Washington merely lodged diplomatic protests.31

In the spring of 1939 the Japanese commenced a series of violent and indiscriminate air raids, some on military objectives but many others aimed deliberately at civilians in the cities, especially Chongqing. The Nationalist capital suffered almost daily bombings. The attacks killed 4,400 persons in the first two days of raids in May. The people quickly dug caves where they could be safe. Morale actually rose. Angry at the senseless and vindictive bombings, citizens developed a strong perserverence and will to resist.32

Beginning in February, 1939, the Japanese began a campaign to reduce the authority of the British and French in Shanghai. They implied they might occupy the International settlement and the French concession unless both suppressed Kuomintang agencies "inciting anti-Japanese elements and utilizing anti-Japanese publications."33

In June Japan stepped up the heat, charging that France and Britain were harboring murderers of a Chinese collaborator in their concessions at Tianjin. The local Japanese commander blockaded the concessions, required European men and women entering or leaving to strip in public to prevent "smuggling" and searched every item going in or out. The Japanese wanted to eliminate the foreign concessions but also sought possession of silver bullion held by the British as backing for Chinese currency, still circulating in north China. Britain wanted no trouble with Japan because Adolf Hitler was threatening Poland. Neville Chamberlain at last had realized he had been hoodwinked by Hitler. With France's reluctant backing, he now guaranteed Poland's borders against Germany. Britain refused to surrender the silver bullion but on July 22 accepted a humiliating declaration as a price of ending the Tianjin blockade. It acknowledged that Japan had a special position in China and responsibility for public order in the areas they occupied.34

But Japan paid a heavy price for its arrogance. Polls during the spring and summer in the U.S. showed mounting pressure for action against Japan. Cordell Hull and President Roosevelt came up with a stinging rebuke and threat only four days after Britain's backdown over Tianjin: the U.S. notified Japan it would abrogate the 1911 U.S.-Japanese trade agreement in six months. Japan needed American iron and steel scrap and oil especially. Termination of the commercial treaty implied that the U.S. might embargo some or all trade with Japan, a decision that would cripple Japan's war effort unless other sources of raw materials were found.35

The news caused a storm of anxiety in Japan and high praise in the United States. Hull deliberately kept silent about American intentions. He instructed Ambassador Grew to tell the Japanese that trade might continue without a treaty, yet could be stopped at any time. "Our best tactic was to keep them guessing," Hull wrote.

During the spring and summer of 1939 Japan received another heavy blow from another quarter: the Soviet Union. In June, the Japanese Kwantung army decided to launch a probe into Russia's satellite Outer Mongolia to enforce Japan's claim to a frontier about twenty miles west of where the Russians and Mongolians said it ran. The locality was Nomonhan, at the easterly "nose" of Outer Mongolia that pokes into Manchuria. In May a Japanese regiment crossed into the disputed territory and quickly ran into a large Mongolian force, supported by Soviet tanks and planes. The Mongols nearly wiped out the Japanese regiment. This incensed the Kwantung army command and it sent 15,000 troops, supported by fast Japanese fighter-bombers, into the region. The Japanese force made quick progress and occupied all of the disputed territory and more. The Soviets now moved up about 300 aircraft and 350 tanks, far more armor than the Japanese could assemble. On August 20, under General Georgi K. Zhukov, they launched a major counteroffensive behind massive artillery and armor concentrations and air attacks. They virtually destroyed the Japanese 23rd Division, which found few places to hide on the flinty, treeless battlefield. Only direct orders from Tokyo prevented the Kwantung army from turning its entire strength against the Russians and thereby precipitating a major war. The Japanese lost 18,000 men and over a hundred warplanes. Most shocking was the fact that the Japanese units suffered casualties of 73 per cent. The Japanese withdrew, licked their wounds and began to ponder on the frightening difference between fighting the poorly equipped Chinese and a modern mechanized army.36

* * * * * * * * * *

Meanwhile, Stalin ended any chance of successful Polish resistance by signing a nonaggression pact with Germany on August 23, 1939. This insured the invasion of Poland beginning September 1 and its subsequent partition between Germany and Russia. Despite their guarantees, neither Britain nor France could help Poland. But Britain, France and the U.S. had only themselves to blame. Stalin had offered an alliance in 1938 against Germany when Hitler would probably have backed down or, if he had dared to fight, could have been beaten. Rebuffed and isolated by the West, Stalin did what he had to do: protect his country as long as possible while he armed for what he feared would be a war without allies against Germany.

The Nazi-Soviet rapprochement was an appalling development for Europe. It was scarcely less so for China. With the attention of the West and the Soviet Union fixed on the European war, there was no immediate hope for international pressure on Japan to withdraw from China.

No country was more stunned than Japan. For well over a year Japan had been basing its hopes on a Berlin-Rome-Tokyo "axis" with the aim either to attack the Soviet Union or neutralize it in order to complete the conquest of China or move south. Now Japan found itself isolated and deeply distrustful of Germany. The Western powers would never support Japan's desire for an empire. And the Soviet Union, with the danger from Germany removed for the moment, might decide to turn on Japan. The news immediately caused Hiranuma Kiichiro's government to topple. Konoe Fumimaro led the oligarchs to select General Abe Nobuyuki to head the new government and to step up efforts to reach an understanding with the Soviet Union. Russia and Japan quickly agreed to a cease-fire and to discuss border questions and a commercial treaty. This ended the immediate conflict between the two countries.37

Despite the fears in Tokyo and despite evidence of Japanese aggression as evidenced by the incursion into Outer Mongolia, Joseph Stalin had no interest in starting a war with Japan while Hitler rampaged right up to the new German-Soviet borders stretching across a partitioned Poland. Still, Japan feared a Soviet attack and leaders felt they had only two choices: renounce aggression and withdraw from China and the south seas or seek an alliance with Germany and Italy. Japan, unwilling to give up its dream of a great East Asian empire, chose the side of the aggressors.

The United States slowly awoke to a sobering reality: Britain and France, who had dominated China and much of the Far East for nearly a hundred years, were withdrawing, leaving an immense vacuum. Japan was rushing to fill this vacuum and only one nation, the United States, was able to challenge Japan's dominion. The American people were left with a grave responsibility, which many did not want to accept, especially isolationists whose vision stopped at the nation's sea frontiers. Yet attentive Americans realized a Japan unchallenged could create an empire that, in time, might be invincible.

Franklin Roosevelt saw this long before Adolf Hitler sent his panzer divisions into Poland. The process of British withdrawal from the Pacific had actually been going on for years. Hitler had exploited the immense increase in the power, range and bomb capacity of warplanes since World War I and, by 1937, had acquired an air arm that outmatched the Royal Air Force and constituted a terrifying threat to the thickly populated cities of Britain. In a desperate attempt to catch up, the British government concentrated most of its efforts on air power. Although Britain increased naval construction, the Royal Navy remained too weak to guard the Atlantic against Germany, the Mediterranean against Italy and the Far East against Japan. Since protection of the Atlantic supply lanes and the Suez canal were imperative to Britain's survival, the Royal Navy abandoned any effort to challenge Japan alone and turned to the United States. The British chiefs of staff made it official in February, 1939. Victory, they said, would depend "upon other powers, particularly the United States of America, coming to our aid."38

Thus when war came to Europe, Roosevelt and the rest of the American leadership knew the United States stood alone in the Pacific.

Chapter 18: Japan Covets the Indies >>

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