"'Exactly four months after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese hostilities on the Shanghai peninsula' a New York Herald Tribune correspondent cabled from Shanghai last week, 'Nanking, China's abandoned capital, for the third time in it's more than 2000 years of history, was captured by an alien foe when the Japanese military forces completely occupied the city.' ...To this, Quo Taichi, Chinese ambassador to England, replied defiantly: 'Capture of Nanking will by no means mark the end of China's resistance.'"
"'Bombs rained like hailstones and churned the waters all around the ship like geysers.' said Earl Leaf, United Press correspondent in China and eyewitness of the sinking of the United States gunbpat
Panay
, by Japanese aviators, in the Yangtze River about 26 miles above Nanking; "....The British gunboat
Ladybird and
Bee also were fired on, and soon Foreign Minister Anthony Eden was telling an angry House of Commons that:
"His Majesty's Ambassador to Tokyo has made the strongest protest to the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs.'"
Click here if you would like to read more about the sinking of the U.S.S. Panay.
This article will come as a surprise to the historical revisionists who run the Chiang Kai-Schek memorial in Taipei where U.S. involvement in W.W. II is oddly remembered only as having been the nation that sold oil to the Japanese. It is a well-illustrated Yank Magazine article filed from India regarding the military training of Chinese infantry under the watchful eye of General Joe Stilwell's (1883 – 1946) American drill instructors.
A brief notice reporting on Prince Teh Wang (Prince Demchugdongrub 1902 - 1966), ruler of Inner Mongolia, who, in an attempt to create an independent Mongolia, simply ruled as an appeaser of Imperial Japan:
"While Prince Teh's position, as a Japanese puppet, can scarcely be less comfortable than it was before , Japan has a grip on the bottle-neck controlling a vast, ill-defined hinterland of North China; and has as well a buffer State between her own influence and that of the Soviets."
"Before the war was hours old, Chiang's most secret plans were known to the Japs. Again and again Jap actions showed foreknowledge of Chiang's movements and stratagems, as discussed and decided with his most trusted leaders. This explains many mysterious incidents, and makes China's apparent 'spy complex' fully understandable."
"What was called a Japanese 'Monroe Doctrine for Asia' whereby Japan would wield dominance there, especially in Chinese affairs, was announced last April, and drew the immediate attention of the world's press."
"In the last days of this January a following-up of this intention was seen in a series of talks at Nanking between Chiang Kai-shek, President and Generalissimo of the Nationalist Government of China, and Lieutenant-General Soshiyuki Suzuki, Japanese military representative at Shanghai; and among Akira Ariyoshi, Japanese Minister to China, and General Chiang and Premiere Wang Ching-wei."
"The occupation of Nanking by the Japanese army in December, 1937, resulted in the greatest authenticated massacre in modern history."
"Fifty thousand blood-crazed beasts in Japanese uniforms roamed China's fallen capital for four weeks in a mad Saturnalia of butchery, rape and pillage without parallel in modern history. That story, suppressed by the Japanese military who chased news correspondents and foreign officials out of Nanking, is told for the first time by one of the few Americans who remained, a 'go-between' for the U.S. Government with 20 years of service in China. He saw roped bundles of humanity saturated with gasoline and ignited for a Nipponese holiday."
"...Peiping Associated Press dispatches tell of a major battle between Japanese and Chinese armies for possession of Chiumenkow Pass in the Great Wall of China. The Pass is one of the most important gateways leading into the rich province of Jehol which, it is reported, Japan purposes to cut off from China and add to Manchukuo...This collision forms the second chapter in the Shanhaikwan dispute, and it comes quickly."
This 1938 article concerned the gas rationing and and other assorted inconveniences that the Japanese population had to suffer during the Sino-Japanese conflict. The reporter was surprised to discover that the general citizenry was kept in a reasonable state of ignorance as to their military's intentions in China:
Some attention is paid to the sacrifices made by the Japanese industrial classes, such as the Yasuda, Iwasaki, and Mitsui families.
"The Japanese censorship boards have drafted regulations for the press in territory under their control, and unsuccessful attempts were made to control news dispatches in Shanghai's foreign-owned newspapers. In Peiping, Tientsin, Tsingtao and other cities where the Japanese are in complete control, foreign editors are having their troubles, as evidenced by the 'secret' instructions to the press issued by the Special Military Missions to China, with Headquarters in Peiping... Under the heading 'Important Standards for Press Censorship' come the following regulations..."
-what follows is an enormous laundry list of "DONT'S" issued to the officers of the foreign press stationed in Japanese-occupied China.
Kind words are written herein by Lt. Commander Charles G. Dobbin regarding the "Himmler of the East", General Dai Li(1897 - 1946), founder of China's secret police under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (1887 – 1975). Written in 1946, this reminiscence concerns the tight cooperation that existed between General Li's guerrilla units and the American military (Sino-American Co-Operative Organization: S.A.C.O.) during the later years of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Dobbins emphasized how deeply General Dai Li's intelligence operatives were able to circulate during the period in which U.S. Rear Admiral Milton "Mary" Miles commanded the S.A.C.O. troops.
"As well as anything else, the leadership of Sian-Kuan Lin explains why the people of China continue to wage barehanded battle against the overwhelming might of Japan. It is a story that starts in 1927 when Chang Kai-shek marched North against the war lords, fighting to make Sun Yat Sen's dream of a great Chinese republic come true."
This 1933 news piece concerned the cessation of hostilities that was agreed upon by both the Imperial Empire of Japan and China in the campaign that began two years earlier with the
Japanese invasion of Manchuria.
"When the withdrawal of Chinese troops is completed, the Japanese agree that their own troops will retire to the Great Wall, which the Japanese claim is the boundary of the state of Manchukuo."
"The aggressive ambitions of Japan know no bounds. The occupation of Peiping [Beijing] will lead to further aggression in Shantung and Shansi and other northern provinces, and will result either in the establishment of a new puppet regime in North China."
"The Shanghai SHUN PAO, an independent newspaper, bewails the futility of the uncoordinated resistance which has prevailed among China's forces since the capture of Jehol, and it adds:"
"The only possibilities now are peace by compromise or a continuance of war. Despite the dangers of the latter course it is the only possible solution, but resistance must be coordinated under an able leader, China must fight or become a second Korea."
This article heralds the creation of a new nation - the short lived puppet state of Manchukuo. Carved out of portions of Japanese-occupied Manchuria in 1932, the country was created by Imperial Japan in order to serve as an industrial province from which they could continue their military adventures in China. A good deal of column space pertains to a silver tongued Japanese Foreign Minister named Count Uchida Kōsai (1865 – 1936) and how he attempted to justify Manchukuo before the outraged members of the League of Nations - when the League declared that Manchuria was Chinese, Uchida withdrew Japan from membership in the League..
By 1945 the Japanese Army was beginning to see the writing on the wall insofar as their occupation of China was concerned. With the collapse of Germany they knew they could expect the Soviets to attack at any time - this foreboding inspired them to corral greater numbers of hapless Chinese and force them to build barricades in order to postpone the inevitable.
"In a dismal forest near Vladivostok, Japanese commanders removed their caps, bowed low, and surrendered their entire Manchurian forces to the Russians... Growing numbers of enemy troops threw away their arms and joined the long lines of ragged Japs trudging down dusty Manchurian roads to Soviet Prison stockades. When a number of of Jap officers objected to the wholesale surrender, they were killed by their own men."
Among the surrendered was the Japanese puppet, Henry Pu Yi (1906 - 1967), eleventh and last Emperor of the Qing dynasty.
"To the colossal giant that is China, furious little Japan delivered a one-two punch last week. Small divisions of the Emperor's troops first took Canton and then Hankow. So easily did both fall that Britons in Hong Kong declared darkly:'It looks like dirty work.'"
Directed by Ben Mindenburg, Scorched Earth was released in April of 1942 in order to show the beastliness of the Japanese military in China.
Hallett Abend (1884 - 1955) was an American journalist who lived in China for fifteen years. He covered the Sino-Japanese War during its early years and had seen first-hand the beastly vulgarity of the Japanese Army. After Pearl Harbor, the editor at
Liberty turned to him in hopes that he would explain to the American reading public what kind of enemy they were fighting:
"In four and a half years of warfare [in China], the Japanese have taken almost no prisoners... Chinese prisoners of war are shot."
These are the observations of an American woman in fascist Japan; the writer was Joy Homer. In this article she tells of her travels to Tokyo in 1940 where she was asked to secretly address those small groups that silently wished for a republican form of government while silently opposing their country's imperial conquest of China.
