The Japan-China War
The Japan-China War started in July 1937 when the Japanese claimed that they were
fired on by Chinese troops at the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing. Using this as an
excuse, the Japanese launched a full-scale invasion of China using the conquered
Manchuria as a launching base for their troops.
The Japanese came up against little resistance. The Kuomintang1 put up little
resistance though they were up against a formidable enemy. In November 1937,
China’s most important port, Shanghai, fell and Nanking, the capital city, fell in
December 1937.
The so-called "Rape of Nanking" has gone down in history as one of the most shocking
incidents in modern history. Its senior officers allowed the Japanese army to ransack
Nanking murdering tens of thousands as they went. The final death toll for Nanking has
been put as high as 250,000. The Kuomintang leader, Chiang, had to flee Nanking and
create a new capital in Chongqing.
The onslaught of the Japanese was relentless. Within 5 months, 1 million Chinese
people were
under Japanese
control. By the
end of 1937, all of
the major cities in
China were
captured by the
Japanese– so
were the major
communication
systems of the
nation.
After this initial success, the Japanese did not advance much further into China. In
many senses there was no reason for her to do so as most of China’s hinterland2
contained nothing of strategic importance. Secondly, even the Japanese army could not
hope to stretch its reserves to cover such a vast nation as China. By 1941, there were 2
million Japanese soldiers in China but even those areas captured by the Japanese were
1
2
China’s major political party
The remote, rural parts of China that are further from the coast
not totally controlled by them and this allowed the Chinese to gradually undermine the
authority of the Japanese in this occupied zone.
The Japanese concentrated their efforts on the enemy they could see – the
Kuomintang. However, they also had to fight an enemy they could not see – communist
guerrillas trained by Mao Zedong.
After Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the Japanese found that their army was even
more stretched. The Americans sent supplies to the Chinese via the "Burma Road". The
enmity3 that existed between China and the west after 1949, was not apparent during
the war. The American bombers that launched the first raid on Tokyo were scheduled to
land in China. Airstrips were built in China to allow American planes to bomb Japanese
shipping. In 1944, the Japanese started an all out attempt to occupy those parts of
China that harbored American airbases. Though successful in that the Japanese
captured China’s capital, Chongquig, it did not change the outcome of the war.
The war against China had lead to 4 million Chinese casualties with 60 million made
homeless.
The Japanese had spread out their forces too far and even the fanaticism 4 of their
approach to war could not stop the inevitable. The surrender of the Japanese in August
1945 left 1 million Japanese troops in China.
The Kuomintang had borne the brunt of conventional fighting against the Japanese.
This led to major casualties. Mao’s fighters had perfected hit-and-run tactics against the
Japanese, which was to serve them well in the civil war that was to break out between
the Kuomintang and the Communists almost as soon as the war ended. The only thing
that linked the Kuomintang and Communists during the war was a common enemy.
After the Japanese surrendered, each had to fight the other for supremacy in China.
By August 1945, the communists controlled far more of China than they had done in
1937. There were several reasons for this. The Japanese concentrated on an enemy
they could ‘see’ and the Kuomintang were the obvious enemy for the Japanese.
Secondly, the communists continued with a policy of their soldiers helping the peasant
population where they could, thus spreading the word of communism. In 1941, the
Japanese started a campaign called the "Three All Campaign" which was designed to
turn the peasants against the communists. It was a total failure.
The end of the war could only herald a full-scale clash between the Kuomintang and the
communists. It could only be a war to the end as neither was willing to tolerate the
existence of the other.
3
4
hostility
Extreme belief in a political or religious cause