In the 1930s there was an influential body of opinion within the United States, the ‘China lobby’, which had a great emotional commitment to China, derived in part from the missionary work that various churches were doing there. This led to great arguments after 1949 about who was responsible for ‘loosing China’ and what might have ‘saved’ it. Huge amounts of military aid were dispatched to China, before and after the Japanese invasion of Burma which closed the overland supply route to China. Much of this aid was siphoned off by Chiang’s generals and sold on the black market or cached for use against the Communists in the future.
Your Dad and my Grandfather probably knew each other, mine went to China in early 42’ USAAC TSGT in communications ie radioman. He eventually ended up with the squadron of P-38’s. Small World.
To the OP, China and Japan’s involvement with China were the direct cause of Pearl Harbor because of US sanctions and embargos.
Capt
I believe this was also a factor in the US losing interest in the Chinese theatre of operations, no need to defend USAAF bases in China at great cost when you can fly from the islands with impunity.
As to the OP, very yes. Speaking of the air force as we were, they did sterling work flying supplies over the Himalayas. Later on the US sent a mission to the Communists, despite officially recognising the Nationalists. Mao had built an unfounded reputation on being willing to successfully engage the Japanese while the Nationalists were too corrupt to be effective. In actuality he was keeping his forces as intact as possible for the resumption of the Chinese Civil War.
The article I read mentioned that Ho Chi Minh was very proud of the engraved pistol he received from his OSS contact during the war. Then when the war was over, the Americans walked away and did nothing to repay his efforts against the Japanese.
You might want to read Stillwell and the American Experience in China by Barbara Tuchman from 1971. It’s about the American general who worked with the KMT goverment during WW2. Her main theory is that although China did suffer greatly during WW2 and fought bravely when they were given the opportunity, the utter corruption of the KMT and their focus on Communism rather than the Japanese (much of the American aid given to the KMT was hoarded for used against the Communists) meant the Chinese effort fell well short of what it could have been. She certainly doesn’t glorify Mao’s armies, but notes they did much more active fighting and were better than at than the KMT.
The United States really did support Ho’s aspirations. If it had been possible they would have supported an independent Vietnam.
But there was a irreconcilable problem: France wanted to restore its Empire and was completely opposed to Vietnamese independence. Britain, which had its own Empire, backed France.
So the United States was stuck. There was no middle ground. It had to either take Vietnam’s side or take France and Britain’s side. And let’s face reality: Britain and France were a lot more important to the United States than Vietnam was.
So the United States essentially didn’t assist the French or the Vietnamese, which was a de facto decision in favor of France. France could re-establish its control over most of Vietnam without American assistance but the Vietnamese could not fight off the French without outside assistance.
But the Vietnamese nationalists turned out to be stronger than France had anticipated. Seeing the French pushed out by the Japanese had raised nationalist hopes. The French found they now needed a much larger military presence in Indochina then they had before the war. So within a few years they realized they needed American support to hold on to Indochina.
To get that support, they had to redefine the issues. They sold the conflict as a struggle against communism rather than against nationalism. Now deep in the Cold War, the United States believed this and began providing money and supplies to France. But even so, they still pushed for the idea of an independent Vietnam under a non-Communist regime like what existed in South Korea or Taiwan.
:rolleyes:
American I presume? Two thirds of the Japanese Army and most of their Air Force was committed to China. Most of the rest was in Burma.
Little Nemo I disagree wrt Indo China. The US supported France materially throughout, if that support had been cut, the French were doomed. It’s not as if the had to support France, they refused support to the UK in India when requested.
Party misleading, partly simply untrue. While the majority of the Imperial Japanese Army was deployed to China, China was a very quiet theater from 1941-45; the only major offensive conducted in all of those years was the aforementioned Ichi-Go offensive which was conducted in direct response to the US use of bases in China to bomb the Japanese mainland with B-29s. China was not to the Pacific War what the Eastern Front was to the war in Europe; while it tied down large numbers of troops it did not consume prodigious amounts of ammunition nor did it result in very many casualties for the Japanese. The statement that most of the rest of the Army was in Burma is simply untrue. With regards to the Air Force, Japan, like pretty much everybody else, did not have a separate Air Force; the Imperial Japanese Army and the Imperial Japanese Navy both had their own separate Air arms. The air arm of the IJN was almost entirely committed to the Pacific War from the start, and most of the air arm of the IJA was not tied down in China but was either involved in the fighting in the Pacific War or was tied down in Manchuria keeping an eye on the Soviets. Very little of Japanese air power was in China in 1945, and it should be pointed out that most of the opposition Japan found in the skies over China from 1941-45 in fact came from American aircraft and pilots, from the AVG to its successors in the China Air Task Force and eventually the Fourteenth Air Force.
The B-29 offensive was never going to get very far operating from China; not only was more of Japan within range operating from the Marianas but supplying the B-29s in China was a huge problem. Every bomb dropped by a B-29 and every gallon of fuel they burned (and they used tremendous amounts of fuel) had to first reach their bases in China, which meant it had to first be flown over The Hump. The logistical effort required to do this was enormous and B-29s were averaging one operational mission per month as a result. Mao offered to set up a weather station to provide better forecasting for the B-29s and suggested the US set up airbases in northern China from which to operate from; but the idea of airbases was declined as it was difficult enough supplying bases in southern China.
It gets complicated even on the communist side.
The Soviets supported the communist Mao and in 1945 invaded Manchuria to drive out the Japanese. Mao thought at the time they would be his friendly ally but they acted more like conquerors and they very reluctantly handed the territory they had conquered back to the Chinese. This lead to the bitter China vs Soviet feud later on.
Also the KMT had strong ties to Germany and several German companies did business with them. I dont remember the name but their is a movie on Netflix that shows Chinese KMT at the time wearing German uniforms and helmets - fighting the Japanese.
ROC was officially counted as one of the Allies as a founding member of the UN, and more so, one of the 5 permanent members of the Security Council, which deliberately consisted of the Allies from the war. The UNSC is the WWII Allies embalmed throughout time (except for 1971 when ROC was replaced by PRC).
Of the ten or so Area Armies (western Field Armys) under the Japanese ORBAT that existed at any time (about 7-8 divisions each), till late 1944, 6 were in China (First, Second, Fifth, Northern China, Central China,Southern China). Burma Area Army (which was oversized) was in Burma/India and the Eight Area Army was in the Solomon Islands, Rest were in garrison.
Of the 6 Air Armies, 3, the 2nd, 5th and 6th were comitted to China, withe the 1st in support. Only in 1945, did the 5th engage the US forces in Okinawa. The vast majority of Japanese losses suffered in the military and air forces were against China.
Naval forces are another thing.
Now you’ve gone from being misleading to being deliberately deceptive. First, as noted, there was very little activity in China from 1941-45 apart from the Ichi-Go Offensive in reaction to the US use of bases in China to raid the Japanese homelands with B-29s. Japan could not sustain full scale military action in both the Pacific and in China, and as a result China became a static front for the duration. Much more noteworthy is that total Japanese military fatalities from 1937-45 were 2 million; only 480,000 of those happened in China, the remaining 1.5 million occurred from 1941-45 outside of China. Now for the deliberately deceptive part; counting only Area Armies and dismissing anything else as “in garrison” is a completely useless method for determining how the IJA was deployed. Counting the Eight Area Army as being the equivalent of any other in 1944 is an example of this absurdity; it was isolated at Rabaul and had nothing like 7-8 divisions under its command. By your method of counting, the 350,000 soldiers of the IJA stationed in the Philippines in mid 1944 who were to die by early 1945 (a substantially larger force than the ‘oversized’ Burma Area Army) are simply “in garrison” and don’t even have a proper existence in your calculation until July 28, 1944 when the 14th Army was redesignated as the 14th Area Army.
This is all of course ignoring the Kwantung Army in Manchuria facing the Soviets which was at a strength of 700,000 men in 1941 and 1,320,000 in 1945. So much for most of the rest being in Burma.
Again, counting Air Armies is as useless of a method of determining Japanese force dispositions as only counting Area Armies is. It also does nothing to show where casualties were taking place and how heavy they were, and as previously demonstrated your claim that the vast majority of Japanese losses suffered were against China is complete nonsense. To repeat: China was a very quiet theater from 1941-45, and most opposition encountered in the air over China by the Japanese in fact came from American aircraft crewed by American pilots. Your apparent suggestion that the air arm of the Imperial Japanese Army only engaged US forces starting in 1945 at Okinawa is utterly absurd. Your figures and dispositions of Japanese Air Armies is completely inaccurate in any event:
You bet. Get a load of this guy