Japan in China: 1937 - 1945

[tequila]

Carl - +1 on your review of the book and general conclusions.

I would disagree about the idea that Nationalist China did not have supply or sanctuary. For me the dominant feature of Japan's war was their complete lack of an overarching strategic plan for China. Their China policy seemed much more a set of improvisations, driven primarily by events and commanders in the field, especially early on ("Manchuria Incident" and assault on Shanghai). They wanted to protect their Manchurian resource enclave from the Nationalist threat, but they had no overall strategic plan as to why Manchuria was worth so much, or what they would do with it or the other parts of China.

Yet in order to protect Manchuria, they decided to destroy the KMT army by attacking first Shanghai, then expanding ever onward in a vain attempt to pin and then destroy the Nationalists. Their entire campaign was an attempt to destroy the KMT's sanctuary and supply lines in the rest of China and SE Asia. In the end, they ended up garrisoning vast territories with overstretched armies, fighting swarms of guerrillas who could be wiped away easily but never quite eliminated, while chasing KMT armies who could be defeated but never quite destroyed completely. Meanwhile their efforts completely wrecked their diplomatic position and turned former Western allies pre-1932 into bitter enemies.

[Fuchs]

Regarding foreign supply; Stalin was happy to help with Polikapov fighters and Tupolev bombers prior to '41 - in exchange for gold.

[Firn]

Manchuria must have seemed to be an excellent addition from the Japanese point of view. A good degree of key ressources which the island lacks, good internal shipping routes ,a relative short 'Chinese' frontier (considering the extent of the region), considerable strategic depth towards the Soviet Union and a relative small population ( in Chinese relations). Keep in mind that for a long time it was 'the' heavy industrial heartland of China with a hefty percentage of the GDP. This is before the big boom transformed the Chinese economy completely.

It is difficult to understand why they extended their forces so much into China. I guess it was a case of too good a chance to pass, of complete victory just a step away, of not giving in to problems.

[Fuchs]

Keep in mind outsider armies were used to the idea that you can venture into China and just beat Chinese rifles and swords-armed mobs up. Eventually, the emperor would agree to an unfair treaty.

The Japanese were the unlucky ones who learned that this had changed. It could just as well have been the Brits, French or Americans.
Being Japanese, they did probably not want to look inferior to the Europeans who had demonstrated Chinese defencelessness conclusively, after all!

[Firn]

Keep in mind outsider armies were used to the idea that you can venture into China and just beat Chinese rifles and swords-armed mobs up. Eventually, the emperor would agree to an unfair treaty.

The Japanese were the unlucky ones who learned that this had changed. It could just as well have been the Brits, French or Americans.
Being Japanese, they did probably not want to look inferior to the Europeans who had demonstrated Chinese defencelessness conclusively, after all!

This might be a frequently overlooked aspect if you use the gift of hindsight. Well spotted.

BTW a current graphic mapping the population density of China:



The Japanese certainly controlled at least nominally a large percentage of Chinese population.

[carl]

Fuchs:

The Chinese fought and fought and never gave up but it didn't make any difference against the Japanese. The Japanese lost China because of what happened in the Pacific, not because of anything that happened in China nor anything the Chinese did.

[Firn]

Fuchs:

The Chinese fought and fought and never gave up but it didn't make any difference against the Japanese. The Japanese lost China because of what happened in the Pacific, not because of anything that happened in China nor anything the Chinese did.

Well I would not say 'any difference'.

Strength

CHINESE
5,600,000
3,600 Soviets (1937–40)
900 US aircraft (1942–45)[1]

JAPANESE
3,900,000[2]
900,000 Chinese collaborators[3]

Casualties and losses

CHINESE
Nationalist: 1,320,000 KIA, 1,797,000 WIA, 120,000 MIA, and 17,000,000–22,000,000 civilians dead [4]
Communist: 500,000 KIA and WIA.

JAPANESE
Contemporary studies: 1,055,000 dead
1,172,200 injured
Total: 2,227,200[5]
Japanese estimates—including 480,000 dead in total

I think it is all to easy to fall into the mental trap of equating the (reveived) media coverage and the importance of an event. There is no doubt that the Japanese had allocated vast ressources of men and material to the Cinese theater of war. Especially Japanese man-power was in massively engaged.

While obviously the Chinese did not play the Soviet part in the Japense downfall there are some interesting parallels with the German effort in the East. And in both instances the war against the 'Western Allies' demanded a far more capital and technology intensive approach. In the German case the contrast was arguably not as extreme and thus the ressource drain had greater consequences on it's Eastern front.

Note: It is too easy to forget just how costly a big small war can be on your territory. 20 million dead civilians are clear reminder, especially since the war was concentrated mostly in areas of the North-east.

[davidbfpo]

Firn,

Two good maps. Is there one showing how far the Japanese expanded? In 1940 IIRC they occupied northern and then southern (Vichy) French Indo-China; my recollection is that the Japanese were by then on the land border.

More generally and I rely on a conversation with Professor Steven Tsang, a British academic whose life target is to complete a biography of Chiang Kai-Shek.

The Nationalists lost their best divisions, first the German-trained divisions in 1940 that tried to hold onto Shanghai (August to November 1937) and when they were reformed and re-equipped they were sent south to Yunnan, to help the Allies in Burma and re-opened 'The Burma Road' (December 1941-late 1944). Steven remarked that these divisions could ably resist their opponents - if Japanese air power was absent.

Wiki links:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Shanghai

[carl]

Tequila:

I was thinking more along the lines of neither the Nationalist nor the Communist guerrillas having a sanctuary or an external source of supply. Neither of them could duck across a line of control or border into a place the Japanese would not go. The only thing they could do if they chose was to move far enough away that the Japanese Army didn't feel like following.

Neither did they have supplies coming over from outside in any important way. The Japanese controlled the coast, not much came over the Hump or the over the mountain roads and the Soviets cut off supplies until they resumed their fight with Japan. For guerrilla forces or insurgencies, without sanctuary or supply things are close to impossible.

I would disagree about the Nationalists having any important source of external supply after the Soviets cut them off. The routes over the mountains to the south just could provide enough to make a difference.

Interestingly, they could supply enough that the USAAF and Chinese Air Force just about ran the Japanese out of Chinese skies by 1944-45. It is interesting too that that didn't stop the Japanese from going where they pleased and wrecking KMT military power in their final offensive to the south. From reading that book I got the idea that the Japanese Army was probably as responsible, or more, than any other factor for the ultimate victory of the Reds.

[Dayuhan]

I was thinking more along the lines of neither the Nationalist nor the Communist guerrillas having a sanctuary or an external source of supply. Neither of them could duck across a line of control or border into a place the Japanese would not go. The only thing they could do if they chose was to move far enough away that the Japanese Army didn't feel like following.

Both the Communists and the KMT found effective sanctuary within China: they couldn't duck across a border, but they could duck deeper into the China, which is a big place.

For guerrilla forces or insurgencies, without sanctuary or supply things are close to impossible.

This I think is exaggerated, and a dangerous assumption: it leads counterinsurgents to focus on whatever bad folks are providing that sanctuary instead of looking at the issues in their own goals, policies, and practices. To use a current analogy, that kind of thinking could lead us to think that our goals, policies, strategies, and tactics in Afghanistan aren't a problem, everything would be fine if it wasn't for Pakistan.

I don't think either Mao or the KMT had any particular desire to fight the Japanese more than they had to. They'd have been quite willing, not unreasonably, to let the Americans fight the Japanese while they prepared to fight each other. Lack of supply would be a constraint, but no amount of supply will get people to fight if they don't think it's in their interest to fight.

I think there are a number of reasons why guerrilla/counterguerrilla warfare in China hasn't received much attention. Most original source material would be written in Japanese or Chinese and heavily biased in both cases: there weren't many neutral observers on the ground. At the time this aspect of the fight was largely seen as a fairly insignificant adjunct to the dominant conventional warfare, and it didn't get much study in any theater. We also don't see much written on SWJ about, say, guerrilla resistance to German occupation in Russia or the Balkans.

I think there's also a sense that there's little to be learned from Japanese counterguerrilla practice in particular because it was so diametrically opposed to current practice and to what is currently considered acceptable. Japanese COIN was not notably pop-centric and placed a fairly low priority on winning hearts and minds.

As an aside, some time ago I looked into the differences between material published by Americans on guerrilla resistance to Japanese occupation of the Philippines and accounts coming from Filipinos. The differences were striking, to say the least. Even where written records exist they must be very carefully filtered for bias.

[carl]

Both the Communists and the KMT found effective sanctuary within China: they couldn't duck across a border, but they could duck deeper into the China, which is a big place.

Yes I know that. Which is why I wrote that. However if you run far enough away from the Japanese that they can't easily get at you, you can't easily get at them. That is a bit different from ducking over a border into a sanctuary. They can't get at you at all but you can still get at them. That is an important thing.

This I think is exaggerated, and a dangerous assumption: it leads counterinsurgents to focus on whatever bad folks are providing that sanctuary instead of looking at the issues in their own goals, policies, and practices. To use a current analogy, that kind of thinking could lead us to think that our goals, policies, strategies, and tactics in Afghanistan aren't a problem, everything would be fine if it wasn't for Pakistan.

I don't think acknowledging the prime importance of sanctuary is at all misplaced. In the case you cite acknowledging that will lead to realizing that the problem can't be solved unless something is done about the Pak Army/ISI. In China, it helps explain why guerrilla forces didn't accomplish much.

I don't think either Mao or the KMT had any particular desire to fight the Japanese more than they had to. They'd have been quite willing, not unreasonably, to let the Americans fight the Japanese while they prepared to fight each other. Lack of supply would be a constraint, but no amount of supply will get people to fight if they don't think it's in their interest to fight.

No, according to the book that is not true. The KMT fought quite a lot as proven by casualty figures. The Reds didn't fight so much. Which is the opposite of what we've been told all these years. The Chinese were very upset that the Japanese were around. They just couldn't get them out even though they tried.

I think there's also a sense that there's little to be learned from Japanese counterguerrilla practice in particular because it was so diametrically opposed to current practice and to what is currently considered acceptable. Japanese COIN was not notably pop-centric and placed a fairly low priority on winning hearts and minds.

Agreed. We don't look at it much because Japanese small wars practices were so savage there is nothing much to be gained by studying them. How much can be gained by going over publications such as "How to kill Filipinos".

[Dayuhan]

Yes I know that. Which is why I wrote that. However if you run far enough away from the Japanese that they can't easily get at you, you can't easily get at them. That is a bit different from ducking over a border into a sanctuary. They can't get at you at all but you can still get at them. That is an important thing.

.

That assumes that you want to get at them.

I don't think acknowledging the prime importance of sanctuary is at all misplaced. In the case you cite acknowledging that will lead to realizing that the problem can't be solved unless something is done about the Pak Army/ISI. In China, it helps explain why guerrilla forces didn't accomplish much.

That's an illustration of the tendency I spoke of: it leads to conclusions that are based less on evidence than on assumption. If you assume that sanctuary is of prime importance, you tend to assume that the problem in Afghanistan is the Pakistanis, and are thus less likely to acknowledge or address the fairly significant problems with our own policies and practices. If you assume that sanctuary was the key factor in the ineffectiveness of Chinese resistance, you tend to overlook the possibility that the Chinese resistances were concerned more with surviving than with winning.

No, according to the book that is not true. The KMT fought quite a lot as proven by casualty figures. The Reds didn't fight so much. Which is the opposite of what we've been told all these years. The Chinese were very upset that the Japanese were around. They just couldn't get them out even though they tried.

What were the sources on the casualty figures, and how reliable are they? Even if they are reliable (not many figures from that time and place can be trusted, and I certainly wouldn't trust any figures originating from the KMT) higher casualty figures on one side don't necessarily mean that side is initiating combat. They can just as easily mean one side is less effective at avoiding combat, is less adept at exploiting the sanctuary provided by China's size, is more inclined to concentrate forces and render them vulnerable to air attack, etc. The KMT were also in a position where the US was constantly pressuring them to fight, a problem the Communists of course did not have. I don't think you can base a conclusion on desire to fight purely on casualty figures. Those who were on the scene and playing attention, notably Gen. Stilwell, did not seem particularly convinced that the KMT wanted to fight the Japanese.

[carl]

.That assumes that you want to get at them.

Ok, you got me beat. Non sequitur responses always do.

That's an illustration of the tendency I spoke of: it leads to conclusions that are based less on evidence than on assumption. If you assume that sanctuary is of prime importance, you tend to assume that the problem in Afghanistan is the Pakistanis, and are thus less likely to acknowledge or address the fairly significant problems with our own policies and practices. If you assume that sanctuary was the key factor in the ineffectiveness of Chinese resistance, you tend to overlook the possibility that the Chinese resistances were concerned more with surviving than with winning.

No, the conclusion that sanctuary is of prime importance is based on historical record and common sense. Recognizing that will not blind you to other faults unless you are a dumb-bell, in which case the primary problem is that you are a dumb-bell.

The Reds were more concerned about survival, so they ended the war stronger than when it started. The Nationalist guerrillas were mostly wrecked because I read they tried to coordinate their operations with conventional military ops. That didn't work out well for them.

What were the sources on the casualty figures, and how reliable are they? Even if they are reliable (not many figures from that time and place can be trusted, and I certainly wouldn't trust any figures originating from the KMT) higher casualty figures on one side don't necessarily mean that side is initiating combat. They can just as easily mean one side is less effective at avoiding combat, is less adept at exploiting the sanctuary provided by China's size, is more inclined to concentrate forces and render them vulnerable to air attack, etc. The KMT were also in a position where the US was constantly pressuring them to fight, a problem the Communists of course did not have. I don't think you can base a conclusion on desire to fight purely on casualty figures. Those who were on the scene and playing attention, notably Gen. Stilwell, did not seem particularly convinced that the KMT wanted to fight the Japanese.

Take all that up with the authors of the essays in the book. They were all apparently very highly reputed historians of various nationalities. All the essays were impressive.