PREFACE

Foreword

Being

born a Hungarian, raised a Ronin-Refugee in Denmark from 1956, I happened to find a home in Japan since 1971 resulting in these writings with the following intention: Honoring the dead and cautioning the living. It is a handbook for high school- and university students in Japan, China, Korea and Vietnam as well as the USA and other Pacific countries, written with the conviction that they all deserve to know

as much perspective about their resent history as possible. I hope that many, better and more accomplished historical works will follow. I believe in the eventual success of the search for historical truth, irrespective of shallow national, political and bigot religious and racial interests, and I am sure that the youth of modern, progressive, pragmatic Asia/Pacific Rim of today desire to become aware of the aspects, facts and reality of the bloody Pacific 20th century
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Introduction

Usually a hundred years has to pass, before historic conflicts, wars and events can emerge and be analysed free of tainted and biased political and religious interests, as well as glorification of the victorious and demonization of the defeated. The Pacific war is no exception, and until recently most historical works about the conflict have been obviously one sided, branding Japan as the sole aggressor and all other parties as victims. But that is no way to write history. These commonly accepted, comfortably shallow victory-addicted historians, having published thousands of books and articles on the Pacific War, often ignore the fact that war is a mere continuation of politics by other means (Clausewitz), and that both Japan and America only pursued their state policy; this resulted in that
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many large and small events led to the spectacular military confrontation between the two major Pacific powers ending in a total restructuring and transformation of the political, economical and military landscape of Asia and the Pacific of today. The first casualty in any armed conflict is the truth, so in my book I have tried to avoid branding like aggressor, war criminal, savage, fanatic, fascistic, militaristic and imperialistic. I have tried to understand how and why a historically relatively peaceful (having not been at war for almost 300 years since 1603), progressive Japan, with no allies, (Germany actually being the ally of nationalist China,) ended up in one of history's bloodiest conflicts with such overwhelming, superior combined adversaries as USA, UK, Canada, Australia and China, later additionally the USSR. Nevertheless it is now a matter of historical record that once the conflict between Japan and China esca-

lated into a full fledged, total war with the USA and UK, the Japanese did not pull their punches and displayed a modern naval/aerial military excellence that forever put the western-christian superiority legend to rest. This later inspired other Asian and African nations to armed resistance against all forms of colonialism and foreign domination. It also became evident that all US supported Asian leaders, including Chiang Kai-sheek, Syngman Rhee, Ngo Dinh Diem and Marcos were all failures, ultimately resulting in America losing most of its influence in Far Eastern events and major economies by the end of 1980's. My conclusion is, that the Pearl Harbour-Hiroshima chain of events were only a part of an ongoing, larger, more complex, hegemony-oriented, geopolitical scenario, not to be distorted by forcing the conflict into a mere five years called The Second World War. To get a clear view, first of all the beginning and end of the conflict and thus the name must be revised and pinpointed.

Names such as - WW II (European history writing), - Greater Asian War (official Japanese name from 1941), - The 15 Years War (according to Chinese and Korean history books) are all misleading since the Pacific War did not start in 1931 (battle of Mukden) or in 1941 (Pearl Harbour) and it did not end in 1945 (Hiroshima-Nagasaki). Rising above political conventionalism and the superficial historical establishment, accepting the fact that many wars start with a peace treaty, we can safely establish the beginning of the conflict as 1895 (Shimonoseki Peace Treaty) and the end as 1975 (Fall or liberation of Saigon depending of point of view). This 80 years period is an unbroken chain of small and big battles and armed conflicts one leading to the other, with an array of treaties, military alliances, revolts, coup d'etats, between ever changing parties and interests. Including opium traffickers, californian sugar barons, emerging oil giants, and industrialists all led by the escalating ambitions of The New Colonialism in the Pacific and East Asia, the major players being USA, UK, France, Holland, Japan, Russia/Soviet Union and China.

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In the USA, legendary President Theodore Roosevelt, setting the course for the American century in October 29, 1900 announced: I wish to see the United States the dominant power on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Actually he was only, officially institutionalizing the dramatic aggressive American westward expansion, beginning with the gentle annexation of Oregon with the Pacific harbours Seattle and Portland from Britain, and the conquest of 1.300.000 sq. km of Mexican national territory after a brutal war. This ended with Mexico ceding the present day California, Nevada, Utah, part of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming and Texas, America paying Mexico 18 million $(about 450 million in todays dollars) or about half the amount the US had offered Mexico before the war. In 1867 USA had purchased Alaska for $7.2 million from Imperial Russia, adding another 1.520.000 sq. km to US territory and geographically embracing the Pacific Ocean ready to future westward expansion eyeing the domination of China as final American industrial-political and strategical-naval goal. Crowning the intruding into the Pacific with the annexation of Hawaii and the Philippines the USA was now dominating the Pacific after the American- missionary
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backed overthrow of The Hawaiian Kingdom of Queen Lili'uokalani on January 17, 1893 and the US war with Spain by the end of the century.

(1) Map of American westward conquests, annexations and acquisitions in the 19 century

After the bloody Philippine-American war (1899-1902) and the first spectacular Japanese victories in 1895 over China and in 1903 over Russia the USA began viewing Japan a serious obstacle to American domination of China and the Pacific at large, resulting in the major powers of Pacific Asia emerging as potential opponents; modern progressive, homogeneous Imperial Japan and neo-colonialist, fundamentalist Christian USA.

Of course wars never go according to plan, conflicts have their own inertia and nobody thought at the beginning of The Pacific 80 Years War that it would become so long and so bloody.

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Chapter 1

PRELUDE TO THE PACIFIC 80 YEARS WAR

The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and later the US purchase of the gigantic Panama Canal project in 1904 (opened in 1914) accelerated the progress of New Imperialism (1871- 1914). During this period, the advanced European nations conquered 20% of the Earth's land area (nearly 23.000.000 km2).

phase of imperialist expansion; in the latter two regions, Japan and the United States joined the European powers in the scramble for territory. USA and Europe motivated by gaining monopoly markets and trading-rights and Japan mainly driven by security concerns, raw-material/energy-supplies; particularly on the week and exposed Korean Peninsula, considered a vassal of and dominated by a collapsing Imperial China as well as threatened by the aggressive Asian expansion of Imperial Russia. Invasion of Japan had always come from the Korean peninsula. It is like a pistol aimed at Japans heart so the Korean peninsula was given top priority in Japanese security strategy. Additionally replacing the fragile and volatile dependency on American oil and steel supplies with reliable, secure raw-material and energy supplies had become vital to Japan. Decline of British hegemony and free trade, the long depression (1873-1896), protectionist measures by Germany (1879), France (1881) resulting in limitation of both domestic and export markets forced governments and business leaders in Europe, and in the USA, to find the solution in sheltered overseas markets united to the home country behind steep tariff barriers. New overseas colonies would provide export markets free of foreign competition, while sup8

2) Historical map of the Pacific

(2) Historical map of the Pacific

Africa, Asia and the Pacific Islands, the remaining world regions that had not yet been colonialized by Europeans, became the primary targets of this new

plying cheap labour and raw materials. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and later the US purchase of the gigantic Panama Canal project in 1904 (opened in 1914) accelerated the progress of New Imperialism (1871- 1914). During this period, the advanced European nations conquered 20% of the Earth's land area (nearly 23.000.000 km2). Africa, Asia and the Pacific Islands, the remaining world regions that had not yet been colonialized by Europeans, became the primary targets of this new phase of imperialist expansion; in the latter two regions, Japan and the United States joined the European powers in the scramble for territory. USA and Europe motivated by gaining monopoly markets and trading-rights and Japan mainly driven by security concerns, raw-material/energy-supplies; particularly on the week and exposed Korean Peninsula, considered a vassal of and dominated by a collapsing Imperial China as well as threatened by the aggressive Asian expansion of Imperial Russia. Invasion of Japan had always come from the Korean peninsula. It is like a pistol aimed at Japans heart so the Korean peninsula was given top priority in Japanese security strategy. Additionally replacing the frag9

ile and volatile dependency on American oil and steel supplies with reliable, secure raw-material and energy supplies had become vital to Japan. Decline of British hegemony and free trade, the long depression (1873-1896), protectionist measures by Germany (1879), France (1881) resulting in limitation of both domestic and export markets forced governments and business leaders in Europe, and in the USA, to find the solution in sheltered overseas markets united to the home country behind steep tariff barriers. New overseas colonies would provide export markets free of foreign competition, while supplying cheap labour and raw materials. This new imperialism was spearheaded by Christian missionaries galvanising the moral bases, and lending monotheistic divine justification to the large land grab in Africa and Asia with the objective of mercantile monopolies. It also found support in Europe and USA by ultra- nationalist and racial supremacist forces. It was popularised to the general public by e.g Rudyard Kipling, and other self-appointed ambassadors of white supremacy, urging the United States to Take up the White Man's burden of bringing the European version of civilisation to other peoples of the world, regardless of whether they wanted this form of civilisation or not.

Kipling even wrote a poem in 1899 to justify the American annihilation of the Philippine- Tagalog republic.

Take up the White Man's burden-- Send forth the best ye breed-- Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives' need; To wait in heavy harness, On uttered folk and wild-- Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child. Take up the White Man's burden-- Have done with childish days-- The lightly proferred laurel The easy, ungrudged praise. Comes now, to search your manhood Through all the thankless years Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom, The judgment of your peers!

Additionally modern industrial shipping and navies demanded new bases and deep-sea, ice- free harbours and strategically ideal, reliable refilling supplies (coaling stations) and secure warehousing facilities of course protected by significant military and naval presence whenever possible. In the wast Pacific this re(3) The white mans burden sulted in US, British, French and German seizures and annexations of various islands and atolls in furious competition with each other and, until the US annexation of Hawaii, with the Kingdom of Hawaii. Events in Hawaii during this period can be considered prototype manual in this new American imperialistic political manipulation. In William Meyer's book The U.S. War Against Asia he writes:

There was already a U.S. military presence in Hawaii, as in 1874 U.S. troops were used to suppress rioting following the
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electoral victory of David Kalkaua over Queen Emma in an election to pick a successor to King William Lunalilo, who was a puppet of the U.S. planters. In addition it was feared that if a trade treaty were not enacted the British might seize the islands. The Reciprocity Treaty of 1875 formalised trade relations between the nation of Hawaii and the United States of America. It provided for duty-free trade for most items. It might serve as a warning that a free trade treaty can be a prelude to annexation. Claus Spreckels became one of the richest men in the United States. Production of sugar cane in Hawaii doubled over the next decade. King Kalakaua was further corrupted by gifts from Spreckels, who also made loans to the Hawaiian government. His personal attorney, John T. Dare, was appointed Attorney General of Hawaii. The greater sugar production required large numbers of immigrants, making native Hawaiians a minority on their own islands. In 1887 American-identied citizens of Hawaii led a revolt that used military force to coerce King David Kalkaua to adopt a new constitution.

The Americans were led by Lorrin A. Thurston, a sugar plantation developer and newspaper publisher. The House of Nobles, equivalent to the U.S. Senate, now became elected rather than appointed. But a property qualication requirement prevented poor citizens from voting; that included most descendants of the native Hawaiians. It also denied voting rights to anyone of Asian descent (Japanese and Chinese). It is unlikely that it is a coincidence that in 1887 the Hawaiian government gave the U.S. rights to use Wai Momi, renamed Pearl Harbour, as a naval base. In the 1890 McKinley tariff put all imported, unprocessed sugar on the duty-free list, after heavy lobbying and campaign contributions by the Sugar Trust, which had consolidated East Coast reners. This left Hawaiian producers and the Spreckels renery at a relative disadvantage; prices for their sugar fell 40%. Henry Havemeyer, leader of the Sugar Trust, had contributed substantially both to Republican Congressman McKinley and to Grover Cleveland, who would become the President in 1893, the rst Democratic Party nominee to succeed since the Civil War. In addition, rather than continue to face ruinous competition, Spreckels made a deal with the Sugar Trust to pay for

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sugar in San Francisco the same price as was paid in New York City. But at that time there was a 2 cent per pound bounty for domestic sugar production. If Hawaii were annexed by the U.S., that bounty would save the Hawaiian growers. The U.S. international policy was one of imperial expansion; the U.S. Minister to Hawaii, John L. Stevens, encouraged Americans in Hawaii to seek annexation. Queen Liliukokalani had had enough of Americans by this time. She proposed changing the Hawaiian constitution to disenfranchise them. Although this proposal failed to pass, it served as a pretext for the 1893 revolt against Queen Liliukokalani. U.S. Marines aided the leaders of the pro-American coup. On January 16, 1893 a provisional government was proclaimed and recognised by Minister Stevens, who must have had instructions in advance from the government of the United States. In the last days of the Harrison Presidency a Treaty of Annexation was drawn up; it was signed February 14th, 1893. But the newly elected President, Grover Cleveland, refused to sign the treaty. He claimed the revolt was illegal and unfair to Queen Liliukokalani. He sent a special investigator to Hawaii who found the natives not in favour of

annexation. But he had also been elected partly with large donations from the Sugar Trust, which opposed domestic production of sugar. Another problem for Spreckels and other planters was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1886. Hawaiian cane planters had become used to a system where Chinese were contracted in China to work essentially for food. If Hawaii became part of the United States that pool of nearly free labor would dry up. In the end Havemeyer had to sacrice the Hawaiian pawn to make more meaningful gains. Congressman McKinley was elected President McKinley in the elections of 1896. The Sugar Trusts interests were aligned with the imperialist faction (Theodore Roosevelt being the best known member); war with Spain was provoked in order to gain Cuba and Puerto Rico. Amidst the fever of war, which was declared on April 11, 1898, the idea of annexing Hawaii became unstoppable. Formal annexation came on August 12, 1898, which gave full U.S. citizenship to citizens of Hawaii even if they were not of European descent. The Territory of Hawaii was not a democracy; a Governor was appointed by the President of the United States. The rst

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appointed Governor was Sanford B. Dole. Dole had served as an appointed Associate Judge of the Supreme Court of Hawaii when it was an independent nation, but turned traitor to become the leader of the 1893 revolution and then President of the Republic that was established. His cousin James Drummond Dole developed the Hawaiian pineapple industry and the Dole Food Company; James did not move to Hawaii until after it had been annexed by the United States. In 1898 the only Hawaiian export of importance was sugar, valued at $16.614.622. Fortunately, Hawaii was included in the U.S. census of 1900. Here is the population, broken down by national derivation: Group Hawaiian/mixed: White: Japanese: Chinese: Other: % of population 24.4% 18.7% 39.7% 16.7% 0.5%

It is surprising that Japan did not go to war with the United States in 1898. She might have seized the Philippines and Hawaii while the U.S. had its hands full ghting Spain. But unlike the U.S., the Japanese were still trying to act like a civilized, peaceful nation. Over the next few decades, the U.S., Great Britain, Germany, Russian and France would continue to hammer home the lesson that being peaceful was for losers. Militarists would come to dominate the Japanese government and intimidate its normally peaceful population. But even so, Japan tried to stay at peace with the U.S. until it was given no other choice but war (or complete surrender) by the Franklin Roosevelt administration in 1940.
The Spanish American War with the objective of securing Cuba as a US vassal and the Caribbean a US lake, eliminated Spain as a Pacific power and resulted in US annexing the Philippines, Guam and Samoa. British rule in India was institutionalised in 1858 following a rebellion the previous year, and the 1880's saw Britain's conquest of Burma and French takeover in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos completing the French Indochinese Empire.

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Imperialist ambitions and rivalries in the Pacific and Asia now inevitably came to focus on the vast Empire of China with more than a quarter of the world's population.

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Chapter 2

CHRONOLOGY OF THE PACIFIC 80 YEARS WAR

CHRONOLOGY OF THE PACIFIC 80 YEARS WAR 1895 1895 1897 1898 1898 1898 1898 1899 1900 1902 1904 Treaty of Shimonoseki Triple Intervention by Russia,France and Germany Trans-Siberian Railroad in Vladivostok Spanish-American war (Guam and Philippines annexed by USA) Treaty of Paris Philippine Declaration of Independence US annexation of Kingdom of Hawaii German-Spanish Treaty (About 6000 Pacic Islands bought by Germany including Carolines, Marianas and Palau for 17 million marks) Boxer rebellion and Eight-Nation Alliance Anglo-Japanese Treaty British invasion of Tibet

1904-1905 The Russo-Japanese war 1905 1905 1905 1905 1905 1912 Russian revolution Secret Taft-Katsura agreement Renewal of Anglo-Japanese treaty Treaty of Portsmouth Formation of Asiatic Exclusion League in US and Canada Republic of China, end of Imperial China
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CHRONOLOGY OF THE PACIFIC 80 YEARS WAR 1915 1917 1919 1919 1922 1911-1941 1919-1927 1927 1927-1950 1927-1937 1928-1938 1929-1939 1931 1936 1936 1937 1937 Twenty-One Demands Lansing-Ishii Agreement May Fourth Movement Treaty of Versailles Nine-Power Treaty Sino-German alliance Kuomintang, Sun-Yatsen, Chiang Kai-Shek and the Canton years Shanghai massacre Chinese Civil war Nanking decade Mongolian-Soviet republic Great Depression Mukden Incident Xi'an Incident Anti-Comintern pact, Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact Madam Chiang Kai-Shek, recruiting American Pilots Sino-Japanese War

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CHRONOLOGY OF THE PACIFIC 80 YEARS WAR 1941 1941-1942 1941 1942 1942 1942 1942 1942 1942-1943 1943 1943 1943 1943 1944 1944 1944 1945 Niitakayama Nobore Battle of Philippines Battle of Malaya Battle of Slim River Battle of Singapore, Malay no Tora Battle of the Java Sea Battle of the Coral sea Battle of Midway Battle of Guadalcanal Battle of Komandorsky Islands Battle of Attu Battle of Tarawa Cairo declaration Battle of China, Ichigo sakusen Battle of Saipan Battle of Palau Battle of Iwojima

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CHRONOLOGY OF THE PACIFIC 80 YEARS WAR 1945 1945 Battle of Manchuria Battle of Taiwan

1945-1950 Battle of Korea 1945-1950 Battle of Indonesia 1945-1949 Battle of mainland China 1946-1954 Battle of Indochina 1954 1950 Battle of Dien Bien Phu Battle of Cambodia

1959-1975 Battle of Vietnam 1970 1975 Battle of Laos Fall of Saigon

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Chapter 3

MOST WARS BEGIN WITH A PEACE TREATY

A prominent example is the Treaty of Versailles ending the First Great European Industrial War (also called W.W. I) and automatically starting the evolvements toward W.W. II between UK, France, Russia (the Allies) and the Third Reich of Germany. The Treaty of Trianon, forcefully creating the British-French dominated states of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania to hinder German and Austro-Hungarian access to the Mediterranean, thus protecting the shipping lanes to the Suez Canal, even resulted in the Balkan Wars of the 1990's. The Pacific 80 Years War also started with a peace treaty. Namely the Treaty of Shimonoseki signed in the Shunpanro hall on April 17, 1895 between the Empire of Japan and The Empire of China ending the first Sino-Japanese war when Japan defeated Chinese troops at Pyongyang liberating Korea September 1894. In the treaty terms, China recognised the independence of Korea, ceded Penghu, Taiwan and Eastern bay of Liandung to Japan, as well as opening Shashi, Chungking, Soochow and Hangzhou to Japanese trade. Although the treaty was a clear and important
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victory for Japan and progressive Koreans and Formosans, it immediately lead to the ultimatum by the Western powers resulting in the Triple Intervention by Russia, France and Germany forcing Japan to withdraw its claim to the Liaodong peninsula. This was a great setback for Japan's security and the economical development of the whole region. Especially the obvious Russian designs for Port Arthur and the beginning of Russian construction of the railway to Harbin in spite of China's protests, the Trans-Siberian railway in Vladivostok, US annexation of Guam, the Philippines and Hawaii, Germany taking over 6.000 Pacific islands from Spain, the Boxer rebellions bloody end and the Eight Nation Alliance, sacking Peking and burning the Summer Palace, all too well confirmed Japans fear of Western expansionist policy in the Pacific and China, right at Japan's doorstep in Liaodong and Korea. Within a few years also Germany, France and Great Britain embarked on taking unbridled advantage of the economical and political weakness of the Chinese Empire, taking control of significant regions on the Chinese mainland.

The Triple Intervention was seen in Japan as a great humiliation and Russian lease of Liaodong two years later, the control of the railway and the Russian fortification of Port Arthur with its strategically critical location vis a vis Korea, The Yellow Sea and Bohai Gulf, determined the place and time of the first major battle in The Pacific 80 Years War.

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Chapter 4

THE BATTLE OF PORT ARTHUR

This first battle 1904-1905, conventionally called the Russo-Japanese War, started with the Battle of Port Arthur central to the conflict and after the defeat of the Russian Pacific fleet, culminated in the Siege of Port Arthur. The siege, introducing all the weapons of modern warfare, such as massive 28 cm mortars, 500 Kg shells, maxim machine guns, rapid howitzers, barbed wire, telephone lines, searchlights and hand grenades ended unexpectedly with total Japanese victory both on land and at sea. The Russian surrender was accepted and signed January 2, 1905 and the following battles of Mukden, Manchuria and the annihilation of the Baltic fleet in the Tsushima Strait eliminated Russia as a Pacific power for the next forty years.

Imperial Navy, its training- and command structure. Japanese victory of these first series of major battles shocked the Western world and Asia, and created, respect, admiration, suspicion and fear all at the same time. Most failed however to draw the right conclusions from Japanese victories, and Russia's humiliation. Both the Japanese and the Russians had Whitehead torpedoes but only the Japanese hit their targets. The fact that general education in Japan was much higher then in Russia and that the education level in a modern navy and army determined the outcome of the battle explains Japan's success. Already in 1860 50% of japanese males, and 25% of females could read and write thanks to the buddhist teragoya, at a time when general literacy in Russia was a mere 0.3%!
JAPAN 117 dead 583 injured 3 torpedo boats sunk 4,380 dead 5,917 captured 21 ships sunk (7 battleships) 7 captured 6 disarmed RUSSIA

(4) Admiral Heihachiro Togo on the bridge of his flagship Mikasa

The battle of Port Arthur also heralded the high human cost of modern industrial trench- warfare as well as the impressive capabilities of the Japanese

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This explains that whereas the infantry losses were close to equal (40.000- 70.000 on each side), the naval losses were dramatically different. The consequences were global. Revolution in Russia, German planning of war with Russia's ally France, the secret Taft- Katsura agreement confirming Japans position in Korea in exchange for US dominance in the Philippines. Renewal of the Anglo-Japanese treaty covering all of East Asia, enlargement of the British docks in Auckland, Bombay, Fremantle, Hong Kong, Singapore and Sidney, and a bit less significant the presentation of a lock of Admiral Nelsons hair to the Japanese Imperial Navy.

(5) Japanese woodblock print: Tsar Nicholas II waking up

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Chapter 5

ROOSEVELTS BIG STICK

The Treaty of Portsmouth engineered by US president Roosevelt was received with strong disappointment by the Japanese public, riots erupted in major cities, and marked the beginning of the growing Japanese distrust of of the West and the military's efforts to influence events in North China as well as a general escalation of the conflict in the Pacific. In 1912 a republic emerged on the ruins of Imperial China. The end of over two thousand years of imperial rule in China replacing it with the Kuomintang one party system, quickly deteriorated into warlordism and declaration of independence of several chinese provinces as well as a free for all scramble for a peace of China. The foreign policy of Republican China, heterogenous by competing internal centres of power all claiming legitimacy, invited foreign interference and invasion and the government of Yuan Shikai had to de facto give control of Tibet to UK and Outer Mongolia to Russia in exchange for being considered the legitimate Chinese government.

Officially called the Beiyang government it ruled in Beijing from 1912 with Yuan Shikai as President and as a short lived Emperor of China (1915-1916), cracking down on Kuomintang and forcing Sun Yat-sen to exile in Japan from where he called for a second revolution against Yuan. KMT's second revolution ended in disaster and Yuan's victory, laying the foundation for warlordism that crippled China for the next two decades.

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Japan's twenty-one demands In 1915 Japan sent China a secret ultimatum with twenty-one demands. The Twenty One Demands were in five groups: Group 1 Confirmed Japan's recent acquisitions in Shandong province and expanded Japan's sphere of influence over the railways, coasts and major cities of the province. Group 2 Pertained to Japan's South Manchuria Railway Zone extending the leasehold over the territory into the twenty-first century, and expanding Japan's sphere of influence in southern Manchuria and eastern Inner Mongolia to include rights of settlement and extraterritoriality appointment of financial and administrative officials to the government and priority for Japanese investments in those areas.

Group 3 Gave Japan control of the Hanyeping mining and metallurgical complex, already deep in debt to Japan. Group 4 Barred China from giving any further coastal or island concessions to foreign powers except for Japan. Group 5 Contained a miscellaneous set of demands, ranging from Japanese advisors appointed to the Chinese central government and to administer the Chinese police force (which would severely intrude on Chinese sovereignty) to allowing Japanese Buddhist preachers to conduct missionary activities in China. After China rejected Japan's revised proposal on April 26, the Genr intervened and deleted Group 5 from the document, as these had proved to be the most objectionable to the Chinese government. A reduced set of Thirteen Demands was transmitted on May 7 in the form of an ultimatum, with a two-day deadline for response. Yuan Shikai, competing with other local warlords to become the ruler of all China, was not in a position to risk war with Japan, and accepted appeasement a tactic which was followed by his suc28

cessors. The final form of the treaty was signed by both parties on May 25, 1915. The international consequences of Japan's heavy handed diplomacy resulted in strong negative reaction especially by the USA and even Japan's closest ally, Great Britain protested.

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Chapter 6

THE GREAT EUROPEAN WAR, ITS EFFECTS IN THE PACIFIC

(7) WW I Alliances (6) Europe in 1914 In Europe the Great War began in early August 1914 and Britain soon requested Japanese assistance against German presence in the Pacific. On August 15, Japan issued an ultimatum demanding that Germany withdrew its warships from Chinese and Japanese waters, and transfer Tsingtao to Japan. On August 23, Japan declared war on Germany and commenced naval operations off Tsingtao, including the introduction of the first seaplane carrier in the world, Wakamiya, heralding a very efficient new aspect of naval warfare in the Pacific. Also landing 23.000 troops for the siege of Tsingtao the battle ended with German and Austro- Hungarian surrender November 16.

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The British Government - and the international community as a whole - were concerned about Japanese intentions in the region and had decided to send a small symbolic British contingent of 1.500 man into the area. German reaction to the Japanese capture of Tsingtao was very bitter. Rear-Admiral Schlieper wrote on November 8, 1914:

The United States entered the war April 1917 and the Japanese and Americans found themselves on the same side despite the growing tensions between them over China and the status quo in the Pacific. This resulted in the partly secret Lansing-Ishii Agreement, signed November 2, 1917, both parties promising open door policy in China but the US recognising Japanese special interests due to its geographic proximity. This treaty proved to be completely ineffective and competition for special rights in China, between various powers went on relentlessly until the Washington Naval conference (1920-1921) and the signing of the Nine Power Treaty (1923) by USA, Japan, China, Britain, France, Holland, Italy, Belgium and Portugal, upgrading the open door policy to international law. In 1918, upon the collapse of the Russian Empire, Japan and US sent troops to Siberia to help Admiral Kolchak defeat the Bolshevik revolution, with Japan planning to send over 70.000 soldiers as far as Lake Baykal. The operation was scaled back and failed, due to US opposition and suspicion of Japans intentions. Kolchak was defeated and the Soviet Union was born.

But we here at home, we will continually repeat it to our children: Do not forget November 7, 1914: do not forget to pay back those yellow Asiatics, who had learned so much from us, for the great wrong they have done to us, stirred up though they were by the petty English mercenary spirit!
In February 1915 Japanese navel forces based in Singapore helped suppress a mutiny by Indian troops against the British and in December 1916 Britain again asked Japanese navy assistance in the Mediterranean. In return Britain recognised Japanese claim to Shantung and all pacific islands north of the Equator. The 1916 treaty with Russia (not to make separate peace with Germany) de facto confirmed Japans dominance in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia.

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The war to end all wars had caused terrible casualties:

WW I CASUALTIES Allied Military dead Military wounded Military missing Central Military dead Military wounded Military missing 525,000 12,831,500 4,121,000 4,386,000 8,388,000 3,629,000

The end of WW I in Europe did not bring any peace in the Pacific, as the attention of the big powers and the emerging Soviet Russia turned to Asia and in particular China, which by 1919 was disintegrating and the old spheres of influence there was becoming obsolete.

(9) The end of the great European Industrial war

(8) Territorial changes

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(10) Asia 1910

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Chapter 7

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

The Versailles Peace Conference with the big four (US, UK, France, Italy) granted Japan permanent seat on the council of the League of Nations and confirmed the transfer of German Pacific holdings (Shandong and South Pacific Islands) to Japanese mandate called The South Pacific Mandate (Saipan, Palau, Yap, Truk, Ponape, Jaluit Atoll) thus Japan emerging as a great power. Nevertheless Japan's proposal of amending a racial equality clause to the covenant of the League of Nations was rejected by the United States, Britain and Australia.

The proposal, like the equality of nations basic principle of The League of Nations, received a majority vote on April 28, 1919 when 11 out of 17 delegates voted in favour and no negative vote was cast.
Japan France Italy Brazil China Greece Serbia Czechoslovakia Total: 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 11 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

British Empire United States Portugal Romania Belgium

2 2 1 1 2

Not Registered Not Registered Not Registered Not Registered absent

(11) League of Nations

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The chairman, US President Woodrow Wilson, overturned it saying that although the proposal had been approved by a clear majority, that in this particular matter, strong opposition had manifested itself, and that on this issue a unanimous vote would be required. This strong opposition came from the British delegation. Needless to say this kind of democracy in The League of Nations was not very attractive to Japan. Arrogance and racial discrimination towards the Asians especially in California, Canada and Australia had plagued Japanese-Western relations and the Japanese delegation perhaps naively considered it a major obstacle to smooth and fair international relations. Additionally the issue was widely covered by the Japanese media resulting in public pressure on the government. Ironically it was not until 1945 that racial equality was accepted in the U.N charter. Alfred Deakin chief of white Australia policy concluded:

ble energy, their power of applying themselves to new tasks, their endurance and low standard of living that make them such competitors.
Edmund Barton formulated it differently:

The doctrine of equality of man was never intended to apply to the equality of the Englishman and the Chinaman.
Also Australian Prime Minister B. Hughes vehemently opposed Japan's racial equality proposition. Hughes believed that such a clause would be a threat to White Australia and made it clear to British Prime Minister Lloyd George that he would leave the conference if the clause was adopted. When the proposal failed, Hughes reported in the Australian parliament:

The White Australia is yours. You may do with it what you please, but at any rate, the soldiers have achieved the victory and my colleagues and I have brought that great principle back to you from the conference, as safe as it was on the day when it was rst adopted.

It is not the bad qualities, but the good qualities of these alien races that make them so dangerous to us. It is their inexhausti37

Needless to say, from an Asiatic/Pacific point of view the Paris Peace Conference ended in humiliation and the League of Nations in failure. It also became obvious that absolutely no consideration was given to human, democratic, national circumstances when French-English strategic and economic interests ware at stake. Hungary e.g. lost over 72% of her territory with 64% of its inhabitants including 3.3 million ethnic Hungarians resulting in approx. 5 million Hungarians today living outside of Hungary.

The Versailles Peace Treaty blaming the war on Germany enforced also unacceptable terms and war reparations to the tune of 226 billion gold marks which Germany will finish paying in 2020. It can be said that pragmatically both the Trianon and Versailles treaties were rather declarations of war than peace virtually guaranteeing the emergence of an opportunistic terrorist turned politician like Hitler. The British, French, Italian secret plan (tripartite agreement) already signed in 1915, of the partition of the Ottoman Empire, illustrated to what length Western powers would go to monopolize and control, oil concessions and trading interests. This British and French obsession with total domination of all trade between Europe and the Far East of course influenced events in China, Indochina, Indonesia and in the Pacific at large.

(12) The Treaty of Trianon was not a peace treaty but a deathsentence

38

(13) The secret plan

39

(14) Treaty of Svres

40

Chapter 8

TEN THOUSAND MILES FROM TIP TO TIP

From the US point of view the Panama Canal, Hawaii, Philippines and thus China and Japan was the key to controlling events in the Far East and dominate the Pacific. From 1919 the involvement and integration of East Asia in the economic interest's of Europe meant, that the course of events in the region was determined by the European Powers rather than its own logical development.

In the Pacific, Britain embarked on strengthening its dominating position, America having opened the Panama canal saw the promising economic growth in China as the Oriental Dream while the Soviet Union, having consolidated its borders in the west, began reestablishing it's presence in China rendering aid and weapons. Furthermore it was evident that Dutch Indonesia and French Indochina would follow British policy and adapt to US strategy in East Asia. Japan was indeed alone and in a very difficult position.

(15) Then thousand miles from tip to tip

42

The Washington Naval conference This was the first international conference in America, and Washington had very specific goals with arranging it. Although it was hailed as a disarmament conference, the first in history, the real objective was to isolate Japan by terminating the Anglo-Japanese alliance, thus ending Anglo-American tensions in the Pacific and forcing Japan to accept unfavourable Naval ratios as well as curbing the growing Japanese influence in China. By this time American leaders and businesses had decided to become the dominating power in East Asia and adopted the century-old British policy of subduing an emerging strong power in a region, by supporting the second strongest power as well as trying to achieve absolute naval superiority. This was the first real American participation in global politics, with tree objectives; isolation of Japan, naval hegemony in the Pacific and monopolizing the Chinese market by the American manufacturing industry. At the Washington naval conference, American negotiators started the efforts toward these objectives with the British carefully on the sidelines and the
43

Japanese doing their best to resist the forces of US intimidation. The Japanese delegation was handicapped from the beginning. The Black Chamber, MI-8 or Cipher Bureau, United States' first intelligence organisation, later the National Security Agency, could decipher the encrypted messages from Tokyo, thus the Americans knowing the Japanese position in advance and the details of the minimum naval tonnage that Japan could accept. Thanks to this first ungentlemanly conduct of opening other peoples letters, the success of this US eavesdropping led to significant growth of such agencies. The conference ended with The Washington Naval Treaty, also called the Five Power Treaty. It set specific tonnage limits on the signees as well as restricted armament size and expansion of naval facilities and fortifications. The established tonnage ratio was agreed on as follows: It was signed February 6, 1922 by the representatives of US, Japan, UK, France and Italy and needless to say every party started to circumvent the treaty be-

fore the ink on the paper was dry, with new concepts like pocket-battleships and light cruisers.
Capital Ships (tons) Aircraft Carriers (tons) US Britain Japan France Italy 525,000 525,000 315,000 175,000 175,000 135,000 135,000 81,000 60,000 60,000

According to recently published research by Russian historians, the US effort to isolate Japan was not limited to naval treaties but an emerging, top secret cooperation with the Soviet Union, e.g. concerning the Mongolian border conflict, which was undertaken, de facto the US financing Soviet military buildup there, provoking Japan and resulting in border clashes and the battle of Khalkin Gol in 1936. After the revolution and a bloody civil war, with over 1.2 million casualties, Soviet Russia with Stalin as undisputed and capable leader, had consolidated its western borders and began reemerging as a Far Eastern power, regaining influence in China. By early 1920's American, British and Soviet interests and objectives were almost identical in their effort to curb and counterbalance Japanese interests in East Asia, specifically China. This new Soviet Russia, leading a worldwide movement towards abolishing monarchies and traditional social orders and establishing workers dictatorships or peoples republics globally, was considered a very serious threat by Japan, and American-British support of it in East Asia further strengthened antiamerican sentiments in Tokyo.
44

The 5-5-3 tonnage ratio, forced on Japan was based on the argument that the US needed a two ocean navy, the British a three ocean navy and Japan only a one ocean navy (Pacific). USA comfortably ignored that these divisions were outdated since the opening of the Suez- and Panama Canals, let alone the emerging possible scenario of US and UK combining their navies against Japan. (As it happened later). Naturally the treaty contributed significantly to the political climate-change in Tokyo and the deterioration of US-Japan relations, strengthening the antitreaty fraction and resulting in Japan leaving the treaty in 1936.

Knowing today that Soviet Russia and Communist China came out victoriously by the end of the Pacific War with the fall of Saigon in 1975, it is important to understand the nature of World Communism at its beginning. In my book Buddhas Salesmen I have detailed a comparable analyses of the root and organisational structure of Communism, basically concluding that all aspects as well as historic significance of Communism is rooted in and similar to Christianity. Communism was simply a return of orthodox, fundamentalistic, absolute, monotheistic Christianity, with Lenin as son of God (Marx) and Stalin as his only true disciple and absolute leader of the sacred party, officially declaring the goal of worldwide victory over all non Communists; just like fundamental Christianity is committed to the final global Christianisation (16) Pope of all peoples. Both organisations practiced identical tactics to reach state power, the Christians in Imperial Rome and the Communists in Imperial Russia, both secretive and clandestine, sacred organisations consider
45

ing all outsiders enemies, the Christians calling them heathens and the Communists labelling them class enemies only to be annihilated. It is not a coincidence that Stalin, originally studying to be an orthodox priest became such a successful leader of World Communism. Neither fundamentalist Christianity or fundamentalist Communism can coexist with or tolerate other religions or any democratic institutions let alone liberal civic organisations and are therefore by their nature and definition absolute intolerant and monolithic, (17) Stalin branding the slightest insubordination heresy. With most of the monarchies gone in Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, China and Turkey, Japan felt additionally threatened by this emerging new partnership of USA and Soviet Russia both being anti-monarchist and both aspiring for hegemony in China. Indeed, Japan found herself in a threatened, isolated position, surrounded by hostility, uncertainty, and fragile oil- and industrial raw material supplies. Doing nothing was not an option and the logical con-

clusion was to try redirecting events in China by somehow counterbalancing the entrenched centuries old European influence and the new powerful American industrial, economic domination; but pacifying a socialist Chinese intelligentsia, supported by Stalin and limiting the influence of a corrupt, colonial, Christian business/industrialist elite supported by the USA did not prove to be an easy task. Soviet Russia established a communist government in Mongolia in 1927 and upon Sun Ya- tsen's death in 1925 Chiang Kai-shek became leader of Kuomintang and nationalist China (Generalissimo). Chiang's career is a mirror of the chaotic conditions in a disintegrating post-Imperial China. Just like Stalin in Russia and Hitler in Germany Chiang was propelled into prominence by lawlessness, famine, poverty and the escalating US-BritishGerman-Japanese interference in a heterogeneous, leaderless China. Entering Rikugun Shikan Gakko in Japan, serving in the Japanese Imperial Army (1909-1911), returning to China in 1911 he became a founding member of Kuomintang, spending his time between exile in Japan and luxury in Shanghai's foreign concessions,
46

during the Yuan Shikai period, cultivating ties with underworld gangs and leaders (the notorious Du Yuesheng of the Green Gang). In 1924 Sun Ya-tsen, with the help of mercenaries and Soviet Russia (officially Comintern) regained control of Guangzou province and sent Chiang to Moscow to study the Soviet military, where he met Trotsky and other Soviet leaders. In Canton-Guangzou the Kuomintang mercenaries camping in and around Canton, receiving $35.000 a day for food and upkeep, were no model-soldiers, engaging in piracy, sizing ships, taking hostages, robbing shops, running gambling, prostitution and drugs. Actually no province led a more miserable life then Canton under Sun Yat-sen and his lieutenants; it was the most misgoverned city in China. Merchants had to lend the administration cash to pay soldiers, there were duties on everything from pigs to dancing halls operated by Russian women. The city's 800 opium dents had to pay high duties; monopolies, official jobs and public property were sold for cash, boat owners had to by special flags, or risk being attacked by the police as pirates; Sun even tried to seize the customs revenue being sent to Beijing. Retuning to China Chiang became commander of the National Revolutionary Army in 1925 and undertook

the Northern Expedition to defeat the warlords of northern China. Chiang was allied with the Chinese Communists (Wang Jingwei) and advised by Soviet agent M. Borodin, when he suddenly began purging the Communists which lead to the beginning of the Chinese Civil War.

47

Chapter 9

EVENTS AND INCIDENTS IN CHINA

In the summer of 1927 Japanese Prime Minister Giichi Tanaka convened the Far East Conference with key members of the Foreign Ministry, Finance Ministry, The Imperial Navy and Army. They reached a compromise/consensus that Japan should support the Kuomintang government of China against the Chinese Communists, as long as General Zhang Zuolin could consolidate a virtual autonomous Manchuria, keeping the Soviet Union from dominating the northern Chinese provinces. The Soviet secret police, GPU, produced a forgery called the Tanaka Memorial in Chinese, circulating and channelling it to various groups in USA and China, claiming that Japan was planning to dominate the world after conquering all of China; the Soviet objective was to obstruct Kuomintang-Japanese reconciliation, and provoke armed conflict between the two, to advance Soviet interests. The Tanaka Memorial was one of the most successful dirty tricks of the twentieth century and a document forgery so brilliant that many Westerners still believe in it. The document was the key evidence in the Tokyo War Crime Trials, consequently convincing serious scholars to doubt the integrity of all the war crime convictions in the Pacific and the Far East.

The Tanaka Memorial was translated to english first time by The American Communist Party published in December 1931. Its authenticity was even vouched for by Leon Trotsky in one of his last writings when he already was a dissident in Mexico, as well as the anti-Japanese Christian-missionary turned politicians in Washington welcomed and accepted the bogus document as real. The British intelligence knew that the Tanaka Memorial was a forgery already in 1937 but it was not until September 2007 that Chinese historians officially declared the document to be a forgery. Today almost all academic histo- (18) GPU propaganda rians consider the Tanaka Meposter morial document a clever forgery.

49

The Drug Warlord In Shanghai there were two power centres supporting Chiang, one being the wealthy Chinese merchants and foreign capitalists, the other organised crime, dominated by the red and the green gangs with the green gang young godfather, Du Yuesheng. He became one of Shanghai's most influential citizens, narcotics overlord, anti-Japanese patriot and Chiang's best friend and Kuomintang's dakokubashira (main supporting pillar). Du Yuesheng began his career in Shanghai's French Settlement the main centre for criminal activities since the French permitted criminal gangs to operate freely even turning the administration of the settlement over to the gangs in return for tax profit on vice. Du started as a lieutenant of Pockmarked Huang chief of detectives in the French concession and also a major leader in the Green Gang. Until 1918 Shanghai's opium traffic was based in the British concession, but after a crack down by the British the opium traffic was taken over by the green gang based in the French settlement. With Du Yuesheng becoming the Opium King, he even produced anti-opium pills as a cure for opium addiction, containing heroin, selling by the millions with his
50

gang even importing tons of heroin annually from the West. He became one of the Big Three Shanghai gangsters and the key to Chiang's total annihilation of the strong united labour movement and communist organisers/student activists. On April 12, 1927 the gangsters executed a vicious crack down on labour organisations establishing a reign of terror, the Green Gang in a pact with Kuomintang getting a virtual free hand to operate throughout Nationalist China and a strong grip on official power. After the Geneva Convention ban on heroin traffic in 1928 the Shanghai gangsters set up their own refineries, becoming very successful with heroin outselling opium and a major export to the USA by 1934. Du's monopoly on power in Shanghai helped Kuomintang to destroy the communists as well as the ministry of finance became totally dependent on funds from the drug trade. For Chiang Kai-shek the money was never enough, so in 1935 he took control of all opium revenues in Yunnan gaining control of the opium business in the Yangtze basin. He turned most of the opium enterprises over to his ally Du Yuesheng, establishing strict control on cultivation and sale by Chiang's government monopoly, providing revenue since the workers and poor farmers would rather by

opium before buying food. In Shanghai the Green Gang boss Du, supervised an efficient narcotics distribution network of Kuomintang's opium, controlling all underworld operations. He ran the local government and even finances being the head of Chung Wai Bank and chairman of The Commercial Bank of China, first of all financing his own criminal dealings. He was now the most powerful man in China and a member of the Opium Suppression Commission, ruthlessly suppressing all competition and independent drug traffickers until he was chased out of Shanghai by the Japanese invasion in 1937. Settling in Chungking he adapted well to the new circumstances, setting up lucrative drug smuggling between free and occupied China, his new organisation financed by several banks to the tune of 150 million Chinese national dollars. By the late 1940's it became clear for Shanghai's gangsters that the Communist forces would occupy the city, and the gangsters participation of the 1927 massacre of labour unions and communist supporters was not forgotten. So between 1947 and 1950 the entire Shanghai underworld moved to Hong Kong where the police was overwhelmed by the massive in51

flux of criminals and organised crime flourished. The Green Gang was a national organisation and its control was in the hands of Nationalist army LTG Kot Siu-wong, setting up a new alliance known as the 14K Society spreading out to Taiwan and Macao after 1949, then further to Thailand, San Francisco, Vancouver, Manchester and Australia. The Green Gang master chemists trained Hong Kong local chemists in heroin refining, the colony becoming the centre for heroin trade by 1950's and the Kuomintang controlled highlands of the golden triangle connecting with distribution channels in USA and Europe. Du Yuesheng retired to Hong Kong where he died in 1971. Taking over Taiwan from Japan in 1945, the Kuomintang governor Chen Yi, ruling the island as a private fiefdom, influence peddling and pillaging, paid special attention to the fate of Japanese Narcotics Monopoly stocks. The monopoly did not publish figures, but records show a 1934 stockpile of 67.000 kg raw opium and 19.000 kg prepared opium and 1935 stock of 424.500 kg coca leaves, 6.000 kg morphine and 1.250 kg of cocaine. Ten years later Chen Yi an-

nounced that the Japanese had only surrendered 4.000 kg opium and a small quantity of cocaine. These narcotics he said had been released to the local Bureau of Health and the Army medical services in Nanking and added that the manufacture of cocaine and its derivatives would be given up with his agents taking control of the cocoa plantations in Taichung and elsewhere. After the Kuomintang defeat and Mao's victory in 1949 Chiang Kai-shek fled via Hong Kong to Formosa (Taiwan) and Genral Lee escaped Yunnan settling in Northern Thailand and Burma from where the remnants of his army developed the heroin trade. Both the Thai government and the West turned a blind eye to the heroin trade, with the CIA funded Kuomintang remaining in Burma until 1961 developing and expanding the Shan State opium production in Thailand and Laos from 40 tons in 1949 to 400 tons by 1962. From the Kuomintang bases in northern Thailand, huge mule caravans were dispatched to bring out the Shan States opium harvest for over twenty years, since the CIA first began supporting Kuomintang troops in the golden triangle, controlling a third of the worlds total illicit opium supply.

Whether the Kuomintang in Taiwan had any connection to this thriving trade between north Thailand and the USA/ Europe remains anybody's guess. Logically Taipei had little incentive to risk US help flowing in after the Korean War. Nevertheless in 1991 US authorities seized half a ton of heroin in California originating in China having transited Taiwan on route to the US and in 1993 Taiwanese police sized 336 kilograms of pure heroin on a fishing boat. The 337 million US $ valued heroin seizure was the biggest in Taiwan's history and added Taiwan to the Majors List in 1995, but the past few years, the opening of major container ports on mainland China has diminished Taiwan's role in the drug trade.

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Generalissimo Cash My Check During Chiang's rule, the Kuomintang became extremely corrupt, with leading officials and military leaders hoarding funding, material and armaments, especially from military aid provided by the US to the tune of 750 million, or 9.669 million in 2008 - US dollars. President Truman wrote that

tary. Ordinary Chinese suffered much under Kuomintang rule, with children forced to work in 13 hours shifts and sleeping by the machines, women being sold off as concubines and slaves, loan-sharks lending money to peasants at outrageously high interest rates, seizing the land when they were unable to pay back. While Chiang Kai-shek's army warehouses overflowed with grain, people in many provinces were starving, eating leaves and bark. Rape by Kuomintang soldiers was common so

the Chiangs, the Kungs and the Soongs are all thieves
and C.P. Fitzgerald describes China under the rule of KMT

as the Chinese people groaned under a regime Fascist in every quality except efciency.
US General Stilwell began to note the amount of US tax-dollars being wasted on the Chiang regime largely due to rampant corruption with US supplies never making it to the starving conscripts (380.584.000 in 1944 US $) and The Cambridge History of China estimates that some 60-70% of Chiang's KMT conscripts did not make it through basic training, with some 40% deserting and the remaining 20% dying of starvation before full induction into the mili53

when Nationalist soldiers came, young girls ed to the mountains, cut their hair and covered their faces with dirt.
Actually Chiang never controlled China and there were now three capitals. The internationally recognized Beijing, CPC controlled Wuhan and the KMT capital Nanjing, lending its name to the Nanjing decade. The Battle for China began with the Shanghai massacre of 12 April, 1927, when Chiang Kai- shek ordered general Bai Chongxi, former warlord turned the best

Kuomintang commander and Shanghai underworld godfather Du Yuesheng to arrest, execute, all the communist leaders and destroy the organised labour unions in Shanghai. Arrests and executions of prominent intellectuals as well as suspected communistand labour-leaders spread to all major cities in China including the execution of Li Dazhao, Mao's mentor, captured during a raid on the Soviet Embassy in Beijing. He was executed with nineteen others on the orders of Zhang Zuolin on April 28, 1927. The so-called northern expedition, with the objective of unifying China under the Kuomintang, had begun in 1926 already and Chiang had to defeat three warlords and two independent armies. Chiang Kai-shek's most important strategic victory in his efforts to become dictator of China was not on the battlefield but in a hot spring resort near Kobe. There, end of September 1927, he lured Charlie Soongs widow into accepting him marring her daughter Soong Mei-ling, by promising to become a good christian, showing the divorce papers from his first marriage. So on December 1, 1927 Chiang married Soong Mayling, Sun Ya-tsen- widow's younger sister and daughter of Charley Soong a Christian bible salesman turned millionaire. To get accepted by the Soong fam54

ily, Chiang had to divorce his first wife, get rid of his concubines and convert to christianity. For Chiang this was the shortcut to become accepted as Sun's successor and get access to American political corridors. As we shall see later, Soong May- ling, known in America as Dragon-lady, became a major asset for Chiang in his efforts to win allies in USA and thus to become a key figure in the Pacific War. He was baptised in a Methodist church in 1929 and promised to abandon all his concubines and wives, including Jennie. Chiang tried to rape her when she was 13 and married her two years later although he already had two concubines; additionally he gave her gonorrhoea on their honeymoon in Shanghai. Given his lifestyle this was hardly surprising since about 15% the population of Shanghai suffered from syphilis and about 30% from gonorrhoea. Forty years later, Jennie (Ah Feng also called Chen Jieru) wrote her memoirs, but the US agent handling the book, was attacked, beaten up twice and his office broken into, threatened with lawsuits and investigated by the FBI. Finally Chiang's son bought the manuscript for $170.000 to make sure that Jennie's recollections would never see the light of the day. However eight years after Jennie died in 1971, Professor Lloyd Eastman tracked down a copy and the book

was finally published in 1992. Despite his new Christian convictions, Chiang regularly used violence and mafia-methods, like hired gangsters from the brutal Green Gang in Shanghai to kill thousand of students and labour organisers, as well as Kuomintang in Shanghai began controlling the opium-trade. He also denied being married to Jennie, having sent her to New York to study and promising her, that his marriage to Mei-ling was only political to save China, and that he later would resume life with Jennie. The wedding on December 1, 1927, was according to Shanghai Times

tion of the US press, carefully selected (by Mei-ling, born and educated in America) details were leaked about the

lonely soldier having found his lady, calling her Darling and My Lady
in english. Jennie read the stories in American newspapers, where Chiang was quoted denying being married to Jennie, describing her as an old concubine, and voicing his surprise that she claimed to be his wife, as well as confirming, that he was

free to marry according to the most monogamous practises.

He added, that a lady like miss Soong would never agree to marriage under any other circumstances. Jennie was shattered and went to the Chinese consulate, but was politely shoved out; she became so upset that she was screaming on the street, tearing her hair, wandering the city and about to drown herself in the Hudson River, when somebody restrained her. She returned to Shanghai in 1933 and lived on funds from Chiang and language teaching, ending up in Hong Kong in 1960's in a house bought by Chiang.

the most important marriage in recent years, bringing military power, politics and nance together.
A Christian service in the Soong house and a Chinese ceremony in Majestic Hotel with a 1.300 crowd inside was held; leading local figures and national dignitaries were present, with the consuls of US, UK, France and Japan, while the Mendelssohn wedding march was played by a Russian orchestra. For the consump55

In June 1928 KMT captured Beijing and with Soviet supplies and US help took control of most of eastern China, whereupon the Nanjing government received prompt international recognition as the sole legitimate government of China. Officially! The reality on the ground was actually very different. Japan controlled Manchuria, the Communist held much of Shanxi, the Soviet Union Mongolia and Xinjiang, and the Europeans controlled the ports on China's coast. Given these conditions Chiang moved his government from city to city depending on circumstances and deals with shifting power centers and warlords. The wars of 1922 and 1924 saw the soldiers under warlord flags grow to a total of 1.5 million costing money the warlords did not have. In relatively rich Manchuria Zhang Zuolin spent $51 million on his forces in 1925 on a revenue of only $23 million. Consequently both warlords and KMT practised most immediate and repressive methods to fill their coffers. Twenty-seven taxes on salt (Sichuan), seventy levies on everything from firecrackers to prostitutes (Xiamen), e.g. a shipment of paper was taxed eleven
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(19) The Nanking Decade times along the Yangtze. Some warlords slapped 100% tax on railway freight and in the mid 1920's there were 673 different land taxes.Some peasants were even taxed for land belonging to their ancestors.

A warlord, driven out, collected taxes for leaving, and the next would do the same on arrival. Defeated armies demanded travel money and victorious commanders welcome payment. Banks were forced to lend, businesses had to by bonds, provinces printed $22 million on a reserve of $1 million (Hunan), $55 million on a silver reserve of $1.5 million (Shandong). Exploiting the opium trade introduced by the British became commonplace, with drug monopolies leased to the highest bidder and revenue raised on production, distribution and use and farmers ordered to grow poppies with those refusing fined for laziness. Annual revenues from narcotics were $50 million in Yunnan, $20 million in Gansu and Fujian, $30 million in Sichuan and troops from Yunnan grew very rich from the drug trade making more in a day than the ordinary monthly salary. Most warlord soldiers were untrained peasants or unemployed from the cities, with some garrisons 90% illiterate. US adviser to Chiang Kai-shek, J. Stilwell reported that of a scarecrow company 20% were under 4.5 feet tall, many under fourteen, some barefoot.

- he wrote in his diary. Many warlords called in advisers and mercenaries. The Russians who helped Kuomintang and the Christian general Feng Yuxiang were there for ideological and political reasons, the Japanese supporting Wang Jingwei of strategic and security reasons, but most foreigners in China were there for pure economical gain. Americans flew planes for twice the salary of a pilot in the US, White Russians fleeing the Soviet regime fought in Manchuria and Shandong with General Nechanev's troops being especially ruthless, driving around in three armoured trains machine-gunning civilians and stealing everything movable. A leading writer, Lu Xun, likened the state of China to syphilis:

congenitally rotten and with dark and confusing elements in its blood vessels requiring total cleansing.
In 1930 the Central Plains War, an internal conflict of the KMT, was launched by Feng Yuxiang, Yan Xishan and Wang Jingwei, with both parties committing over 1.300.000 troops, causing over 300.000 casualties. As a
57

The wildest stretch of the imagination could not imagine this rabble in action except running away

result the Nanjing government faced bankruptcy, and failure to destroy Mao's Soviet Chinese Republic, as well as it indirectly resulted in the Japanese intervention and the Xi'an Incident in 1936. Ironically a cardinal point in the Japanese policy towards China was the fear of Soviet influence and the spread of communism as well as the traditionally anti-monarchy sentiment of US establishment of industrialists dominating the nationalists in KMT. After the breakdown of the united front with KMT, Mao issued this order to all CCP party members:

hiding in some mountain cave today. No, we are grateful and do not want your war reparations.

Our aim is to develop the military power of the CCP in order to stage a coup d'etat. Therefore the main directive is to be strictly followed: 70% of our efforts for expansion, 20% for dealing with the Kuomintang, and 10% for resisting Japan.
In 1972 when Japan and China established diplomatic relationship, and P.M. Tanaka apologised to Mao for invading China, Mao said:

You don't have to say sorry, your country made a great contribution to China. Why? Because if Imperial Japan did not enter the war, how could we communists become mighty and defeat Chiang Kai-shek? If it were not for Japan I would be
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Chapter 10

THE STALIN DOCTRINE AND IL LUCE

The Xi'an incident A year after the Long March, on December 12, 1936, Chiang Kai-shek was taken prisoner by his own generals at Hua Qing Pool, a Tang Dynasty resort near Xian. Chiang was taken, wearing pyjamas, after a Manchurian general, Zhang Xueiling made a deal with Zhou Enlai under orders of Stalin for the Communists and Kuomintang to stop fighting and unite against the Japanese. Stalin was concerned about growing Japanese influence and ordered the CPC to fight along with Kuomintang against Japan. Chiang met with Communist and Manchurian leaders, ending the civil war temporary, in a deal worked out by Madam Chiang, arriving in Xi'an eleven days after her husband's capture, talking Zhang into letting Chiang free. Chiang vindictively later arrested Zhang and imprisoned him; he was kept in a Taiwan jail until 1992, seventeen years after Chiang's death. A few month after the Xi'an incident, Chiang manoeuvred the Manchurian troops out of Xi'an, getting ready to make a move on the Communists when the Japanese mounted a major invasion in 1937 forcing him to cancel his plans and face the Japanese.

Japans full scale entry into the battle for China was in fact considered to be beneficiary to the general strategic situation in the Pacific both by the US and Soviet Russia. Stalin wanted China to fight Japan, so Japan would be tied down, and the US found a good reason to put pressure on Japan and circumvent the neutrality act by openly supporting anti-communist Chiang Kai-shek with hundreds of millions of dollars and military supplies. The Marco Polo Bridge incident that resulted in full scale war between Kuomintang-China and Japan is still controversial among historians. Some consider it an accident, some an evident Japanese provocation, others a well executed plan by Soviet and US agents to force Kuomintang to fight the Japanese (e.g. according to historian Li Fu-jen, just like the Mukden incident). Whatever the truth, it is a fact that at this stage of the Pacific War in 1937, both the Soviet Union, Germany plus to a lesser degree UK and France as well as the USA found themselves all on the same side against Japan although for very different reasons. Stalin, preparing for war in Europe, wanted China waging full scale war on Japan to avoid a possible Japanese attack on Soviet Siberia and risk a two60

front war. Germany and China had a very close economic and military cooperation, with half of Germany's arms export going to China in exchange for badly needed raw materials for the German industry. Japan had nothing Germany needed and Germany had nothing Japan needed (oil and steel). Even when it came to military technology, e.g. military aviation Japan on it's own, was close to leading the world in 1930's with their Mitsubishi A6M Zero being the best carrierbased fighter in the world, or the legendary land based fighter Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa designed by Hideo Itokawa.

61

Il Luce USA 's reason for, in silent cooperation with Stalin, supporting China in the war against Japan was the most complex and surprisingly multi-facetted. It is elementary that the US, like other industrialised nations at the time, was attracted by the huge future potential of the Chinese market for American products, as well as the final objective of US Pacific expansion was China and Japan being the biggest obstacle. By a closer look however, that's not all. The picture gets clearer if we understand who the main architect and public opinion creator of US policy in Asia was; namely Henry R. Luce founder and owner of Time magazine (launched 1923) and later Fortune magazine (1930) and Life magazine (1936). Henry Luce, born in Penglai, Shandong province, China to Presbyterian Christian missionary parents, went to China Inland Mission Chefoo School and naturally viewed China the rest of his life, from the vantage point of the Christian missionary compound.

China was America's ward. Step by step China would enter a new age of Christianity and Westernisation where the American big brother would bring the American Dream to 450 million grateful and happy Chinese drinking Coca Cola, singing Jingle Bells every Christmas. He was a convinced American fascist, running his magazines nicknamed Il Luce, responsible for favourable articles and interviews in his influential Time magazine with Hitler (chosen Man of the Year 1938) and Mussolini (five appearances on Time cover from 1923) and became chief engineer of selling Mr and Mrs Chiang Kai-shek (Man and Wife of the year 1937) to the American public and influential industrialists as the future of an AmericanChina. He believed in The American crusade in Asia and like all Christian missionaries in Asia, basically anti- monarchist, he retained a strong dislike of Japan due to the hopelessness of Christianity and western domination there, his Time magazine referring to the Japanese as the Jap rather then Japs denying them the merest semblance of pluralism. Luce, who remained editor-in-chief of all his publications until 1964, was influential in the Republican Party with anti-communist sentiments, and major
62

figure behind the China Lobby, steering American foreign policy and public sentiment in favour of Chiang Kai-shek with his wife Soong Mei-ling and against Japan. The Chiang's appeared on the cover of Time magazine eleven times between 1927 and 1955. Luce had ambitions to become secretary of state and wrote his famous article in Life magazine, The American Century (1941) defining Americas role in the rest of the 20th century and beyond. Luce became an extremist opponent of Fidel Castro and funded the Alpha 66 attack on Cuba (1962 and 1963), as well as he used his media empire against John F. Kennedy. Upon Kennedy's assassination Life Magazine purchased the Zapruder film and Marina Oswald's story, never to appear in print, and the film never to be screened in its entirety. The article Henry Luce's Empire of Fascism in EIR (June 25, 2004) is educational reading. The American neutrality acts of the1930's was the reason that neither China or Japan officially declared war until 1941 and called the battles between them until then incidents. The Neutrality Acts were laws passed by the US Congress due to the tensions
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and conflicts in Europe and Asia, and the rapidly growing isolationism following the costly US involvement in WW I, and was meant to ensure US noninvolvement in foreign conflicts. The Neye committee hearings between 1934 and 1936 reported that the US between 1915 and 1917 loaned Germany 27 million dollars and UK and its allies 2.3 billion dollars (85 times more) concluding that America entered W.W.I to make sure that UK did not lose. Many books and articles argued that arms manufacturers tricked America into entering the war. The 1935 act, imposed a general embargo on arms and war materials to all parties in a war. Roosevelt wanted the possibility of selective sanctions, but was rejected by Congress.This act was invoked after Italy's invasion of Ethiopia. The Neutrality Act of 1936 also forbade all loans or credit to belligerents. General Franco of Spain, found a loophole since the war in Spain(1936-1939) was a civil war not covered by the act, so US companies such as Texaco, Standart Oil, Ford, GM and Studebaker could supply him with a total of 100 million dollar credit.

The Neutrality Act of 1937 outlawed arms trade with Spain and was extended to cover civil wars, but Roosevelt managed the provision cash and carry, which allowed the sale of materials and supplies to belligerents in Europe if they paid cash and arranged transport themselves. Obviously cash and carry was meant to aid France and Great Britain in case of war with Germany since they controlled the Atlantic shipping lanes. In the battle for China, Roosevelt supported Chiang Kai-shek, and did not invoke the Neutrality Act since nobody had formally declared war and only Japan would have been able to take advantage of cash and carry. Not invoking the act made it possible to support KMT-China with arms, supplies and finance. This outraged the isolationist Congress, so Roosevelt had to forbid American ships to carry arms, but allowing British ships to transport American arms to China. His Quarantine Speech in October 1937, officially marked the end of American neutrality. The Neutrality Act of 1939 was passed November 4th allowing arms trade with France and UK on a cash and carry bases and was followed by the LendLease Act in March 1941 allowing the US to sell, lend or give war materials to allied nations.
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Chapter 11

BATTLES OF SHANGHAI AND NANKING

China Strength: 600,000 troops 200 airplanes Casualties: 250,000

Japan 300,000 troops 500 airplanes, 300 tanks and 130 naval ships 70,000

His wife Mei-ling, born and educated in America turned out to be the best press-secretary and PR manager in the world, handling media-control as if it was a part of the defence ministry. A very prominent example of how severely a single photo, given world wide distribution could influence and define world public opinion is the Shanghai railway station baby photo by ChineseAmerican photographer H.S. Wong. One of the most celebrated photos of the cen(20) Shanghai baby tury, 136 million people were said to have seen it. Real or arranged, it is a fact that Wong at the time was an employee of William R. Hearst, the father of yellow journalism, whose motto was:

How effectively Chiang led the war against Japan in now a matter of historical record. One military disaster followed the other until almost all of eastern China was under Japanese domination. The first, bloodiest and biggest battle out of 22 major engagements of the war was the battle of Shanghai. In August 1937 600.000 of the best trained and equipped (by Germany) troops prepared to defend Shanghai at all costs, Chiang wanting to demonstrate to the world, that China would not surrender, Shanghai being an international cosmopolitan city, with large Western and Japanese investments and hundreds of correspondents and a huge expatriate community. Both China and Japan was aware that the whole world was watching and instructed the troops accordingly, especially Chiang Kai-shek prepared to make astonishing sacrifices to steer US media and public opinion in his favour.

You provide the photographs, I'll provide the war.

He mastered all aspects of his craft, including scare headlines, faked or arranged photos, inventing stories, dramatic sympathy with the underdog, scandalmongering, sensationalism quoting non-existent
66

Hearst correspondents in London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Venice, all to sell more newspapers. A typical Hearst front page yellow journalism was showing male Cuban customs officials searching a naked American female tourist during the Spanish American war. The fighting in and around Shanghai lasted over three months, a Stalingrad-like house to house, hand to hand combat and with over 200.000 (21) Cuban customs officials Chinese casualties insearching a naked American fecluding most of the elite male tourist Wampoa-trained officers. Chiang was defeated, and would never recover his military strength later resulting in the ultimate victory of Mao. Chiang was however victorious diplomatically as he and Mai-ling skilfully secured Western military aid for China, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars cash, various supplies and armament shipments. The Japanese plan to conquer China in three month proved a grave miscalculation and from the battle of
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Shanghai on, the international diplomatic and economic isolation of Japan grew exponentially especially after the next Japanese victory and the fall of Nanking in December, a few days after Chiang evacuated the capital to Wuhan.

Battle of Nanking and the Katyn of Asia

China Strength: Casualties: 70,000 - 100,000 50,000 killed

Japan 240,000 6,000 killed

Built with German help, the defence of Nanking was based on the Chinese Hindenburg Line and with the objective of a defence in depth, two lines, the Wufu Line and the Xicheng line were built to protect Nanking in case Shanghai should fall. The battle for Nanking and its aftermath have been one of the most written about, talked about and controversial events of The Pacific 80 Years War with two extreme basic views facing each other, namely the Nanking rapists believers (official Kuomintang-China view) and the Nanking rape deniers (official Japanese view); unfortunately the populistic horror version, orchestrated mainly by Taipei and American-Chinese is often accepted by western public opinion and the Hollywood entertainment industry as well as some publishers and to some degree scholars. One very successful prototype of the Nanking story written by I. Chang (The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War ll.) published in 1997, was
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on the US bestseller list for 10 weeks, and resurrected the world wide interest also among scholars in what actually happened. The book is full of mistakes and facts based on rumours and hearsay, as well as the almost infantile demonization of the Japanese. It actually had the opposite effect of her intention and triggered an array of new serious historical analyses of the events. Critical revision of especially the photographic evidence as well as analyses of facts and numbers previously accepted by the general public has resulted in an emerging suspicion about the whole Nanking story. Even a new statue of Chang in Nanking as well as a Hollywood film based on her book does not settle the controversy since historians are forced to take sincere standpoints about the matter. Call it Rape of Nanking, Nanking Jiken or Chiang's Nanking Betrayal we shall not know the whole truth until the secret files of the National Security Bureau, Taiwan's KGB will become available to historians. Immediately after the fall of Nanking, two American correspondents broke the news blackout, A. Steele of the Chicago Daily on radio on board the U.S.S. Oahu and Tillman Durdin of the New York Times, reaching Shanghai three days after the incident in Nanking.

Judging from the records, documents and witnessreports from other sources, it seems that despite some errors and sensationalism, these two American journalists told the essential details of the Nanking disaster. Strangely, historians and writers, journalists having written countless books and articles about Nanking have largely ignored these two eyewitnesses coverage of the incident. Recently there have even been efforts, by using the term Holocaust, to establish some parallel between the Holocaust of European Jewry and Nanking, branding it as an Asian counterpart of the Nazi Holocaust, which of course is entirely misleading. If Nanking is comparable to anything, it is the Katyn massacre. The Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre (Polish: zbrodnia katyska, literally 'Katy crime'), was a mass execution of Polish citizens ordered by Soviet authorities in 1940. Estimates of the number of executed persons ranges from 15.000 to 21.768). Polish POWs and prisoners were murdered in Katyn forest, Kalinin (Tver) and Kharkiv prisons and elsewhere. About 8.000 of the victims were officers taken prisoner during the 1939 invasion of Poland, the rest being Polish citizens who had been arrested for allegedly being intelligence agents, gendarmes, spies, saboteurs, landowners, factory owners, lawyers, priests and officials. Since Poland's conscription system required every unexempted univer69

sity graduate to become a reserve officer, the Soviets were thus able to round up much of the Polish intelligentsia, as well as the Jewish, Ukrainian, Georgian and Belarusian intelligentsia of Polish citizenship. The Katyn Massacre was beneficial to Nazi Germany, which used it to discredit the Soviet Union. The Germans assembled and brought in a European commission consisting of twelve forensic experts and their staffs. With the exception of a Swiss from the University of Geneva, all were from lands then occupied by Germany. After the war, all of the experts, save for a Bulgarian and a Czech, reaffirmed their 1943 finding of Soviet guilt. The Soviet government immediately denied the German charges and claimed that the Polish prisoners of war had been engaged in construction work west of Smolensk and consequently were captured and executed by invading German units in August 1941. The Soviet response on April 15 to the German initial broadcast of April 13, prepared by the Soviet Information Bureau stated that Polish prisoners-of-war who in 1941 were engaged in country construction work west of Smolensk and who fell into the hands of the GermanFascist hangmen. The Western Allies had an implicit, if unwilling, hand in the cover-up in their endeavour not to antagonise a then- ally, the Soviet Union.

On April 24, 1943 Churchill assured the Soviets: We shall certainly oppose vigorously any 'investigation' by the International Red Cross or any other body in any territory under German authority. In 1943 the Katyn Manifesto blaming the Soviet Union was published in London (in English) by the eccentric poet Count Geoffrey Potocki de Montalk, who was arrested by the Special Branch and imprisoned. In the United States, a similar line was taken, notwithstanding that two official intelligence reports into the Katyn massacre were produced that contradicted the official position. In 1944 Roosevelt assigned Navy Lieutenant Commander George Earle, his special emissary to the Balkans, to compile information on Katyn, which he did using contacts in Bulgaria and Romania. He concluded that the Soviet Union had committed the massacre. After consulting with Elmer Davis, the director of the Office of War Information, Roosevelt rejected that conclusion, saying that he was convinced of Nazi Germany's responsibility, and ordered Earle's report suppressed. When Earle formally requested permission to publish his findings, the President gave him a written order to desist. Earle was reassigned and spent the rest of the war in American Samoa. From December 29, 1945 to January 5, 1946, ten officers of the German Wehrmacht Karl Hermann Strffling, Heinrich Remmlinger, Ernst Bhm, Eduard Sonnenfeld,
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Herbard Janike, Erwin Skotki, Ernst Geherer, Erich Paul Vogel, Franz Wiese, and Arno Drer were tried by a Soviet military court in Leningrad. In what is now widely considered a show trial, they were falsely charged for an alleged role in the Katyn massacre. The first seven officers were sentenced to death and executed by public hanging on the same day. The other three were sentenced to hard labor, Vogel and Wiese to 20 year terms each and Drer to 15 years. Drer is said to have pleaded guilty at the trial and to have returned to Germany later, the fate of the others sentenced to hard labor remains unknown. In 1946, the chief Soviet prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, Roman A. Rudenko, tried to indict Germanfor the Katyn killings but dropped the matter after the United States and United Kingdom refused to support it. On April 13, 1990, the forty-seventh anniversary of the discovery of the mass graves, the USSR formally expressed profound regret and admitted Soviet secret police responsibility. That day is also an International Day of Katyn Victims Memorial. Naturally the debate about the Nanking massacre is also a debate about the legitimacy of the postwar military tribunals: The Nanjing Trials and The Tokyo trials.

The New York Times: December 18, 1937:

Capital's Fall Laid to Poor Tactics of Chiang Kai-shek and Leaders' Flight By F. Tillman Durdin The capture of Nanking was the most overwhelming defeat suffered by the Chinese and one of the most tragic military debacles in the history of modern warfare.Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek was responsible to a great degree because against the unanimous counsel of his German military advisers and the opinions of his chief of staff, General Pai Chung-hsi, he permitted the futile defense of the city.

Hsiakwan. Others ran into alleys to transform themselves into civilians. Some soldiers disrobed completely and then robbed civilians of their garments. Hordes surrounded the safety zone headquarters, turning in their guns, and even throwing them over the gate of the compound in their haste to shed military arms. The foreign committeemen at the safety zone accepted their surrender and interned them in buildings in the zone.
He further reports that civilian casualties are several thousands and that japanese executions of Chinese soldiers caught in civilian clothes are taking place and that Chungshan Road was a long avenue of discarded uniforms, rifles, pistols, machine guns, fieldpieces, knifes and knapsacks with all the suburbs burned by the Chinese, while the Japanese avoided wrecking good buildings. The scarcity of air bombardments in the capture indicated their intention to avoid the destruction of buildings.The Japanese even avoided bombing Chinese troop concentrations in built-up areas, apparently to preserve the buildings. Durdin, back in Shanghai writes December 22 that the battle of Nanking was the most tragic event in modern military history, that the wholesale Chinese burning of villages and populous areas miles around
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The report in New York Times further blames Chinese General Tang and his division commanders for deserting their troops causing panic and despair. After the Japanese had surrounded the city the fall of Nanking was predictable and by December 9, the Japanese reaching the city wall, the 50.000 Chinese troops caught inside soon began throwing away their rifles and donning civilian clothes. Durdin:

Driving through the city Sunday evening, I witnessed wholesale undressing of an army that was almost comic. Many men shed their uniforms as they marched in formation toward

the metropolis and the Japanese wiping out at least about two-third of the Chinese army (33.000 Men) being trapped inside the city walls was in the final analysis the responsibility of Chang Kai-shek' generals and the KMT leadership since no retreat was contemplated concluding that:

The Nanking safety zone did save some 100.000 civilian lives since the Japanese never subjected the zone to shelling in spite of that the full demilitarisation of the area was never achieved and thousands of Chinese soldiers streamed through the area. The safety zones worked very well in Shanghai and not in Nanking. Why? The Jacquinot Safe Zone in Shanghai, established and run by a French Jesuit Robert Jacquinot de Besange almost singlehandedly, was a neutral zone in the historic quarter, respected by both the Japanese and the Chinese, that for almost two years provided safety for over 200.000 civilians. In Nanking a similar safety zone was established by Siemens China Rep and Nazi John Rabe, with strong pro-KMT ties and a committed Germany-Sino alliance advocate. According to some historians his admitting thousands of Chinese soldiers, on the run, in civilian clothes, as well as the presence of hundreds of armed plainclothes KMT-agents and operatives in the safety zone, was one of the reasons for the deterioration of the post battle situation in Nanking at
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In losing Nanking the Chinese lost more than the capital of their country. Their army lost invaluable morale and thousands of men. Chinese forces who had fought a frontal battle against Japanese from Shanghai up through the lower Yangtze Valley were shattered, and it is doubtful if they can be rallied again for effective mass resistance against the Japanese military machine.
Chang's General Tang Sheng-chi made his getaway 20:00 Sunday evening December 12 without informing the officers of his general staff, who by midnight learned about his disappearing and then tried themselves to escape in civilian clothes leaving rank and file troops leaderless. Thousands of these troops appeared all over the foreign safety zone, shedding uniforms begging for civilian clothes, others drowning in the panic on the riverbanks.

large, with the fall of Nanking in December 1937. Internationally the Anti-Comintern Pact was signed November 25, 1936 between Japan and Germany and the Sino-Soviet Pact signed August 21, 1937, with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact taking effect August 1939 making the who is with who in case of conflicts mildly put very unpredictable.

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Battle of Xuzhou

China Strength: Casualties:

Japan

ian life, for military tactical gains however, largely contributed to the unpopularity of Chiang's army among Chinas peasants, some of whom later, even preferred Japanese occupation instead of KMT rule.

600,000 240,000 100,000 30,000

Ignoring the non-expansionist policy of the government in Tokyo, the northern Japanese army advanced south establishing connection between Beijing and Nanking, with the Chinese army, rejecting Chiang Kai-shek's orders, retreating and the Japanese occupying Qingdao and Jinan, the defence line along the Yellow river thus torn apart, and by June 1938 the Japanese Imperial Army taking control of the entire Northern China. The situation was grim, and Chiang ordered withdrawal and preparation of the defence of Wuhan. To gain time and slow the Japanese advance he ordered the demolition of the Yellow river dikes, resulting in the 1938 Yellow River Flood (June 9). To achieve full surprise of the Japanese, Chiang decided not to inform the public before destroying the dykes; the flood, submerging millions of homes,covered 54.000 sq. km, taking 500.000 civilian lives. Partly successful, the flood did delay the japanese attack and the fall of Wuhan. The total disregard of the loss of civil74

Chapter 12

BATTLES OF WUHAN AND NOMONHAN

Battle of Wuhan, June 11 - October 27, 1938

ers headed by Vasily Chuikov, the future hero of Stalingrad.These Soviet troops fought at Nanking, Wuhan, Nanchang and Chongging. In reality, from December 1937, the United States, The United Kingdom, and France were all providing loan assistance and war supplies to Republic of China and on top of that, Australia (UK) was preventing Japanese iron ore imports ignoring already signed contracts. From Japan the horizon looked threateningly dark. In the meantime, thousands of kilometres to the west, events in Europe 1939, were accelerating towards war, with the League of Nations collapsing, Germany and Italy signing the Pact of Steel (May 22) and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact signed August 23, dividing Europe between Hitler and Stalin; German battleships opened fire on the Polish military base at Danzig September 1. 4:40 AM as the Wehrmacht crossed the Polish border. Norway, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain and Ireland declared neutrality September 2, while UK, France, New Zealand and Australia declared war on Germany September 3, followed by Nepal's, South Africa's and Canada's war-declaration September 6 and neutrality declaration in the war by USA September 5.
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China Strength: Casualties: 1,100,000 soldiers 200 airplanes 30 ships

Japan 350,000 soldiers 500 airplanes 120 ships

Wuhan, with a population of two million, and a major traffic centre, was, after the fall of Nanking, the most important political, industrial and military city and the capital of China. On April 29 a major air battle over Wuhan (4.29 Air battle) had resulted in 21 japanese air planes shot down against a loss of 12 planes. By this time it was not only Russian but also American pilots flying the Chinese fighters. Already in June 1937, Soong May-ling or Madam Chiang hired Claire Chennault a retired US Army Air Corps officer as Air defence advisor, with a salary of $1.000 per month, to run the Chinese Air Force, creating the, later called, Flying Tigers with the shark painted P 40 fighters. Also the Sino-Soviet NonAggression Pact was signed in September 1937 starting Operation Zet, a Soviet volunteer air force with Soviet supplied bombers, fighters and other supplies (total value $250 million) and 3.665 pilots and advis-

The Battle of Khalkhyn Gol (Nomonhan Incident) May 11-Sept 16, 1939

organised supply fleet of 2.600 trucks, while the Japanese suffered severe supply problems. By the end of August, Zhukov had amassed three rifle divisions, two tank divisions, two more tank brigades, a total of 498 tanks and two motorised infantry divisions with an air wing of 250 fighters and bombers and two Mongolian cavalry divisions.The Kwantung Army was totally outgunned and outnumbered mustering only two lightly armed divisions, and their intelligence failing to detect the scale of the Soviet buildup or the scope of the attack Zhukov was planning. 50.000 Soviet and Mongolian troops attacked the elite Japanese forces across the river, trapping the Japanese 23rd division in a pincer; their attempt on August 27 to brake out of the encirclement failed. When the surrounded Japanese forces refused to surrender, Zhukov wiped them out with artillery fire and air attacks, the battle ending August 31 and a ceasefire signed September 16. This Soviet strategy and Zuhkovs battle-hardened Siberian troops were later put to good use when the German Wehrmacht was dealt a crushing defeat at the gates of Moscow in December 1941.

Soviet Union Strength: Casualties: 57,000 7,974 dead 15,000 wounded

Japan 38,000 8,440 dead 8,466 wounded

Following the battle of Lake Khasan (July 29-August 11) on the Soviet-Korean border, this four month battle was a major clash between Japan's Kwantung Army and the well prepared Soviet General Zuhkov's armoured divisions. The battle started as a minor skirmish between Mongolian and Manchu cavalry, whereupon Soviet-Mongolian forces surrounded and destroyed Lt Col Azuma's reconnaissance regiment of the 23rd Division. Both sides began building up forces and soon 30.000 Japanese were facing Gen. Zuhkov's motorised and armoured Divisions. On June 27 the Kwantung Army, without informing Army H.Q. in Tokyo, ordered an air attack on the Soviet air base in Mongolia, soon to be followed by a major Soviet counterattack on the ground with some 450 tanks and armoured vehicles. The two armies continued fighting for two weeks, Zuhkov with a well
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The final epilog to the Khalkhin-Gol incident was at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in 1946 when Kenji Doihara, Kiichiro Hiranuma and Seishiro Itagaki were convicted for

initiating war of aggression against the Mongolian Peoples Republic and the USSR
resulting in General Doihara's and General Itagaki's execution December 23, 1948 in Tokyo, adding another conviction that revealed the questionability of the integrity of the Tokyo Tribunals.

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The Tientsin Incident June 14- August 20, 1939 Simultaneously with the Soviet-Japanese border war, the Tientsin incident almost started an AngloJapanese war in June 1939, demonstrating the extreme, unpredictable, complex, fragile and lawless situation in a China torn apart by an array of foreign interests, domestic chaos, warlordism and Kuomintang's clandestine activities. On April 9, 1939 the manager of the Japanese F. R. Bank of China was gunned down by Chinese terrorists.The Japanese accused six men, living in the British concession of the assassination. British police arrested four of the six and handed them over to the Japanese with the promise that they would not be tortured and be returned to the British within five days. Under torture two confessed and although the confessions were obtained by torture, British police accepted that the accused were involved in the assassination. Once the men were returned to British custody, the wife of Chiang Kai-shek, May-ling admitted to the British the the assassins were Kuomintang operatives and tried to prevent the accused being returned to the Japanese and executed.The British consul had not informed London of the details of the case, and
79

that he had promised to return the assassins to the Japanese, so Lord Halifax, foreign secretary in London refused to return the men to Japanese custody. General Tomoyuki Yamashita, advocating a termination of Western concessions in China, convinced Tokyo to order a blockade of the British concession, thus the Japanese army surrounding the area on April 9, 1939, body-checking anyone leaving or entering. The standoff was rapidly deteriorating towards open war, especially when the British press reported that British women were forced to strip at bayonetpoint by Japanese soldiers, leading to a yellow peril outcry in the British media, and the Admiral of the Fleet calling it a declaration of war. In the meantime both the French and the Americans refused to risk war with Japan because of 1500 British subjects in Tientsin, so Chamberlain ordered the British Ambassador in Tokyo to find a way out of the crises with not too obvious loss of British prestige. On August 20, 1939, the Chinese assassins were turned over to the Japanese, and later executed. The Tientsin Incident demonstrated the contradiction of Japanese government foreign policy and the policy of the Japanese Army, as well as the military weakness in Asia of the U.K. without the support of the USA. Towards the end of 1939 many countries

were at war with small and big battles raging all over the world, and those countries not yet at war were rapidly preparing for military confrontations. On September 22 the Wehrmacht and the Red Army held a joint victory parade in Brest-Litovsk, Poland and on the other side of the Atlantic, October 11, US President F.D. Roosevelt was presented a letter by Albert Einstein urging the United States as soon as possible to develop the atomic bomb. Meanwhile a super-top-secret meeting between Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin took place on October 17, in Lvov, Poland, both signing a new secret pact, replacing the outdated Molotov- Ribbentrop agreement. Non of the two divine dictators, destined to save the world, wanted to leave any trace of their meeting so the only evidence is the following letter signed by FBI's Edgar Hoover:

held a meeting in Lvov on October 17, 1939, signing a new secret treaty replacing the old pact. Sincerely J.Edgar Hoover
It must have been fascinating to observe the meeting of the two dictators, so similar and so different; Hitler, destined to save Europe from Asiatic Bolshevism establishing a 1000 years German empire with the motto Gott mit uns, and Stalin the marxist Zar-Pope of a Holy Communist Global Empire, both swearing eternal friendship to each other, while both desperately speculating how and when to liquidate the other. On November 30, Soviet Union attacked Finland starting the Winter War, with 500.000- 900.000 Russian troops, 2.500-6.500 tanks and 3.880 aircraft, planning for a two weeks war until Finland's defeat. Surprisingly, in spite of overwhelming firepower of the Soviet forces, the war lasted until March 13, resulting in 200.000 dead and 300.000 wounded or missing Soviet soldiers as well as the destruction of 3.543 tanks and 515 aircraft. Despite the impressive Finnish victory, due to lack of French, English and US support, the Finns had to ac-

July 19, 1940 Att. Excellency Adolf A. Berle Assistant Secretary of State. Strictly condential. We received information from reliable sources that after the German-Soviet division of Poland, Hitler and Stalin secretly

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cept the Moscow peace treaty on March 12, 1940, ceasing 10% of Finish territory including the second largest city, Viipuri to Soviet Union, with 422.000 Karelian Finns losing their home. Some historians claim that the crushing Soviet defeat was a brilliant deception by Stalin to pretend Soviet weakness and fool Hitler into underestimate its military forces. The truth is that the architect of the Finnish victory Field Marshall Friherre Carl Gustav Mannerheim was a military genius applying the motti (kettle) tactics, thus the vastly outnumbered Finnish forces being able to annihilate much larger Soviet units. This encirclement tactics, trapping large enemy forces, cutting their supply lines deep behind them, was later applied by both the Germans and the Russians on a grand scale. Additionally Mannerheim, had spent many years in the Imperial Russian army, so he knew the Russians very well and was promoted to Colonel for his bravery in the Battle of Mukden in 1905. He spoke not only fluent Russian but also Swedish (his mother tongue), Finnish, French, German, English, Polish and some Mandarin Chinese having trav81

elled extensively including crossing Asia from St. Petersburg to Beijing; his journey over Samarkand, Turkestan, Khotan, Kashgar, Urumchi, Turpan, Dunhuang, Xi'an also took him to Wutai Shan, where he met the Dalai Lama whom he gave his pistol for protection against the Chinese. Arriving in Beijing over Hohhot in July 1908 he wrote his military intelligence report and returned to St. Petersburg via Japan with the Trans-Siberian Express.

Events in Indochina By the beginning of 1940 it was obvious that the developments in the Atlantic war and the Pacific War mutually influenced each other, so that strategic and diplomatic decisions by all parties in the Pacific War had to include observing military developments in Europe. Similarly, especially the Soviet Union and U.K. had to include events in China into the calculations and decisions. On March 5, 1940 the Katyn massacre ordered by Stalin was executed by Beria, on April 12 British troops occupied the Faroe Islands important for the battle of the Atlantic, May 10 marks the beginning of the battle for France and Churchill becoming prime minister. Britain invaded Iceland and on May 20, German forces under General E. Rommel reached the English Channel and the British barely evacuated 300.000 troops from Dunkirk. On June 10 Italy declared war on France, Canada declared war on Italy, and Norway surrendered to German forces. US President Roosevelt signed the Naval Expansion Act June 14 increasing the US Navy by 10%, the Soviet Army entered the Baltic states, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia incorporating them into the Soviet Union and the British Navy sank or seized the ships of the
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French Navy on July 3, resulting in Vichy France breaking off diplomatic relations with Britain. Public debate in America heated up, with Gen. John Pershing demanding all-out aid to Britain, while American hero Charles Lindbergh, leading the isolationists, recommended a neutrality pact with Hitler and on September 16. the first peace time draft in US history is signed into law by Franklin D. Roosevelt, starting the draft registration of 16 million men October 16. With the Chinese, importing fuel, arms and 10.000 tons of US supplies through the Haipong- Yunnan railway line, Japan decided to put pressure on France and take control of events in French Indochina. On September 22 Japan and France signed an agreement granting transit rights and bases for 6000-25.000 Japanese troops in Indochina. Some fighting broke out, when Lt. Gen. Nakamura's 5th division moved on the railhead at Lang Son, but by the evening September 26 the fighting ended with the Japanese in possession of Gia Lam airfield and Lao Cai on the Yunnan border. With 900 troops in Haiphong and 600 more in Hanoi, the complete blockade of China, except for the Burma road, came into effect. US President Roosevelt was furious and imposed the first total embargo on all scrap metal shipments to

Japan September 26, and unfortunately for Japan he becomes the first and only third-term United States President on November 5, winning the election with the motto:

world peace. Accordingly, the Governments of Japan, Germany and Italy have agreed as follows: ARTICLE 1. Japan recognizes and respects the leadership of Germany and Italy in the establishment of a new order in Europe. ARTICLE 2. Germany and Italy recognize and respect the leadership of Japan in the establishment of a new order in Greater East Asia. ARTICLE 3. Japan, Germany, and Italy agree to cooperate in their efforts on aforesaid lines. They further undertake to assist one another with all political, economic and military means if one of the Contracting Powers is attacked by a Power at present not involved in the European War or in the Japanese-Chinese conict.

You don't change horses in midstream.

On September 27, 1940 The Tripartite Pact is signed by Japan, Germany and Italy and was immediately named by the Italian press Roberto from the first syllables of Rome, Berlin and Tokyo.

The Governments of Japan, Germany and Italy consider it the prerequisite of a lasting peace that every nation in the world shall receive the space to which it is entitled. They have, therefore, decided to stand by and cooperate with one another in their efforts in the regions of Europe and Greater East Asia respectively. In doing this it is their prime purpose to establish and maintain a new order of things, calculated to promote the mutual prosperity and welfare of the peoples concerned. It is, furthermore, the desire of the three Governments to extend cooperation to nations in other spheres of the world that are inclined to direct their efforts along lines similar to their own for the purpose of realizing their ultimate object,
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ARTICLE 4. With a view to implementing the present pact, joint technical commissions, to be appointed by the respective Governments of Japan, Germany and Italy, will meet without delay. ARTICLE 5. Japan, Germany and Italy afrm that the above agreement affects in no way the political status existing at present between each of the three Contracting Powers and Soviet Russia. ARTICLE 6. The present pact shall become valid immediately upon signature and shall remain in force ten years from the date on which it becomes effective. In due time, before the expiration of said term, the High Contracting Parties shall, at the request of any one of them, enter into negotiations for its renewal.
December 17 Roosevelt outlined his plan to send aid to Britain later known as Lend -Lease and on January 20, 1941 Chief Justice C.E. Hughes swore in US President Franklin D. Roosevelt (also called FDR) for his
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third term becoming from this moment, a major player in the Pacific War.

Chapter 13

THE FDR GAMBIT

According to some historians, Roosevelt flirted with the idea of freezing Japanese assets already in July 1937, but of various reasons kept a lid on his Japan punishing with a variety of sanctions. We do not know what went on in his mind, but it is safe to assume that almost all of FDR's decisions in US foreign policy had roots in the US domestic situation after and during the Great Depression October 1929, with 25% unemployment and industrial production less than half of capacity. Looking at the statistics FDR was right, preparation for war, the Lend-Lease supplying weapons, trucks, planes, ships on credit did get Americas industrial wheels rolling and people back in jobs. The beginning of 1941 marked a turning point, with the US starting a full-blooded financial warfare against Japan. Nevertheless, the US oil embargo in the summer of 1941 was not sufficient to provoke Japan into war since Japanese companies already had licences for 7.1 million barrels of gasoline, 21.9 million barrels of crude oil and 33.000 barrels of lubricants, all together worth $50 million and enough supplies until end of 1943. Therefore the tool to immediately stop all supplies to Japan was FDR's executive order on July 25, 1941 to freeze all Japanese assets in the United States. If this would not bring Japan to
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(22) US industrial production war,

(23) GDP per American in constant year 2000 dollars

nothing would; it was no coincidence that FDR had brought back hardliner Dean Acheson as assistant secretary of state and chief architect of the USBritish-Dutch oil embargo. Acheson subjected all transactions with Japan to licensing, giving his tree man committee (FFCC) a dual-track control granting licences but, if needed denying releasing funds. A powerful country with abundant resources, strangulating and pauperising a have not nation fighting for its very existence. (24) US Unemployment It seems that Roosevelt wanted all along to prod Japan into action, more than than his diplomatic and naval advisers wished, and that Acheson just was carrying out the unspoken and unwritten wishes of the commander in chief. Studies by the US ECA (May 1, 1941) reveals the extent of understanding Japanese vulnerabilities, and the fact that US petroleum supplies were irreplaceable. The aim of the export control bureaucracy became a total embargo of all Japanese commerce with the US, the British Empire, and the Dutch East Indies leaving no doubt that Acheson knew it could produce war. (25) The depression in international relativity
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The financial freeze was by any standard, a lethal threat and an assault on Japan's very existence, justi-

fying war as self-defence against the USA. The German invasion of the Soviet Union, in violation of the tripartite agreement, terminated all trade with Europe via the Trans- Siberian railway, making the US dollar Japan's only medium of international exchange. Evidence of FDR's guilt in provoking Japan and thus making it possible for the US to enter the Pacific War with blazing guns and the support of all Americans is only circumstantial at best and historians may never find hard evidence. It remains a fact however, that a majority of the American public, still in January 1941, was against war with Hitler's Germany and with opinion-leaders like aviator Charles Lindbergh recommending a US neutrality pact with Adolf Hitler before the US Congress (January 23, 1941), made it clear that much of the American Public, found Hitlers white arian supremacy ideology attractive, leaving the only option for war entry, an armed conflict with Japan. Due to this, as we shall see later, many circumstances around Pearl Harbour remain unexplained.

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The Year of Pearl Harbour US Ambassador to Japan Joseph C. Grew informs Washington on January 27, about a rumor of a planned surprise attack on Pearl Harbour, overheard at a diplomatic reception. The US House of Representatives passes the Lend-Lease Act on February 8, starting the program of America supplying the UK, Soviet Union, China and other friendly nations with huge amounts of weapons and war material ending the pretence of US neutrality. A total of $50.1 billion (approximately 730 billion in year 2008 dollars) worth of supplies were shipped between 1941 and 1945. 31.4 billion dollars to Britain, 11.3 billion dollars to Soviet Union, 3.2 billion dollars to France and 1.6 billion dollars to China. Some of it was calculated against UK providing military bases in Newfoundland and British West Indies, while the rest was to be used until return or destruction. It was actually sold to Britain at a discount for 1 billion pounds worth of long term loans with the UK settling its debt to the USA in 2006. Canada operated a similar program to Britain and Soviet Union worth $4.7 billion.

On February 14, 1941 Admiral K. Nomura begins his duties as Japanese ambassador to United States, indicating that Tokyo was fully aware of the grave deterioration of Japan-US relations, and was trying to defuse the mounting crises by appointing a diplomat of Nomura's stature and experience to Washington. Out of semi-retirement at 64, Nomura had been Naval attache in the USA, delegate at the Paris Peace Conference and the Washington Naval Conference, promoted to full Admiral in 1933 he was foreign minister of Japan in the Nobuyuki Abe cabinet (1939-1940). He attempted relentlessly through most of 1941 to negotiate a settlement with US Secretary of State Corden Hull, preventing war between Japan and the USA. On March. 27th Japanese Naval Intelligence officer Takeo Yoshikawa, arrived in Honolulu, Hawaii and being an expert in the US Navy, his assignment was to study the American fleet at Pearl Harbour. An elite,1933 graduate of The Imperial Naval Academy at Etajima, he rented an apartment overlooking the harbour taking notes of fleet movements, charters small planes for flying over naval installations and even dived under the harbour gathering information. His reports were transmitted to the foreign ministry and the Japanese Imperial Navy in purple
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code, which had been broken by American code barkers so all messages to and from Tokyo were intercepted and decrypted, but was considered low priority information and sometimes not translated for several weeks. In March 1941, Japanese foreign minister Yosuke Matsuoka travelled to Europe, meeting A. Hitler March 27, trying to ease US pressure on Japan by strengthening ties with Germany and possibly establish a quadripartite pact with the Soviet Union. It was too little too late since Germany already was preparing to attack the Soviet Union, and both Churchill and Roosevelt welcomed secret reports that war between Hitler and Stalin may soon erupt, rendering it unnecessary to reach any compromise or agreement with Japan. Nevertheless Churchill did secretly contact Matsuoka in Rome, trying to convince him of the drawbacks of diplomatic cooperation between Japan and Germany and proposed Matsuoka to visit the USA and meet Roosevelt since FDR had submitted a draft Japan-United States understanding on April 14th. April 13th the Japanese-Soviet Nonaggression Pact was signed staying in effect until 1945, and on April 15th, the US began shipping Lend-Lease aid to
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China, while the battle of the Atlantic reached climax, when German battleship Bismarck sank the pride of the Royal Navy, HMS Hood, hitting her magazines with a single 15 inch shell. Causing a huge explosion, killing all but 3 crewman on board it split the huge ship in two sending her to the button, all within three minutes. Admiral Holland and 1.415 crewmen went down with the ship and the three survivors were picked up by the destroyer Electra. Churchill's furious reaction was: Sink the Bismarck. Executed on May 27, the crippled Bismarck was sunk with her captain Ernst Lindemann and 2.300 crew on board leaving 116 survivors. On June 14 all German and Italian assets in the US are frozen, and the Atlantic War takes a major turn when Germany launches Operation Barbarossa June 22, without informing Japan thus braking the Tripartite Pact. From this moment on, Japanese leadership should have realised that Roosevelt and Churchill in alliance with the Soviet Union and China, no longer needed any reconciliation with Japan; in fact the US diplomatic attitude towards Japan from this day, becomes arrogant, totally rigid and inflexible.

The German surprise attack on the Soviet Union is still historically controversial today, just like Pearl Harbour in the Pacific war. Planning of operation Barbarossa started on December 18 1940, and Hitler secretly moved 3.5 million German troops and their equipment to the Soviet border in the following four months, preparing the biggest military operation in human history in terms of manpower and casualties. Stalin was well informed already in March 1941 about the plan, when the Soviet military intelligence put the whole Barbarossa plan on his desk, as well as many of the Komintern spies in Berlin as well as Richard Sorge in Tokyo even predicted the exact date of the attack (June 20, 1941); but Stalin only believed in common sense. Launching an attack on the Soviet Union mid June while still at war with Britain would be a reckless adventure and exhaust the German economy. Besides, Soviet intelligence was keeping a close watch on the European sheepskin market. If Hitler planned to attack late summer, his army must prepare to fight in the Russian winter, purchasing millions of sheepskin-coats, causing a fall in sheep meat prices and a steep rise in sheepskin prices. Since no such
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price fluctuation was reported, Stalin concluded that an attack so soon was most unlikely. The fact is that Hitler attacked anyway, since he was running out of time with the Soviet Union winning the industrial armament race deploying 15.000 tanks against 4000 German tanks and 11.000 planes against 4.500 German airplanes.

Soviet armoured vehicle production:

1940 Light armoured Medium armoured e.g. T 34 Heavy armoured e.g. KV 1 2,255 127 243 1941 1,907 2,800 1,353 1942 9,579 12,578 2,635 1943 5,391 17,192 1,458 1944 7,155 16,242 4,762 1945 3,562 13,485 3,030 Total 30,079 62,424 13,831

Total German production of all armoured vehicles:

Pre-war 3,503 1939 370 1940 1,788 1941 3,623 1942 4,136 1943 13,657 1944 18,956 1945 4,406 Wartime 46,936 Total 50,439

Considering the US Lend-Lease supply and British help on top, only a Blitzkrieg victory over the Soviet Union could save Hitler's Germany. So on June 22 Germany attacked with 98 divisions (3.5 million men), 4.200 tanks and 3.400 aircraft on a 1.200 Km front between the Baltic Sea and the Carpathian Mountains with Italy and Romania declaring war on Soviet Union the same day, followed by Hungary and Slovakia on June 23.

Roosevelt, whose aim had been to prevent GermanSoviet-Japanese reconciliation, had become alarmed of a possible quadripartite pact conceived by Matsuoka, but now with the full scale GermanSoviet war, he could relax as Japanese-US peaceful understanding became totally unnecessary. Now the aim was to aggressively keep Japan busy and prevent a Japanese attack on the Soviet Far East, something that Hitler was secretly praying for. Still hoping for improving relations with the US, Konoe delivered a message through Matsuoka on July 8th, that

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The Japanese Government wishes to state, that it has not so far considered joining the hostilities against the Soviet Union.
Roosevelt was able to secure a guarantee that Japan would not invade the Soviet Union; nevertheless contrary to what was expected by Japan, US demands grew considerably. Roosevelt, during the July 24 meeting with Ambassador Nomura demanded total Japanese withdrawal from French Indochina, and neutralisation of Thailand, Japan's closest ally with historically very close relations between the two

monarchies and the only Asiatic countries that had escaped colonialism. What Roosevelt really intended with this new demand of Thai neutrality was, that even if Japan withdrew totally from Indochina, the problem would not be solved. With the exception of a few individuals, nobody in the bureaucratic Japanese foreign ministry and in the even less diplomatically sophisticated military leadership realised that the Hull-hook swallowed, would be impossible to spit

(26) The Atlantic Charter world map

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out. The FDR- gambit was now a check-mate. The Atlantic summit between Roosevelt and Churchill was concluded on August 12, 1941 confirming the colonial status quo in the future. Roosevelt arrived back in Washington on the morning of August 17 and despite being Sunday, he called Nomura for a meeting and expressed his desire for peace in the Pacific handing Nomura the following written statement:

Still, upon the freezing of Japanese assets July 26 and an oil embargo August 1, PM Konoe tried to brake the deadlock by proposing a Japan-US summit. Secretary of State Hull swept the idea aside brusquely, but when Nomura took the proposal to Roosevelt, who had already heard about it from Hull, the President reacted extremely positively and suggested Juneau in Alaska for the summit sometime in October. It was FDR-Hull good cop-bad cop game with poor Nomura san. On September 29 the Moscow conference began, with USA's A. Harriman and Britain's Lord Beaverbrook meeting Molotov and Stalin, arranging urgent military assistance for Soviet Union. Agreement was reached October 1, finalising the Soviet Union joining the Allies, and guaranteeing that it would not collapse under the German onslaught or surrender in the foreseeable future. There was now no need to deal with the Japanese illusion of a Japan-US summit, so the next day, October 2, Hull met with Nomura, and declined the Japanese summit-proposal with some cooked up accusation. With this October 2, 1941 memorandum, the USA, in reality, terminated its relations with Japan. It is worthwhile here to note, that the US Secretary of
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This government now nds it necessary to say to the Government of Japan that if the Japanese Government takes any further steps in pursuance of a policy or program of military domination by force or threat of force of neighbouring countries, the Government of the United States will be compelled to take immediately any and all steps which it may deem necessary toward safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of the United States and American nationals and toward insuring the safety and security of the United States.
This was not speaking softly and insinuated that the United States border now, was somewhere in Indochina.

State Cordell Hull of Tennessee, had the manners of an Appalachian lumberjack and spoke redneck like:

We's been speekin' Redneck of s'long's I can member. My mammy and pappy spoke it, and they learned it frum deer mammy and pappy,
making it real hard to understand what he was saying. If FDR wanted to insult Japanese diplomats and make sure that negotiations didn't go anywhere he sure had picked the right Secretary of State in Cordell Hull. Nominated by FDR, Hull was for some mysterious reason, awarded the Nobel Peace Price in 1945. I suspect that the Norwegian Nobel committee didn't dare to say no. American Ambassador in Tokyo (1932-1941) Joseph Grew, was kept in the dark about FDR's real strategy, and tried to prevent war to the last, sending desperate warnings to Washington that the uncompromising US policy would drive Japan to national suicide. On September 29 he sent the following report to Hull: The basis on which Japan had joined the Tripartite Alliance had thus been completely upset and this country is now endeavouring to get out of a very
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dangerous position ... The situation has now come I believe for a complete readjustment of the relations between our two countries ... The prime minister is prepared to nullify Japan's membership in the Axis at the proposed meeting ... Secretary of State Hull simply ignored Grew's advice and his efforts. Robert Fearey, Ambassador Grew's secretary in Tokyo wrote in a recent article:

Until the day he died, Ambassador Joseph C. Grew, our Ambassador to Japan 1932-41 and the nation's most experienced and distinguished diplomat of that era, believed that Washington's handling of the U.S.-Japan negotiations preceding the Pearl Harbour attack was unimaginative and inexible. Grew thought that Washington gave short shrift to the Embassy's carefully considered reports, analyses, and recommendations, centering on Japanese Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoye's proposal that he and President Roosevelt meet faceto-face in Honolulu in a direct effort to achieve a settlement of all outstanding issues. If the meeting had been allowed to take place, he believed, the Pacic War might have been avoided.

Obviously Grew was kept in the dark of FDR real plans in the Pacific and naively wrote a report during his two month internment after Pearl Harbour, which he presented to Hull upon his return to America. Since August he had been working very hard to avoid war informing Washington that P.M. Konoe's proposal of a personal meeting with FDR in Hawaii to find a peaceful settlement had the backing of Showa Tenno as well as all the top Japanese military. Initially Washington showed interest but suggested meeting in Alaska for some strange reason FDR claiming time pressure. As for Konoe, he was ready to go and meet anywhere to avoid war and immediately arranged a steamed up destroyer ready in Yokohama for the trip to Alaska. On September 3 at a meeting with Nomura, FDR suddenly produced a document with preconditions for the meeting, including the necessity of discussing the matter fully with the British, Chinese and Dutch. By now it should have become clear to both Nomura and Grew as well as Konoe, that FDR and Hull were dancing backwards having absolutely no intention of any meeting in Alaska or for that matter anywhere else.

Konoe's honesty and straightforward manner in the Spring, explaining Ambassador Grew and he to Washington why it was necessary to meet FDR outside Japan now backfired. Washington now took advantage of, that Konoe only could agree to the tough American- Chinese proposals, if he avoided the usual Japanese diplomatic channels, fearing betrayal by pro Axis Foreign Minister Matsuoka, who according to Konoe - would immediately leak everything to Germany and Italy with both countries eager to sabotage any Japan-US reconciliation. P.M. Konoe explained to Ambasador Grew, that if the delicate negotiations on China were leaked by Foregn Minister Matsuoka, strong Axis supporter, he (Konoe) would be assassinated. Additionally hostile leaks may originate from the Japanese codebrakers of the US Embassy-State Department communication codes which Konoe thought had been broken. Furthermore Konoe explained that Matsuoka, when forced to resign because of the German Attack on USSR, had left supporters behind in the foreign office, who would also leak any progress made by Konoe to reach a peaceful agreement with the US on the China problem.

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Therefore, Konoe argued, a personal meeting between himself, accompanied by senior Japanese Army and Navy officers, and President Roosevelt was the best way to reach an effective US/Japan agreement on China and peace in the Pacific. Grew supported Konoe's strategy and assured Whashington that most Japanese from the Showa Tenno down supported and sincerely wanted some face-saving gradual pull out of the China quagmire, except for Manchuria where Japan had invested heavily and modernised its economy and infrastructure drastically. But Konoe said the Fate of Manchuria could be worked out later bilaterally with China. Grew, not being informed about FDR real intentions, being finalised, after the German attack on Soviet Union, warned that the time was running out since the US embargo and freezing of Japanese assets was strengthening the extremist political circles in Tokyo. These circles were demanding that the military took action, even if it meant a suicidal war with the American- British-Chinese-Dutch (ABCD) alliance. Not knowing that that was exactly what some hawkinsh people in Washington hoped for, Grew grimly warned that in case the Konoye Government failed in its peace effort, it would be re97

placed and Japan would descend towards a desperate survival war. Time was running out and Grew urged Washington to accept the meeting between Konoe and FDR but Stanley Hombak, having a love China-hate Japan mind sabotaged all Grew's efforts and ridiculed the mere possibility that Japan would dare waging war. He also argued that Grew had been in Japan too long, soft on the Japanese, and that all one had to do was to stand up to the Japs and they would tuck their tail between the legs. Special adviser to the Secretary of State C. Hull, Stanley Hornbeck, arrogant and haughty of Japanese capability to challenge the US, dismissed fears among Foreign Service officers that Japan might initiate war out of desperation; the day after the Hull note on November 26, he wrote:

In the opinion of the undersigned, the Japanese Government does not desire or intend or expect to have forthwith armed conict with the United States ... Were it a matter of placing bets, the undersigned would give odds of ve to one that Japan and the United States will not be at "war" on or before March 1 (a date more than 90 days from now, and after the

period during which it has been estimated by our strategists that it would be to our advantage for us to have "time" for further preparation and disposals.
Still Konoe struggled to urgently bring about a summit conference between Japan and the US, FDR pretending to be interested, Hull and Hornbeck dismissing any possibility that Japan would dare to soon wage war on the US and a German-Nazi fifth column in Japan trying to prevent any US-Japan reconciliation. Previously the following Outline of Execution of National Policy had been adopted at the Imperial conference September 6th: In order to insure her selfsufficiency and self-defence, Japan shall complete her preparations for war by the latter part of October 1941, with the determination not to decline war with the United States, Britain and the Netherlands. On October 16 Konoe, tired of pleading and waiting or maybe just realising that FDR had other plans that a peaceful solution with Japan, resigned and was replaced by General Hideki Tojo.

This marked Showa Tenno's last effort to diffuse the explosive situation General Tojo being the only authority strong enough to make the Imperial Army's young turks accept an unconditional retreat from China. Grew still pretended that a peaceful solution was possible but admitted privately the dice had been cast. He sent cable after cable to Washington warning of a sudden desperate attack but his warnings were swept aside by Hombecks reports and ridiculed by the US military responsible for defence in the Pacific, exactly what both Hull and FDR wanted to hear. On October 18, General Hideki Tojo becomes the 40th Prime Minister of Japan, FDR approves US $ 1 billion Lend-Lease to Soviet Union, the Soviet government moves to Kubyshev October 16, but Stalin remains, leading the battle of Moscow beginning November 12; Churchill in a speech November 10, promises British declaration of war on Japan within the hour of a Japan-US armed conflict erupting. In a desperate last ditch effort to diffuse the explosive situation, senior Japanese diplomat Saburo Kurusu arrives in the US to assist Ambassador No98

mura while Joseph Grew, US Ambassador to Japan cables Washington (November 17), warning of an imminent sudden Japanese attack. Actually the Tojo cabinet was appointed because Japan tried to avoid war to the last, in accordance with the desires of the Emperor, since only General Tojo had the authority in the military, to make Japan's armed forces accept the humiliating US conditions for peace, being: Immediate and total Japanese withdrawal from Indochina and all of China, but not mentioning Taiwan and Manchuria where Japan had invested heavily. Not referring to Manchuria and Taiwan, where hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians were living, obviously left open this possibility of pressuring Japan further, for later in case Japan would have accepted initial conditions, exiting China. The two versions of a final Japanese peace proposal (A and B) was actually sent to the Japanese Embassy in Washington as early as November 4, with the deadline of the negotiations as November 25th. All messages were intercepted and decoded, so Roosevelt read them even before the were officially offered, including knowing the deadline set by Tokyo. Secretary of War Henry Stimson (since 1940) in
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charge of directing US army expansion to 10 million soldiers, and later the Manhattan Project, entered the following sentence in his diary on November 27:

How we should manoeuvre the Japanese into the position to re the rst shot, without allowing too much danger to ourself.
The day before, Stimson had called FDR about the dispatch of a Japanese expeditionary force to Indochina, triggering the Presidents famous feigned furious anger, leading to the Hull note. Yes, an excellent FDR performance, as he himself later quipped to his friend Orson Welles, that they were the two best actors in the world. FDR and later Truman followed all of Stimson's advice about the nuclear bomb which was very lucky for the old Japanese capital Kyoto, since Stimson had spent his honeymoon there, and therefore ordered the military to take Kyoto off the bomb-target list, but more about that later. The famous Hull note ultimatum (with absolutely no modus vivendi) is delivered to Japan by the United States on November 26, and on the same day a fleet of 6 aircraft carriers, commanded by Vice Admiral Nagumo leaves Hitokapu bay on Etorofu Ja-

pan; on November 27 all US military forces in Asia and the Pacific are placed on war alert. Keeping up appearances, Franklin D. Roosevelt makes a personal peace appeal to the Emperor of Japan on December 6, while in the freezing winter in front of Moscow, the German Wehrmacht is dealt a crushing defeat by Stalin's Siberian ski-divisions ending Hitlers blitzkrieg. The Japanese Navy launches full scale attack on the United States Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbour December 7th (December 8th Japan time), simultaneously (thirty minutes before the attack as Admiral Yamamoto had demanded) Japan officially declaring war on the United States in this way upholding the conventions of war as well as achieving surprise. Of course the US code breakers had intercepted and deciphered the war- declaration hours before the Japanese embassy was scheduled to deliver it. Hull kept ambassador Nomura and special envoy Kurusu waiting in the lobby, until he was receiving news of Pearl Harbour. The two Japanese diplomats not able to deliver the declaration and not knowing the attack was taking place, were shocked when Hull, fi100

nally granting audience called them scoundrels and piss- ants. The book Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbour by Robert Stinnett, published in 1999 is based on secret records of the deciphered and translated Japanese Imperial Navy coded communication at the time and only recently accessible due to the freedom of information act. He concludes beyond any doubt, that the details of the pending Japanese attack was on FDR's desk several days before December 7, 1941. Then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt, along with many other key people, conspired to deprive the US military commanders in Oahu (Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, commanding the Pacific Fleet, together with Lieut. General Walter C. Short, commanding the Army ground and air forces in the Hawaiian Islands) of highly specific warnings regarding the Japanese Kido Butai or First Air Fleet and its approach to Hawaii. Specifically, he contends that the Japanese transmitted a number of messages which were intercepted and decrypted by various agencies, who on presidential orders buried the information. He identifies at least eight senior naval officers (most of whom went on to distinguish them-

selves in World War II) as having betrayed their nation and service in this fashion. Yet even having found what he calls the terrible truth, Stinnett is still inclined to forgive.

action. Americans were told of US cryptographers' success in cracking pre-Pearl Harbor Japanese diplomatic codes, but not a word has been officially uttered about their success in cracking Japanese military codes. During the 60 years, the truthful answers were in secret bomb-proof vaults, withheld from two congressional Pearl Harbor investigations and from the public. As recently as 1995, the Joint Congressional Investigation conducted by Sen. Strom Thurmond and Rep. Floyd Spence, was denied access to a naval storage vault in Crane, Indiana, containing documents that could settle the questions.

I sympathize with the agonizing dilemma faced by President Roosevelt.

He writes.

He was forced to nd circuitous means to persuade an isolationist America to join in a ght for freedom. It is easier to take a critical view of this policy a half century removed than to understand fully what went on in Roosevelt's mind in the year prior to Pearl Harbor.
He says Pearl Harbor was not an accident, a mere failure of American intelligence, or a brilliant Japanese military coup. It was the result of a carefully orchestrated, design, initiated at the highest levels of the US government. He cites a key memorandum to highlight eight steps that were taken to make sure we would enter the war by this means. He writes that Pearl Harbor was the only way, leading officials felt, to galvanize the reluctant American public into
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In the mid-1980s I learned that none of the hundreds of thousands of Japanese military messages obtained by the U.S. monitor stations prior to Pearl Harbor were introduced or discussed during the congressional investigation of 194546. Determined to penetrate the secrets of Pearl Harbor, I led Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests with the US Navy. Navy ofcials in Washington released a few pre-Pearl Harbor documents to me in 1985. Not satised by the minuscule release, I continued ling FOIAs.

Finally in 1993, the U.S. Naval Security Group Command, the custodian of the Crane Files, agreed to transfer the records to National Archives in Washington, D.C. In the winter of 1993-94 the les were transported by truck convoy to a new government facility built on the College Park campus of the University of Maryland inside the Washington Beltway, named Archives II. Mr. Clarence Lyons, then head of the Military Reference Branch, released the rst batch of Crane Files to me in the Steny Hoyer Research Center at Archives II in January 1995. Apparently, the pre-Pearl Harbor records had not been seen or reviewed since 1941. Though reled in pH-safe archival boxes by Lyons' staff, some of the Crane documents were covered with dust, tightly bunched together in the boxes and tied with unusual waxed twine. Lyons conrmed the records were received from the U.S. Navy in that condition. It took me a year to evaluate the records. The information revealed in the les was astonishing. It disclosed a Pearl Harbour story hidden from the public. I believed the story should be told to the American people. The editors of Simon & Schuster/The Free Press published Day of Deceit: The

Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1999.

This great question of Pearl Harbour - what did we know and when did we know it - has been argued for years, he writes.

At rst, a panel created by FDR concluded that we had no advance warning and should blame only the local commanders for lack of preparedness. More recently, historians such as John Toland and Edward Beach have concluded that some intelligence was intercepted. Finally, just months ago, the Senate voted to exonerate Hawaii commanders Admiral Kimmel and Lieutenant General Short, after the Pentagon ofcially declared that blame should be "broadly shared". But no investigator has ever been able to prove that foreknowledge of the attack existed at the highest levels.
Until now. Whereas previous investigators have claimed that the government did not crack Japan's military codes before December 7, 1941, Stinnett offers cable after cable of decryptions. He proves that a Japanese spy on the island transmitted information including a map of bombing targets - beginning on
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August 21, and that government intelligence knew all about it. He reveals that Admiral Kimmel was prevented from conducting a routine training exercise at the eleventh hour that would have uncovered the location of the oncoming Japanese fleet. And contrary to previous claims, he shows that the Japanese fleet did not maintain radio silence as it approached Hawaii. Its many coded cables were intercepted and decoded by American cryptographers in Stations on Hawaii and in Seattle. The evidence is overwhelming. At the highest levels on FDR's desk - America had ample warning of the pending attack. At those same levels, it was understood that the isolationist American public would not support a declaration of war unless attacked first. The result was a plan to anger Japan, to keep the loyal officers responsible for Pearl Harbor in the dark, and thus to drag America into the greatest war of her existence. Two questions about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor have ignited a controversy lasting for 60 years: Did US naval cryptographers crack the Japanese naval codes before the attack?

Did Japanese warships and their commanding admirals break radio silence at sea before the attack? If the answer to both is no, then Pearl Harbor was indeed a surprise attack described by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a Day of Infamy. The integrity of the US government regarding Pearl Harbor remains solid. But if the answer is yes, then hundreds of books, articles, movies, and TV documentaries based on the no answer-and the integrity of the federal governmentgo down the drain. If the Japanese naval codes were intercepted, decoded, and translated into English by US naval cryptographers prior to Pearl Harbor, then the Japanese naval attacks on American Pacific military bases were known in advance among the highest levels of the American government. The declaration of war was printed on the front page of Japan's newspapers in the evening edition December 8, 1941:

Imperial Rescript By the grace of Heaven, Emperor of Japan (Emperor Showa) seated on the throne occupied by the same dynasty from time immemorial, enjoin upon ye, Our loyal and brave

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subjects: We hereby declare War on the United States of America and the British Empire. The men and ofcers of Our Army and Navy shall do their utmost in prosecuting the war. Our public servants of various departments shall perform faithfully and diligently their respective duties; the entire nation with a united will shall mobilize their total strength so that nothing will miscarry in the attainment of Our war aims. To insure the stability of East Asia and to contribute to world peace is the far-sighted policy which was formulated by Our Great Illustrious Imperial Grandsire (Emperor Meiji) and Our Great Imperial Sire succeeding Him (Emperor Taisho) and which We lay constantly to heart. To cultivate friendship among nations and to enjoy prosperity in common with all nations, has always been the guiding principle of Our Empire's foreign policy. It has been truly unavoidable and far from Our wishes that Our Empire has been brought to cross swords with America and Britain. More than four years have passed since China, failing to comprehend the true intentions of Our Empire, and recklessly courting trouble, disturbed the peace of East Asia and compelled Our Empire

to take up arms. Although there has been reestablished the National Government of China, with which Japan had effected neighborly intercourse and cooperation,the regime which has survived in Chungking, relying upon American and British protection, still continues its fratricidal opposition. Eager for the realization of their inordinate ambition to dominate the Orient, both America and Britain, giving support to the Chungking regime, have aggravated the disturbances in East Asia. Moreover these two Powers, inducing other countries to follow suit, increased military preparations on all sides of Our Empire to challenge Us. They have obstructed by every means Our peaceful commerce and nally resorted to a direct severance of economic relations, menacing gravely the existence of Our Empire. Patiently have We waited and long have We endured, in the hope that Our government might retrieve the situation in peace. But Our adversaries, showing not the least spirit of conciliation, have unduly delayed a settlement; and in the meantime they have intensied the economic and political pressure to compel thereby Our Empire to submission. This trend of affairs, would, if left unchecked, not only nul-

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lify Our Empire's efforts of many years for the sake of the stabilization of East Asia, but also endanger the very existence of Our nation. The situation being such as it is, Our Empire, for its existence and self- defense has no other recourse but to appeal to arms and to crush every obstacle in its path. The hallowed spirits of Our Imperial Ancestors guarding Us from above, We rely upon the loyalty and courage of Our subjects in Our condent expectation that the task bequeathed by Our forefathers will be carried forward and that the sources of evil will be speedily eradicated and an enduring peace immutably established in East Asia, preserving thereby the glory of Our Empire. In witness whereof, we have hereunto set our hand and caused the Grand Seal of the Empire to be afxed at the Imperial Palace, Tokyo, this seventh day of the 12th month of the 15th year of Showa, corresponding to the 2.652nd year from the accession to the throne of Emperor Jimmu. (Released by the Board of Information, December 8, 1941. Japan Times & Advertiser)
On December 8, 1941 the United States officially declares war on Japan followed by war declarations
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from United Kingdom (including India, South Africa, and Canada by default), China, The Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, Haiti, Dominica, Honduras, El Salvador on the same day. Robert Fearey remembers:

And so war came. It was Sunday in the U.S. but Monday morning, December 8, when the news reached us in Tokyo. At about eight I walked over from my apartment to the Embassy chancery, a distance of about 40 feet. Chip Bohlen came down the stairs. Had I heard the news? The Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor and other points around the Western Pacic and the Imperial Headquarters had announced that a state of war existed between Japan and the U.S. and its Allies. As I absorbed this intelligence other Embassy ofcers arrived, most having heard the news from their drivers. I went down to the compound's front gate, which was closed tight with Japanese police standing all about. Outside up the street I heard a newsboy calling Gogai, Gogai, meaning Extra, Extra, and waving copies of the English language ofcial

Japanese Government newspaper, The Japan Times and Advertiser, on which I could see the gigantic headline, WAR IS ON. It occurred to me that the paper would probably not only be informative on what had happened but would make a great souvenir. So I walked as inconspicuously as I could back along the 8-foot wall surrounding the compound to a corner where some small pine trees provided a little cover. There I scrambled over the wall, bought two copies of the paper, one to give to Grew and one to keep, and scrambled back. My copy hangs framed at home. Below the WAR IS ON headline is the English version of the Imperial Rescript to the Japanese people on the outbreak of war. Probably drafted and translated by the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, uent in English, it is a masterful piece of prose. Returning to Tokyo in early October 1945, I was able to obtain a copy of the August 15, 1945 surrender issue of the same paper, which during the war had been renamed the Nippon Times. The surrender headlines are understandably smaller than the outbreak of war ones, reading, His Majesty Issues Rescript to Restore Peace. But as in 1941, the Rescript is a prose masterpiece.

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Chapter 14

NIITAKAYAMA NOBORE

Niitakayama nobore was the secret Japanese final code to launch the attack on Pearl Harbour with the objective to eliminate the US Pacific fleet with one concentrated lightning stroke. Mount Niitaka (Yushan in Chinese) was at 3.952 meters the highest mountain in Japan, located in Taiwan, being 176 meters higher then Mount Fuji. (It was named by anthropologists R. Torii and U. Mori climbing it in 1900.) In spite of the fact that the US Pacific fleet in Hawaii and the Philippines was on war alert since November 27, and that all key US top government people knew about the imminent attack in advance, the Japanese Niitakayama nobore on Pearl Harbour turned out to become a severe humiliation of the USA. Shocking the American top brass and government by its surgically precise execution, coordinated efficiency, organisational power and scale and by the total unpreparedness of US Naval defence due to American superiority complex; Roosevelt's fury now was genuine. Because on that day, December 7th, 1941- a date which will live in infamy, the 18-19th century belief in white-christian-anglo (WASP) global cultural and military supremacy was put to rest forever. The only good news was, that, as luck would have it none of the three American carriers of the Pacific Fleet, USS Enterprise, USS Lexington and USS Saratoga were

home in Pearl Harbour on that day. They had been ordered by the supreme commander (FDR) on some mission away from Hawaii in good time. Ninety minutes after it began, the attack, in two waves, was over with a total of 2.402 Americans killed, including 55 civilians mostly killed by unexploded American anti-aircraft shells landing in civilian areas. Half of the total fatalities were due to the explosion of Arizona.
USA 8 battleships 8 cruisers 30 destroyers 4 submarines 49 other ships 390 aircraft Ford Island Air base Hickam Air Force Base Japan mobile unit 6 aircraft carriers 2 battleships 1 light cruiser 9 destroyers 8 tankers 28 submarines 414 aircraft

Strength:

4 battleships sunk 4 battleships damaged 4 midget submarines 2 destroyers sunk, sunk 1 damaged 1 run aground 3 cruisers damaged, Casualties 27 aircraft destroyed and losses: 1 sunk 55 airman 188 aircraft destroyed 9 submariners killed 155 damaged 1 submariners captured 2 347 military killed and 1 247 wounded
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(27) Track of carrier task force for Pearl Harbor attack Minoru Genda, chief architect and executer of the attack urged Admiral Nagumo to carry on the attack with a third strike, to destroy the fuel and torpedo storages, maintenance- dry docks, submarine and intelligence facilities, which would have crippled American operations in the Pacific for over an extra year. Nagumo however, decided to withdraw. Admiral Yamamoto, initially supported the withdrawal, but later admitted that it was a big mistake.

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Battle for the Philippines The Japanese did not rest on their laurels, launching invasions in Hong Kong, Malaya, Manila and Singapore on December 8. General Homma comanding the 14th IJA of 43.000 man landed on Batan island and on northern Luzon, Vigan, Aparri, Gonzanga two days later. Masaharu Homma, also known as the poet general since he wrote and painted in his spare time, had spent eight years as military attache in UK, and had instructed his men to treat the filipinos friendly and respect their customs and religion. On December 12, the Japanese landed 2.500 men in Legazpi and while the Americans withdrew most of the US Asiatic fleet from the Philippines the main attack began on December 22, with the Japanese advancing rapidly towards Manilla both from north and south.
USA- Philippines Strength: 151,000 Japan 130,000 9,000 killed 13,200 wounded 500 missing 10,000 disease stricken

25,000 killed 21,000 wounded Casualties: 100,000 captured (mostly in sick condition)

(28) Battle of Philippine

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Filipino-American resistance lasted only for three month although they outnumbered the Japanese, and after the battles of Bataan and Corregidor on May 6, General Wainwright (MacArthur had left for Australia March 11) asked General Homma for the terms of surrender. Homma insisted that surrender include all allied forces in the Philippines, resulting in the largest surrender in American military history.` By some twisted logic General Homma became the scapegoat of this humiliation of the US forces and MacArthur's vindictive nature, so on explicit, express order of MacArthur, Homma, retired from the military since 1943 was arrested by the US military police in 1945. Extradited to the Philippines to face American military tribunal and executed by firing squad April 3, 1946, he was innocent of any war crime. Homma's defence council, John Sceen stated that

Either we conduct such a trial as this in the noble spirit and atmosphere of our Constitution or we abandon all pretence to justice, let the ages slip away and descend to the level of revengeful blood purges.
Homma's wife appealed to MacArthur to spare his life, but in vain.

It was a highly irregular trial, conducted in an atmosphere that left no doubt as to what the ultimate outcome would be.
Justice Frank Murphy of the US Supreme Court also protested the verdict:

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POW Treatment The truth is, that just like the German surrender at Stalingrad, the American surrender at Bataan of 76.000 diseased, starving, malaria-ridden soldiers, was irresponsible by the cynical commander not securing minimal supplies of his troops. (Paulus in Stalingrad and MacArthur in Bataan.) Already in January 1942, McArthur ordered his forces to be fed one-half daily rations because the USAFFE food-stocks on Bataan were insufficient for a long siege. Still, without adequate food, medicine, ranks ravaged by malaria, dysentery, malnutrition and Japanese attacks, the battling bastards of Bataan held out for over four month looking more like living corpses of Bataan when Major General Edward King surrendered on April 9, 1942, transferring the responsibility for his dying troops to the Japanese. Of the 70.000 POW's 54.000 arrived at Camp O'Donnel, about 10.000 died on the way, the rest 6.000 escaping into the jungle. From September through December 1942, the Japanese gradually released Philippino soldiers to their families and home towns. In comparison, of the 91.000, German POW at Stalingrad only about 5.000 survived. US General Eisenhower in Europe was the most creative when it came to dealing with large numbers of
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POW's. He simply redefined them to be DEF (disarmed enemy forces) instead of POW's which meant the the Geneva convention did not apply. One of the guards, Martin Bech of such a DEF-camp remembers:

In Andernach about 50.000 prisoners of all ages were held in an open eld surrounded by barbed wire. The women were kept in a separate enclosure I did not see until later. The men I guarded had no shelter and no blankets; many had no coats. They slept in the mud, wet and cold, with inadequate slit trenches for excrement. It was a cold, wet spring and their misery from exposure alone was evident. Even more shocking was to see the prisoners throwing grass and weeds into a tin can containing a thin soup. They told me they did this to help ease their hunger pains. Quickly, they grew emaciated. Dysentery raged, and soon they were sleeping in their own excrement, too weak and crowded to reach the slit trenches. Many were begging for food, sickening and dying before our eyes. We had ample food and supplies, but did nothing to help them, including no medical assistance. Outraged, I protested to my ofcers and was met with hostility or bland indifference. When pressed, they explained they

were under strict orders from "higher up". No ofcer would dare do this to 50.000 men if he felt that it was "out of line", leaving him open to charges. Realizing my protests were useless, I asked a friend working in the kitchen if he could slip me some extra food for the prisoners. He too said they were under strict orders to severely ration the prisoners' food and that these orders came from "higher up". But he said they had more food than they knew what to do with and would sneak me some. When I threw this food over the barbed wire to the prisoners, I was caught and threatened with imprisonment. I repeated the "offense", and one ofcer angrily threatened to shoot me. I assumed this was a bluff until I encountered a captain on a hill above the Rhine shooting down at a group of German civilian women with his.45 caliber pistol. When I asked, Why?, he mumbled, "Target practice", and red until his pistol was empty. I saw the women running for cover, but, at that distance, couldn't tell if any had been hit. This is when I realized I was dealing with cold-blooded killers lled with moralistic hatred. They considered the Germans subhuman and worthy of extermination; another expression

of the downward spiral of racism. Articles in the G.I. newspaper, Stars and Stripes, played up the German concentration camps, complete with photos of emaciated bodies; this amplied our self-righteous cruelty and made it easier to imitate behavior we were supposed to oppose. Also, I think, soldiers not exposed to combat were trying to prove how tough they were by taking it out on the prisoners and civilians. These prisoners, I found out, were mostly farmers and workingmen, as simple and ignorant as many of our own troops. As time went on, more of them lapsed into a zombie-like state of listlessness, while others tried to escape in a demented or suicidal fashion, running through open elds in broad daylight towards the Rhine to quench their thirst. They were mowed down. Some prisoners were as eager for cigarettes as for food, saying they took the edge off their hunger. Accordingly, enterprising G.I. "Yankee traders" were acquiring hordes of watches and rings in exchange for handfuls of cigarettes or less. When I began throwing cartons of cigarettes to the prisoners to ruin this trade, I was threatened by rank-and-le G.I.s too. The DEF-camps

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The Allied powers had decided at the highest level (Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin) to repudiate the Geneva Conventions, especially after the extinction of a German government able to negotiate with the Red Cross. (The Soviet Union, of course, had never signed the Geneva Conventions in the rst place.) (1) Detention after the end of war: Under the Geneva Conventions, PoWs are to be sent home within months of the end of the war. The Allies instead decided to hold many PoWs (redesignated "disarmed enemy forces") as slave laborers, providing "labor reparations" to rebuild the damage inicted by Nazi aggression. In the West, the demands of France were considered especially compelling -- the Germans had held millions of French PoWs as slave laborers, besides stripping France to the bone. After screening the PoWs, releasing the old men and boys of the "Volkssturm", and detaining Nazis for prosecution, the USA transferred 740.000 of the remainder (including some of those shipped back to Europe from the USA) to France. 1.000.000 German Pows remained in US camps in Ger-

many at the beginning of 1946, but only 38.000 were still left at the beginning of 1947. The Western nations sent their last German PoWs home in 1948 (often under US pressure), while the Soviets kept theirs as late as 1956. In the spring of 1945, when the US held 3.4 million German PoWs, Britain held 2.150.000. Many were shipped as slave laborers to Britain, where 400.000 still remained at the end of 1946. As a general rule, the ones in Britain were treated decently, in contrast to many in France. (Parenthetical note: The French PoWs held by the Germans 1940-45 were treated reasonably decently, having an annual death rate comparable to British and American PoWs. In the early years of the war, their welfare helped guarantee economic cooperation by France's Vichy government; by the time Vichy's cooperation no longer mattered (1944), impending German defeat would have made mistreatment of French PoWs highly imprudent.) (2) Reduced rations: Under the Geneva Conventions, German PoWs should get the same ration as their Allied captors. Instead, designated as "disarmed enemy forces", they got no more rations than Ger-

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man civilians. Especially in April through July 1945, this meant starvation rations, though generally enough food came through to prevent mass deaths from starvation. Hundreds of thousands of PoWs were kept for many weeks out in the open, with no shelter apart from what they might dig in the ground, and nothing to sit or lie on (above the mud and puddles) apart from their own helmets and greatcoats. This was during the spring and summer, when there was no danger of freezing; nevertheless, given Germany's cooler, wetter climate, these open barbed-wire "cages" were much more of a hardship than similar temporary expedients in North Africa and Italy. The worst US temporary enclosures were the 16 "Rheinwiesenlager" ("Rhine meadow camps"). 557.000 PoWs were held from April to July 1945 in the six worst of these: Bad Kreuznach-Bretzenheim, Remagen-Sinzig, Rheinberg, Heidesheim, Wickrathberg, and Bderich. The Maschke Commission would later tabulate 4.537 parish-registered deaths in these 6 worst RWLs, 774 from the others. They thought the actual death toll might be twice this, but were skeptical of an eywitness claim of 32.000 deaths.

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Myths about POW treatment in Malaysia - The POW's were herded into a prison. - Wrong. They were sent to British Army barracks located in rubber plantations with no barbed wire, and when later barbed wire was introduced the POW's could go outside regularly, almost nightly with no problem. Only attempted escape from Singapore island was punishable. The Japanese guards turned a blind eye to POW's leaving the camp for errands or black market visits. Some sold the clothes they were waring for beef or other food and items smuggled into the camp were not confiscated. - The POW's were often beaten. - Not by the Japanese. According to reliable reports from people who were there, the Sikh guards, recruited by the Japanese, did do some beating and terrorising, but the abuses of power was stopped by the Japanese quickly.

- The POW's were deliberately starved. - Wrong. The prisoners were placed on Japanese military ration scales consisting of mainly rice, unfamiliar and unwelcome, especially to the Australians who were used to meat rations that was twice of what even the British Army got. As the war progressed, and resupply from outside Malaya/Singapore became more difficult due to the British, Australian and US navy activities, ration scales were reduced even for the Japanese. Some Japanese front line troops were actually starving at the time in New Guinea, due to zero resupply by the sea. It could not be expected that the Japanese feed the prisoners better than their own troops. Many creative prisoners cut down the rubber plantations and grew their own vegetables, potatoes and cabbage. - The POW's were worked to death. - Not true. Boredom was the biggest problem so construction work parties were sent out to keep them occupied, but the prisoners suffered from poor nourishment and not hard labour.

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- The Japanese did not distribute Red Cross parcels. - Wrong. There were no Red Cross parcels. - The POW's had to live in overcrowded conditions. - Yes by Australian standards, and no by Asian standards. In 1970's Australian troops in Malaysia bunked 8 man to one room, the British 16 to the same room and the Malaysian 20 to a room, and this was not POW's. - The POW's were regularly executed. - Not true. Some executions did take place for escaping attempts, which were few.

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Chapter 15

CHURCHILL AND MALAY NO TORA

Early in the morning December 8, local time, Singapore, the cornerstone of British Asia came under attack by Japanese bombers. The British capital battleships HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, sent to Singapore as a deterrent to the Japanese, shot back with anti-aircraft fire, neither side sustaining any damage. Around that time news came in about Pearl Harbour, which meant that now the British navy was on it's own in the South China See. Admiral T. Phillips was ordered to send his battleships codenamed Force Z into offensive operations, trying to intercept and destroy Japanese convoys heading for Malaya, while Admiral Yamamoto sent 36 G4M bombers to strengthen the Kanoya Naval Force and Genzan Air Group.
Britain Strength: 1 battleship 1 battlecruiser 4 destroyers Japan 88 aircraft including 34 torpedo aircraft

Wales, causing extensive flooding, shaft damage, leaving the steering unresponsive. When one bomb fell among the wounded in her hangar, order was given to abandon ship, HMS Express taking off the wounded, the Prince of Wales rolled over and sank at 13:18. The Repulse had dodged 19 torpedos until she was caught in a pincer torpedo attack, and hit by two, possibly 4 torpedos, listing heavily to port before rolling over and sinking at 12:23 with heavy casualties.

Losses:

1 battleship sunk 4 aircraft destroyed, 1 battlecruiser sunk 2 scouting aircraft lost 840 killed 18 killed

(29) The Mitsubishi G4M bombers

Around 11:40 December 10 the Genzan Air Corps attacked sending at least six torpedos into Prince of
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The next day, Lt Haruki Iki flew over the site of the battle, dropping two wreaths of flowers, one for the fallen Japanese pilots and one for the British sailors who died in the battle. The next morning after the battle Sir Dudlay Pound First Sea Lord telephoned Churchill: Pound: Prime Minister, I have to report to you that the Prince of Wales and the Repulse have both been sunk by the Japanese we think by aircraft. Tom Phillips has drowned. Churchill: Are you sure it's true? Pound: There is no doubt at all. (30) Prince of Whales He later wrote: Churchill hangs up.

In all the war, I never received a more direct shock ... As I turned over and twisted in bed the full horror of the news sank in upon me. There were no British or American ships in the Indian Ocean or the Pacic except the American survivors of Pearl Harbour, who were hastening back to California. Over all this vast expanse of waters Japan was supreme, and we everywhere were weak and naked.
(30) Prince of Whales The two modern capital ships, while furiously defending themselves, were the first to be sunk solely by air120

power while steaming on the open sea, demonstrating the importance of air superiority in naval warfare. British survivors later told that at the beginning of the attack, they ridiculed the Japanese pilots trying to hit the mighty battleships, telling each other that from up there they could not even hit a football field. It turned out that they could even hit a tennis court. On December 23, the Japanese take Wake Island, defeat the British and Canadian forces at Hong Kong, capture Manilla January 2, 1942 and on January 11,

declare war on the Netherlands and invade Dutch East Indies and Burma (January19) as January 23 marks the beginning of the battle of Rabaul. This battle on the island of New Britain, formally called German New Guinea, January- February 1942, was a significant defeat of the allied forces by Japan, turning the port of Rabaul into a major Japanese base and key to advance into New Guinea with Port Moresby and towards Australia.
Australia Strength: 1400 Japan 5,000 Kaga, Akagi

In January 1942 Japanese carrier based aircraft attacked Rabaul destroying the Australian coastal artillery forcing infantry withdrawal from Rabaul and the Japanese landing on New Ireland formally called Neumecklenburg. On January 22, 2:45 am, they landed on New Britain unopposed whereupon, after some stiff resistance, the Australians spread into small groups retreating into the jungle, most of them captured or surrendering in the following weeks.

(32) Bismarck Archipelago

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The battle of Malaya

Britain Strength: 140,000 158 aircraft 5,500 killed 5,000 wounded 40,000 POW

Japan 70,000 568 aircraft 200 light tanks 1,793 killed 3,378 wounded

Casualties:

The battle of Malaya began on December 8, 1941 with the Japanese amphibious assault at Kota Bharu and the first ever air raid on Singapore by Imperial Navy bombers out of Saigon. The Japanese battle hardened forces quickly advanced into northern Malaya having the advantage of close air support, light armour and bicycle infantry, easily defeating elite Indian Army and British Army battalions, at Jitra, Penang and Kuala Lumpur by January 11, 1942 only 300 Km from Singapore. The 11th Indian Army at Kampar, delayed the Japanese advance for a few days while the British retreated to prepared positions at Slim River.

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The battle of Slim River, January 6-8, 1942

Britain Casualties: 500 killed 3,200 POW

Japan 17 killed 60 wounded

The defence was led by Brigadier A. Paris and the 11th Indian Army, including a Gurkha Brigade and the elite Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, while Colonel Ando's battle group, including Major Shimada's tank unit leading the Japanese assault, undertook the attack. Shimada came up with the plan of his tanks spearheading a night attack by the infantry, a highly risky, brave and unusual tactic. It nevertheless proved very efficient and ended the battle with Japanese victory and the annihilation of two Indian brigades, forcing Parcival to replace the 11th Indian Army with the 8th Australian Division. By midJanuary the Japanese had reached Johore encountering the stubborn Australians on January 14th, resulting in one of the bloodiest battles of the Malay campaign on January 15, near the Muar River. With the 45th Indian Brigade destroyed, its commander Brigadier Duncan and three battalion commanders killed, 600 Japanese casualties and Australian anti tank gunners destroying 9 japanese tanks, the Gemensah Bridge was demolished but repaired in just six hours after the battle.
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Repairing bridges in unbelievably short time was one of the most successful strategies of the Japanese core of engineers. The other was Shimada's tank unit's lightning attacks, at Slim River led by Lt Watanabe, personally cutting demolition wires with his sword, moments before the bridge was to blow up. Even the British who suffered so badly due to Watanabe's Blitzkrieg night attacks were impressed. Lt. Col A. Harrison nearly killed in the battle remarked later:

Heedless of danger and of their isolation they had shattered the division: they had captured the Slim Bridge by their reckless and gallant determination.
On January 27, 1942 Percival received permission from the commander of the American- BritishDutch-Australian Command, General A. Wavell to retreat across the Johore Strait to the island of Singapore.

The battle of Singapore, Malay no Tora Tomoyuki Yamashita:

My attack on Singapore was a bluff- a bluff that worked. I had 30.000 men and was outnumbered more than three to one. I knew that if i had to ght for long for Singapore, I would be beaten. That is why the surrender had to be at once. I was very frightened all the time that the British would discover our numerical weakness and lack of supplies and force me into disastrous street ghting.
Britain 120,000 1,000 guns of various types 250 armoured cars 100 fighter planes 130 bombers 2 battleships 7 destroyers 5 submarines 60,000 400 guns and mortars 120 tanks and armoured cars 459 army planes 158 navy planes 1 cruiser 10 destroyers 5 submarines 1,713 killed 2,772 wounded Japan

Singapore was the Gibraltar of the East, and the major British base, controlling the sea lanes between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea / Pacific. It was Protected by the famous large calibre coastal batteries, one with three 15 inch guns and one with two 15 inch guns capable of firing shells 360 degrees. They were only supplied with armour-piercing shells for battleship armour penetration, since nobody had prepared for an overland attack through 1200 Km of dense Malayan jungle. British planners were confident that any attack would start from the see, but General T. Yamashita, nicknamed Malay no Tora for his fearless, lightning tactics, commanding the Japanese, battle hardened, 25th army lead by the elite Imperial Guard Division, had other plans for Singapore and Malaysia. On December 8, the Japanese divisions landed in Singora, Patani and Kota Bahru starting the blitz of the Malay Peninsula, the bicycle infantry moving with lightning speed on dirt roads, through the plantations and jungle, and the engineering units repairing blown up bridges at unbelievable pace. This new application of bicycles for jungle warfare and supply-transport (80 Kg/cycle) was successfully adapted later in the Pacific war, by Vietnamese Gen124

Strength:

2,000 killed Casualties: 5,000 wounded 50,000 captured

eral Giap on the Ho Chi Min Trail. Capturing Penang December 17, Ipoh December 26, Kampar December 29, Kuantan December 30, the Japanese took Kuala Lumpur without resistance on Jan 11, 1942. It took Yamashita's army only 55 days to overrun the entire Malay Peninsula by January 31, 1942 and to cross the Johor strait on February 7 for the final attack on Singapore. British and US military planners had predicted that such an operation would last more than a year. Contradicting all expectations since their landing in Singora, the Japanese made an overland dash of eleven hundred kilometres, fighting ninety-five large and small engagements and repaired more than two hundred and fifty bridges. Thus the troops, on average, fighting two battles, repairing four or five bridges and advancing twenty kilometres every day reached their objective; now the final goal, Singapore lay in front of their eyes. On the evening of February 10, P.M. Winston Churchill cabled General Wavell in Singapore:

of the Imperial General Staff, General Alan Brook] that Percival has over 100.000 men, of whom 33.000 are British and 17.000 Australian. It is doubtful whether the Japanese have as many in the whole Malay Peninsula ... In these circumstances the defenders must greatly outnumber Japanese forces who have crossed the straits, and in a well-contested battle they should destroy them. There must at this stage be no thought of saving the troops or sparing the population. The battle must be fought to the bitter end at all costs. The 18th Division has a chance to make its name in history. Commanders and senior ofcers should die with their troops. The honour of the British Empire and of the British Army is at stake. I rely on you to show no mercy to weakness in any form. With the Russians ghting as they are and the Americans so stubborn at Luzon, the whole reputation of our country and our race is involved. It is expected that every unit will be brought into close contact with the enemy and ght it out.
Wavell ordered Percival to fight to the end, and said that any surrender was out of question.

I think you ought to realise the way we view the situation in Singapore. It was reported to Cabinet by the C.I.G.S. [Chief
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The Japanese, having already won the battle for Malaya, now prepared for the assault on Singapore, a 640 sq. km island a bit larger than Yakushima, with an inviting coastline of 100 km and a not so inviting defence of 100.000 military personell from Britain, Australia, India, Malaya and Singapore Dalforce (Chinese communist volunteers). General Parcival had divided the defence into three combat zones, north, west and south with a reserve in the middle of the island, but the foxy Japanese attack started midnight February 7, 1942 with a landing unopposed on Pulau Ubin faking a major attack from there. The real gravity of the attack became clear on February 8, with a major air and artillery assault on the north-west coast with the first amphibious landings at 9:30 that night at Sarimbun, by the Imperial Guards undeterred by heavy losses from Australian machine-gun fire; the Tengah airfield was captured and landings at Kranji executed Feb 9th. For Yamashita, now in solid control of the north, the next goal was Bukit Timah which was captured by February 11th, whereupon Yamashita called upon Percival to surrender. He declined, so further battles continued for Pasir Panjang, Bukit Chandu with the British falling back to the city perimeter, critically low on

water, food, fuel and ammunition. At the Ford Motor factory in Bukit Timah on the 15th of February 1942 at 18:10 that evening the official surrender was signed. It was a magnificent victory for Japan signalling the end of British military power in the Far East forever. Percival's cable to the supreme command of the American-British-Dutch-Australian forces read: All ranks have done their best. The liberation or occupation (depending on point of view) of Shonan/ Singapore, was now a fact and the Japanese military administration began a painstakingly thorough de(33) British surrender colonisation of Malayan hearts and minds, institutions, legal and illegal organisations, as well as the general public at large. The recruiting of Indian soldiers for a new pro-Japanese Indian National Army was highly successful, resulting in approximately 45.000 Indian soldiers fighting the British in Burma from 1942 until 1945. On October 21, 1943, the Provisional Government of Free India established its first headquarters in Singa126

pore, and the Kempeitai (military police) imposed harsh measures especially on ethnic Chinese many of whom had been supporting both Chiang Kaishek's Koumuntang against Japan and the British colonial system, being Singapore's privileged elite and wealthy business class. Of course many British and Australian secret operatives went underground and began organising sabotage-commando units, mainly against the harbour and Japanese shipping and supplies, such as Operation Jaywick, -Gustavus, -Sruggle and -Rimau, resulting in a number of executions of arrested commandoes considered terrorists by the Kempeitai.

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The Burma campaign The Japanese strategy in South East Asia included taking control of Burma, its raw materials, oil fields and rubber-plantations as well as closing the important Burma road completed in 1938, thus stopping US/UK military supply of Chiang Kai-Shek in Yunnan. In mid January 1942 the Japanese 15th army under the command of Lt. Gen. Shojiro Iida attacked Burma forcing their way through steep jungle covered hills, taking the airfields at Tavoy and Mergui January 18. Rangoon, defended by Indian divisions, The Burmese Rifles, volunteer US pilots (The Flying Tigers) and a British Armoured Brigade Under General Alexander and Field Marshal Archibald Wavell was evacuated March 7, 1942 after a scorched earth policy was implemented. The British hoped to stop the Japanese advance in central Burma with the help of the Chinese Expeditionary Force defending Mandalay but instead of slowing down, the Japanese attack gained momentum. Bringing in two divisions from Singapore and Java, using captured British trucks to supply their forces they captured Yanangyaung and the important Yunnan-Burma road closing down the last overland US supply route of Chiang Kai-Shek.
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(34) Japanese Conquest of Burma

The British Burma government fell back to Myitkyina while the Burma Corpse retreated to India, disorganised stragglers and refugees filling the roads and the Chinese troops cut of from China. The Chinese entering India were put under the command of US General Stilwell, retrained and re-equipped while many of the Chinese soldiers trying to reach Yunnan died on the way ending the largest British lead retreat in military history. General Alexander gave the order to withdraw all men to India April 26, a 1000 mile retreat with the rear guard of British-, Indiantroops and Ghurkhas entering India end of May, totally exhausted, ragged and pitiful riddled with malaria and dysentery. The five month Burma campaign had cost more than 10.000 British and 3700 Burmese casualties as well as among other material losses 116 RAF planes lost.

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FDR's executive order of February 2, 1942 At the same time on the other side of the Pacific FDR's executive order of February 2 1942 was being implemented. This was a Presidential decree directing the internment of 120.000 Japanese Americans to so called War Relocation Camps, a dressed up version of basic concentration camps. All Japanese Americans on the US West Coast were interned while in Hawaii, where one third of the population, or 150.000 souls were Japanese Americans only 1800 were interned. Of the total internees 62% were US citizens. Also in a little-known secret program from December 1941 to February 1948, the US government orchestrated and financed the mass abduction, forcible deportation and internment of 2.264 men, women and children of Japanese ancestry from 13 Latin American countries. Stripped of their passports en route, they were, on arrival in USA, declared and accused as illegal aliens and jailed. There was further unprecedented action towards Japanese in Latin America, where there were a considerable population of first and second generation Japanese immigrants holding Cuban, Brazilian, Chil-

ean, Bolivian, etc citizenships. In Brazil with the largest Japanese immigrant community of 250.000 next only to Manchuria, only 1000 families, perceived dangerous, were forcibly relocated to Paranagua, the rest, although Brazil was a close ally of the US, were left in place, considered valuable and productive citizens of the Brazilian economy. In central America and the Caribbean lesser Japanese communities suffered different degrees of dislocation and trauma. In Cuba the entire Japanese population was interned on the prison island, Isle of Pines, and the very isolated Japanese colony in La Colmena, Paraguay was left intact. Bolivia cooperated closely with the US government arresting and sending a large number of its Japanese-Bolivian citizens to the USA, where they were arrested by the FBI for illegal immigration. Run by the Special War Problems Division of the State Department the arrests and illegal deportations were top secret and the 2.264 Japanese Latin American citizens, forcibly brought to the USA were interned in camps run by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

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Although they were civilians, the internees and their families were treated as POW's in the hope that they could be useful for exchanges of American POW's in Japan, inventing a completely new version of human trafficking. Over 800 were included in two prisoner exchanges. This blatant abuse of the most basic human rights and international conventions upgrading kidnapping and hostage-taking to US government policy was widely reported in the Japanese press. It was now clear that in this war, for the first time since the bloody Thirty Years War, no prisoners would be taken and the targeting civilians was an important part of American military strategy, convincing even committed Japanese pacifists, that there was no alternative to fighting the US until death.

(35) Japanese Peruvians on their way to US internment. Panama canal zone April 2, 1942.

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Chapter 16

BIG BATTLES FOR SMALL ISLANDS

Battle of the Java Sea February 27, 1942

USA-UK-HollandAustralia Strength: Casualties: 2 heavy cruisers 3 light cruisers 9 destroyers 2 cruisers sunk 3 destroyers sunk

Japan 2 heavy cruisers 2 light cruisers 14 destroyers 10 transports 1 destroyer damaged 2,300 killed

ers Yudachi, Samidare, Murasame, Harusame, Minegumo, Asagumo, Yukikaze, Tokitsukaze, Amatsukaze, Hatsukaze, Yamakaze, Kawakaze, Sazanami and Ushio gathered to strike at Java. On February 27 - the ABDA naval force including cruisers HMS Exeter, USS Houston, HNLMS De Ruyter and HNLMS Java, HMAS Perth, destroyers HMS Electra, HMS Encounter, HMS Jupiter, HNLMS Kortenaer, HNLMS Witte de With, USS Alden, USS John D. Edwards, USS John D. Ford and USS Paul Jones engaged the Japanese in the Java sea at about 16:00, the battle raging until midnight with heavy losses inflicted on the American-British-DutchAustralian fleet. Exeter was critically damaged, Kortenaer sunk, Elactra crippled and abandoned, Jupiter sunk and De Ruyter and Java sunk by one devastating long lance (Type 93 torpedo) salvo, with commanding Dutch Admiral Karel Doorman and most of the crew going down with HNLMS De Ruyter. On the Japanese side only Asagumo was retired because of damage and further two American and one Dutch destroyer were sunk as they attempted to escape to Australia, thus the ABDA naval force almost totally destroyed with 10 ships and 2.173 sailors lost, ending Allied naval op-

The Japanese invasion of Dutch East Indies, advanced from Palau capturing bases in Sarawak, southern Philippines, Borneo and Celebes with the invasion convoy approaching oil- rich Balikpapan in Borneo through the Makassar Strait. On February 13 - in the battle of Palembang, the combined American-British-Dutch-Australian naval force engaged the Japanese convoy under the command of Rear Admiral Nishimura, but could not prevent the Japanese from capturing the major oil-port of Sumatra. On February 19 - the Japanese First Air Fleet attacked the port at Darwin, stopping ABDA supplies to East Indies as the Japanese convoy escorted by cruisers Nachi, Haguro, Naka, Jintsu and the destroy133

erations in South-East Asia and in the unopposed Japanese invasion of Java February 28, 1942. The Indian Ocean Raids by the Imperial Japanese Navy on April 5th and 9th near Colombo, Ceylon additionally resulted in the sinking of Royal Navy Cruisers HMS Cornwall and HMS Dosetshire and aircraft carrier HMS Hermes and Australian Navy destroyer HMAS Vampire.

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The Battle of the Coral Sea

Allied 2 fleet carriers 9 cruiser 13 destroyers Strength: 2 oilers 1 seaplane tenders 128 carrier aircraft Japan

Losses:

2 fleet carriers 1 light carrier 9 cruisers 15 destroyers 5 minesweepers 12 transports 127 carrier aircraft 1 light carrier 1 fleet carrier 1 destroyer 3 small warships 1 destroyer 1 fleet carrier 1 oiler damaged 1 fleet carrier damaged 69 aircraft 92 aircraft 966 killed

(36) Coral Sea At the same time Admiral Yamamoto was planning a major operation in June in the central Pacific near Midway Atoll, hoping to trap and destroy the main American carrier force which miraculously had escaped Pearl Harbour, so he detached some of his large carriers and placed Admiral Inoue in charge of the naval part of Mo sakusen. Unfortunately for Yamamoto the US Navy's Office of Naval Communications was able to decipher and read 85% of the Japanese communication signals broadcasted in the Ro code, thus giving the American
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On May 4-8, 1942 the first battle in naval history where two enemy fleets fought without seeing each others fleets, took place in the Coral Sea between the Imperial Japanese Navy lead by Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue and the combined American-Australian navies and air forces under the command of Admiral Frank Fletcher. The Japanese objective was to take control of Port Moresby, New Guinea, establishing a base there thus cutting the supply line between Australia and USA the operation called Mo sakusen.

Admiral Nimitz, facing superior Japanese Pilot training and Naval Tactics, a big advantage. On May 3 the Japanese took possession of Tulagi and began building a seaplane base, while early on May 5 Fletcher received a message from Pearl Harbour that, according to radio intelligence, the Japanese were planning to land at Port Moresby on May 10 and that their carrier fleet was probably going to be operating close to the invasion convoy. This information made it possible for Fletchers task force to complete refuelling on May 6 and getting ready to do battle on May 7. Early morning both parties sent out scouting planes and search aircraft trying to locate each others main carrier groups first; being able to bomb and torpedo enemy flattops first was the key to success in this new aerial-naval warfare, which the Japanese were mastering superiorly. Thanks to their code-braking ability however it was the American Lexington air group that first struck and sank Shoho with only 203 of 834 crew surviving making May 7 a black day for the Japanese postponing the Port Moresby landing to May 12. The second day of the carrier battle started early May 8, when both parties spotted each others carrier groups and the Japanese carriers launching a combined force of 18 fighters, 33 dive bombers, and 18
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torpedo planes under the command of Lt. Commander Kakuichi Takahashi at 09:15. The Yorktown group of 6 fighters, 24 dive bombers, 9 torpedo planes got on its way by 09:15 with the Lexington's group committing 9 fighters, 15 dive bombers, 12 torpedo planes at 09:25.

(37) The flight officers on Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carrier Shokaku aboard the ship on December 6, 1941, the day before their attack on Pearl Harbor. Second row, 4th from right is fighter division officer Lieutenant Tadashi Kaneko. To his left is air officer Commander Wada, Captain Koji Shiroshima, and Lieutenant Commander Kakuichi Takahashi, the air group commander.

The Yorktown dive bombers attacked Shokaku causing heavy damage to the flight- and hangar decks and the carrier, with 223 of the crew killed or wounded retired from the battle at 12:15 while the Lexington's planes missed Shokaku with 11 of their torpedos. The Japanese attack on the US carriers began 11:30 with the 19 Shokaku dive bombers led by Takahashi lining up on Lexington minutes after the torpedo planes began their run while Zuikaku's flying ace Tamotsu Ema commanded the remaining 14 bombers attacking Yorktown. Lexington was hit with two bombs causing severe fire and later a huge explosion and Yorktown's centre flight deck was penetrated by a 250 Kg armour-piercing bomb exploding four decks below causing severe damage and killing or wounding 66 men. At 12:00 the US and Japanese strike groups were returning to their respective carriers, passing each other, resulting in air to air combats and

Takahashi's aircraft shot down killing him. Lexington, burning out of control, the crew began abandoning ship at 17:07 which sank at 19:52, battle damaged Shokaku reaching Kure, Japan on May 17, Zikaku on May 21 and Yorktown reaching Pearl Harbour May 27, ending the first of this new type of naval warfare, where the warships never sighted or fired directly at each other. Instead manned aircraft in carrier-versus-carrier duels, acted as offensive artillery increasing distance and speed, dramatically compressing decision making time and making code- braking and information communication essential. The experienced Japanese carrier air crews were better, and achieved greater results as well as the Japanese attack on May 8 was better coordinated than the US attacks, but the Japanese loss of 90 pilots killed in the battle started the irreplaceable decimation of Japan's veteran carrier air crews in the following months.

(38) Tamotsu Ema leader of the Zuikaku bombers

The Battle of the Coral Sea was a tactical victory for Japan sinking 42.000 tons versus 19.000 tons sunk by the Americans, but it was a strategic victory for the US/Australia turning back a Japanese invasion force for the first time, averting the fall of Port Moresby, vi137

tal to US- Australian shipping and Naval support. Japanese and US carriers would cross swords again in the battles of Midway, the Eastern Solomons and the Santa Cruz Islands in 1942 and the Philippine Sea in 1944, all significant battles of the Pacific War. From now on it was clear that the control of a land based unsinkable air field near any Pacific naval battle location would make a big difference.

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The battle of Midway (Pihemanu Kauihelani in Hawaiian)

The outcome of the battle of Midway was due to a) The outcome of the battle of the Coral Sea, with 90 veteran Japanese pilots killed and Shokaku and Zikaku damaged not being on their planned posts at Midway. b) US code-breaking assets. c) The unsinkable carrier Midway atoll. d) Japanese battle fatigue within the Kido Butai being in constant battle for the past 6 month. e) A good deal of US luck. By 1942 it had become obvious that victory in naval warfare depended almost entirely on airpower, airand carrier crew excellence and the control of a land based airfield in the vicinity of the battle, almost essential. The Japanese preparation for the battle of Midway, June 4-7, 1942 was, compared to the perfect, precise, disciplined planning and execution of previous naval battles, almost sloppy, as Admiral Nagumo would fight at Midway with only four fleet carriers, namely Kaga, Akagi, Hiryu and Soryu. Additionally there were not enough strike aircraft to replace the losses of previous battles as well as most of the airplanes had been in operation since November 1941, all of which meant that all Japanese carriers had fewer
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US 3 carriers 25 support ships 360 aircraft (1/3 land based) 1 carrier sunk 1 destroyer sunk 150 aircraft lost 307 killed

Japan 4 carriers 2 battleships 15 support cruisers and destroyers 248 carrier aircraft 4 carriers sunk 1 cruiser sunk 248 aircraft lost 2,013 killed

Strength:

Casualties and losses:

(39) The 6.2 sq km Midway atoll

than their normal aircraft strength and only a few in reserve. Battle fatigue was also a factor since Japanese carriers had been in constant operations since December 7, 1941 so the strategic scouting in air by Kawanishi flying boats and by submarines was not up to standard, thus the information about the US Navy movements only spotty. On the American side Admiral Nimitz's codebreakers at HYPO in Hawaii had broken the JN- 25 code, and due to a delay in a new Japanese codebook introduction, could confirm the impending Japanese attack on Midway, the date as 4 or 5 June and the complete Japanese order of the battle. The Americans knew when, where and at what strength the Japanese would appear, while the Japanese knew almost nothing about US movements and plans. A good deal of luck and fate rewarded the stubbornness of the commander of a squadron of US divebombers, McClusky, carrying on the search for the Japanese fleet in spite of running low on fuel, spotting destroyer Arashi, by chance arriving in perfect time to attack with armed Japanese aircraft still on the hangar decks, refuelling in progress.

At 10:22 the Enterprise air group hit Kaga, and Akagi while Yorktowns aircraft targeted Soryu, leaving all three carriers heavily ablaze within a few minutes and Hiryu the sole Japanese carrier launching a counterattack sinking Yorktown and her protection destroyer Hammann. Later that day, dive bombers from Enterprise attacked Hiryu setting her ablaze in spite of being defended by a dozen Zero fighters, and sinking her with Vice Admiral Yamaguchi choosing to go down with his ship, Japan thus losing one of her best naval commanders. The unsinkable carrier, Midway island, making landing possible for American bombers even when their home-carriers were sunk or damaged, an option not available for the Japanese pilots, made the difference. Having lost four of her six fleet carriers as well as a large number of the best air crews, Japan's defenses were weakened dramatically, since replacement could not be sustained by her industry, unlike the USA whose GDP being five times Japan's, could easily tolerate ten Pearl Harbours.

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In the book Shattered Sword. The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway by J. Parshall and A. Tully the newest analysis of the battle of Midway is very interesting:

The Battle of Midway has rightly remained one of the most important and widely studied engagements in naval history. It is, in the eyes of many, the quintessential contest between Japan and America - the decisive naval battle in the Pacic war. This is understandable, since Midway contains all the timeless elements that dene a classic clash of arms - an apparent mismatch in the strength of the combatants, a seesaw battle with the initiative passing back and forth, acts of tremendous heroism on both sides, and an improbable climax. It is a battle that has rightly captured the imagination of subsequent generations seeking to understand both the engagement itself and its effects on the course of the greater conict of which it was a part. By any measure, June 4, 1942, was a watershed date, after which the Pacic war entered an entirely new phase. For the Japanese, Midway abruptly rang down the curtain on a triumphant rst six months of war and largely destroyed Japans ability to initiate major new offensives in the Pacic.
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The destruction of the Imperial Navys four nest aircraft carriers - Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu, and Soryu - forever ruined the world- class naval aviation force with which it had opened hostilities. While the imperial eet remained a force to be reckoned with, it never regained the combination of material and qualitative superiority that made it so feared during the initial phase of the conict.
On August 7, 1942 the US initiated the landing on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, a battle lasting until February 9, 1943.

Battle of Guadalcanal

USA and Australia, eventually intending to capture the major Japanese base at Rabaul.
Japan

USA Strength: Casualties: 7,100 killed 29 ships lost 615 aircraft lost

60,000 ground forces 35,000 ground forces 31,000 killed 38 ships lost 650 aircraft lost

Landing 10.000 marines at Tulagi and Guadalcanal against 2.200 Japanese defenders, the attacking marines landing on Tulagi had to overcome fierce resistance by the Imperial Japanese Navy personnel fighting to the last man the Americans suffering 122 killed. The 11.000 marines landing on Guadalcanal island met much less resistance securing the airport, being under construction, by 16:00 August 8, capturing the Japanese construction equipment. Japanese naval aircraft based on Rabaul under the command of Sadayoshi Yamada attacked the landing forces several times sinking US transport Elliot and the destroyer USS Jarvis. Near Savo island that night, allied warships under the command of British Rear Admiral Crutchley were surprised and defeated by Japanese cruisers, commanded by Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa, based in Rabaul.

(40) Solomon Islands The US marines outnumbered and overwhelmed the Japanese defenders and landed on the islands of Guadalcanal, Tulagi and Nggela, capturing an airfield with the objective of securing the sea lanes between
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One Australian and three American heavy cruisers were sunk (Canberra, Astoria, Quincy and Vincennes), two destroyers and one cruiser badly damaged but Mikawa, worried about daylight, failed to follow up and did not attack the allied transport ships while the opportunity was there, thus making a big mistake. In an astonishing effort the marines finished the airport by August 18 naming it Henderson Field after marine aviator Lofton Henderson killed in the battle of Midway. Still not aware of the Japanese deathdefying spirit of fighting, the Marines dispatched reconnaissance patrols to find and capture Japanese willing to surrender, resulting in patrols coming under fierce Japanese attacks, some completely annihilated and only a few Korean workers surrendering. Underestimating the allied forces, the Japanese high command ordered to retake Guadalcanal but the Ichiki regiment, attacking frontally with only about 1000 men, were defeated with just 128 soldiers escaping the battle of Tenaru. On August 24 in the battle of Eastern Solomons, the Japanese light carrier Ryujo is sunk and the US carrier Enterprise is damaged as well as a few days later, the American carrier Saratoga is torpedoed
143

near San Christobal. On the night of September 12 the Kawaguchi battalion attacked the US marines between Lunga River and Lunga ridge but failed to rout and annihilate the enemy in the vicinity of the Guadalcanal Island airfield, suffering 850 killed in prolonged hand to hand combat, finally retreating and reporting defeat to their commander Hyakutake on Rabaul. This triggered an emergency session at the supreme HQ in Tokyo, the Japanese finally realising that the battle of Guadalcanal was developing into a major battle of the war, with decisive strategic importance. Several engagements and local naval- and ground battles later, with US carrier Wasp sunk and North Carolina torpedoed September 15, heavy cruisers Furutaka and Fubuki sunk October 11-12, and battleships Kongo and Haruna shelling the US positions, the battle for the Henderson Airfield commenced October 24 followed by the battle of Santa Cruz and the sinking of US carrier Hornet October 26. In the following Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, November 12-15, Japan loses battleships Hiei and Kirishima, heavy cruiser Kinugasa and three destroyers while the Americans lose Atlanta, San Francisco,

Juneau plus seven destroyers while heavy cruisers Suzuya and Maya bombard Henderson Field on November 13. Finally upon additional naval and ground engagements, Japan evacuates Guadalcanal February 1-7, 1943 admiral Nagumo stating that

Kiska, Admiral Hosogaya, although enjoying superior firepower, flailed to completely annihilate all the American warships and retreated too soon, fearing US airpower, ending Japanese attempts to surface runs to the the Aleutians and resulting in American invasion of Attu.

The battle was a tactical win but a shattering strategical loss for Japan.
With the excellent carrier aircrews decimated and no quick replacement possible and no hope to mach the American Industrial output in material and manpower Japanese decisive victory became elusive and her offensive capabilities limited while the Americans were rapidly replacing and even increasing their forces. Thousands of kilometres to the west the German defeat February 2, 1943 ended Operation Barbarossa, signalling the beginning of German/Italian defeat and obviously strengthening the US/British/Soviet position in the Pacific. On March 26 in the battle of Komandorsky Islands, in an effort to resupply the Japanese garrison at
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Battle of Attu and Kiska

USA Strength: Casualties: 144,000 1,481 killed 3,400 wounded 225 aircraft destroyed 8,500

Japan

high ground resulting in over 4000 American casualties in hand to hand combat lasting until May 29 when Colonel Yamazaki led a large banzai charge, shocking the US and Canadian forces. After a brutal close-quarter combat the Japanese force was killed almost to the last man with only 28 prisoners taken. The invasion of Kiska island by 34.400 US-Canadian combined forces found the island abandoned since the Japanese had managed to successfully remove the troops under fog-cover on July 28, the American Air force having bombed the abandoned positions for three weeks. At the same time in the Solomon Islands on July 6 a Japanese Kolombangara reenforcement group of 10 destroyers, loaded with 2.600 combat troops, led by Admiral Teruo Akiyama's flagship Niizuki engaged US light cruisers Helena, Honolulu and St Louis in the brief Battle of Kula Gulf, the Americans sinking Niizuki, killing Admiral Akiyama. On August 4 the 36.000 tons USS Intrepid is launched further strengthening the US Pacific Navy, and on August 6 the Americans, having learned their lessons well, launching their torpedoes, before firing their guns and giving away their position, defeat a Japanese convoy off Kolombangara. With 36 torpedoes in
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4,350 killed 7 warships sunk

(41) Attu Island, Kiska island The American recapture of Attu began on May 11, 1943 and became very bloody since the Japanese led by Colonel Yasuyo Yamazaki, had dug defences on

the water in 63 seconds they sink three destroyers with no losses to themselves; over 1.000 Japanese soldiers and sailors were lost mostly by drowning. No longer being able to supply their garrison on Kolombangara the Japanese soon abandoned the island. Incidentally future US president Kennedy's boat PT-109 was rammed and sunk by the destroyer Amagiri, but Kennedy had the luck of being saved by natives in a canoe. On November 20, the United States Marines land on Tarawa starting a second offensive in the central Pacific after Guadalcanal; it was the first time the Americans were going to face a strong Japanese opposition to an amphibious landing, and as it turned out, the Japanese intended fighting to the last man, the marines taking heavy losses.

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Battle of Tarawa

USA Strength: 35,000 Losses: 1,000 killed 2,300 wounded

Japan 3,000 and 2,000 labourers all but 146 of 5,000 killed

well defended so the Japanese garrison on Tarawa Atoll had to be taken first. The Japanese were very well aware of the strategic importance of the Gilberts Islands and Tarawa, investing thoroughly in fortifications and stationed a force of 2.600 elite navy unit led by Commander Takeo Sugai. His defence included tanks, coastal defence guns in concrete bunkers, 500 pillboxes, forty artillery pieces around the island and trenches connecting most points of the defence system. The garrison commander, Kaigun Shosho Keiji Shibasaki, boasted that

it would take one million men a hundred years to conquer Tarawa.

The US invasion force was not one million but the largest yet assembled with 17 aircraft carriers, 12 battleships, 12 cruisers, 66 destroyers, 36 transports and 35.000 soldiers and marines with the naval guns opening fire November 20, 1943 shelling over one and a half hours, only interrupted by carrier based dive bomber attacks. The marines starting their attack on the lagoon, were convinced that the bombardment had eliminated the defenders on the tiny island, but the Japanese quickly
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(42) Tarawa Island The Tarawa invasion was a part of the American island hopping plan with the objective to take the Mariannas Islands from where land-based US bombing raids against mainland Japan could eventually be launched.The Mariannas were heavily fortified and

emerged from their bunkers and manned their gun positions, shelling the American boats on the reef, knocking out half the amphibious vessels, effectively stopping the first assault. On the second day the marines managed to cut the Japanese defence into two, calling in offshore naval fire slowly progressing, taking out machine guns and defences, the entire western part of the island in US control by the end of the day on November 21 and the atoll commander Shibazaki killed. On the third day, November 22, the Americans consolidated their positions with tanks and heavy equipment gaining the upper hand by nightfall. The expected Japanese counter assault, next day at 04:00 left 200 attackers dead in front of the US lines. Only one Japanese officer, 16 enlisted men and 129 Koreans were alive at the end of the battle. Total Japanese casualties were 4700 dead and 1.000 US marines killed with 2.300 wounded and an additional 700 US Navy personnel dead; a surprising outcome of the battle considering that the US forces were seven times larger than the Japanese defenders. This triggered a storm of protests in the US and demands of explanation of the high losses of taking such a small island in the middle of nowhere.

Some US generals later admitted the Tarawa was not worth it. Both sides would later apply the lessons of Tarawa in the Battle of Iwo Jima. In the meantime the Cairo Conference of November 22-26 attended by FDR, Churchill and Chiang KaiShek with his wife, supposed to address the future of Asia after an unconditional surrender of Japan, did not work well because Stalin refused to participate since Chiang was attending, thus the Teheran meeting two days later with Stalin was arranged. The Cairo declaration, signed on November 27, 1943 turned out to be meaningless, stating that the allies would continue military force until Japan's unconditional surrender, stripping Japan of all Pacific islands including Okinawa and awarding China with Manchuria, Formosa, Pescadores and promising Korean independence in due course. FDR even offered the Ryuku's to Chiang but he said no thank you.

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Battle of Kwajalein

stroying almost all beach defence ahead of the Americans landing amphibious trucks, tanks, armoured vehicles and bulldozers.
Japan

USA Strength: Losses: 53,000 372 killed 1,600 wounded

about 8,300 8,122 killed 100 captured

The Americans had two objectives; taking the islands of Roi-Namur in the north and Kwajalein in the south. Having decrypted Japanese communications, they knew the defence structures/locations, and air superiority was ensured by bombing the airfield on Roi-Namur destroying almost all Japanese planes in the Marshalls on January 29; the 7th infantry division captured the small island Carlson, establishing overwhelming artillery base there, carpeting the 4Km long and 800m wide Kwajalein Island's surface with a devastating combination of B- 24 bombers, naval heavy shelling, and artillery fire.

It looked like the whole island had been picked up 20.000 feet and then dropped
an eyewitness wrote. (43) Kwajalein, Marshall Islands An awesome armada left Pearl Harbour on January 22, 1944. A total of 375 ships with 700 carrier planes headed for Kwajalein, initiating Operation Flintlock January 31, firing 7.000 12 cm shells and 29.000 artillery rounds, covering every sq. m of the islands, de149

Nevertheless there was still resistance, the Americans estimating that 1500 of the 5000 Japanese were still alive. The airfield on Roi was captured on February 1, and Namur fell the next day with only 51 of the original Japanese defenders surviving.

The capture of Kwajalein demonstrated that the new US overkill tactics and new amphibious strategy rendered conventional beach defences useless. The overwhelming naval and air bombardment demanded a deep, fortified, tunnel defence strategy.

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Battle of Eniwetok

USA Strength: Losses: 10,000 200 airplanes 350 killed and missing

Japan 2,800 500 airplanes, 300 tanks and 130 naval ships all killed only 16 captured

Upon the large naval bombardment of Eniwetok February 17, the marines landed on Engebi the next day only opposed by little resistance soon securing the island, but on Eniwetok, after only a short bombardment, the Americans were stopped and it took until February 21 to take the tiny island. This mistake was not to be repeated again and during the rest of their island hopping campaign the Americans made sure that every sq. m. before landings were shelled and bombarded, e.g. 900 tons of explosives were dropped on Parry Island by USS Tennessee and USS Pennsylvania. By February 23 the whole atoll was in American hands.

(44) Eniwetok Atoll

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Battle of Admiralty Islands

USA/Australia Strength: Losses: 35,000 330 killed 1,200 wounded

Japan 4,000 3,300 killed 75 captured

mark archipelago, renamed New Britain when occupied by and awarded to Australia by the Leage of Nations. Given Australian racism and record of Aborigine treatment the Australian administration of New Guinies was not attractive from the Papuans point of view. On February 29, 1944 an American force landed on Los Negros, rather easily to begin with, but soon a furious battle started for the control of the Admiralty Achipelago. The Japanese defended Seeadler Harbour, Hauwei Island and Manus in bloody counter attacks, but as they gradually ran out of food and ammunition, the fighting became unequal and a last stand by fifty Japanese in the Papitalai Hills on March 24 ended organised resistance on Los Negros and Manus. A diary found on a fallen Japanese soldier describes the condition the Japanese defenders had endured:

(45) Manus Island This battle was a part of the New Guinea campaign, the islands held by Japan, having established a strong base at Rabaul early on. A bit smaller than Kyushu and bigger than Taiwan the island originally was a part of German New Guinea called the the Bis152

28 March Last night's duty was rather quiet except for the occasional mortar and rie re that could be heard. According to the conference of the various unit leaders, it has been decided to abandon the present position and withdraw. The preparation for

this has been made. However, it seems as though this has been cancelled and we will rmly hold this position. Ah! This is honorable defeat and I suppose we must be proud of the way we have handled ourselves. Only our names will remain, and this is something I don't altogether like. Yes, the lives of those remaining, 300 of us, are now limited to a few days. 30 March This is the eighth day since we began the withdrawal. We have been wandering around and around the mountain roads because of the enemy. We have not yet arrived at our destination but we have completely exhausted our rations. Our bodies are becoming weaker and weaker, and this hunger is getting unbearable. 31 March Although we are completely out of rations, the march continues. When will we reach Lorengau? Or will this unit be annihilated in the mountains? As we go along, we throw away our equipment and weapons one by one.

1 April Arrived at native shack. According to a communication, friendly troops in Lorengau cannot help but withdraw. Hereafter there is no choice but to live as the natives do.
There were still Japanese forces on the outlying islands but air superiority and command of the sea allowed the Allies to end the battle officially May 18, 1944, starting the construction of a major air and naval base becoming important for further campaigns in the Pacific.

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The Bougainville Campaign

naval base at Buin. In November 1943 US marines attacked Bougainville at Torokina, established a beachhead and began constructing three air fields, but with Japanese well camouflaged artillery on high ground in the hills along Torokina River, heavy losses was inficted on the Americans, and fierce combat for Hellzapoppin Ridge lasted most of December not being captured by the Marines before Christmas Day. It took US infantry and Australian troops bloody fighting until April 18, 1944 when the last of the Japanese defenders were killed or withdrew. The Japanese withdrawing to the interior, cut off from supplies, tried to survive by farming and suffered 8.200 killed and 17.000 dead of disease and malnutrition, the rest, 23.000 surrendering on August 21, 1945.

USA/Australia/ New Zealand Strength: 126,000 troops 700 aircraft

Japan 60,000 troops (including labor personnel) 150 aircraft

(46) Bougainville Island In April 1942 the Japanese had landed on Bougainville and constructed a number of airfields across the island, the main ones at Buka and Kahili, and a

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Battle of Saipan

USA Strength: 71,000 31,000

Japan

rines landing on June 15 from 300 Landing Vehicles on the west coast. The Japanese defence, was well organised, so artillery and machine gun emplacements destroyed 20 amphibious tanks, but their counterattack at night was repulsed by the marines and the Americans took the Aslito airfield on June 18. Due to the Imperial Navy losses in the battle of the Philippine Sea, resupply of the garrison on Saipan had become hopeless and the Japanese had nowhere to retreat, so their commander, General Yoshitsugu Saito organised defence in the hills of central Saipan around Mount Tapotchau. The fighting was bloody and intense with the American nicknames, such as Purple Heart Ridge, Hell's Pocket, Death Valley going down in history, the Japanese hiding in well camouflaged caves, executing hit and run night attacks, the Americans using flamethrowers to clear the bunkers. The combat chaos deteriorated to a point when there was no distinction any longer between civilians and troops and General Saito planned and ordered a final suicidal banzai charge by his remaining 3000 men followed by barely armed wounded and civilians with bamboo spears, the attack becoming the biggest Banzai charge of the Pacific war leaving 650 Americans
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Losses:

3,000 killed

24,000 killed 5,000 suicides 921 POW's 22,000 civilians dead 10 000 wounded

(47) Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands The Invasion of Saipan began on June 13, 1944 with fifteen battleships firing 165.000 shells and 8.000 Ma-

dead and wounded and 4.300 Japanese killed. On July 9, 1944 16:15 Admiral Turner declared Saipan secure, with 3.000 Americans dead, the entire Japanese garrison of 30.000 and 22.000 civilians killed and 10.000 Americans wounded. General Saito committed seppuku in a cave on July 10 his final order being:

I am addressing the ofcers and men of the Imperial Army on Saipan. For more than twenty days since the American Devils attacked, the ofcers, men, and civilian employees of the Imperial Army and Navy on this island have fought well and bravely. Everywhere they have demonstrated the honor and glory of the Imperial Forces. I expected that every man would do his duty. Heaven has not given us an opportunity. We have not been able to utilize fully the terrain. We have fought in unison up to the present time, but now we have no materials with which to ght and our artillery for attack has been completely destroyed. Our comrades have fallen one after another. Despite the bitterness of defeat, we pledge "Seven lives to repay our country".
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The barbarous attack of the enemy is being continued. Even though the enemy has occupied only a corner of Saipan we are dying without avail under the violent shelling and bombing. Whether we attack or whether we stay where we are, there is only death. However, in death there is life. We must utilized this opportunity to exalt true Japanese manhood. I will advance with those who remain to deliver still another blow to the American Devils, and leave my bones on Saipan as a bulwark of the Pacic. As it says in the "Senjinkun" (Battle Ethics), "I will never suffer the disgrace of being taken alive," and "I will offer up the courage of my soul and calmly rejoice in living by the eternal principle." Here I pray with you for the eternal life of the Emperor and the welfare of the country and I advance to seek out the enemy. Follow me!!

One Japanese officer, JIA Captain Sakae Oba kept on conducting an organised guerilla war, hiding during the day and fighting in the night holding out in the jungle until December 1, 1945.

search-chain of the island, but could not find Captain Oba, who kept fighting for 16 months, until his commanding officer was brought in from Tokyo, ordering Oba to surrender using a megaphone. Only then did Captain Oba and his 46 men lay down their arms, and march out of the jungle singing.

(48) Captain Oba and his men

The Americans tried to defeat him and his men, even conducting a 10.000 man strong fingertip to fingertip
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Battle of Angaur

from USS Wasp the island defended by 1.400 Japanese troops under the command of overall Palau commander General Sadae Inoue.
Japan 1,400 1,340 killed 60 captured

USA Strength: Losses: 15,000 260 killed 2,400 wounded

September 17, six days later the US 81st infantry division landed on the northern and southern coasts but as they advanced Japanese resistance hardened. The fighting got bloody as the Americans advanced on a hill near lake Salome where the Japanese defenders were making their last stand, this time not making banzai charges but committed to selling their life as dearly as possible. From September 20 they repulsed repeated US attacks with artillery, mortar and machine gun fire, but after the Japanese ran out of water and food, the fighting finally ended September 30, after the Americans used bulldozers to seal the entrances of the caves killing everybody inside. The 81st division moved directly to the battle of Peleliu where the US 1st marine division was in extremely difficult fighting.

(49) Angaur Island The bombardment of Angaur a small volcanic island 5 Km long and located 10 Km from Pelelui began September 11, 1944 by USS Tennessee and dive-bombers
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Battle of Pelelui, Palau

USA Strength: Losses: 28,000 1,800 killed 8,000 wounded

Japan 11,000 10,700 killed 200 captured

the airfield, establishing fortified bunkers, underground positions taking full advantage of the existing 500 limestone caves, connecting them by tunnels installing heavy steel sliding doors for flame-thrower and napalm protection and with multiple openings for both artillery and machine guns. Additionally the Japanese blasted positions into Umurbogol for 81 mm and 150 mm mortars as well as 20 mm machine cannons, connecting the whole vast system with tunnels allowing evacuation and reoccupation of defence positions as needed. Also thousands of mines and explosive devices were laid on the beaches and coral reefs especially on The Point which was strengthened with a sealed 47 mm gun position and six 20 mm machine cannons. This was a radical change of Japanese tactics, proving to be very efficient when confronted with overwhelming enemy artillery and air power superiority. The American Navy began pre-invasion bombardment on September 12, with the battleships Pennsylvania, Maryland, Mississippi, Tennessee, Idaho, heavy cruisers Colombus, Indianapolis, Louisville, Minneapolis and Portland, light cruisers Cleveland, Denver, and Honolulu as well as three carriers and five light carriers surrounding the small island dropping 14" shells, 16" rounds, 500 pound bombs and
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(50) Pelelui and Palau Islands There were a total of about 30.000 Japanese troops on Palau, of which 11.000 men defended Pelelui, the organisation of the defence led by Colonel Kunio Nakagawa. He concentrated on an inland defence, anchored around and in Pelelui's highest point, Mount Umurbogol overlooking most of the island including

80.000 50 caliber bullets on the island, the 1st Marines landing 8:30 September 15, convinced that all japanese positions were destroyed. Opening the steel doors the Japanese opened fire with heavy artillery, 47 mm and 20 mm machine guns wiping out 60 landing crafts. Casualties were horrific as the occupants of the knocked out LVT's had to wade ashore in machine-gun fire, many loosing rifles and other equipment. At the end of the day the marines held on to a 3 km stretch of beach and nothing else, at a cost of 200 killed and 900 wounded, but US General Rupertus was still not aware of the radical change of Japanese island-defence tactics. Capturing the airfield, the American Corsair planes began landing September 26, starting dive bombing missions across Pelelui rocketing cave openings and napalm- attacks against the occupants. The Point was captured after bloody hand to hand combat, the attacking US company reduced to 18 men suffering 157 casualties in the battle for The Point. Next, a particularly bloody battle took place on what the Americans christened Bloody Nose Ridge suffering over 70% casualties. The Japanese eventually inflicted a total of 60% casualties on the 1st Marines, who lost 1750 out of 3000 men, with the 5th and 6th marines attacking Umurbrogol suffering similar casualties los160

ing half their men by mid October. By the third week of October all the remaining marines had to be evacuated from the battle and the US army troops took over, fighting it out for another month, before securing the island. Finally, Colonel Nakagawa announcing

Our sword is broken and we have run out of spears

burned the regimental colours and committed seppuku and was posthumously promoted to Lieutenant General. Still Japanese lieutenant Ei Yamaguchi with a group of 26 infantry soldiers and some navy personnel, held out in the caves until April 22, 1947, only surrendering when a Japanese Admiral was flown in, commanding them to surrender. The fighting around Umurbrogol turned out to be among the bloodiest in US military history and the Peleliu invasion a far cry from General William Rupertus prediction of just a three day battle. Finally the US military realised that even island hopping with vastly superior forces was not going to be a Sunday picnic and decided to apply

material overkill with no distinction between troops and civilians, man, women, children,
announcing that

all japanese are proper military targets.

The reaction to this in the Japanese public and media was of course furious and resulted in that the consideration of any form of surrender to America became despicable.

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The Battle of Iwo Jima

knowing that the city was soon to be bombed by the US.

Japan

USA Strength: Losses: 110,000 6,800 killed 20,000 wounded

22,000 20,000 killed 200 captured

Upon a rare audience with Showa Tenno, General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, a former military attache in Washington and a highly gifted military strategist out of a traditionally loyal Nagano Samurai family was assigned to command the defence of Iwo Jima, a volcanic island 7 km long and 4 km wide located 1.200 km south of Tokyo but with a Tokyo address. Wasting no time he took on to perfect the new defence strategy of underground three- dimensional tunnel systems making overwhelming air- and artillery superiority impotent, forcing lethal, infantry ground combat unavoidable for the enemy. He knew that the only remote possibility to force Washington into reasonable peace talks, was to force US commanders to send as many official condolence letters back to American parents as possible. He forbade his troops dying, unless they killed ten Americans, thus trying to get the American public to demand an end to the conflict. He organised a special defence system around Mount Suribachi, with an extensive system of tunnels connecting pillboxes and combat points both horizontally and vertically all over Iwo Jima; running
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(51) Iwo Jima Island This battle has been publicised recently by Hollywood in the Clint Eastwood production Letters from Iwo Jima, basing the film on the letters of General Kuribayashi, worrying about his family in Tokyo,

out of time, he was not able to finish his defence system completely. The American attack plan was simple and sledgehammer, starting with 74 days of B-24 Liberator bombings, followed by pre-landing bombardment by the battleships Arkansas, New York, Texas, Nevada, Idaho, Tennessee and the cruisers Pensacola, Salt Lake City, Chester, Tuscaloosa, Vicksburg and numerous destroyers. February 19, 1945 the 16-inch guns of battleships North Carolina, Washington and West Virginia opened up, signalling the start of the invasion with all the US Navy firing every gun, cannon, rocket and anti aircraft artillery at its disposal, while 100 bombers dropped every ordnance they could on the 21 sq km island. At 9:00 February 19 the first 30.000 marines landed, only meeting deadly silence since General Kuribayashi had ordered holding fire until the beaches were packed with marines and equipment; letting the landing take place, the Japanese artillery opened the steel doors on Suribachi inflicting devastating losses on the US attackers. In fierce combat, taking heavy casualties, the marines did advance cutting Suribachi off from the rest of the island, supported by an addi163

tional reinforcements of 40.000 marines landing on Iwo.

The famous flag on Suribachi Popular legend has been attached to the flag raising but actually, the Japanese defenders, let the the flagraisers go ahead making the US troops feel victorious so as to lure them into bloody ambushes. Consequently there also developed a rather comical distribution of several genuine Suribachi Stars and Stripes flags to several political and military persons, well described 60 years later in the book The Flags of Our Fathers by William Broyles, allegedly the descendant of one of the US flag (52) The flag on Suribaraisers. chi The fighting was actually just starting and became extremely fierce as the Americans tried to advance, and the defenders ambushing them from their caves and in bloody night attacks, with the only effective weapon against the Japanese positions being the new Zippo flame- thrower Sherman tanks. Additionally close American air support from the carriers, and efficient ground communications, including walkietalkies and Navajo code talkers helped the US ad164

vance. Running out of water, food and supplies few options was left for the Japanese troops, except fighting until death. In his last radio message to Tokyo, General Kuribayashi stated:

We have not eaten or drunk for ve days, but our ghting spirit is still running high. We are going to ght bravely to the last.
It is said that he led the final silent attack, his troops penetrating the American lines, inflicting heavy losses before being killed to the last man. Of the 22.000 Japanese defending the Island only 216 were captured mostly wounded. It is from this moment that the Japanese introduced a new aspect of warfare, totally unknown to Western officers and Generals. Namely the concept of the commanders dying with their troops, thus motivating them to give everything they had and to fight until death.

Western Christian propaganda labeled their conduct fanatic and savage, ignoring that their leadership was exactly what Zen is all about. In contrast, western commanders including General Paulus, General Mc Arthur, General de Gaulle, General Jany, General Wainwright, Lt. Gen. Percival, Marshal Voroshilov, Marshal Timoshenko, General Cheng and many others not only survived the sloughter of their troops, but returned home as celebrated heroes. More than sixty years later, honor is due to the many Japanese commanders who choose to fight and die with their soldiers. Here are a few of the many:

The Americans suffered 26.000 casualties with 7.000 killed in action, thus Iwo Jima being the only battle where US casualties exceeded the Japanese. There were also an estimated 3.000 Japanese soldiers still hiding in caves, many committing seppuku or blowing them selfs up with their last hand grande. The last surrender, by Lieutenant Toshihiko Ohno's men took place January 6, 1949. Given the appalling number of casualties, many American military leaders criticised the US invasion of Iwo Jima as a mistake and not necessary at all. Little did they know that the need to take Iwo Jima was critical in planning the delivery of the atomic bomb, the island designated in mid 1944, as the only emergency landing point for the B-29 carrying the device destined for Japan. Logically the reason for taking Iwo Jima no matter the costs, contradicts the legend, that the US only dropped the nuclear bomb to save lives.

(53) General Hideyoshi Obata, Colonel Kunio Nakagawa, General Mitsuru Ushijima, General Yoshitsugu Saito, General Tadamichi Kuribayashi

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Conventional Firebombing of Japan

(55) Tokyo 1945

bombing defence having almost no underground shelters. Aircrews at the tail end of the B-29 bomber stream reported that the stench of burned human flesh permeated the aircraft over the target.

Fusako Sasaki:

(54) Mariana Islands - Tinian The new US airfields on Saipan and Tinian meant that the B-29's were able to reach Japan and a massive incendiary bombing of cities could commence. The night-raid on sleeping Tokyo, March 9-10 by 335 B-29's dropping 1.700 tons of napalm created a firestorm destroying 41 sq. km of the densely populated city with 1.5 million people living in the burned out area, killing an estimated 100.000 and injuring 125.000 civilians, destroying over one million homes. Japanese cities were totally unprepared for air raid/
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Stacked up corpses were being hauled away on lorries. Everywhere there was the stench of the dead and of smoke. I saw the places on the pavement where people had been roasted to death. At last I comprehended rst-hand what an air-raid meant. I turned back, sick and scared. Later I learned that 40% of Tokyo was burned that night, that there had been 100.000 casualties and 375.000 left homeless. A month after the March raid, while I was on a visit to Honjo on a particularly beautiful cherry-blossom day, I saw bloated and charred corpses surfacing in the Sumida River. I felt nauseated and even more scared than before.

We ourselves were burned out in the re raid of May 25th 1945. As I ran I kept my eyes on the sky. It was like a reworks display as the incendiaries exploded. People were aame, rolling and writhing in agony, screaming piteously for help, but beyond all mortal assistance.

The seven month firebombing of 67 Japanese cities from January to August 1945, resulted in unprecedented destruction, a total of more than 500.000 civilians killed, an unknown number burned or wounded and about 5 million made homeless.
More than 70% destroyed Hitachi Kofu Kuwana Fukuyama Tokushima Fukui Toyama Tokyo Yokohama Tsuruga Nagaoka Hitachi Kumagaya Hamamatsu Maebashi Mito Toyohashi Ichinomiya Nara Tsu Kochi Shizuoka Gifu Akashi Takamatsu Isesaki Hachoji Matsuyama Imabari Okayama Wakayama Kobe 50-70% destroyed Nagoya Osaka Shimonoseki Kure Omuta Kawasaki Sasebo Saga Sakai Kumamoto Aomori Okazaki Hiratsuka Tokuyama Yokkaichi Ujiyamada Ogaki Himeji Shimizu Omura Chiba Numazu Choshi Utsunomiya 30-50% destroyed Nishinomiya Yahata Amagasaki Moji Miyakonojo Nobeoka Miyazaki Ube Oita Fukuoka Sendai Less than 30% destroyed

(56) The air offensive against Japan. Survey of destruction wrought in Japan's major cities
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Battle of Okinawa

arcane- alcohol for torpedos and engines. In late March 1945, the USA assembled a giant armada around Okinawa consisting of 1.300 ships, including more than 40 aircraft carriers, 18 battleships, 200 destroyers hundreds of various support ships including 365 amphibious vessels. The capital, Naha had already been totally destroyed on October 10, 1944 by Admiral Halsey's planes with 200 bombers devastating Okinawa's main population centers. In seven days leading up to L-Day a massive amount of ordnance was fired including 37.000 rounds 5" shells, 33.000 rounds of 4.5" shells, 22.000 4" rockets from 117 rocket gunboats as well as 3.100 air strikes conducted on beach and in shore targets in what generally became known as tetsu no bofu or, typhoon of steel. Few sq. meters of Okinawa ground escaped shelling, bombing, napalming, finally turning most villages and the the lush tropical vegetation into mud, decay, human remains, animal cadavers, maggots and lead, with possible escape and survival only in caves or deep underground shelters. The first American attacking force, commanded by General S.B. Buckner consisted of 183.000 troops, supported by tremendous Navy and Airforce fire, while
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USA-UK Some 1,300 ships including 40 carriers, Strength: 1,500 aircraft 183,000 troops landing the first day, later reaching a total of 550,000 men 72,000 casualties of which 12,500 killed 33,000 non combat losses due to nervous breakdown or combat Losses: stress 79 ships sunk or scraped 150 vessels damaged 770 aircraft destroyed

Japan 75,000 plus 35,000 Okinawan combatants 1,465 kamikaze

66,000 combatants and about 150,000 civilians killed, 10,000 women raped, a common practice by US troops resulting in mass suicides 3,100 aircraft destroyed

At 1200 sq. km Okinawa is smaller than Kauai in Hawaii, and had a population of perhaps 500.000, no industry and no surplus food production or any other capability or activity to support the Japanese war effort except for a small production of commercial sug-

the defence was undertaken by the Japanese 32nd Army, with 66.000 men supported by 20.000 Okinawa Boeitai with supreme command on the island in the hands of General Mitsuru Ushijima.

The Americans landed unopposed, since the Japanese main defence was the strongly fortified NahaShuri-Yonabaru line; the Americans moved inland quickly capturing Kadena and Yomitan airfields and cutting the island and the Japanese forces in half two days later. By April 7, US marines reached the Nago-Taira line coming up against Col. Udo's 44th infantry, entrenched on top of Yae-Dake, the highest point of Motobu Peninsula. On April 14, the US marines launched an all out assault on Yae-Dake with devastating Naval and Air support fire, finally capturing it on April 18, in bitter, bloody combat, leaving 2.500 Japanese dead and 46 captured as well as 236 US marines killed and 1.061 wounded. The next objective was to capture Ie Jima with its large airfield west of Motobu, defended by the Ikawa Unit (under the command of Major Tadashi Ikawa), entrenched in a well organised, heavily fortified web of tunnels, gunnests, pillboxes and caves, centred around Ie town, Bloody Ridge and Iegusugu hill. The Japanese resisted for six days with the last three days of the fighting the bitterest ever witnessed by Maj. Gen. A Bruce, and Ie Jima falling on 21 April with 4.700 Japanese soldiers and 1.500 Okinawan civilians killed and 172 US troops dead and 900

(57) Okinawa
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wounded. April 6, 400 Japanese attack planes left Chiran on Kyushu, launching Tokkotai attacks on the US invasion armada inflicting heavy losses, while the remnants of the once invincible Japanese Navy steamed out of Kyushu to meet the US flotilla, but were intercepted on April 7 by American planes sinking the Battleship Yamato, the Cruiser Yahagi and three destroyers. The Shuri line was the main Japanese defence, with well camouflaged caves, tunnels, blockhouses, reverse-faced gun-nests, connected strongpoints, fortifications and pillboxes, artillery- and mortar positions well integrated into the hills and terrain. Between 6-9 April the US infantry took Mashiki, Minami-Uebaru, and Ouki only after fierce Japanese resistance, but encountering the strong Kakazu defence they were repulsed by superbly camouflaged artillery and mortar firing positions for four days. The next two weeks turned into ruthless hand to hand fighting even more brutal and intense than the combat on Tarawa, Pelelui and Iwo Jima. Only after a map with all the defence positions was found on a
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dead Japanese artillery officer, translated and distributed to the US forces, who then could pinpoint and destroy the hidden Japanese positions with artillery and napalm, could the US forces advance. Japanese counterattacks on April 13 and 14 were stopped with almost total losses of lives and on April 19 three US divisions attacked the Machinato-Mura line after bombarding the entrenched defenders with 19.000 shells, but in vain since the Americans were stopped in their drive towards Shuri suffering 720 casualties. In several other bloody battles the Japanese, yielding no ground and fighting to the death, inflicted heavy losses on the attackers, and place-names like Twin Pinnacles and Urasoe- Mura went down in history as some of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific conflict. During the night of April 24 the Japanese withdrew from the outer Shuri line under cover of fog, and took up the defence of Shuri and Naha. On May 6 the Americans attacked the Asa-DakeshiGaja line with tanks and infantry meeting fierce resistance every meter, hill by hill, cave by cave, only able to advance after directing flame-throwers, napalmgasoline fire, demolition charges into caves and pill-

boxes. Gen. Buckner ordered an all out assault on May 11, but the next 18 days fighting was bitter and costly with slow progress against key defence positions, such as Conical Hill, Sugar Loaf Hill, Chocolate Drop Hill, Dakeshi Ridge, Wana Ridge and finally Ishimi Ridge falling by May 21. From May 22 The Japanese Airforce launched its greatest offensive sending almost 900 raids of Tokkotai against the US Navy inflicting great damage in spite of an overwhelming concentration of American anti aircraft fire. The Tokkotai or Kamikaze strategy conceived by Vice Admiral Takashiro Ohnishi, commander of the First Air Fleet in the Philippines, was the most effective way to inflict damage upon American warships. It was decided then that pilots would purposely crash their planes - with 500 Kg of explosives - into American warships. The call for volunteer Tokkotai pilots drew a staggering response. Three times as many applied as the number of planes available. Experienced pilots were turned down. They were needed to train the young Tokkotai who died at a very young age.

Over 90% of the Navy's kamikaze pilots were between 18 and 24 years of age. Almost all Army Tokkotai pilots during the Okinawan campaign were between 17 and 22, many former students from Japan's elite universities. In October 1943, military draft deferment ended for students in liberal arts and law, although the deferment continued for students in such fields as engineering and natural sciences. Many of these former students entered Navy or Army pilot training programs, and they later joined special attack force units to carry out Tokkotai attacks. An estimated one thousand student soldiers died as kamikaze pilots. The Tokkotai motto was:

Choosing the cause, place and time of death is a rare privilege bestowed on exeptional men.
April 6th, 1945, proved to be most efficient use of Tokkotai in the battle for Okinawa. More than 350 aircraft at a time dove at the Allied fleet driving some American sailors literally insane. From October 25, 1944, to January 25, 1945, Kamikazes managed to sink two escort carriers and three destroyers. They also damaged 23 carriers, five battleships, nine cruisers, 23 destroyers and 27 other ships.
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American casualties amounted to 738 killed and another 1.300 wounded as the result of those attacks. The psychological effect of the Tokkotai on the US Navy was such, that Chief of Naval Operations went to Washington and demanded an immediate end to the conflict, which the Supreme Commander in the White House declined. By May 29 US forces captured Naha and Yonabaru surrounding Shuri, where General Ushijima decided to withdraw, instead of making a final stand, thus rather prolonging the battle inflicting further losses on the Americans. The Japanese HQ in Shuri was abandoned secretly, leaving small rear guard units, that kept the Americans at bay until the fall of Shuri on May 31. The US troops found it completely levelled and in ruins after 200.000 rounds of Naval and artillery gunfire, aerial bombings, the Japanese defence decimated with over 70.000 killed in action and only 9 POW's all wounded or unconscious. There was only one kind of Japanese casualty ... the dead.

Unofficially, even American officers admitted that the defenders displayed heroism and bravery of epic proportions, including the 222 15-18 years old Himeyuri schoolgirls nursing the wounded and dying, even performing surgery and other gruesome duties enduring terrible circumstances in caves and overcrowded underground shelters, described later more like morgues filled with living corpses; until June 18, 1945 only 19 of them had been killed, but the next morning the US attack on the Ibara surgery centre killed 80% of them, whereupon many of the surviving girls committed suicide, throwing themselves off cliffs or with hand grenades to avoid systematic rape by US soldiers; only a handful of the high school girls survived to tell the three month long Himeyuri ordeal. On June 4, US marines landed on Oroku taking Naha Airfield after a savage and brutal combat wiping out the well armed and committed defending troops led by Admiral Minoru Ota, who finally committed seppuku letting the marines further advance towards Itoman.

(58) The Himeyuri memorial build April 1946

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In the final stand General Ushijima, as he was running out of supplies and equipment and suffering mounting casualties, ordered his troops to hold their positions to the death, resulting in the US attackers facing murderous Japanese fire, suffering heavy losses, pinned down for days until supporting flamethrower-tanks, air-, naval- and ground artillery destroyed Japanese defence positions one by one. Among numerous other defence strongholds, Yuza and Kunishi was only defeated after 5 days of the bloodiest remorseless fighting, inflicting the highest US casualties in the Okinawa campaign. The Japanese were bombarded ceaselessly by naval guns and surrender leaflets as well as General Buckner sent a message to General Ushijima:

plies, but they faithfully followed Ushijima's last order:

The battleeld is now in such chaos that all communications have ceased. It is impossible for me to command you. Every man in these fortications will follow his superior ofcer's order and ght to the end for the sake of the motherland. This is my nal order. Farewell.
Thousands of Japanese kept on defending Makabe area from caves, forcing the US marines to fight on, until June 21, when the last resistance was wiped out. On June 23 General Mitsuru Ushijima (after getting a haircut and a sip of whiskey) and his staff committed seppuku upon reporting the end of the battle to Tokyo HQ , oddly enough surviving his American adversary with a few days; Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner was killed on June 18 by a Japanese shell, making him the highest ranking American killed by enemy fire. Gen. Ushijima's chief-of-staff, Colonel, Hiromichi Yahara, one of the best strategists, was ordered to survive the battle, although he asked for permission to commit seppuku, which Ushijima denied because as he said:
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The forces under your command have fought bravely and well. Your infantry tactics have merited the respect of your opponents in the battle of Okinawa. You know no reinforcements can reach you ... destruction of all Japanese resistance on the island is merely a matter of days.
It is said that Gen. Ushijima just smiled discarding any consideration of surrender; by June 17, the Japanese were down to their last ammunition and sup-

If you die there will be no one left who knows the truth about the battle of Okinawa. Bear the temporary shame but endure it. This is an order from your army commander.
Later, Colonel Yahara wrote a book, Okinawa Kessen, published in 1973, confirming that people who have been millimeters, milligrams, minutes from certain death ... tend to tell the truth, and that in the battle of Okinawa, Japanese bravery and heroism was far more contagious than cowardice. Having fulfilled Ushijima's command Colonel Yahara died in 1981. (59) Japanese Commanders on Okinawa

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Chapter 17

HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI

Some historians believe that the appalling US casualties (kept secret to the US public) in the battle of Okinawa led to the Nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to save American lives. Nothing can be further from the truth. The decision to nuke Japan, getting a bang for the buck (the Manhattan Project having cost minimum 22 billion in todays dollars) was made long before the Okinawa bloodbath took place, and the testing of the new wunderwaffe on non-Christian civilian cities would have taken place no matter what. The US top brass could not let such an opportunity pass by, since by then, any consideration of civilian Japanese lives, bombing limitations and restraints to military targets was totally irrelevant to Japanbombing target selections in Washington. In the aftermath, the US-CIA manipulation of the fate of the Nagasaki Bombed Madonna reveals what hypocritical emotions and motives were in process
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rearranging the location of the Madonna away from the Nagasaki Peace memorial. The Nagasaki sister city since 1955, St Paul, Minnesota, somehow arranged that the mayor of Nagasaki forgot the existence of the scorched-black Madonna, thus saving USA's Christian face spiriting the Atomic Madonna away for decades only to be rediscovered recently but still not a (61) Bombed Madonna part of the Nagasaki Peace Memorial but discreetly exhibited inside the rebuilt Urakami cathedral. It is here proper also to put to rest the legend about the Japan- German alliance. This alleged alliance was actually non existent. First of all the German racial Blond-Aryan-Ubermensch ideology was just as alien to the oriental Japanese mind as the American Anglo-Saxon- Christian White Warrior supremacy world, or the Australian government's repulsive Aborigine- children concentration camp program.

(60) After the nuclear attack

The only real economic and strategic German engagement in Asia and the Pacific was the GermanKuomintang alliance supplying German weapons and hardware to Nationalist China in exchange for Chinese raw materials for the German arms industry. Japan's only ally in the Pacific War was Thailand and some local militia in Indonesia, Philippines and volunteer Indian troops. There was some German cooperation with Japan in the final days of Hitler, when Japan purchased a dismantled Me-262 jet fighter, some V-2 missile components and 550 Kg uranium oxide all secretly loaded on U-234 embarking from Kristiansand April 15, 1945 with several German experts and two Japanese officers on board, destination Tokyo. The voyage proceeded smoothly until May 4, when U234 received order from Admiral Karl Doenitz to surface and surrender which, after some discussion between the crew and the passengers, was accepted by U-234's commanding officer Johann Fehler deciding to surrender to the Americans surfacing on May 10, 1945. For the Japanese on board, Lieutenant Commander Hideo Tomonaga submarine designer and Lieutenant Commander Genzo Shoji aircraft expert, surrender
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was not an option. After distributing numerous gifts, Fehler receiving a katana, which he later threw overboard, and a large amount of Swiss Francs, the Japanese retired to their bunks where they took Luminol, not wanting to bloody the submarine by committing sepukku. Dying 36 hours later, they left a letter of thanks to Fehler and a request of sending a signal to Japan, which the German Captain did not do. Commander H. Tomonaga and Commander Shoji were buried at sea May 11, 1945. The actual surrender of U-234 took place May 14 and was big news in America, but the uranium cargo was hushed up and its confiscation personally supervised by Oppenheimer, head of the Manhattan Project. According to some unlikely rumor/legend, for the American nuclear bombs; the whole story was later told by Joseph Scalia in his book Germany's Last Mission to Japan: The sinister voyage of U-234. On August 6, 1945 an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima killing about 160.000 people, including 90% of the doctors and the nurses, and in the blink of an eye turning the whole city into radioactive rubble, the USA completing the new LFX gigantic weaponstest by dropping a second bomb on Nagasaki 3 days

later, killing over 100.000 civilians. Let us recall what international law says about bombing civilians: 1. The intentional bombing of civilian populations is illegal. 2. Objectives aimed at from the air must be military objectives and must be identifiable. 3. Any attack on legitimate military objectives must be carried out in such a way that civilian populations in the neighbourhood are not bombed through negligence. On September 1, 1939, FDR had issued the following statement:

dressing this urgent appeal to every government which may be engaged in hostilities publicly to afrm its determination that its armed forces shall in no event, and under no circumstances, undertake the bombardment from the air of civilian populations or of unfortied cities. I request an immediate reply. Franklin D. Roosevelt
By the second meeting of the Target Committee in Los Alamos, May 10-11, 1945, the American President and military was blowing an entirely different tune and targeted cities were ranked and selected according to maximum civilian casualties. Of course the chimney effect of the nuclear blast was taken into consideration, so cities surrounded by mountains and the size of more than 6 km in diameter topped the target list to achieve optimal leathal-efficiency. The targets were ranked: 1) Kyoto - Classified as an AA target. This target is an urban industrial area with a population of 1.000.000. It is the former capital of Japan and many people and industries are now being moved
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The President of the United States to the Governments of France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Britain: The ruthless bombing from the air of civilians in unfortied centres of population during the course of the hostilities which have raged in various quarters to the earth during the past few years, which has resulted in the maiming and in the death of thousand of defenceless men, woman, and children, has sickened the harts of every civilised men and woman, and has profoundly shocked the conscience of humanity. I am therefore ad-

there as other areas are being destroyed. From the psychological point of view there is the advantage that Kyoto is an intellectual centre for Japan and the people there are more apt to appreciate the significance of such a weapon as the gadget (atomic bomb). 2) Hiroshima - Classified as an AA target. This is an important army depot and port of embarkation in the middle of an urban industrial area. It is a good radar target and it is such a size that a large part of the city could be extensively damaged. There are adjacent hills which are likely to produce a focusing effect which would considerably increase the blast damage. Due to its rivers it is not a good incendiary (conventional bombing) target. 3) Yokohama - Classified as an A target. This target is an important urban industrial area which has so far been untouched. Industrial activities include aircraft manufacture, machine tools, docks, electrical equipment and oil refineries. As the damage to Tokyo has increased additional industries have moved to Yokohama. It has the disadvantage of the most important target areas being separated by a large body of water and of being in the heaviest antiaircraft concentration in Japan. It has the advantage

as an alternate target in case of bad weather being rather far from other targets considered. 4) Kokura Arsenal - Classified as an A target. This is one of the largest arsenals in Japan and is surrounded by urban industrial structures. The arsenal is important for light ordnance, anti-aircraft and beach head defence materials. The dimensions are such that if the bomb were properly placed full advantage could be taken of the higher pressures underneath the bomb for destroying the more solid structures and at the same time considerable blast damage could be done to more feeble structures further away. 5) Niigata - Classified as a B target. This is a port of embarkation on the N.W. coast of Honshu. Its importance is increasing as other ports are damaged. Machine tool industries are located there and it is the potential centre for industrial dispersion. It has oil refineries and storage. 6) Emperor's palace The possibility of bombing the Emperor's palace was also discussed. It was agreed that we should obtain information from which we could determine the
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effectiveness of our weapon against this target. Contrary to popular belief and fortunately for Japan and the world, it was not due to some US scholastic Japanophile effort or Professor E. Reischauer's influence, but simply Secretary of War Henry Stimson, responsible for final selection of targets, that removed Kyoto from the atomic bomb target list. His reason was very private; he had spent his honeymoon there in 1926, and maybe understood a bit of the cultural value of the city or simply just nostalgic about the youthful, virile time he had spent there. Truman bragged when he wrote in his diary:

It seems Truman did not know that there was nothing left to bomb in Tokyo since the 335 B- 29's bombing on the night of March 9, dropping 1.700 tons of napalm, killing 100.000 civilians and the firestorm making over a million residents homeless, made any suggestions of additional bombings ridiculous. The relentless efforts of convincing the world that the conventional fire-bombings and the nuclear bombings of Japan was an effort to save lives, is of course just as burlesque, as the US claiming during the battle for Indochina twenty years later, that:

The marines had to destroy the Vietnamese village in order to save it from Communism.
One thing is sure: war is about death and dying and in every war in the final analysis, death defeats all belligerents since humans started waging war with the stone axe. The Pacific 80 years War was unique in the sence that it was the first major conflict between Christianity and Zen Buddhism and it became obvious, that when it comes to facing death bravely and sincerely Zen is superior.

I have told the Secretary of War, Mr Henry Stimson to use it (the bomb) so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop this terrible bomb on the old Capital (Kyoto) or the new (Tokyo).The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives. I'm sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance.

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War is the Act of a Nation, Not of Individuals, and Thus, Not a Murder to be Convicted. A rather pathetic chapter of the Pacific conflict was the Tokyo Trials, oficcially The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), degrading International Law to medieval witch-hunt (Philippine Prosecutor P. Lopez acting and looking like a Manilla pimp). The whole trial was sharply condemned by Indian High Court Judge R. Pal and American Defence Lawyer Ben Blakeney. Both called the Tokyo War Crimes Trials unjust due to the predominance of judges from the victor nations. A Harvard graduate American lawyer, Blakeney took the stand to defend one of his clients; his confidence in the knowledge and razor-sharp understanding of international law was apparent. His voice pierced sharply through the atmosphere of the court demanding

faces of the judges were unmistakably evident when they heard his argument. As he continued to engage in the case, simultaneous translation for the Japanese defendants was abruptly disrupted, so they would not understand the contents of his deliberation.

To ask someone for the responsibility of a war, which is the action of the state, is not included in todays legal system. So any murder in war cannot be tried by law. This court is about to commit an unpardonable mistake; that is to try actions that cannot be considered a crime. If murders committed by war were sin, shouldnt we try those who are responsible for dropping atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and murdered many people? I know the name of the Joint Chief of Staff and the name of the head of state who had granted the permission to do drop the bombs. If its necessary, shall I recite those names?
Blakeney stood by the faithful and intelligent interpretation of law and dared to bring up the subject of the legality of the nuclear bombings.

that some people in the court and in Washington should sit side by side of the accused.
Without hesitation, in order to claim his clients innocence, he brought up the subject of the American use of nuclear weapons as a violation of international law (Hague Convention). The disturbed, panicky
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Regrettably, no matter how impressive his argument and the extraordinary bravery he showed, his contributions of the trials were cencored or ommitted and are hardly known to Americans, or to the world. In November of 1948, Blakeney wrote to Truman:

The following year, Blakeney took a position to teach law at Tokyo University. In 1963, Blakeneys life abruptly ended after his personal plane crashed in the mountain of Izu Peninsula, Japan, according to some rumors, with the help of some clandestine activists. Although Blakeney was not Japanese, but Jewish American, he voiced his argument against the use of US nuclear weapons, as a world citizen, as much as and maybe more than most Japanese have, by being true to his profession and his beliefs in justice.

Americans in time to come are unlikely to be proud of this verdict ...

He concluded his letter with the following statement:

This Tribunal, and its verdict - like SCAP itself, under the aegis of which it came into being - however international in fact, is identied in the eyes of the world at large with the United States. Inevitably, it is to the United States that will inure, in great measure, the credit or discredit which history will attach to the proceeding of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East - and not history only, but contemporary opinion. That this verdict would stand, without the efforts begin made to correct its glaring inequities, would constitute but poor tribute to our statesmanship, out attachment to justice and, in the end, our service to peace.

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Chapter 18

BEARING THE UNBEARABLE

It is not an exaggeration that Showa Tenno made the decision to exit the Pacific War single- handedly, a decision which he considered already month before the nuclear bombings. Hiroshima and Nagasaki only confirmed that there was no way that the US and Britain would compromise on an absolute and total humiliation and submission of the Japanese Nation or the US tolerating any significant naval presence, besides the British in the Pacific Ocean, which in the future was supposed to become an American pond. Additionally the merciless conventional fire bombings of civilian targets, with the purposes of breaking the moral-spirit of the Japanese people would go on until every sq. meter of populated areas had been bombed as planned by General LeMay. LeMay complained that he was not allowed to firebomb Hiroshima, Nagasaki and other not yet bombed Japanese cities, not knowing that those cities were reserved for nuclear bombings, yet an other fact contradicting the legend about the saving lives effort after the bloody Okinawa battle postulated in many history books. According to US Army publications:

The entire population of Japan is a proper Military Target ... THERE ARE NO CIVILIANS IN JAPAN. We intend to seek out and destroy the enemy wherever he or she is, in the greatest possible numbers, in the shortest possible time.
Naturally this policy only resulted in exponentially hardening the fighting spirit of the Japanese at large and made any consideration of surrender to the barbarian Americans out of the question. Only the Emperor himself could command authority to take any decision alternative to fighting till death. If we compere Showa Tenno to other contemporary leaders, statesmen, sovereigns, dictators and politicians nobody rivals his wise and sincere conduct and unselfish consideration of the fate of his subjects in those critical days. With the Japanese Imperial Army totally intact, well armed, and highly motivated (as the fighting on Iwo Jima and Okinawa had demonstrated), would a Hitler, a Stalin a Truman or a Churchill, Chiang Kai184

shek, Roosevelt, De Gaulle or Ho Chi Min have thrown in the towel to save the people from further suffering? It's hard to imagine, isn't it? Especially if we consider the alternative, with the huge underground bomb-proof government facility (Shozanchikagou) under the Nagano mountains ready, the geography of Japan being excellent for a prolonged guerilla warfare, and with the writing on the wall, that USA and the Soviet Union were shortly going to be on a collision course over the spoils upon allied victory in Europe. Also the top secret Japanese aircraft carrying submarine project "Sen Toku I-400" conceived by Admiral Yamamoto in (62) Sen Toku I-400 1941 entered into service in mid 1945, making air attack on the Panama Canal and other dificult strategic targets possible. Being the largest submarines in the world until the construction of ballistic missile submarines in the 1960s, each submarine had an astonishing range of 70.000 Km at 35 km/h, capable of reaching any point on the globe, launching its three
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M6A1 Serian sea-planes very fast and retrieving them by crane upon finishing the attack. Upon strict order from Imperial HQ they surfaced on August 22 1945 and after destroying their torpedoes and sea-planes they let the Americans aboard, who were astonished by the size of these early forerunners of missile(63) The Serian sea-plane submarines. Upon thorough inspection in Sasebo Bay the word came of urgent Soviet demand to access the super submarine carriers, so the Americans blew them up to deny the Soviet I-400 inspection. Already the US-Soviet emerging and growing hostility was a fact. In case of a separate peace with Mao, in exchange for transferring Manchuria, by far the most industrialised and rich part of China to his control, and a prolonged Japanese resistance to US invasion soon to be supported by Mao and Stalin, it is not unlikely that the Pacific War would have ended around 1955, and not in 1975 in Saigon but likely in Kagoshima or Yoko-

hama. However Showa Tenno compassionately and wisely choose to accept the painful and degrading Potsdam Declaration to save lives. As it turned out, he could only save Japanese lives, since the Pacific War went on after Japan's exit, bloodier than ever, claiming millions of Chinese, Korean, Taiwanese, Indonesian, Vietnamese, laotian, and Cambodian lives, all in the name of the American/Christian version of Freedom and Democracy. Previously there were several Japanese peace feelers, all ignored by Washington. Already at the end of 1944 some prominent Japanese contacted the Apostolic delegate in Tokyo requesting the Vatican to mediate a peace and in April 1945 the Swedish government was requested to help, again with no result. The most interesting diplomatic effort took place in Lisbon on May 7, 1945 when M. Inoue of the Japanese Embassy in Portugal contacted US representatives saying that Japan was ready to cease hostilities. He warned, that unless US-Japanese common interest against the USSR were found, all of China and most of Asia would become communist. He stressed however, that unconditional surrender was not acceptable but that apart, the actual peace terms were un186

important. Roosevelt, so sick that he hardly knew what was happening around him in Yalta, had died April 12, so the completely unknown and unexperienced, domestic, grocery-clerk looking Truman took over, potentially making a negotiated peace process possible. Truman however, being very two-dimensional, had only Japs in his mental hunting-scope crosshair. On his first day in office he was informed that the Soviets were not observing the Yalta agreement, and Truman wrote:

It is certainly a good thing for the world that Hitler's crowd or Stalin's did not discover this atomic bomb.
In his radio speech August 9, 1945 window-dressing the Hiroshima bombing he said:

The world will note that the rst atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this rst attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians. But the attack is only a warning of things to come. If Japan does not surrender, bombs will have to be dropped on her war industries and, unfortunately, thousands of civil-

ian lives will be lost. I urge Japanese civilians to leave industrial cities immediately, and save themselves from destruction.
Good advice, except Truman forgot to tell Japanese civilians where to go. Also one wonders where they would have dropped the bomb in case they really wanted to kill civilians. t is revealing, that Japan's accepting the Potsdam Declaration, with the Japanese army, (5.400.000 soldiers and 1.800.000 sailors) undefeated and intact, took the American government, Truman and the US military by complete surprise. Totally unprepared for this turn of events, it lead to disaster, not only in the power- and administration vacuums left in Manchuria, Korea and Taiwan but in Indochina, Malaysia, Burma and China proper as well. The American leadership and Army/Navy top brass was only preparing for Operation Downfall (invasion of Japan) with 500.000 Purple Heart medals (awarded to those killed in action) manufactured in anticipation of the invasion, indicating Washington's estimate of US casualties. There have been many theories over the years about how many casualties it would have taken and what would have happened if Japan had kept on fighting.

I believe that the US would have made unconditional peace with Japan a few days after August 29, 1949, the birthday of Stalin's nuclear bomb. Showa Tenno's First Public Speech, 15 August 1945:

To our good and loyal subjects. After pondering deeply the general trends of the world and the actual conditions obtaining in our empire today, we have decided to effect a settlement of the present situation by resorting to an extraordinary measure. We have ordered our Government to communicate to the Governments of the United States, Great Britain, China, and the Soviet Union that our empire accepts the provisions of their joint declaration. To strive for the common prosperity and happiness of all nations as well as the security and well-being of our subjects is the solemn obligation which has been handed down by our imperial ancestors and which we lay close to the heart. Indeed, we declared war on America and Britain out of our sincere desire to insure Japan's self-preservation and the stabilization of East Asia, it being far from our thought either to

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infringe upon the sovereignty of other nations or to embark upon territorial aggrandizement. But now the war has lasted for nearly four years. Despite the best that has been done by everyone - the gallant ghting of our military and naval forces, the diligence and assiduity of out servants of the State and the devoted service of our 100.000.000 people - the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest. Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to ght, it would not only result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization. Such being the case, how are we to save the millions of our subjects, nor to atone ourselves before the hallowed spirits of our imperial ancestors? This is the reason why we have ordered the acceptance of the provisions of the joint declaration of the powers.

We cannot but express the deepest sense of regret to our allied nations of East Asia, who have consistently cooperated with the Empire toward the emancipation of East Asia. The thought of those ofcers and men as well as others who have fallen in the elds of battle, those who died at their posts of duty, or those who met death and all their bereaved families, pains our heart night and day. The welfare of the wounded and the war sufferers and of those who lost their homes and livelihood is the object of our profound solicitude. The hardships and sufferings to which our nation is to be subjected hereafter will be certainly great. We are keenly aware of the inmost feelings of all of you, our subjects. However, it is according to the dictates of time and fate that we have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unavoidable and suffering what is un-sufferable. Having been able to save and maintain the structure of the Imperial State, we are always with you, our good and loyal subjects, relying upon your sincerity and integrity. Beware most strictly of any outbursts of emotion that may engender needless complications, of any fraternal contention and

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strife that may create confusion, lead you astray, and cause you to lose the condence of the world. Let the entire nation continue as one family from generation to generation, ever rm in its faith of the imperishableness of its divine land, and mindful of its heavy burden of responsibilities, and the long road before it. Unite your total strength to be devoted to the construction for the future. Cultivate the ways of rectitude, nobility of spirit, and work with resolution so that you may enhance the innate glory of the Imperial State and keep pace with the progress of the world.
The State Department in Washington, and not MacArthur made the decision by 1944, to retain the Japanese Imperial institution according to some rumours with some advice from the Danish Royal Family the most respected, oldest constitutional monarchy in Europe; the correct wartime assumption that the Emperor was essential for American plans for postwar Japan, proved successful already in the first days of the occupation. Showa Tenno moved rapidly to ensure surrender by all army units, demobilzing his soldiers, his police keeping law and order, facilitating the American Oc189

cupation. The Americans did not control Japan directly, but kept the Imperial government in place, not giving orders, but making suggestions, which the Japanese quickly accepted. The descendant of Amaterasu and the Gaijin Shogun from Little Rock got along well. The American nervousness, obvious during McArthur's first 25 km drive to Yokohama Grand Hotel, the road lined with thousands of armed Japanese policemen in attention, facing away from the road, a security measure only customary for the Japanese Imperial Family, was gone in a few days. One of the few disagreements occurred when the Japanese government told newspapers not to publish the humiliating photograph of MacArthur standing besides the Emperor. MacArthur intervened and the photo was published, the government resigned and a new government took over cooperating smoothly with SCAP. Of course the occupation replaced the wartime Japanese censorship with their own version, forbidding criticism of the United States or other allied nations, political activities deemed subversive by the American government and suppressing news of rape and murder by allied occupation forces. According to historian Peter Schriivers, an estimated 10.000 Japanese

women were raped by American troops during the Okinawa campaign and reported cases of US rapes in the first 10 days of the occupation in Kanagawa prefecture alone are 1.336, so it seems that rape was a general practice against Japanese women. The mention of censorship itself was forbidden so the Allied occupation censorship was more intense and strict than the Japanese military censorship had been, because even traces of censorship had to be concealed which meant that articles had to be rewritten in full, rather then submitting XX's for the offending phrases. In the wake of an emerging American occupation of the Japanese Empire came the inevitable looting, pillaging and robbing of Japanese property on a grand scale.

(64) The Japanese Empire

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Chapter 19

BATTLE FOR MANCHURIA

Soviet Union Strength: 1,700,000 men 28,000 artillery 5,500 tanks 5,400 aircraft

Japan 1,200,000 men 5,300 arttilery 1,100 tanks 1,800 aircraft

three months after German surrender, and between the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, on August 6, and Nagasaki on August 9 these events playing a major role in the timing of the Soviet attack. At 11 PM Trans-Baikal time August 8, 1945, Molotov declared war on Japan, and one minute past midnight the Soviets commenced their invasion of Manchuria with overwhelming firepower. The outgunned and outnumbered, battle hardened Kwangtung army put up fierce resistance, but could only delay the fast moving Soviet armoured divisions, attacking deep into Manchuria in a tank/ parachute pincer with both parties ignoring the Emperors Gyokuon-hoso August 15 and the Soviets avoiding pockets of resistance, reaching Mukden, Changchun and Qiqihar by August 20. The Emperor of Manchuria, PuYi was captured by the Soviets and by August 18 several Soviet amphibious landings had been executed in northern Korea, Sakhalin and the Kurils establishing Soviet authority. By the time cease-fire order reached the Kwangtung Army, the Soviet's had reached most of their objectives but their ambition to take the whole Korean peninsula was hindered by US forces landing at Incheon on September 8.

(65) Manchuria

At Yalta Stalin agreed to Allied pleas to enter the Pacific war within three months upon German defeat in Europe. The invasion began August 9, 1945 precisely
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Nonetheless it was Stalin who was in total control of Manchuria, the size of Western Europe (1.550.000 sq. km) and the crown jewel of Pacific Asia, by far the most developed and richest part of China. The population of Manchukuo estimated to be 30.000.000 plus in 1934 had grown to 43 million by 1940 and 50 million by 1945, including over 1.5 million Japanese and Koreans and 0,5 million other nationalities. (Some Japanese officials, e.g. K. Inuzuka, even planning (Fugu plan) to settle Jewish refugees that had obtained Japanese visas issued by the Japanese consul in Lithuania C. Sugihara, in Manchurian cities.) Chiang in south China desperately begged the US to transport his troops to Manchurian cities, while Mao's peasant army was taking over the country side and the Russians undertaking a 24 hour, seven days a week, dismantling and giant looting of all Manchurian industries and cities. This state orchestrated super plunder can only be grasped, if the scale of the Japanese investments in Manchuria since 1930 is understood. The Japanese government constructed 6.500 Km roads, founded a local airline in 1931, Manchukuo National Airways, linking Dairen, Mukden, Harbin and other places with a hub in Hsinking. The Japanese expanded principal railways to 12.000 Km and the
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(66) Soviets commenced their invasion of Manchuria South Manchurian Railway Company had invested in coal-mining (Fushum), iron&steel (Anshan), ports (Dairen and Ryoujun), hotels and spas, merchant and fishing vessels, power plants, schools, research insti-

tutes, geology-mining, medical-public services. Steel production in Manchuria surpassed Japan's by mid 1930's, and an efficient public educational system was developed with 12.000 primary schools, 200 middle schools, 140 teachers schools, 50 technical schools, 1600 private schools with a total of 600.000 pupils and 25.000 teachers, making Manchuria by far the best educated country, next to Japan and Korea in Asia. By 1945 the total Japanese investments was estimated at a staggering 11.000.000.000 Yen (5.5000.000.000 US Dollars) and the value of the Soviet shipments to Siberia of Manchurian property being 2 billion US Dollars included 3 million US Dollars in gold bullion from Mukden banks. The rape, looting and robbery by individual Red Army soldiers and Chinese mobs, a daily matter of course, as reported by American observers of the OSS Cardinal Team (e.g. Corporal Hal Leith in Mukden), all paled into insignificance in comparison to the systematical deindustrialization of Manchuria by the Soviet authorities. Working around the clock the Soviets dismantled entire factories, power plants, sending them north to Siberia on endless trains of flatcars. Six month later only twenty of 972 factories in Mukden had sufficient machinery to continue func194

tioning, waterworks, sewage plants, and coal mines were inoperable due to lack of machinery and power. They had taken everything that could be taken recalled US marine Robert Seck.

The only thing they left was a memorial to themselves with a tank on top in the centre of the city.
New York Times correspondent Hallett Abend reported that even the giant locomotive and railwaycar building plants at Dairen were taken north of the Amur river, and economists concluded:

The damage which Manchurian industry has sustained since V-J Day, has set back China's industrial progress for a generation.
In addition to the hardware, the Soviet's took 640.000 Japanese POW's to various Siberian hard labour camps where 60.000 died during the first winter, the rest being released gradually between 1948-49 and the last 1025 souls in December 1956. In August 1945, the Japanese army was largely intact, there were six and a half million Japanese soldiers and civilians in the western Pacific and mainland Asia, including 1.200.000 in Manchuria, 750.000 in Ko-

rea, 1.500.000 in China proper. The policy of disarming and repatriating the Japanese, was provided in the hastily drafted document August 10 by Pentagon, stating that Japanese forces in China, Taiwan and northern Indochina should surrender to Chiang Kaishek and those in Manchuria and northern Korea to the Soviet commander. Unfortunately the Kuomintang was over 1.5 thousand kilometres from Manchuria and the large northern cities of Beijing, Tsingtao, Hankou, Shanghai, and Nanking were surrounded by Communist forces. Chiang had to start from the flat of his back in the reoccupation of China and often relied on the Japanese troops to keep law and order until nationalist troops could take over. In the American press Chiang was hailed as a brave, patriotic and dedicated national hero, yet to the people who knew him, he was not inspiring confidence, surrounding himself with corrupt cronies and when mistakes were made always blaming his subordinates, being convinced that he could never be wrong. There were actually five functioning governments in China in 1945, each having its own currency, legal system, taxes and army. Chiang's, Mao's and the governments in Manchukuo, Beijing and Nanking, of which
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Chiang Kai-shek's nationalists were the most weary, ill organised, corrupt, ineffective and oppressive. The American support of Chiang proved a big mistake, and his undisciplined nationalist army was not welcome anywhere by the simple Chinese peasants. The poor Chinese often preferring the Japanese occupation were punished by the Nationalist thugs and terrorising officials executing alleged Japancollaborators at the slightest display of insubordination. Nevertheless Washington sent General Wedemeyer to organise, train and equip Chiang's troops, helping them to disarm the Japanese and progressively win back East China and reoccupy all the former Japanese-held areas of China and Taiwan. He was also to make sure that US forces would not become involved in any Chinese fratricidal war. In the North, Mao Tse-tung did not even know of the US engineered Sino-Soviet treaty (August 14, 1945) recognising Chiang as China's President, but he wasted no time, starting to accept surrender of Japanese forces. His radio broadcast declared that the Fascist chieftain, Chiang Kai-shek can not represent the Chinese people. Troops of Mao's Eighth Route Army moved forward to disarm the Japanese, ignoring Chiang's orders to stay put, forcefully disarming those Japanese who waited for the nationalists. At the same time, Mao's troops started accepting weapons and heavy equipment from those Japanese who surren-

dered to the Communists as well as recruiting some of the Japanese officers and specialists into the Communist Eighth Route Army. Wedemeyer asked for seven American divisions to be sent to China a.s.a.p., but was told that it was impossible until McArthur's forces have been lifted into Japan and Korea. In the meantime, Chiang and his American allies had to depend on the Japanese and their vassal- armies to hold back the red tide. Most of the Japanese Generals in China disliked both the Nationalists and the Communists and did not at all feel defeated by Chiang or the Communist guerillas. Americans who met Japanese officers to arrange surrender noted that they represent a Japanese Army that has not been defeated their manners just indicating a formality of surrender. For weeks in Beijing and Shanghai, Japanese troops continued to patrol the streets and their officers were still driving around in their staff cars, and as late as September Japanese forces were in full control of Shanghai. From 1945 on, Manchuria served as the base area for Mao's Peoples Liberation Army and staging ground for operations against the Kuomintang with many Manchukuo army, Japanese Kantogun personel and Japanese civilian professionals (e.g. doctors) serving

with the Communist troops. Finally the 1.5 million Japanese that had been left in Manchuria were sent back to their homeland in 19461948 by US Navy ships.

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Chapter 20

BATTLE FOR TAIWAN

Death of the Formosans

Most of the China specialist's in the State Department were incurably Christian missionary in their approach to Chinese problems and ignored that Formosa under Japanese rule was not Japanized but modernised and that Taiwan had become far more progressive than China, with a living standard and infrastructure surpassing any other part of East Asia. In the mind of these missionary turned China-hands the Chinese could do nothing wrong and the Japanese could do nothing right. The need to preserve the special Taiwanese modernisation progress, resulting from Japanese rule since 1895 was not considered. Already in 1943 a continental policy was adopted, confirming officially at the fateful Cairo Declaration that Taiwan was a part of China. It was useless to explain, that Taiwan never was a part of China and that mainland Chinese considered the Formosan unworthy of being Chinese, exercising an outspoken discrimination of the islanders. The end of Japanese administration and Nationalist Chinese rule was to bring death and destruction to all native Formosans and the end of the rich cultural diversity on the island and doom of their 13 spoken languages. When Roosevelt, Churchill and the Chiang's met in Cairo November 1943, FDR was afraid that Chiang's KMT, having lost all battles with Japan since 1937, was considering a separate peace with Japan thus leaving it to America alone to fight the Japanese. So,
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(67) Taiwan

to Churchill's astonishment, FDR promised to return Taiwan to Chiang Kai-shek, ignoring that Taiwan was a part of Japan according to the China-Japan Peace treaty of 1895. On top of that FDR also hailed

China as a great power and Chiang as a great leader. The American delegation to Cairo included former YMCA worker W. R. Peck, born in China, interned in Bangkok January 1942, and now a senior ChinaSpecialist in the State Department. The FDR-Chiang deal in other words was that the more Chinese casualties, the fewer American corpses to be explained to parents and the US public. In the book Formosa Betrayed US Consul in Taiwan at the time George Kerr writes:

The Cairo Declaration is as noteworthy for historical inaccuracies within the text as for its rhetorical ourishes. The latter made good propaganda, but the former set a dangerous trap. Some of the damage to American interests will never be repaired. Korea, properly enough, was promised independence "in due time," but the text refers to the Kurile Islands as having been "taken by force". The sentence which lies at the heart of our postwar Formosa Problem reads as follows: All territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, such as Manchuria, Formosa, and the Pescadores, shall be restored to the Republic of China.
(68) Formosan languages
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Here expediency led the three Heads of State to ignore distasteful facts; treaties again had become "mere scraps of paper". Japan acquired undisputed title to the Kuriles by a treaty carefully and peacefully negotiated with Russia in 1875, (In return Russia received undisputed title to the entire island of Saghalin, only to lose half of it, by treaty, at the close of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905.) The Korean Kingdom had been simply expropriated in 1910, but at the time Great Britain, China, and the United States conceded Japan's sovereignty and gave it full legal recognition. Manchuria undoubtedly had been seized by aggression, but the Liaotung and Shantung Concessions held by Japan had been taken from Russia and Germany, respectively, in 1905 and 1914, and Japan's position in each of them was recognized and unchallenged by London and Washington in the intervening years. It was somewhat late to cry "thief". Peking ceded the Pescadores and Formosa to Japan in 1895 in the Treaty settlement made after China's defeat in the SinoJapanese War.
On September 1, 1945 the first liberator allies arrived in Keelung harbour; three young Americans and two
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Chinese colonels came ashore with a cortege of cooks, body-servants and bodyguards, taking up residence at The Plum Mansion, Formosa's best geisha house. They demanded money for expenses, whereupon the Japanese authorities opened a bank account for them with 3 million Yen (US $200.000). Most of the expenses was withdrawn by Colonel Chang the next day. It was soon obvious that the Americans belonged to Chiang's Gestapo or officially BIS know for their very brief interrogations at gun- and bayonetpoint eliminating Chiang's critics and enemies through terror. There were 170.000 well armed Japanese troops to defend Taiwan, and 330.000 Japanese civilians supporting them, ready to fight to the death, as well as most Taiwanese were suspicious of the mainland Nationalist regime and expected the Americans to replace the Japanese administration. For six weeks nothing happened and nobody knew what to do, except cleaning up the rubble and keep law and order, which the Japanese and Formosan leaders did very well. In Chunkin, Wedemeyer and Chiang was preoccupied with Manchuria considering Taiwan a minor issue. On October 5, a Lt. Gen. Keh King-en flew in with escort and an advisory group of

one hundred Americans. Addressing the public, Gen. Keh directed the Japanese to carry on as usual and set the tone for the Chinese occupation by saying that:

Formosa is a degraded territory and the Formosans are a degraded people beyond the pale of true Chinese civilisation.
The Formosans did not grasp the real meaning of the speech being too happy about the end of the war and optimistic about the bright future of Taiwan believed to be secured by America. When the first Chinese Nationalist soldiers arrived, 12.000 ragtag soldiers on US troopships, they were so scared of the Japanese that they refused to leave the ships. They had to be physically forced to go ashore, with the Formosans watching and laughing at the dirty, scared, undisciplined Chinese troops. Obviously the troops them self did not feel victors and only ventured into Taiwan because the Americans went ahead. The first confrontation between the Formosan and their new Chinese masters occurred when young, pampered Chinese Air Force officers simply seized
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the best private property around Taipei Airport, and ordered all residents to get out within 48 hours.The Formosans, different from the mainland Chinese illiterate, inarticulate and subdued peasantry, did not humbly tolerate such injustice, protested immediately to General Keh, and the Americans had to intervene to avoid bloodshed. Governor of Taiwan General Rikichi Ando formally surrendered Taiwan to Chinese General Chen Yi on October 25, 1945, in a ceremony at the Civic Auditorium. General Yi was on familiar ground, since he in 1935 in this building, had helped celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Japanese sovereignty over Formosa, congratulating the Formosans on their good fortune of being Japanese subjects. On this second occasion Chen Yi's address hailed China's triumph in defeating the Japanese and recovering Formosa, not mentioning at all the American role in this process. General Ando was later charged with war crimes (no details of the accusation provided) by the Chinese and committed suicide in a Shanghai prison. A majority of his officers in Taiwan accepted the Imperial decision of 15 August 1945, only a few committed suicide.

Then the looting of Formosa began on a massive scale and on three levels. From September thousands of scavengers in nationalist uniforms looted, robed, stole everything and anything moveable in every city and village unfortunate enough to be near Kuomintang barracks. Additionally hundreds of petty thieves, criminals, ragged mainlanders mainly from Shanghai, poured in every day arriving on junks, boats or bribing their way on US navy ships or airforce planes. The word of the Taiwan bonanza was spreading all over coastal China. The 30.000 filthy, illiterate National troops shipped to Taiwan, were not paid and were actually expected to live of the land which they did well since the pickings were good compared to the mainland. Soon all over Formosa the saying went that:

officials shipping out the stockpiles of military and civilian supplies. By the end of 1945 the looting by well organised officer-led Kuomintang military units reached huge proportions, including everything from foodstuffs to textiles and dismantled railway tracks. They were using confiscated Japanese military trucks with the only limitation on the looting being the lack of conscripts able to drive a truck. Most of them didn't even know how to ride a bicycle, carrying away stolen bicycles on their backs, let alone drive a vehicle. Even Taipei's garbage trucks were ordered to transport loot to the harbour, leaving the garbage piled high in the streets. The looting of the homes of the 300.000 Japanese residents went on in broad daylight by armed mainlander gangs, and by December many Japanese, left in legal limbo, had been evicted from their homes, but denied repatriation to Japan by McArthur, while their homes were striped of everything moveable. The liberation of property was not limited to Japanese houses but soon spread to include Formosan homes, so blatantly that fights erupted between rival gangs over the targeted loot, while the owners were watching helplessly with nowhere to turn for protec-

At least the Japanese protected and respected private property.

During the next month on Taiwan it became obvious why Kuomintang was loosing the battle with Mao's Communist Liberation Army. This low level looting would soon pale in comparison to the next stage of the giant, organised looting by senior military men officers and the new government
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tion. Roaming bands in uniform cut down copper wire, dug up piping, dismantled plumbing, removed doors, windows, metal fixtures and railway signals and switches leaving buildings, hospitals, schools, temples liberated by KMT troops mere shells. All this seemed petty theft compared to the plunder shipped out by senior officers and Chen Yi's government lieutenants mainly of the huge food, medical, clothing, and equipment stockpiles and other supplies accumulated by the Japanese army for the vast Pacific-Asian war front, Taiwan being the main distribution centre with a total value of the liberated supplies, estimated at 2 billion US dollars. Officially, since the Americans may be watching, the shipments were for the heroic troops on the mainland fighting the Communists, but in reality most of it disappeared along the way with the American's closing their eyes, soon resulting in a food crises on the island since civilian rice stockpiles were liberated too in the process. When public demand for an end to Chen's robbing the island erupted in riots, Chen accused the Formosans of lack of patriotism and launched a rice collection program making local
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Formosans appear responsible for the food shortages and threatening famine, never before known in the island's history under the Japanese. On top of the growing lawless misery, Chiang Kaishek's Blue Shirt gangsters began moving in from Shanghai raiding private warehouses, breaking up buildings organising the spiriting away among other stocks, an estimated 600.000 tons raw sugar to private warehouses in Hong Kong supervised by madame Chiang's brother, T.V. Soong. Of course the sugar production on Taiwan having been developed by the Japanese to 1.400.000 tons in 1937, fell to 30.000 tons in 1947 under KMT management. Japanese records of the surrendered stockpiles show that everything disappeared in similar fashion, and enormous profits were made on coal shipped to Shanghai as well as salt, liquor, narcotics, camphor (400.000 tons) and matches (3.5 million cases). As for the liberated medical narcotics stockpile of 4000 tons coca leaves and 600 tons of crude morphine on Japanese record, Chen Yi announced only 4000 kg of raw opium shipped to hospitals on the mainland, thus Taiwan becoming a major centre for illegal narcotics refining and trafficking for many years to come.

The illegal, corrupt and criminal undertakings by the Chen Yi administration and Chiang Kai- shek cronies of this magnitude had to be camouflaged and window dressed to the American government and public which was done smartly by announcing the new Taiwan government table of organisation. Looking good on paper, consisting almost exclusively of Christian missionary school or US educated Commissioners, all speaking excellent english, and very well versed in showing the American guests a happy Taiwan during their short visits, guaranteeing a proAmerican China-province. In return these Commissioners were allowed to hire relatives, friends and concubines by the dozen on government payroll holding titles as specialists and technical advisers. Thus the administration, for which the Japanese had employed 18.000 people, ballooned to 43.000 under Chen Yi by 1946, with only a fraction of the Japanese productivity and efficiency and almost no Formosan employees above messengers, doormen and janitors with all important and lucrative positions going to mainland Chinese. The Formosans now had to experience and tolerate what real colonialism meant from their Kuomintang liberators. Originally in October 1945 all Japanese on Taiwan were dismissed from industry and government, but
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were immediately hired as part time advisors forced to sign petitions to allowed to work for the new Taiwanese administration and to stay on the island. Actually 50.000 Japanese were lifelong residents of Formosa considering the island their home, but after a few weeks under KMT rule most of them preferred to abandon everything and repatriate to war torn, bombed out Japan with only 2.000 Japanese remaining on Formosa by 1946. In december 1945 The Kuomintang announced the Provincial Training Corps Program for the Japanbrainwashed backward Formosans to replace Japanese engineers and technicians. The course was a three month training in Sun Yat-sen, Chinese literature, geography, history, economy, some accounting and meteorology and above all about the words and deeds of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. While the Formosans were trained all the positions left by the Japanese were filled by mainland immigrants mostly unqualified and the three Sun Yat-sen principles, San Min-Chui advertised, became a farce and non of the first class Formosans finishing the course were actually employed.

For the purposes of reeducating the Formosan youth, the Kuomintang Youth Corps was organised modelled on a mixture of Hitler Jugend and Komsomol, based on the principle that the government should serve and finance the party and that there was no Kuomintang without Chiang Kai-shek just as no Nazy Party without Hitler. In all monarchies from Denmark to Thailand, the tradition of placing a portrait of the reigning monarch or emperor in all the schools was adapted by Kuomintang placing portraits of the National Leader Chiang Kai-shek everywhere, ordering weekly ceremonies to the national flag, party and leader everybody bowing three times and singing the Party Song. The time honoured close cooperation between Kuomintang and the Shanghai crime syndicate was revitalised when party organisers began using various strong arm methods all over Taiwan. Confiscating real estate, taking over businesses, liquidating critics, blackmailing well to do Formosans by sending them to rehabilitation centres if they did not pay protection money, accusing the local press of being Japan hirelings and traitors if they dared to raise their voice. Organising the shipments of stockpiles, dividing up the loot and managing the confiscated property became a huge task in itself even for the experienced Shanghai gangsters and KMT party cad-

res. Various types of wealth changed hands. First there were the government properties of the Tokyo government and Taiwan G. General including public land, buildings, railway and transport companies, radio stations and port facilities, various state run production factories, power plants and Bank of Taiwan. Then there was self owned institutions and properties such as schools, hospitals, forestries, farms, research centres, postal savings and insurance agencies. Private property to be transferred included subsidiaries of Japanese corporations and Taiwanese joint ventures, production companies of timber, chemicals, minerals, and all the small holdings of the 300.000 Japanese who's lifetime work had been accumulated in shops, clinics, restaurants, small industries and services of all sorts. They were repatriated allowed only to take with them what they could hold in their hands. Those Formosans who had joint businesses with Japanese lost everything being

guilty of collaboration with the enemy.

According to the most conservative estimates the total value of non military property transferred was two billion 1940 US dollars. By some twisted bur205

lesque window-dressing the whole Taiwan looting, destruction and robbery was called

restoration of stolen property to the original owners

by the Christian-missionary turned China-specialists in Washington.

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The 228 Massacre On February 27, 1947, Chinese agents from the Tobacco Monopoly, confiscated contraband cigarettes, for their own black market racketeering, from a 40 year old widow named Lin Jiang- Mai. They robbed her life savings along with the cigarettes, cracking her skull with a pistol, angering the Taiwanese crowd watching. Running away from the scene the agents fired into the furious crowd killing a bystander further escalating the confrontation; the Taiwanese, already fed up with KMT rule, protested to the police and gendarmes to no avail. Violence spread the next morning, with security forces firing machine-guns into the demonstrators that were calling for the arrest of the agents responsible for the previous day's shooting. Formosans took over the town and military bases on March 4 and cautioned against violence on the radio, with martial law declared and curfew enforced by evening. Fresh KMT troops from China arrived on March 7 engaging in three days of indiscriminate killing and looting. New York Times reported that everybody seen on the streets were shot at, homes broken into, occupants killed and women raped, some streets littered with dead some beheaded.

Nevertheless the Taiwanese held control of large part of Taiwan for several weeks after the February 28 incident and within a few days order and calm was restored by improvised police recruited from high school students and volunteers. Local leaders formed a committee listing 32 demands for reform, including autonomy, free elections, surrender of ROC Army and an end to government corruption. Some Formosan groups demanded proper international representation and independence but were fi(69) Civilian executed by ROC nally settling for army greater autonomy. Pretending to negotiate, the ROC authorities stalled for time, with Chen Yi assembling a large military force on the mainland, launching an indiscriminately bloody crack down upon their arrival on March 8. His troops reportedly executed over 4.000 civilians throughout Taiwan and by the end of March Chen had jailed or killed all the Taiwanese leaders, students and intellectuals he could catch. To the staunchly pro Chiang Kai-shek Time magazine, April 7, 1947 he said:
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It took the Japs 51 years to dominate this island. I expect to take ve years to re- educate the people so they will be happier with Chinese administration.
In the course of Chen Yi's re-education many of the killings were random, but the elimination of the Taiwanese elite, local leaders, home rule groups, intellectuals, middle and high school students, not to mention anybody nostalgic for the civilised Japanese law and order was systematic, thorough and complete. The purges was followed by repression and terror, a white terror that lasted until the end of martial law in 1987. How many thousand Chinese, Taiwanese, Hakka and Formosan were imprisoned, tortured and killed during the KMT one party rule we shall not know until the Taiwan secret police files, if not already shredded, will become public. Today only the victims deep seated bitterness toward the KMT Chinese forty years of terror and their US sponsors is left.

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Chapter 21

BATTLE FOR CHINA

1945-1949 As we have seen, the United States ordered Japanese troops to surrender to KMT and not the Communists everywhere in China, except for Manchuria. There they were expected to surrender to the Soviets, so Chiang Kai-Shek asked the Japanese to remain armed at their post until Kuomintang troops arrived. He also made a deal with the Soviets to delay their withdrawal until he had moved some of his best troops, being airlifted by the US into the large cities in Northern China. The Russians happily obliged, giving them time to systematically dismantle and transport the large Manchurian industrial base, according to some estimates worth about 2.5 billion US dollars, to Siberia. The peace negotiations between Chiang and Mao beginning October in Chongqing, did not produce any peace and battles between the two sides continued, escalating into a full scale war by June 1946, between CPC and KMT, a three years long battle for mainland China which the Communist historians and the majority of the province peasantry called the War of Liberation. The United States supported the Kuomintang and Chiang with hundreds of millions of dollars, military hardware, generous loans as well as advisors
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and air-power-transport. Like everybody else Truman tried to use the Japanese, in his case against Mao and his peasant army because as he wrote:

If we told the Japanese to lay down their arms immediately and march to the seaboard, the entire country would be taken over by the Communists. We therefore had to take the unusual step of using the enemy as a garrison until we could airlift Chinese National troops and send marines to guard the seaports.
More than 50.000 marines were sent to strategic points in China. The US policy mess in China and efforts to make a truce between CPC and KMT had been entrusted to a colourful American heavy drinker, rags to riches General, Oklahoma born Patrick Hurley, new US ambassador to China. Chosen by FDR, he had come to bring unity to China arriving first time on November 7, 1944 on the weekly US plane to Dixie Mission at the Communist headquarters in Yan'an. As Mao, Zhou and Zhu De came from their car to greet him, Hurly yelled his favourite

greeting, the American Indian war cry of Yahoo!. On the way to China, Hurley had called on Moscow, where Soviet foreign minister Molotov had assured him that Mao and his associates were not real communists and the Soviets had nothing to do with them. Hurley believed this and the illusion, that Chiang Kai-Shek could be convinced to introduce democracy in China, in return for the US recalling General Stilwell whom Chiang hated for his incorruptibility and outspokenness. US policy toward China was mainly left to Hurley, since Washington was busy getting ready for victory in Europe, which needless to say was unfortunate since he was as far out of his depth as can be. He considered bringing the two chinks, Chiang and Mao, together over a few whiskeys easily within his ability to work miracles. He knew absolutely nothing about China, pronounced Mao Zedong's name as Moose Dong and called Chiang 'Mr Shek'. The Dixie Mission chief, Colonel Barrett, a fluent Chinese speaker, had difficulty in translating due to the saltiness of the Generals remarks on top of which his discourse was not following any logical pattern of thought, as well as his toasting of some Chinese women as my tall, blonde goddess was ... embarrass211

ing. That night, Hurley attended a huge banquet celebrating the Russian revolution, disrupting the ceremony with loud cries of Yahoo!. Needless to say, Chiang and his Dragon Lady played Hurley like a fish, letting him swallow the hook deeper and deeper. The main Communist base around Yan'an of 350.000 sq. km was run totally independent of KMT, and its two armies of 500.000 men would double in size by Spring, additionally being supported by the Commu(70) Patrick Hurley at centre nist militia, 2 million (bow tie) with Communist leadstrong. For them the ership in Yan'an Kuomintang, fascist in every way, except for efficiency, was, if possible, more of an enemy then the Japanese. Eager to make a good impression on the American guests, Mao, smoking Camel cigarettes, declared he was ready to accept Chiang as President if reasonable agreement could be reached. There were parties, dances and long nights with lots of Johnny

Walker flown in by the Americans. In talks with political officer John P. Davis, Mao, having an 'organic dislike' of the Soviet Union, undertook to collaborate fully, if US forces landed in eastern China and brought the Communists supplies. Davis predicted that Mao's progressive ways and Chiang's feudal China would never coexist. Most American missionary turned politicians in Washington, ignored or missed this fact and kept on championing Chiang. It is interesting here to contemplate on the American political establishments commitment to an obviously corrupt and suppressive dictator like Chiang KaiShek. To understand this, we have to go back to examine the beginning globalisation of America in 1897. The National Board of Trade observed at the time:

Admiral J. G. Walker also recommended Nicaragua and the failed French Panama venture, the French price tag being $109 million, stressing US Naval expansion and consolidation in the Pacific, acquiring naval bases and lucrative trading opportunities in Asia, even by war if needed. By the end of the nineteenth century, US politics focused on wealth and materialism, transforming the political process into masculine Darwinism, being led by those accumulating wealth, elevating military action against Native Americans, the Spanish, Filipinos, Chinese, Panamanians, Haitians, and Mexicans into natural free trade competition. One main catalyst of this process was Christian religion and revivalist missionary expansion in mainland China, e.g. sending 5000 marines against the Boxers, so that the American missionaries and Columbus's dream of exploiting Asia would not die. The US multinationals made immense profits in South America by simultaneously controlling local export prices and US market prices, often differing 2030 times the production costs, leaving the country of origin in permanent poverty.

The growing commerce of the United States with the west coast of South America, the islands of the Pacic and Asia, as well as with Alaska and our own Pacic States and the development of China with its four hundred million people would seem to demand the construction of the Nicaraguan Canal by the United States Government.

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It was the vision of a similar China-US traderelationship that dictated US policy in Asia and the single-minded support of all the US-periphery politician-failures over the decades. (Chiang KaiShek, Marcos, Syngman Rhee, Pinochet, Noriega, Diem and Thieu.) General Marshall was called in to sort out the mess in China and find some form of compromise, and although the Soviets did not support Mao, the Communists inherited large amounts of weapons abandoned by the Japanese. The hardware included heavy armour and artillery and when large numbers of KMT troops surrendered and joined Mao's army the Communists got the upper hand in the power balance. Their land reform, benefitting the exploited landless peasantry, made an unlimited supply of manpower available, mobilising 5.500.000 peasants against KMT forces during the Huaihai Campaign alone. According to a secret agreement in Yalta the Soviets were promised the same concessions in China, that Imperial Russia had lost to Japan in 1905. By March 1946 it was clear to Stalin, that Chiang's Kuomintang had no future in China and ordered General Malinovsky in Manchuria to let Mao's troops move in as the Red Army was withdrawing, leaving northern
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China under Mao's firm control. KMT did achieve a symbolic victory at Yen'an in March 1947, but by 1948 Mao's peasant army captured Shenyang and Changchun where the best KMT army had to surrender providing the Communist troops with tanks and heavy weapons. Luoyang fell April 1948 and Shandong province on September 24, 1948. During the Pingjin Campaign lasting 64 days, November 1948- January 1949, the Peoples Liberation Army, in spite of heavy losses secured Zhangjiakou, Tianjin, Dagu and Beijing, killing, wounding or capturing 520.000 KMT troops. On April 21, the Communists crossed the Yangtze Kiang, capturing the KMT capital Nanjing, forcing Chiang to retreat successively to Guangzhou (October 15), Chongqing (November 25), and Chengdu before the final KMT retreat to Taipei December 10, 1949. The Maoist's victory was due to their social awareness and self reliance, both of which was totally alien to Kuomintang. Also essential was the decade long, continued Japanese victories over Chiang's armies and Chairman Mao's and Zhou's pragmatic attitude towards mutual understanding and secret agreements with both the Japanese high command and various anti-Chiang, Japanese-supported forces. Addi-

tionally over 150.000 Japanese soldiers and officers went into service with the Chinese Red Army not wishing to return to a Japan under USA, making an important difference in the power balance between Mao and Chiang. Apart from the immense civilian casualties in the 4 years' Liberation war, from July 1946 to June 1950, the PLA eliminated over 10 million KMT forces and bandits including 6.3 million captured, defected and surrendered, while the PLA suffered more than 260.000 killed and 1.040.000 wounded. On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the Peoples Republic of China with its capital in Beijing, while Chiang Kai-Shek and 2 million Kuomintang invaded the island of Taiwan, establishing Taipei as temporary capital of the Republic of China. A group of approx. 12.000 KMT soldiers under General Li Mi escaped to Burma and paid by the ROC government and supported by the CIA, they continued guerilla attacks into south China and undertook drug trafficking for finances. By 1949 it was common knowledge, that

Chiang's leadership was corrupt, his secret police merciless, his administration feudal, his promises lies and KMT's daily diet the blood and tears of the people of China.
Everybody expected Chiang's government to fall, if faced with a Communist invasion of Taiwan and even the US government was ready to abandon him in his last stand. As luck would have it, the onset of the next large battle of the Pacific 80 Years War, in Korea, and the birth of Stalin's nuclear bomb August 29, 1949 changed things radically. So Truman ordered the United States Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan straits, saving Chiang and the Kuomintang. In Taipei Chiang could continue to assert his government as the sole legitimate authority in China, keeping his permanent seat in the UN Security Council, declaring a closure of all mainland China ports, intercepting shipping by government sponsored pirate activity, causing severe hardship for mainland China's food distribution and fishery industry.

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Battle for Korea, 1945-1950

South Korea Strength: Casualties:

North Korea

1,200,000 include 1,200,000 include 500,000 US troops 900,000 Chinese troops 780,000 1,500,000 (estimated)

like the State Department, two US army planners, Colonel Bonesteel and Colonel Dean Rusk were able to locate Korea on the map. They suggested to divide the peninsula at the 38 parallel with the South containing two- thirds of the population, Seoul the capital and several excellent ports, constructed by Japan, on the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan. The 38th parallel was first suggested as a dividing line for Korea in 1896, when Russia wanted to annex Korea, while Japan had just secured its rights in Korea from China and Britain. In 1945 Stalin accepted the proposal since the Soviet objective was that

Total of civilians killed, missing and wounded: 2.500.000. At the Cairo conference FDR, Churchill and the Chiang's agreed to being mindful of the enslavement of the Korean people and that Korea should become free and independent in due course. This sounded good to intellectual and Christian Korean ears, except for the in due course part. No one in Washington knew what it meant and apart from a handful of fundamentalist Christian missionaries many did not even know the location of Korea, so Secretary of state Edward Stettinius had trouble finding it on the map. It was clear that the Soviets in Manchuria would get there first, and that a Soviet Korea instead of Japanese Korea was a psychosis scenario non grata. Un215

Japan must be forever excluded from Korea since Korea under Japanese rule would be a constant threat to the Far East of the USSR.
Japan might be permitted to trade with Korea but should be excluded from investing, industry or mining. By the early afternoon August 15, 1945, Koreans everywhere were singing, shouting, waving flags, congratulating each other, beating drums pots and pans in celebration of what they thought was the end of

the war. Nobody, from Pyongyang to Pusan, in their wildest nightmare could have imagined that the years ahead, following Japanese administration, would bring endless tears, blood, deprivation, destruction and suffering. That the future would mean two Korean puppet states, powerless pawns forced at each others throat by foreign interests, without any Koreans participating in the talks concerning the future of the peninsula between USA and USSR, let alone the Korean people being asked about their opinion. Additionally the saying goes that:

cated, Christian-nationalist dictator Syngman Rhee August 15, 1948, and the Peoples Republic of North Korea led by USSR trained Kim Il-sung. Oddly Kim was born a Christian too, but apart from that, the only thing the two had in common was their claim to whole of Korea, outlawing each other, and Syngman Rhee purging leftists who then headed for the hills preparing for guerilla war. The partition of Korea led to demonstrations, especially by organised labour in the South, leading to the arrest of 2.500 socialist unionists, and a bloody demonstration on Jeju Island on April 3, 1948 when 100 policemen and civilians were killed; escalating into a regular rebellion the furious Jeju population attacked police stations burned down polling stations, and issued an appeal to fight the American occupation and the partition of Korea. The South Korean government sent 3.000 soldiers and several hundred paramilitary NYA anti- communists to reinforce the police, but the soldiers mutinied turning over their weapons to the rebels, while the NYA's engaged in systematic killing, rape and terror of Jeju residents. Lt. General Kim Ik Ruhl, commander on Jeju, tried to end the uprising peacefully by meeting rebel leader Kim Dalsam, who demanded disarmament of the police, dismissal of all govern216

If two Englishmen meet, they make a club, if two Frenchmen meet they make a restaurant, and if two Koreans meet they make three political parties.
In December 1945, Korea was governed by the USUSSR commission; on paper. In reality on the ground, it totally relied on the intact Japanese administration and police force, leading to bloody strikes and clashes, several policemen killed and martial law, totally discrediting the US Free Korea declarations. The chaos led to the establishment of the Republic of South Korea, led by the Harvard edu-

ment officials, prohibition of the NYA and reunification of Korea. When General Kim Ik Ruhl refused order from US military Governor General William F. Dean to end the rebellion by force, he was recalled and his replacement mounted a major offensive against Jeju. The rebels created mountain strongholds with over 4.000 combatants by October 1948, poorly armed, but supported by many peasant villagers, while the government forces and NYA held the coastal towns. Officially on the sideline, the US military in Korea was deeply involved in the following bloody attack on the rebels by four South Korean battalions and NYA units by spring 1949, finishing off the massacre of Jeju insurgent movement on August 17, 1949. During the next fifty years, it was a crime even to mention the Jeju uprising, and the following coverup of the killing of an estimated 30.000 people, 20.000 jailed suspected of taking part in or sympathising with the rebellion and the burning of 230 villages with 40.000 houses. On June 25, 1950 North Korean troops crossed the 38 parallel in force to oust bandit traitor Syngman Rhee,
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ignoring the following US sponsored UN resolution. The well equipped North Korean Army launched the Fatherland Liberation War with 230.000 soldiers, 274 T-34 tanks, some 150 Yak fighters and 110 attack bombers totally outgunning the South Korean weak, untrained and disloyal, demotivated 80.000 troops, retreating South or defecting en masse to the Communist North. Truman ordered MacArthur to transfer material to the ROK army but by August the KPA had advanced to Pusan city vicinity on the Southern tip of the peninsula, the US Eighth Army desperately holding the Pusan Perimeter. The USAF flew 40 daily bombing sorties, destroying KPA logistics, bridges, roads and rail junctions, while the Pusan Perimeter was reinforced with 500 tanks and 180.000 soldiers soon counterattacking. Simultaneously McArthur launched the amphibious assault on Incheon destroying most of the city, retaking Seoul, rapidly defeating KPA troops of whom only about 30.000 survived the bloody retreat to the North. On September 30, 1950 Defence Secretary Marshall instructed McArthur

to feel unhampered tactically and strategically to proceed north of the 38th parallel,
and on October 1 the ROK army crossed into North Korea, capturing Pyongyang together with The Eighth US Army on October 19, 1950, by then holding 135.000 North Korean POW's. In spite of Stalin's hesitation, Mao Zedong ordered the Chinese People's Volunteer Army, to resist US occupation of all of Korea and by march and bivouac discipline the PVA could enter Korea undetected by US air reconnaissance, the three divisions marching dark to dark (19:00- 03:00 hrs) 460 Km from Manchuria to their Korean combat zone in 19 days. Differences and disagreements between Moscow's red Pope, Stalin and the Chinese peasant Luther, Mao became a major factor in Asian politics and would from this moment on shape developments in the Pacific war, a fact ignored by the Christian missionary turned politicians in Washington. They still maintained, that all Communists were inches of the same yard, adding a new nail into the coffin of US policy in Korea and Indochina. They were turning a blind eye to the dynamics of Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh's peasant/village power policy, being essentially different from the Soviet industrial/proletarian
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Marxist idealism. Previously, McArthur had told President Truman, that there was little risk of Chinese intervention since they would be slaughtered by US air superiority, but Mao's troops had learned their lessons well fighting the Japanese. So on November 1, 1950 deep inside Korea thousands of PVA soldiers encircled and attacked US units, scattering them and overran defensive positions at Unsan, defeating South Korean divisions and forcing the US Eighth Army into the longest retreat in US Army history. The only successful, but very costly, delay of the Chinese offensive, was at Kunuri by the Turkish brigade, slowing the attack for 4 days. The Chinese had adopted the hachi shiki tactics, a Japanese combat formation name for (eight), skilfully implemented by Mao's troops, allowing the enemy to move into the /\ formation, then closing the opening trapping the forces inside, splitting and liquidating them at will. The decisive battle of the Chosin Reservoir was a brutal seventeen day battle in freezing weather, between 30.000 US army and marines, encircled by 60.000 Chinese PVA troops under the command of

Song Shi-Lun. Eventually the Americans managed to break out and evacuate from the port of Hungnam, marking the total US withdrawal from North Korea. The Chinese suffered 40.000 casualties and the US 15.000 during the battle but the Americans succeeded in evacuating 100.000 soldiers with most of their equipment and 98.000 civilians to Pusan. Prior to escaping the US effected enemy-denial-operations, raising Hungnam to the ground while on December 16, 1950 President Truman declared a national emergency. In January 1951 the PVA and the Korean Peoples Army launched their Third Phase Offensive (Chinese Winter Offensive), conducting night attack tactics, adapted from the Japanese Imperial Army, stealthily encircling superior enemy forces, surprising, overwhelming and disorienting the US troops, who hurriedly retreated to the south some abandoning their weapons and equipment. On January 4, the Chinese conquered Seoul. The state of the demoralised Eighth Army and other setbacks prompted General McArthur to plan a nuclear attack on the Chinese and KPA armies, thus creating a deadly radioactive fallout zone interrupting the Chinese supply chains. US forces retreated to Suwon, Wonju and Samchock, but the new commander M.
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Ridgeway, restored Eighth Army's esprit de corps. With the Chinese outrunning their logistics, supplies, ammunition and material carried on foot and bicycle from the Yalu river to the battle lines, the US counterattack was successful, recapturing Wonju and breaking the momentum of a renewed Chinese offensive at Chipyong-ni. Revitalised, the Eighth Army expelled the Chinese and North Koreans from Seoul on March 14, 1951, which was the Korean capital's fourth conquest in a year, being in total ruin and leaving its population at a mere 200.000 out of the pre-1945 residents of 1.5 million. The disagreement between Truman and McArthur over the conduct of the war in Korea reached explosive levels by April and at a top secret meeting in Washington at 4 p.m. on April 6, 1951 between Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Gordon E. Dean and President Truman, the transfer of nuclear bombs to the military was discussed. Truman grimly described the situation in the Far East, the expected Chinese spring offensive and the heavy concentration of three Chinese armies, 700.000 men, at the Yalu river.

Additionally the Soviet Union had assembled 70 submarines in Vladivostok and another heavy troop concentration in south Sakhalin ready to cut the shipping lanes between Japan and Korea. The Joint Chief of Staff believed that Soviet entry into the battle of Korea would mean global war and they had asked President Truman to transfer nine atomic bombs to the Air Force. Unless Dean objected Truman would authorise the transfer ending civilian control of the nuclear weapons, originally supported by Truman, Dean, the Atomic Commission and the American public. Not even the Berlin crises had changed civilian atomic weapons control. On that April day however, Truman ended exclusive civilian control and transferred a few bombs to the military. To retain some control of developments at the same time, he removed trigger-happy Big Mac terminating his UN Korea command, recalling him to USA, where in return, McArthur called for Truman to be impeached, suggesting that the President was drunk when he fired McArthur, creating an outcry over the relief of the celebrated war hero. Back in the United States McArthur led a campaign against Truman, and when Eisenhower was elected president in 1952 he asked McArthur for advice about
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Korea. When the General suggested atomic bombings of North Korea and China, Eisenhower rejected the advice, and ended McArthur's military and political career. Not nuking North Korea did not mean that the FEAF (Far Eastern Air Force) had not been busily bombing and today, looking at the numbers, one wonders what was left to bomb in Korea by 1951. During the war FEAF units flew 720.980 sorties and delivered 475.000 tons of ordnance, killing an estimated 150.000 North Korean and Chinese troops, destroying about 1.000 aircraft, 800 bridges, 1.100 tanks, 800 locomotives, 9.000 railroad cars, 70.000 motor vehicles, 80.000 buildings and 20 dams flooding roads, railroad tracks and thousands of hectares of rice paddies. The B-29s had flown 20.448 sorties day and night, dropping 170.000 tons of bombs and napalm. The horrific USAF incendiary attacks with napalm against Japanese and Korean cities received much less attention then the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and did not emerge as a major war criminal issue until and during the Vietnam napalm bombings, producing terrible photos of injured civilians. Yet a lot more napalm was dropped on Korea and with much more devastating effect, the targets being large populous cities and urban indus-

trial concentrations. At the end of May 1951 a stalemate emerged, and in spite of continued fighting in the battles of Bloody Ridge, Heartbreak Ridge, White Horse, Triangle Hill and Pork Chop Hill no territory changed hands, the armistice negotiations continuing for two years. Finally a fragile agreement on an Indian sponsored ceasefire was reached on July 27, 1953, with the battle line approximately at the 38th parallel, a ceasefire still in power today with a DMZ separating the two Koreas. By the time the armistice was signed in 1953, North Korea was devastated by three years of bombings with almost no buildings standing and both Koreas had watched the whole peninsula totally ravaged as the expectations of 1945 turned into a nightmare. Kim Il-sung's regime was nearly extinguished having to survive on Chinese help and Soviet handouts, and South Korea lived on the brink of starvation until large Japanese investments in 1960's (total foreign investments in South Korea amounting to 3.6 billion US dollars with Japan accounting for 52%) finally helped it get on its feet. The Battle for Korea, although the Koreans just being innocent pawns, turned out to become one of the bloodiest chapters
221

of the Pacific 80 Years War, with total losses that still today are difficult estimate.

The Western (USUN Command) numbers of Chinese and North Korean casualties are primarily based upon calculated battleeld-casualty reports, POW interrogations, and military intelligence (documents, spies, etc.).The Korean War dead: US: 36.940 killed; PVA: 100.0001.500.000 killed; most estimate some 400.000 killed; KPA: 214.000 520.000; most estimate some 500.000. ROK: Civilian: some 245.000415.000 killed; Total civilians killed some 1.500.0003.000.000; most estimate some 2.000.000 killed. The PVA and KPA published a joint declaration after the war, reporting that the armies had "eliminated 1.09 million enemy forces, including 390.000 from the United States, 660.000 from South Korean, and 29.000 from other countries". No breakdown was given for the number of dead, wounded, and captured, which Chinese researcher Xu Yan suggests may have aided negotiations for POW repatriation. Xu writes that the PVA "suffered 148.000 deaths altogether, among which 114.000 died in combats, incidents, and winter-kill, 21.000 died after being hospitalized, 13.000

died from diseases; and 380.000 were wounded. There were also 29.000 missing, including 21.400 POWs, of whom 14.000 were sent to Taiwan, 7.110 were repatriated." For the KPA, Xu cites 290.000 casualties, 90.000 POWs, and a "large" number of civilian deaths in the north.
The impact and aftermath of the battle of Korea had far reaching consequences beyond the peninsula, especially for the the two Great Power blocs. The strengthening of NATO, being able to mobilize fifty divisions and a strong navy and air force by 1953 rendering Soviet aggression in the West unlikely, and in the east the emergence of Communist China not only as a great Asian power, but a global China with a strong military posture to influence world affairs. An Additional impact was on the acceleration of the development of large thermonuclear devices and their testing in 1952 and 1953 as well as China's first nuclear weapons test in 1964 at Lop Nur, ending possible American and Soviet nuclear blackmail. The USA, realised by 1951, that the support of Nationalist China and Koumintang against Japan had bean a grave mistake and arranged for the San Francisco Treaty with the aim of repairing US-Japan relationships and gaining an ally for obvious emerging battles and conflicts in Pacific Asia. The San Francisco Treaty was signed by over 50 countries lending credi222

bility to new US-Japan relations. Soviet opposition to the treaty was vehement, and only India was signing a special India-Japan treaty, since India considered certain provisions unjust in the treaty, and wished to give Japan the proper position of honour and equality among the community of free nations. Neither Nationalist China or Peoples Republic of China was invited leaving the status of Taiwan, integral part of Japan since 1895, up to discussion to this day in spite of the Treaty of Taipei. The massive transfer of Japanese assets to third parties, including private, industrial, state and public investments and holdings resulted in the transfer of: Japanese overseas assets in 1945 (1945, 15 = 1 US $)
Country/region Korea Taiwan North East China North China Central South China Others Value (Yen) 7,025,600,000 42,542,000,000 1.46532E+11 55,437,000,000 36,718,000,000 28,014,000,000 Total 379,499,000,000 Value (US $) 468,370,000 2,846,100,000 9,768,800,000 3,695,800,000 2,447,900,000 1,867,600,000 $25,300,000,000

Additionally Japan agreed compensation of POW's and prostitutes (mainly the Koreans and Philipinos but not the Japanese) for their work and services and an extra payment for war damages to: Japanese compensation to countries occupied during 194145
Country Burma Philippines Indonesia Vietnam Total Amount in Yen Amount in US $ Date of treaty 72,000,000,000 198,000,000,000 80,388,000,000 14,400,000,000 200,000,000 550,000,000 223,080,000 Nov 5, 1955 May 9, 1956 Jan 20, 1958

38,000,000 May 13, 1959

364,348,800,000 $1,012,080,000

The last payment to the Philippines was made on July 22, 1976. Payment to other Asian countries were accepted and executed by Japan under bilateral agreements and the understanding that the money was to be used for individual compensation. In some cases such as South Korea, the compensation was not paid out to individuals by their governments but was used for public and other projects so a large number of individuals received no payment.

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Chapter 22

BATTLE FOR INDONESIA

As luck would have it Indonesia, just like Indochina, happened to have right leaders picking up the pieces in 1945, with the cooperation of Japanese Navy and Army officers declaring independence without waiting for the former colonial masters to reoccupy their old offices. In Indonesia his name was Sukarno. Unlike Burma and the Philippines, Indonesia was not granted formal independence by the Japanese in 1943 as no Indonesian representative was present at the Greater East Asian Conference in Tokyo in November 1943. In September 1944 Japan announced that not only Java but the entire archipelago would become independent. Originally the naval kingdom of Srivijaya and the Buddhist Sailendra and Hindu MataramMajapahit dynasties thrived in Java and over most of Indonesia, and it was not until the 16th century that Islam became the major religion in Java and Sumatra and the Dutch East Indian Company became the dominant power, Indonesia formally becoming a Dutch colony in the early 20th century. The Japanese invasion encouraged the previously suppressed Indonesian independent movement, and Japan's choice of Sukarno, a modern, secular, multilingual and engaged leader of a future non-colonial prosperous Indonesia was an excellent choice.

The son of a Javanese aristocrat and a Balinese mother, attending a Dutch school and studying civil engineering at the Technical University in Bandung, he spoke native Sundanese, Balinese, Indonesian and Dutch and was also fluent in German, English, French, Arabic, and Japanese having a photographic memory and a very clear mind. Being intensely progressive both in architecture and politics, his modernity was anti racist, anti imperialist, as well as basically non-capitalist, socialist, secular and western, his hero being K. Ataturk. He became the leader of the pro independence party (PNI) in 1927, and was arrested by the Dutch colonial police in 1929, sentenced to two years in prison. During the 1930's he was arrested several times and was beginning to believe that

Indonesian independence could only be achieved together with Dai Nippon (Japan) ... for the rst time I saw myself in the mirror of Asia.
When the Japanese invaded Indonesia, February 1942, quickly defeating the Dutch forces, the Dutch intended to keep Sukarno a prisoner, being finally forced to setting him free to save themselves. The Japanese knew about Sukarno, and approached him with respect and asked him to help organise indige225

nous forces across Java and Sumatra for the war effort, consequently Sukarno having success in recruiting a considerable Javanese volunteer army, numbering two million by 1945. On November 10, 1943 he was decorated by Showa Tenno and September 7, 1944 Indonesian independence was announced by Tokyo, triggering the US justification of denouncing Sukarno as one of the foremost collaborationist leaders. In March 1945 Sukarno and Hatta began preparation work for an Independent Indonesia with delegates from all over Java and Sumatra, Portuguese Timor, British Borneo and Malay peninsula, establishing the bases of postwar Indonesia Raya, envisioned by Sukarno outlining the guiding principals of the Indonesian nation in his speech June 1, 1945. Sukarno's vision of a unitary, secular state was not popular with the Muslim leaders and their aspirations for Islamic law, but a compromise was reached in the Jakarta Charter, muslims accepting precedence of national independence guided by Pancasila, the five principles being belief in God, humanitarianism, national unity, democracy and social justice. Sukarno, Hatta and Radjiman were flown to Saigon August 11, 1945 where they were summoned by Field
226

Marshall Hisaichi Terauchi, the highly respected Japanese supreme commander, to discuss Indonesia's independence. The draft to the declaration of independence was prepared on the night of August 16, at Rear-Admiral Maeda's house, Miyako-Doori 1, Jakarta, now the Museum of Declaration of Independence, while Maeda was sleeping upstairs. The proclamation was scheduled for August 24, but under pressure from youth organisations with the motto independence or death, Sukarno, on August 17, red the declaration to about a hundred people in front of Maeda's house. They raised the red-and- white flag an sang Indonesia Raya. Sukarno and Hatta signed the declaration and said that the Dutch should be ashamed that the Japanese did more to recognise Indonesian independence than the democratic Dutch. Adam Malik broadcast the declaration over Japanese short-wave radio, while young activists in Maeda's office printed thousands of leaflets and on August 19 the Japanese sponsored PPKI was transformed into the Indonesian National Committee (KNI). The Dutch, having absolutely no intention to recognise an independent Indonesia labelled Sukarno and Hatta Japanese collaborator puppets and the Republic of Indonesia a creation of Japanese fascism, but

the Netherlands lacked the resources to reestablish colonial authority, and asked the supreme allied commander in Southeast Asia, Mountbatten to exercise jurisdiction over Indonesia. This was easier said than done, so unabashed he asked the Japanese troops to maintain law and order until British troops could land in Java late September. This they did, but at the same time some Japanese commanders felt no reason to surrender to the British since no Japanese military unit had ever been defeated by the UK. So they simply turned over their weapons to the Indonesian republicans contributing to an important part of strengthening the anti-Dutch resistance. The allies had no policy concerning Indonesian's future and only wanted do disarm the Japanese and liberate the Europeans in the internment camps. Of course most Indonesians suspected their aim to be restoration of Dutch rule, and tried to establish republican power on the ground, which was often difficult given the complex, linguistic, religious, ethnic and social-economic differences in the provinces. In Semarang on October 14 the republicans murdered some 130 Japanese prisoners and Japanese forces killed 2000 Indonesians before the British arrived six days later, arranging a cease-fire November
227

2, but sporadic fighting resumed later. In Surabaya Vice Admiral Shibata gave the Indonesians the Japanese weapons and Muslim leaders declared a holy war for Indonesia, so when 6.000 British Indian troops arrived on October 25 trying to disarm the Indonesians, they were attacked and many Indians, especially muslims, defected and joined the fight against colonialism. The British flew in Sukarno who arranged a cease-fire October 30, lasting for a few hours when Brigadier-General Mallaby was killed. The British forces reacted furiously, killing more than 6.000 Indonesians and the Indonesians in return killed over a thousand Dutch, Europeans and Chinese the fighting becoming a full fledged popular revolution. By the end of 1945 about 8.000 Indonesians were killed in Jakarta and the war of independence took on a new momentum when the Arab League recognised Sukarno's Indonesia marking the beginning of Indonesia's war of independence as well as a social revolution. The Dutch being in a week position tried to negotiate some form of agreement, reaching the Linggajati compromise finally signed May 25, 1947. Non of the parties was happy with the agreement and the Dutch

heaving gained time, launched a police action against the republic, driving the republicans out of Sumatra and most of Java. Resulting in a breakaway Islamic state in western Java and communist insurgency in Madiun-East Java, it consequently triggered the USA to pressure the Dutch to accept the republican Indonesian independence. Not giving up, the Dutch started a second police action in December 1948 arresting Sukarno and Hatta exiling them to the island of Bangka, Northern Sumatra. The Dutch iron-fisted policy aroused strong international reaction among Asian nations, such as India, as well as among the UN security council members including the United States. This resulted in the Dutch being pressured to accept Indonesian Independence, with West New Guinea remaining under Dutch control and Indonesia having to pay the Netherlands 4.3 billion Guilders. Independence took formally effect December 27, 1949 with Sukarno as the first President. Due to Indonesian non-aligned policy, The Initiative of Five as well as his affiliation with the Japanese, the Americans never liked Sukarno, and in the 50's and 60's the CIA sponsored several attempts to overthrow him. They finally succeeded with a military coup in 1965, ending Sukarno's fragile guided democ228

racy and upsetting the delicate power balance between the military, political Islam, the Communists and the nationalists, resulting in purges and terrible massacres in Java and Bali with at least a million killed in 1965-1966.

Chapter 23

BATTLE FOR INDOCHINA

pendent Democratic Republic of Vietnam. He began his declaration with All men are created equal the immortal statement in the American declaration of 1776, went on to quote the French declaration that All men are born free and equal of 1791 and then to accuse the French imperialists of abusing the truths of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, having violated our Fatherland and oppressed our fellow citizens. The Ho declaration went on:

(71) Vietnam

On September 2, 1945 in Hanoi, a little fragilelooking, Vietnamese, Ho Chi Minh declared an inde230

They have acted contrary to the ideals of humanity and justice. In the eld of politics, they have deprived our people of every democratic liberty. They have enforced inhuman laws; they have set up three distinct political regimes in the North, the Center and the South of Vietnam in order to wreck our national unity and prevent our people from being united. They have built more prisons than schools. They have mercilessly slain our patriots- they have drowned our uprisings in rivers of blood. They have fettered public opinion; they have practised obscurantism against our people. To weaken our race they have forced us to use opium and alcohol. In the elds of economics, they have eeced us to the backbone, impoverished our people, and devastated our land. They have robbed us of our rice elds, our mines, our forests, and our raw materials.

They have monopolised the issuing of bank-notes and the export trade. They have invented numerous unjustiable taxes and reduced our people, especially our peasantry, to a state of extreme poverty. They have hampered the prospering of our national bourgeoisie; they have mercilessly exploited our workers.
The declaration concluded:

which at Tehran and San Francisco have acknowledged the principles of self-determination and equality of nations, will not refuse to acknowledge the independence of Vietnam.
It was straight talk, undeniable facts, and Ho Chi Min meant what he said, but on top of that, unbeknownst to the French and Allied he had prepared thoroughly for practical and pragmatic action on the ground. The USA and European powers did not understand that Chinese and Vietnamese Communism was totally different from the Communism of Russia and Europe, Moscow being a totalitarian Red Vatican. Unlike Europe, Ho's Communism did not replace a bankrupt moral world of Christianity among the exploited industrial proletariat, but on the contrary found a rather symbiotic coexistence with Buddhist-Confucian ethics in the mind of the ancient village dwelling Vietnamese peasant. Ho Chi Min was born in 1890, received French education, and like other Asian young intellectuals at the time, his political horizon was influenced by the Japanese victory over Imperial Russia in 1905, heralding possible independence for Asian colonies, by force if necessary. From 1911 to 1941 he had travelled to France, USA, London, became founding member of Parti Communiste Francais, spending much time in
231

Our people have broken the chains which for nearly a century have fettered them and have won independence for the Fatherland. Our people at the same time have overthrown the monarchic regime that has reigned supreme for dozens of centuries. In its place has been established the present Democratic Republic. For these reasons, we, members of the Provisional Government, representing the whole Vietnamese people, declare that from now on we break off all relations of a colonial character with France; we repeal all the international obligation that France has so far subscribed to on behalf of Vietnam and we abolish all the special rights the French have unlawfully acquired in our Fatherland. The whole Vietnamese people, animated by a common purpose, are determined to ght to the bitter end against any attempt by the French colonialists to reconquer their country. We are convinced that the Allied nations

Moscow advising Comintern on Asian matters. From Moscow, upon Lenin's death, after participating in the Fifth Comintern Congress, he arrived in China 1924, where he taught at Whampoa Military Academy but Chiang Kai-shek's anticommunist 1927 coup, triggered his leaving Canton returning to Thailand via Moscow, Brussels, Berlin, Switzerland and Italy. From Thailand he moved to Hong Kong where he was arrested in 1931, but the British did not extradite him to the French, but announced that he had died in prison and released him quietly in 1933. In 1938 he returned to China as adviser for the Chinese Communists and finally ended his wanderings, returning to Vietnam in 1941 becoming the leader of the Viet Minh independence movement. His old friend/disciple Nguyen Giap, whose family had been arrested, tortured and executed by the French, also heaving fled to China, returned to Vietnam in 1944 joining up with Ho. What Ho and Giap did not know was, that at Potsdam, Truman, Churchill and Stalin already had decided on the future of Vietnam, with the north under the control of the Nationalist Chinese and the South under the British.

Of course the French had their own plans in Indochina rooted in the century old Christian- French undermining and abolishing of Vietnamese independence and culture, imposing significant changes in the society. Especially the aggressive Christian missionaries, created deep (often violent) resentment. Not so much because of the sexual abuse of young vietnamese by the Catholic priests, but more due to the Christian organised, purposeful and relentless attacks on the traditional Confucian filial piety, being a cornerstone of every Indochinese society, upsetting even the poorest peasants with hate of everything Christian. Even the totalitarian Mongol rulers did not experiment with trying to interfere with the traditional, sacred Vietnamese/Chinese Confucian family values. Already Emperor Minh Mang (1819-1841) tried to protect Vietnam from French-Christian influences, confining missionaries to Hue, to translating french books; having read The Bible he thought it was absurd, and he embarked on a policy of devoted Confucianism. In his decree of 1836 he permitted the killing of missionaries, convinced that the Japanese ban of the Christian religion in 1639, had helped Japan to avoid colonialism. Upon Minh Mang's death in 1841, the Vietnamese Christians supported by France rebelled, and order was not restored until Tu Duc (1847-83), also a pious Confucian, came on the throne. Deeply mistrusting the Europeans, his edicts pun232

ished missionaries with death and dispersed Christian communities, many French priests were executed and thousands of Christians persecuted. A decree in 1855 banned Christian expressions, imposed death penalty on all priests, and offered reward for their capture. The Spanish Bishop Diaz of Tonkin was executed in 1857, and De Montigny (French Consul in Shanghai from 1859) went to Vietnam demanding religious freedom, end of persecution of Catholics and the establishment a consulate in Hue. Vietnam rejected all his demands and the French had found a good reason to dispatch a military force of 3.000 to Vietnam. Capturing Danang September 1, 1858 and by the end of 1861 gaining control of the lower coast of Cochinchina (a third of Vietnam, Saigon being it's centre) marked the beginning of the end of the ancient Vietnamese Monarchy. In June 1862 Emperor Tu Duc had to cede the provinces of Gia Dinh, Dinh Tuong, and Bien Hoato to the French, promise religious freedom but the Mandarins of Cochinchina rebelled. Admiral Bonard bringing in reinforcements suppressed the rebellion appointing french inspectors to the administration. Several rebellions, skirmishes and clashes followed, with Tu Duc accepting French sovereignty over six provinces, a French resident in Hue, and the opening of the ports of Quinonh, Hai Phong, Danang and Ha233

noi to French trade, a consulate at each and to tolerate the Christians. However several rebellions, Buddhist religious uprisings followed, and Christian communities were set on fire as well as bandits and pirates roamed the rivers and provinces making trade difficult and costly. Some Vietnamese went to Europe trying to bring modernisation to Vietnam and some French tried to convince the French to learn Vietnamese instead of millions of Vietnamese having to learn French. In 1878 the French decided that after 1882 the official quoc-ngu roman alphabet would be the only acceptable official writing of Vietnamese, resulting in more rebellions and repressions. In 1880 Tu Duc requested Chinese help and Beijing sent 200.000 men to help their Vietnamese vassal. The French commander Col. Riviere started hanging Chinese and Vietnamese POW's and in response Luu Vinh Phuoc labelled the French petty bandits and foreign beast destroying our country warning that they should go home or they would die. On May 19 Col. Riviere and fifty other Frenchmen were killed in an ambush near Son Tay. In mid 1883 Prime Minister Jules Ferry decided to send a strong military force to finally conquer Indochina. Led by General Bouet and Admiral Courbet capturing Hue

river forts by August 18, 1883 forcing the new Emperor Hiep-Hoa to sign a surrender, Vietnam became a protectorate of France. China protested and sent troops but the French treated them as bandits and beheaded POW's, soon driving out the Chinese forces by December, resulting in Beijing declaring war on France in August 1884. The Chinese defeated the French at Lang Son on March 28, 1885, General Negrier's troops panicking, fleeing to the mountains, and leading to the signing of a cease-fire on April 4. Meanwhile turmoil in the succession over the throne in Hue led to numerous armed conflicts and revolts in Tonkin and Annam with various princes supporting or fighting the French, some exiled to Thahiti and Algiers others fleeing to China or Japan. Additionally the Muongs, Thais and Thos supported the French having suffered from discrimination by the Vietnamese. Resistance by the peasants to the French became frequent, with burning of churches, guerilla attacks, insurgency movements and the French retaliating by burning pagodas and razing villages. By 1896 casualties included 40.000 Catholic converts, 18 French missionaries, 40 priests and 9.000 churches burned with the colonial war having cost the French 750 million gold francs. The insurgency sacrifice had little chance of defeating the French but the desperate resistance would inspire later generations fighting for

Vietnamese independence. The new Governor-General Doumer raised revenues by monopolising the production and sale of opium, alcohol and salt and used the administrations revenue of 20 million piasters in 1899 for public works, planning roads and railways lines, constructing over 2.000 Km of railroads in twelve years up to 1911. More than 25.000 Vietnamese and Chinese died working on the 500 km Yunnan-Fuo line alone, and the lack of industries and mining did not make the new railways economically viable; actually people suffered tremendously from the higher taxes and forced labour on railroad construction. It was said that Doumer built an opera house in Hanoi instead of sewers for the city. Many young Vietnamese escaped to Japan to get education, study and publish works, books and studies forbidden in Vietnam while others tried to flee to China from the unbearable conditions under the French. There were 80.000 opium addicts, fishermen could not afford to by salt for their fish, French monopoly prohibited traditional alcohol distillation, peasants suffered from unfair taxes and forced labour. Schools and universities modelled on Japanese modern education systems were closed, teachers arrested and jailed, demonstrations suppressed the
234

ringleaders tortured. Agents broke into and searched homes without warrants confiscating literature smuggled in from Japan, and the French even tried to pay the Japanese Government not to tolerate Vietnamese refugees, prompting many Japanese intellectuals and leaders to help anti-colonial activists. By 1913 Vietnam had 175 medical facilities for a population of 25 million with only one doctor per 38.000 people. In 1917 the university of Hanoi was reopened but medical graduates were not doctors but only hygiene officers, and those who wanted to be recognised as doctors still had to go to France. An estimated 140.000 Vietnamese volunteers were shipped to the war in France by recruiting methods more like abductions and kidnapping. In 1919 Prince Cuong De in exile in Japan sent a telegram to President Wilson at the Versailles peace conference demanding an Autonomous Indochina so the French asked Japan to keep Cuong De under surveillance and confined to Tokyo. A few people made fortunes, while the majority in Vietnam merely existed, e.g. in 1929 the rubber companies made 309 million francs and paid only 40 million in salaries, resulting in 24 strikes by 6.000 workers and next year 98 strikes by 31.000 workers, the organisers being hunted by police, jailed and tortured.
235

Following the Yen Bay revolt in 1930, 699 people were executed without trials, over 7.000 exiled to Poulo Condore and torture of suspects was common. By 1931 most of the resistance was crushed, and the French Foreign Legion had orders to kill and interrogate applying torture. Still the illegal unions and Ho Chi Min's communist peasant organisation members grew to 64.000 since, compered to Java, where more than half of the rubber plantations were owned by natives, in Vietnam it was less than five percent. In 1938 France asked for 20.000 Vietnamese troops to be sent to Europe, Prince Cuong De left Tokyo to organise anti-colonial forces and Ho Chi Min returned to China. After the French defeat to Germany, the Vichy government made a treaty with Japan and the Japanese protection of French Indochina, agreeing on the stationing of 25.000 Japanese troops but allowing the French to continue governing Indochina. After an absence of almost ten years Ho established the Viet Minh on May 10, 1944, urging the Vietnamese to prepare for independence. On November 1941 the Japanese took control of all Indochinese enterprises, but allied bombing prevented shipping goods to and from Indochina and the Chinese nationalists, who had arrested Ho and tried to organise a nationalist Vietnamese resistance to the Japanese without him, had to realise that only Ho Chi Min and his Viet

Minh was capable of mobilising the Vietnamese. In July 1943 General Iwane Matsui announced in Saigon, that Japan had ended French rule and that Indochina could develop independently, while Charles de Gaulle rejected all alternatives to reclaiming Indochina as a French colony. On March 9, 1945 the Japanese gave French Governor Decoux two hours to surrender increasing Japanese troops in Indochina to 60.000. Most of the French military units were disarmed and Japan announced that Vietnam was independent with Emperor Bao Dai as head of state. Ignoring the Japanese - Vietnamese announcement, the French on March 24, 1945, declared the five states of Cochinchina, Annan, Tonkin, Cambodia and Laos a federal state under a French governor-general. This plan was immediately rejected by all Vietnamese political parties. The day after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the Vietnamese government of Trang Trong Kim resigned, and one week later the Japanese accepted the Allied terms to transfer control of Cochinchina. The Indochinese Communist Party met in Tonkin on August 13, voted for a general insurrection and tree days later the Peoples Congress led by Ho Chi Min in the village of Tan Trao near Hanoi formed the National Liberation Committee of Vietnam. The same
236

day Viet Minh guerrillas entered Hanoi distributing thousand of leaflets and taking over all the public buildings mostly with Japanese officers cooperating and almost non resisting. The Viet Minh entered Hue and Emperor Bao Dai asked them to form a government marking the victory of the Vietnamese August Revolution. In the meantime The French parachuted into Tonkin and Annam but most of the troops were killed or captured and Viet Minh remaining united and strong in Tonkin and Annan. In the south commissioner Jean Cedile was captured by the Japanese and taken to Saigon, where most political parties yielded to Viet Minh and on August 25 hundreds of thousands took to the Saigon streets celebrating the revolution. On August 29 Ho Chih Min formed a government and declared Vietnamese independence on September 2 before half a million people gathered in Hanoi. Saigon had large demonstrations the same day and two days later Marshal Terauchi was told by the British that Japanese troops were responsible for keeping order until British forces came ashore. The first British arrived on September 6, immediately demanding that all Vietnamese, including the Saigon police surrender their weapons, and bought in 1.800 French troops planning for a French takeover of Sai-

gon. The Vietnamese had no intention of disarming and the French acting aggressively, provoked disturbances and confrontations, leading to a general strike on September 17, Vietnamese police arresting French provocateurs. The British suspended all Vietnamese newspapers, ordering the Japanese troops to police the city and finally declared martial law, banning all meetings and demonstrations. On September 22 the British armed more French troops, taking over the police stations, beating up and arresting hundreds of Vietnamese, leading to a Vietnamese general strike and the blockade of Saigon preventing food deliveries for the French. Trying to restore control the British even arrested Marshal Terauchi threatening to hold him as a war criminal if he did not order the Japanese troops to subdue the Vietnamese. Finally General Leclerc marched into Saigon with fresh troops from France and heavily armed columns, braking the blockade and driving the Vietnamese out of Saigon. In the North, as planned in Potsdam, about 50.000 Chinese troops occupied Vietnam keeping the French from crossing the 16th parallel, and living of the land taking whatever they needed. Chinese companies (mostly Chiang Kai-shek cronies) used the inflated
237

Chinese Dollar to by up French mines, factories, and other businesses at low prices. In the mean time Ho Chi Minh's government abolished the poll tax and the monopolies on salt, alcohol, and opium. The genuine reforms included suffrage for all citizens over eighteen, prohibited opium, prostitution, alcohol and gambling, gave land to landless peasants, dikes were repaired, unions could organise and public utilities previously owned by the French were nationalised. A massive literacy campaign was undertaken and the University of Hanoi was reopened. During the summer 1946 General Giap built up the Liberation Army to 60.000 with the help of an estimated 5.000 Japanese officers and specialist's, training and leading the Vietnamese soldiers, among others JIA Colonel Tsuji and Colonel Mukayama. Giap and Ho had started the enlisting of Japanese anticolonial military personnel and former Kempeitai not wanting to return to Japan and war-criminal trials already in 1945. With Giap arranging Vietnamese citizenship and false ID papers, a strategy which turned out to be very valuable for the strengthening the Viet Minh and their fighting capabilities. In fact one of the French demands, during the peace negotiations in 1947, was that the Vietnamese should turn over the Japanese war criminals fighting with and training the Viet Minh army, which Ho Chi Minh flatly refused. He was calling the Japanese allies and

friends which he would not betray and walked out of the peace negotiations for seven years of more war. Mukayama and Tsuji became the most important officers of General Giap; both were probably killed in action in Vietnam. Their organisation of the bicyclesupply and transport divisions first applied by the Japanese Army in the Malaysian Jungles and the underground cave-tunnel defence systems against enemy air and artillery-armour superiority first applied in the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, proved essential to the final success of Viet Minh. On December 17, 1946 the French demanded that Viet Minh in Hanoi disarm in three days, which led to sporadic fighting and France declaring martial law marking the beginning of the French-Vietnam battle 1946-1950. This led to Giap's radio broadcast call for the battle of national liberation and Ho Chi Minh's urging the Vietnamese to endure sacrifices and fight to the end. By january 1947 the French had about 115.000 troops in Indochina and launched an offensive by paratroopers against Viet Minh headquarters, but failed to catch Ho. Consequently the Viet Minh changed their defensive tactics to aggressively initiating battles with the French from 1948 onwards. On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the Peoples Republic of China with its capital at Beijing and
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on January 18, 1950 China became the first nation to grant diplomatic recognition to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). Recognised as the only legal government in Vietnam by Mao, Ho secretly visited Moscow, where Stalin, Mao and Ho agreed on an alliance and the Viet Minh was promised USSR aid through China. A happy Ho Chi Minh returned by train with Mao and Zhou Enlai to Beijing and China began sending aid and advisors arming and training 20.000 Vietnamese by the end of the year. The Viet Minh forces reached 160.000, undertaking offensives forcing the French (after loosing 4.000 men), to evacuate the entire region bordering China. The French National Assembly had established the Associated States of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos under France and the USA began military aid to French Indochina in March 1950. Establishing the Military Assistance Advisory Group in Saigon, the French forces, assisted by 65.000 Vietnamese troops and encouraged by the American help, began bold operations against the Vietnamese fighting for independence. In the meantime the conflict had spread to Laos and Cambodia, where Pathet Lao and Khmer Serei was organised after the model of Viet Minh and with the objective of achieving a colonial-free In-

dochina. By 1954 the centre of gravity in the Pacific War had moved to Indochina with the Chinese supply of weapons, expertise, food and materials transforming Viet Minh into a formidable regular army and in response, with the USA's arms supply and 1 billion US $ support of the French war effort. In spite of heavy losses in the battles of Lang Son and Hoa Binh General Giap's stubborn willpower and his soldiers motivation and resilience, finally made the difference, paving the road to the humiliating French (and US) defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.

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Chapter 24

BATTLE OF DIEN BIEN PHU

A new concept by Colonell Berteil, called the herrison (hedgehog) had been applied by the French successfully at the battle of Na San, where the Viet Minh was beaten and forced to retreat with heavy losses. General Henry Navarre decided to repeat the hedgehog concept on a much larger scale, hoping to lure Giap into a devastating defeat in the valley of Dien Bien Phu, thus eliminating the Viet Minh threat to Laos. What the french failed to realise was the crucial differences between Na San, where they controlled the high ground and Dien Bien Phu valley where Giap's troops controlled the surrounding hills and the french were at the bottom. Additionally the Viet Minh outnumbered the foreign legionnaires four to one and had adapted the Japanese strategy in Jungle warfare of transporting heavy artillery, anti-aircraft batteries and stockpiling sufficient ammunition even in very difficult terrain. The Viet Minh camouflaged their artillery well, took the effort to set up decoys and to pinpoint the exact location of the French artillery before the battle. French operations began in the morning of November 20, 1953 with dropping 9.000 troops in to the valley at three drop zones:Natasha, Octavie, and Simone, so by the end of November six parachute bat241

talions had consolidated their positions. In December Colonel Castries began transforming the whole valley into a cluster of seven fortresses named after former mistresses of de Castries, which was a legend he created to boast of his virility, since the names simply began with the first letters of the alphabet. Anne- Marie to the Northwest, Beatrice to the Northeast, Claudine to the South, Dominique to the Northeast, Eliane to the South, Gabrielle to the North, Huguette at the air strip (originally constructed by the Japanese) and Isabelle 6 km to the South. By the end of December the French had nearly 16.000 men in the valley consisting of elite paratroopers, battle hardened Foreign Legionnaires many former German SS, and Algerian and Moroccan tirailleurs. General Giap had moved 50.000 troops into the hills including a heavy artillery division and AA guns overlooking the valley surrounding the french hedgehog. The fighting began on March 13, the Viet Minh launching a devastating artillery attack on Beatrice, killing the commander Major Pegot, Colonel Gaucher and about 500 legionnaires at a cost of 600 Viet Minh killed and 1.200 wounded, resulting in the hardening of Vietnamese morale and the suicide of French artillery commander Charles Piroth frustrated by his ar-

tillery's impotence against the Viet Minh gunners. Next, the air strip was hit, forcing the French to parachute supplies in but the night attack on Gabrielle, held by an elite Algerian battalion, ended with the

French abandoning it, losing around 1.000 men and the Viet Minh about 1.500. Anne-Marie was defended by ethnic T'ai Vietnamese, who demoralised by the fall of Gabrielle, simply left their positions or defected and forced the remaining French to withdraw. Also the arial resupply took heavy losses from Viet Mihn antiaircraft machineguns and by end of March, Giap intensified the attacks of Dominique and Eliane in central Dien Bien Puh. With fierce night fighting the next few days, attacks and counterattacks, various fortifications and defence strong points changing hands several times, both sides were taking heavy casualties. On April 10 the French attempt to retake Eliane 1, the strongpoint essential to the defence of the central valley, gaining control by the next day, defeating desperate Viet Minh counterattacks, Eliane firmly remaining in French control by April 12. The extreme casualties suffered by Viet Minh at this point, 6.000 killed and 8.000 wounded plus 2.500 captured cupeled with the total lack of an effective medical service resulted in a crises among many Viet Minh units. Mutinies and refusing orders occured threatening a collapse which General Giap barely averted by calling in reinforcements from Laos.

(72) Dien Bien Puh

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The Viets are everywhere. The Situation is very grave ... but we will ght to the nish.
By evening the French central positions had been captured and the radio operator's last words were:

The enemy has overrun us. We are blowing up everything. Vive la France!
During the battle there had been secret talks between the French and the Americans in which the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons against Viet Minh were discussed. Called Operation Vulture, it consisted of sending in 60 B-29s supported by 150 fighters from the US Seventh Fleet carriers, including the option of dropping three nuclear bombs on General Giap's positions and the US carriers entering the Tonkin gulf and launch constant reconnaissance flights over Dien Bien Puh. Finally President Eisenhower decided against intervention and Giap handed the French a stunning military defeat, Dien Bien Puh surrendering on May 7, 1954, forcing the French government to granting independence to Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam at the Geneva Conference.

(73) Dien Bien Phu, March 1954 On the morning of April 22 the Viet Minh controlled most of the airfield, practically making air supply by parachute dropping impossible and the final attacks against the last exhausted defenders were launched on May 6. On May 7, General Giap ordered an all out attack by 25.000 Viet Minh against some 3000 garrison troops. At 5:00 PM de Castries radioed the French headquarters in Hanoi:

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Chapter 25

BATTLE FOR SOUTH VIETNAM

On May 8, the Viet Minh counted 11.721 prisoners including 4.436 wounded. Only 3.290 were repatriated four month later. At Geneva the Viet Minh victory resulted in the partition of Vietnam at the 17th parallel, into the Northern Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Southern State of Vietnam, with the agreement that the division would be temporary. It would only last until reunification after free and democratic national elections in 1956. After the French withdrawal from Indochina to face the Algerian war, the United States put Ngo Dinh Diem as head of the South Vietnamese government, opposing the Geneva agreement, having no intention of holding any elections. Diem, born to devote Catholic parents in Hue, was Christened Jean-Babtiste, his elder brother later becoming Vietnams highest ranking priest, and went to Catholic schools, graduating in 1921, joining the civil service. He was promoted to district chief and became highly regarded by the French, helping to suppress peasant revolts, went into politics on an antiVietminh platform. Having little success and Viet Minh having had enough of his activities, sentencing him in 1950 to death in absentia. Since the French refused to protect him he left Vietnam for Rome for the holy year celebration in the Vatican.

On the way he visited Japan, tried to get help from McArthur, who ignored him, but Diem had better luck in America where he was introduced to The American Pope and notorious anti- communist Cardinal Francis Spellman, Archbishop of New York and staunch supporter of McCarthy and a pioneer of America's going to war in Vietnam. Already a major American political power broker in 1936 when he manipulated the reelection of Roosevelt, he was a crusader of Christian Indochina spending every Christmas with American troops in Japan, Korea and Europe, becoming one of Diem's most powerful advocates laying down the foundation of the disastrous US involvement in Indochina. In spite of French warnings, who considered Diem to be incompetent and fanatical, the Eisenhower administration appointed Diem Prime Minister of South Vietnam. The US choice of Diem proved unfortunate from the beginning since he would always be a stranger to the Vietnamese peasant, so when he arrived in Saigon airport, June 26, 1954 only a few Catholics were there to great him. The first undertaking of Diem was, together with the US Navy and CIA, Operation Passage to Freedom, moving over one million Catholics from North Vietnam to the South, to help strengthen his rule, using propaganda like
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Christ has gone South and accusing Ho Chi Minh of rampant persecution of Christians. Still Diems position was weak, his National Army trained and controlled by the French, Cao Dai's private army ruling the Mekong Delta, the Viet Minh controlling a third of the provinces. Saigon was run by the Binh Xuyen crime syndicate army of 40.000, operating a vice empire of brothels, casinos, opium factories, extortion rackets, even with the national police on their payroll for 1.5 million dollars. In reality Diem's power did not extend beyond the doorstep of his palace. He and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, an opium addict and admirer of Hitler, did arrange a referendum about the future of Vietnam in October 1955, which turned out to be a farce with Diem getting 98.2% of the vote including 605.025 votes in Saigon, the city having only 450.000 eligible voters. Actually Diem's three brothers, Nhu chief of the secret police, Can in charge of Hue and running opium through Laos, and Thuc archbishop of Hue, amassing urban real-estate, farm land, rubber plantations in the name of the Catholic church, holding 1.500 sq.
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km (370.000 acres) of tax exempt land. They were running South Vietnam like a Sicilian Mafia family operation. Nuh and his wife amassed a fortune in offshore banks, operating lotteries and currency manipulation while a fourth Diem brother, Ambassador to UK, became a multimillionaire speculating in PiastersPounds using insider government information. As one American put it:

Saigon is worse than Chicago was under Al Capone.

Additionally tortures and killings of Communist suspects, anti-corruption crusaders and Diem- dynasty critics were committed constantly with an estimated total of 50.000 executions and 75.000 imprisonments. Naturally violent opposition grew and an insurgency began to be organised in 1957, so finally in January 1959 Hanoi's Central Committee authorised the armed struggle in the South, establishing the NLF (National Liberation Front) on December 20, 1960 to fight the Diem government. The two key reasons for the Vietnamese people's hostility towards the Diem/USA South Vietnamese regime, was the unbalanced distribution of land, e.g.

40% of the land in the Mekong Delta was owned by 0.025% of land owners and in total 10% of the population owned 55% of the land. The other reason being the extreme privileged position of the Catholic church and the regimes discrimination of the Buddhist majority estimated to be 80% of the Vietnamese population. All important positions in the government and bureaucracy were held by Catholics, all promotions in the South Vietnamese Army were of Catholics and many ambitious Vietnamese high ranking officers became Catholics as a matter of fact part of becoming successful (Similar to the Christian power-monopoly in South Korea today). Some Catholic priests had private armies doing forced conversions, looting, burning and demolishing pagodas. Some villages converted to Christianity to receive aid, avoid resettlement, and forced labour and in 1959 Diem dedicated Vietnam to the Virgin Mary, flying the Vatican flag at public major events. In 1963 this led to the Buddhist crises, when a Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc set himself on fire in the middle of Saigon on June 11th. The photo of the incident taken by Malcolm Brown resulted in global resentment and became undeniable prove of the fail-

ure of the Diem/US government. Several other monks followed Duc's radical protest and when Diem's reaction was to arrest 1.400 monks, demolishing Buddha statues, and beat peasants trying to protect temples and sacred Buddhist (74) Buddhist monk Thich relics, widespread resisQuang Duc set himself on fire tance, boycott, and general disobedience to the Diem government became common.

Madame Nhu's ofcial comment that: If the buddhists want to have another barbecue, I will be happy to provide the gasoline,
alarmed the world public opinion, USA and it's CIAVietnam hands. The raids on Buddhist pagodas produced a military coup on November 1, 1963, approved by the US, and was followed by the swift execution of Diem and his brothers. Ironically no stable South Vietnamese government was established after the Diem regime, and the Ho Chi Minh prediction of, that American imperialist sponsored governments will all fail, one following
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the next became reality. By 1964 NLF ranks had grown to 100.000 and the US troops in Vietnam reached 16.500 following the NLF attack on the airbase in Pleiku, leaving eight Americans dead and 128 wounded serving as justification of the launching of bombing attacks against North Vietnam. The bombing campaigns Flaming Dart, Rolling Thunder and Arch Light were supposed to stop Ho Chi Minh supporting the NLF and to destroy North Vietnams air defences, industry- and transport infrastructure, with rolling thunder alone dropping a million tons of various bombs and rockets. The bombings were not restricted to Vietnam but included attacks on Laos and Cambodia and the Ho Chi Minh Trail in general, e.g. a total of 2.757.000 tons dropped on Cambodia alone. All in all the US bombing of all of Indochina reached a staggering 6.727.000 tons compared to a mere 2.700.000 tons totally dropped by the allies in the European theatre. The objective of stopping the supply of Viet Cong from the North was never achieved and only served to further generate support of the NLF. The threat by General Le May, the architect of the fire bombing of Tokyo in 1945, that he would bomb the Vietnamese back to the stone age proved empty
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words but only a few Americans could see that the conflict was a political/religious one and victory would not be achieved by bombs. On January 31, 1965 the Tactical Fighter Wing was moved from Okinawa to Da Nang AFB and since the South Vietnamese Army was not capable of providing security on the ground, 3500 US marines were dispatched to Vietnam in the global struggle against communism, and Ho Chi Minh warned:

If the americans want to make war for twenty years, we shall make war for twenty years.
US army deployment reached 200.000 by December following the NLF defeating ARVN(South Vietnamese Army) in Binh Gia and Dong Xoai increasing desertion and plummeting moral among ARVN personnel. General Westmoreland dropped all diplomatic hypocrisy and open- ended US commitment to war on Viet Cong and Ho Chi Minh officially commenced, Westmoreland predicting victory by the end of 1967 and practically admitting that the South Vietnamese Government was an empty shell. The one year US duty rotation turned out to be a mistake, depriving units of experienced combat leadership

the Americans not in Vietnam for 10 years but for one year 10 times
while the Viet Cong and NVA accumulated battle hardened elite officers. Washington tried to lure allies to contribute troops to Indochina, but the major Nato countries, UK and Canada declined with only Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Thailand and the Philippines sending troops with US footing the bill. In the mean time a totally new front in modern warfare emerged with devastating consequences for those, who were not capable of mastering this new weapon. It is called global direct live-television, already resulting in large demonstrations against the USA in many major cities from Paris to Pentagon. After 1963 the effect on the television of battles,offensives and operations became an important part of Giap's tactics and strategy. The first such offensive, called the Tet Offensive, began on January 31, 1968 striking military and civilian centres with the objective of toppling the Saigon government and ending the war, with 80.000 NLF troops hitting more than 100 towns and cities including the capital.

(75) Tet Offensive In conventional military terms, the Tet offensive proved to be a failure, but on the TV-frontline is was
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a fantastic success. General Westmoreland seemed ridiculous by maintaining that the the attack on Saigon was a mere diversion and it was obvious that he and the whole American leadership was deeply shaken by the scale and organisation of the offensive. In Saigon the offensive had six primary targets; capturing the Tan Son Nhut Air Base, the Independence Palace, the US Embassy, the Long Binh Headquarters and the National Radio Station and holding them for 48 hours. The Radio Station being most important since the NLF brought with them a tape-recording of Ho Chi Minh announcing the liberation of Saigon. The Radio was sized and held for six hours, but technical difficulties hindered the broadcast. The six-floor US Embassy building was attacked by a 19-man commando team and in spite of that their commanding officer had fallen, they held part of the Embassy for six hours leaving five US personnel dead. All over Saigon small teams of Viet Cong in civilian clothes spread out liquidating military-, police officers and government personnel revealing, that many undercover NLF cadres had been living and working in the city as normal citizens. In one famous incident the chief of National Police, Nguyen Ngoc Loan executed the captured Viet Cong
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officer, Nguyen Van Lem in front of camera men and TV-reporters. The captured images showed in the global media did not explain that suspect Lem, had just taken part in the killing of a police officer and his family.

(76) Execution of Nguyen Van Lem

During the mopping up operations in and around Saigon during the first phase of the Tet offensive (30 January-8 April) approximately 45.000 Communist soldiers had been killed and an unknown number wounded while the US and South Vietnamese suffered 4.300 killed and 16.000 wounded. The battle of Hue, the historic capital of Vietnam became the bloodiest and longest battles of the conflict when more than 10.000 entrenched NLF guerilla forces and Peoples Army regulars controlling the city were attacked by US marines and South Vietnamese Army battalions. The battle started on January 31, 1968 when a division VC's an NVA's stormed Hue targeting key points with the strategic objective to sweeping NLF into power.

Attacking Tay Loc Airfield and the Citadel where a four man North Vietnamese commando unit, dressed in South Vietnamese Army uniforms killed the guards at the Western Gate and opened the gate for the NVA regiments raising the NLF banner over the Citadel tower. At the same time US marines at Phu Bai airfield outside of Hue were attacked, and marine reinforcements entered the city where house to house, hand to hand bitter combat followed for more than three weeks. Finally, upon Skyhawks dropping napalm and bombs, the marines raised the american flag over the Citadel, causing South Vietnamese protests, since the US flag was supposed to be accompanied by the South Vietnamese flag. When a few American Army officers, instructed to take down the US flag appeared, the marines threatened to shoot them. Eventually the marines took down the flag themselves under command of their superior officers. NLF suffered heavy losses in the battle of Hue, estimated at 9.000 killed, as well as civilian losses and executions ran at over 5.000 with 80% of the city destroyed by American heavy firepower. Militarily Hue
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was a US victory and a NLF defeat upon holding the city for one month, but in world public opinion and TV-media reports Hue was the beginning of the end with Washington considering to find an exit of the conflict beginning the Nixon/ Kissinger doctrine of Vietnamisation. Gradual withdrawal of US troops began soon after the Tet offensive and the Nixon administration embarked on a fresh policy of detente with the Soviets and rapprochement with China, in spite of both keeping up the supply and support of North Vietnam's efforts to reunite the country. Ho Chi Minh died in September 1969 and anti-war movement gained spectacular strength after the revelations of the My Lai Massacre in which a frustrated US Army platoon (77) The My Lai Massacre went on rampage killing and raping civilian villagers including women and children. Also Newsweek revealed that in a US operation, claiming 10.000 Viet Cong killed, perhaps half the casualties were civilians.

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Chapter 26

FALLLIBERATION OF SAIGION

Cambodia gaining independence at the Geneva Conference, led by Prince Sihanouk, made neutrality a cornerstone of Cambodian policy during the 50's and 60's. By the mid-60's the NVA-activity in the eastern provinces and on the Ho Chi Minh Trail triggered a fourteen month long concentrated bombing of Cambodia further contributing to the war spilling over into neutral Cambodia. Prince Sihanouk's policy of keeping out both the NVA/NLF and the USA and everybody else from Cambodia upset the US, labelling him as a North Vietnamese sympathiser. Washington ordered the CIA to dispose of him, chasing him out of his country in 1970, allowing Cambodian air space free for US operations all over Indochina, fermenting the ground of the Khmer Rouge and the Pol Pot regime as well as Pathet Lao victory in Laos. The secret bombing of Cambodia and Laos and South Vietnamese Army/US incursions into neutral Cambodia to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail was an escalation of the conflict in spite of withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam, and when the secret Pentagon Papers about US involvement were leaked to New York Times, anti war sentiments in USA and elsewhere grew considerably. The moral and discipline among the US troops deteriorated, drug use increased, disobedience and even fragging of officers occurred, resulting in Australia and New Zealand

withdrawing their troops from Vietnam in 1971. The Easter Offensive in 1972 by NLF and North Vietnam barely halted by massive American air power (Operation Linebacker) left no doubt that the Vietnamisation was a failure and that South Vietnam could not survive on its own. On April 20 Kissinger secretly met Brezhnev in Moscow trying to talk the USSR into pressure Hanoi to end the offensive, to which Brezhnev agreed wary of Washington's improved relationship with Beijing. Brezhnev arranged a secret meeting in Paris between Kissinger and Hanoi's Le Duc Tho, but the Vietnamese smelling blood and victory were in no mood to bargain and the talks turned out to be brutal and insulting. May 1, 1972 marked the fall of Quang Tri City and 40.000 NVA troops defeating an army of 150.000 South Vietnamese, ending the Paris Peace talks. Nixon was furious promising that

the bastards have never been bombed like they are going to be bombed this time
commencing operation Pocket Money at precisely 9:00 May 8 when Navy A-7 Corsairs and A- 6 Intruders from the Coral Sea dropped 36 1000 pound mines into Haipong Harbour.

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Simultaneously Nixon spoke on TV to America saying:

August 15, 1973. On 15 January 1973 Nixon announced an end to the offensive against North Vietnam and signed the Paris Peace Accords Ending the War in Vietnam January 27, 1973, calling for the territorial integrity of Vietnam and a general election in the North and South, stipulating a sixty- day period for a total and complete US forces withdrawal from Vietnam. Of course the ceasefire was violated before the ink on the paper was dry and NLF resumed operations in the dry season recapturing significant territory by January 1974. Resulting in 25.000 South Vietnamese casualties and President Thieu announcing that the ceasefire was no longer in effect, he was trying to lure the US back into the Vietnamese quagmire. As luck would have it, Watergate finished off Nixon, and the Congress started to cut financial aid to Thieu, inspiring NLF leaders to undertake larger offensives. Tran Van Tra, commander of the NLF, ordered a limited invasion of Phuoc Long Province from Cambodia to test South Vietnamese resolve and US non-involvement. The attack and fall of the Provincial capital Phuoc Binh January 6, 1975, leaving the South Vietnamese Leadership demoralised and passive and the US just watching the events meant,
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The only way to stop the killing was to take the weapons of war out of the hands of the international outlaws of North Vietnam,
the mines being activated five days later while another 11.000 mines were laid in various harbours blocking all maritime commerce and traffic. The objective was to isolate North Vietnam, stopping a monthly 22.000 tons of Chinese supplies by bombing railroads, bridges, rolling stock, storage facilities, airfields and finally destroying air defence systems. By the end of the month the Americans had destroyed 13 bridges on the railroad to China, between Hanoi and Haipong and several others to the south, as well as oil storage and other facilities were destroyed, with the intensity of the bombing reaching more than 29.000 sorties including 1.000 by B-52's. Delivering precision guided ordnance and additionally bombing Viet Cong in South Vietnam, dropping 57.000 tons napalm in Quang Tri province alone, it did restart the Paris peace negotiation but also resulted in the Case-Church amendment, introduced on January 26, 1973, approved by the Senate on May 13 with a deadline to end all American bombings by

that NLF victory was finally within reach and Vietnamese reunification realistic.

At the start of 1975 the South Vietnamese had three times as much artillery, twice the tanks and armoured cars as the opposition, as well as 1.400 aircraft and twice the number of combat troops, but they faced a highly disciplined, well organised and ruthlessly determined North Vietnam. On March 10, 1975 General Dung launched an attack in the Central Highlands, with tanks and heavy artillery, targeting Pleiku, resulting in a surprising speedy success and the South Vietnamese defence collapsing on March 11. President Thieu ordered a retreat, which soon turned into chaos, with the bulk of the troops fleeing, abandoning Pleiku and Kontum and only isolated, surrounded South Vietnamese units desperately continued fighting. The retreat became known as the column of tears, civilian refugees mixed with the soldiers, shelled by the North Vietnamese, panic set in with many officers abandoning the troops, in a disastrous scramble for safer ground, the retreat totally annihilated by April 1. Following this recent victory, the Ho Chi Minh campaign was launched calling for final victory and the capture of Saigon by May 1, the North Vietnamese moral boosted and their battle hardened troops rolling on, taking Nha Trang, Cam Ranh and Da Lat. On
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(78) The final days

April 7 they attacked Xuan Loc (60 Km from Saigon) defended by the South Vietnamese 18th division making a last stand in a two weeks long desperate battle, finally surrendering April 21. In Saigon martial law was declared when chaos, panic and lawlessness broke out and South Vietnamese officials, high ranking officers and civilians were trying to leave the city. US helicopters were evacuating certain at risk Vietnamese and most US and foreign nationals from various points in Saigon in Operation Frequent Wind. The operation became the largest helicopter evacuation in history, beginning on April 29 with ugly scenes of desperate Vietnamese fighting for limited seats and helicopters thrown overboard from US carriers to make landing space on the deck. All in front of TV-reporters and cameramen, the evacuation continuing around the clock while North Vietnamese Tanks reached the outskirts of Saigon. On April 30, 1975 NLF overcame all resistance, capturing key points and buildings, tanks entering the presidential palace, raising the NLF flag above it, and the US broadcasting White Christmas signalling the last US marines leaving the roof of the American em-

bassy by helicopter. Rather controversially, they left many thousand American-employed Vietnamese to their fate. The (79) Tanks entering the presigoal of toppling the Saidential palace gon regime, ending the Pacific 80 years war, had been reached. In Cambodia after 117 days of hard fighting the Khmer Republic had collapsed just five days after the US mission evacuated Cambodia, the Lon Nol government surrendering on April 17, 1975 and Pathet Lao, supported by North Vietnam, won control of Laos late April. But these victories were at a terrible cost. Over 1.5 million Vietnamese killed, three million wounded, totally two million civilians killed and 4 million victims of Agent Orange dioxin poisoning (US airplanes dropped 45 million liters of the poison over Indochina), and immense material damage in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Estimated Casualties in the battle of Indochina excluding Cambodia and Laos 1958-1975:

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South Vietnamese military 270,000 killed Chinese military 1,500 killed South Korea military 5,000 killed and 11,000 wounded

North Vietnamese military and NLF 1,100,000 killed USA armed forces 58,000 killed and 300,000 wounded

Conventional bombing statistics:

Total in Europe 1939-1945 Total in Cambodia Total on Indochina Total on Japan 1942-1945 2 700 000 tons 2 800 000 tons 6 800 000 tons 650 000 tons

Total civilians killed in North and South: 2.000.000

(80) Bombed sites

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Chapter 27

THE OUTCOME

Who came out victorious of the Pacific War? USA, China, Vietnam or nobody? There is no simple answer. Greater Asia is probably the closest we can get. Militarily speaking the USA won most battles but politically the final victory was Japan's and consequently China's. The clash of the Oldest Monarchy of the World and the New Pacific Christian Empire ended the American Ambition in the Pacific Asia in failure or a stalemate at best. With almost no US military presence on mainland East Asia after 1975, the only reliable US Pacific bases left being South Korea, Okinawa and the Philippines. Even the Okinawa US presence may soon be in the process of gradual relocation to the Mariannas, and South Korean growing resistance to the aggressive US backed Christianization of the population the past forty years and the following discrimination of the Buddhist majority may soon produce reverse, radical change on the peninsula. Additionally the American Industrial might and its Asian market share began declining rapidly with
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only aviation industry and military products staying competitive and growing. As of 2010, almost no US manufactured hardware consumer products makes it to any markets west of Midway. Upon the long bloody Pacific 80 Years War it became evident that the strongest military alliance in the region, the USA-UK, in spite of limitless resources and relentless commitment could not reach any of its objectives or establish Pacific hegemony let alone keep or reclaim colonial dominions, loosing all political influence in the process. In the words of Napoleon:

You can not sit on a throne created of bayonets.

Like it or not, Japan led the course of events in the Pacific, reaching her goals of sponsoring and supporting a family of independent Pacific and Asian nations step by step by the end of the century. The 20th century history, fate and development of Pacific Asia was determined by Japan during the last 100 years, and will be dominated by Japan in the 21 century too. Who would have predicted in 1975 that by 2015 the combined expected GDP of China and Japan will become almost equal to the USA as well as

the EU, and that Japan's GNI (per capita) would become no. 3 in the world after Switzerland and Luxembourg by 2010. Nobody. After the end of the Pacific War in 1975, a spectacular and speedy development of almost all Asian countries took place, which by the turn of the century catapulted, Taiwan, Korea (partly), China, India and Vietnam into healthy economies with prosperous forecasts, not to mention the financial hub of the dynamic Singapore City state. Indeed Japan lead a successful investment strategy, educating and training her neighbours to coproduce high value added products destined for the world markets. Introducing excellence in QC, product reliability, disciplined work-ethics guaranteeing customer satisfaction and reasonable pricing, making previously expensive products available even in developing economies. Europe and the US on the other hand did not invest long term in its poor neighbours leaving Latin America and Africa uneducated and poverty stricken, with the Christian churches obstructing birth-control in
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savage competition with Islam and with no hope to limit the overpopulation being the root of the environmental destruction, permanent poverty, unemployment and economic disaster. In the book Imperial Cruise, just published, about the Roosevelt- Taft mission to Hawaii, Tokyo, China, Korea and the Philippines, James Bradly has many interesting points and revelations. He forgets however that the main reason for Japanese expansion into Korea was security concerns, and into Manchuria a result of the racist based limitation on Asian immigration to America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, considered the most attractive destinations by all Asian and European immigrants. Nobody had heard about a rich uncle in Brazil or Argentina so the development of Manchuria, the size of Western Europe but sparsely populated would serve as a substitute Japanese- Korean immigration destination. In the process, Japan also intended to save the Manchu monarchy for the future. The reactionary and anti-educational policy of the ruling classes in China and Korea was the cardinal reason for the poverty and suffering during 19th and 20th century and contrary to Western-Christian be-

liefs not racial or culturally based. The Japanese military effort to introduce progressive governments and modern industry to her Asian neighbours was defeated by the US-UK-Soviet allies only temporarily. A few years after 1950 these Japanese efforts took another form and became accepted, adapted and revitalised, producing successful economies and fully developed nations in the whole region after the end of the Pacific War in 1975. Already by 1964 JR introduced the Shinkansen highspead train, going 210 km/h made technically possible by three aerodynamical engineers; Tadanao Miki, Tadashi Matsudaira and Hajime Kawanabe. All three had designed fighters and airplanes during the war and laid the ground of the Shinkansen network of 2176 km at present, having carried a total of over 6 billion passengers the past 40 years. Additionally Japan's Shinkansen technology have been introduced and adopted by Taiwan, China, UK, Brazil, USA, Canada and Vietnam. The outstanding safety record of the technology was dramatically confirmed very recently during the mega earthquake 11 March 2011. Non of the dozens of Shinkansen trains running at the time inflicted harm or was derailed with all automatic quake-security systems working perfectly.

A rather illustrious, typical and factual Japanese successful, unplanned and coincidental influence on Asian and Global developments and political actuality is the history of the facsimile machine. Originally developed for the US police and prosecutors to fight organized crime making it possible to instantly send evidence (photos) from coast to coast, the fax technology was authorised for civilian use in 1948 by the US military and standardised by ITT in 1968. Digital commercial fax machines were first developed in Japan coincidently, since it was much faster to handwrite documents than to type them, given the 10.000 kanji ideogram characters, thus Japan becoming a massive fax machine market and an almost monopoly on economic fax machine invention, production and export. The global spread and application of the cheap fax machines, then quickly spearheaded the uncontrollable free, economic, instant globalisation of borderless document multiplication, rendering centralised information control meaningless, digging the grave of general governmental telephone eavesdropping, especially in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

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The success of Japanese application engineering, investments, training, cooperation, joint ventures, financing of Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Thailand, India, Indonesia and Philippines is today a matter of historical record and any potential hegemony in the Pacific is but an illusion of the past. In year 10 of the 21st century, Japan, China, India and East Asia are all embarked on an unprecedented renaissance, culturally Buddhist, non monotheistic, socially Confucian, uniquely compassionate, wise, spiritual, practical and pragmatic. After all, the Japanese proverb goes:

Serve your neighbour as you would serve yourself.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gbor Fabricius Education 1963 - 1966 Akademisk Studenterkursus 1966 - 1971 University of Copenhagen 1976 - 1978 Eastasiatic Institute, Japanese studies Work Experience 1972-1976 Scandinavian Pavilion, Sapporo, Manager of Import Responsible for finding Scandinavian companies and importing their products to Japan, establishing a permanent exhibition and wholesale - retail outlet. Product line included Scandinavian design, gold and silver jewery, fur coats and textiles, cross country skiing equipment, etc. 1978-1981 Helpmates International, Tokyo, Consultant Servicing international companies in Japan with executive search and human resources mainly mid-level area. Clients included banks (Bankers Trust, Paribas, Dresdner Bank, Goldman Sachs, etc.), manufacturing companies (Bosch Japan, GE, Tandem Computers, Castrol, etc.) as well as various other international corporations. 1981-1996
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(81) Mainichi Shimbun 1986 1-18

SGM Corporation, Tokyo, President Established own executive search company, rapidly becoming strong in the Tokyo market for human resources and executive recruiting of highly qualified and top-notch Japanese executives for very demanding and competitive multinational corporations. Clients include Volvo, Mercedes Benz, Alfa Romeo, Ford Japan, Pirelli as well as major financial institutions such as Kidder Peabody, Bankers Trust, Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of Montreal, Credito Italiano. 1997-present Japanese Internet Marketing Inc, President Established the major Japanese portal http://naruhodo.com with over 650.000 pw/month, providing efficient and economic advertising platform for companies and services focusing on reaching the Japanese consumer directly. Client-list at http://twwt.com Other projects include: http://job.twwt.com (GCC) http://photo.twwt.com
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Languages Fluent in Danish, English, German, Hungarian, Japanese. Swedish and Norwegian understood well. Some French. Interests/Hobbies International affairs, corporate and national cultures, history and linguistics, nature, environment, gastronomy, art and antics. Sportsman and black belt holder in Shotokan Karate. Mid-level Chess player and rusty Bridge enthusiast.

LITERATURE

Literature

Georg Feifer,
Breaking Open Japan, Smithsonian, 2006

James Bradley,
The Imperial Cruise, Little, Brown and Company, 2009

Jonathan Fenby,
Chiang Kai-Shek, Caroll & Graf, 2004

Novikov Priboj,
Chushima, Caroll & Graf, 2004

Richard Hough,
The Fleet that Had To Die, Ballantine Books, 1960

Richard Minear,
Victorers' Justice,The Tokyo War Trials, Princenton U., 1971

Ronald H. Spector,
In The Ruins Of Empire, Random House, 2007

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Ruth Benedict,
The Chrysanthemum and The Sword, Meridian, 1972

Tadao Takemoto,
The Alleged Nanking Massacre, Nippon Kaigi, 2000

Colonel Masanobu Tsuji,

Japan's Greatest Victory, Sarpedon, New York, 1993

M. Bnffy,
Huszont v, Puski, Budapest 1993

Paul Johnson,
Intellectuals, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1988

E. Radzinszkij,
Stalin, Doubleday, New York, 1996

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Internet Literature

I realize that my book is far from being as detailed about all aspects, encompassing the 80 years of Pacific/ Asia history, and many readers may want to know more details and facts as they read "Zen in War".

I have therefore compiled a list of informative internet sights providing objective, accurate, neutral and factua information. 1895: Treaty of Shimonoseki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Shimonoseki 1895: Triple Intervention by Russia, France and Germany http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_Intervention 1897: Trans-Siberian Railroad in Vladivostok http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Siberian_Railway 1898: Spanish-American war (Guam and Philippines annexed by USA) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine-American_War 1898: Treaty of Paris http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Paris_(1898) 1898: Philippine Declaration of Independence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine-American_War 1898: US annexation of Kingdom of Hawaii http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Hawaii 1899: German-Spanish Treaty (About 6000 Pacific Islands bought by Germany) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine-American_War
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1900: Boxer rebellion and Eight-Nation Alliance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_Rebellion 1902: Anglo-Japanese Treaty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Japanese_Alliance 1904: British invasion of Tibet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tibet 1904-1905: The Russo-Japanese war http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Japanese_War 1905: Russian revolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1905_Russian_Revolution 1905: Secret Taft-Katsura agreement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft-Katsura_Agreement 1905: Renewal of Anglo-Japanese treaty http://navalhistory.flixco.info/H/180236/8330/a0.htm 1905: Treaty of Portsmouth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Portsmouth 1905: Formation of Asiatic Exclusion League in US and Canada http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiatic_Exclusion_League 1912: Republic of China, end of Imperial China http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qing_Dynasty 1914: Siege of Tsingtao http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Tsingtao
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1914: Occupation of German Samoa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Samoa 1915: Japanese Navy in Singapore http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_during_World_War_I 1915: Twenty-One Demands http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-One_Demands 1917: Lansing-Ishii Agreement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LansingIshii_Agreement 1919: May Fourth Movement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Fourth_Movement 1919: Treaty of Versailles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles 1922: Nine-Power Treaty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-Power_Treaty 1911-1941: Sino-German alliance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-German_cooperation_(19111941) 1919-1927: Kuomintang, Sun-Yatsen, Chiang Kai-Shek and the Canton years http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Kai-shek 1927: Shanghai massacre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_massacre_of_1927 1927-1950: Chinese Civil war http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Civil_War
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1927-1937: Nanking decade http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_decade 1928-1938: Mongolian-Soviet republic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_People's_Republic 1929-1939: Great Depression http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression 1931: Mukden Incident http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukden_Incident 1936: Xi'an Incident http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi'an_Incident 1936: Anti-Comintern pact, Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Comintern_Pact http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_Non-Aggression_Pact 1937: Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, recruiting American Pilots http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Volunteer_Group 1937: Sino-Japanese War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War 1939: Soviet-Japanese War (Khalkhin Gol) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Khalkhin_Gol 1940: Japanese troops in French Indochina http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Indochina

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1941: Japan Surrounded by the ABCD pact http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/ph25_2.html 1941: Oil embargo, freezing of Japans assets http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=16148#axzz1GjySuUaU 1941: Niitakayama Nobore http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor 1941-1942: Battle of Philippine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippines_Campaign_(194142) 1941: Battle of Malaya http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayan_Campaign 1942: Battle of Slim River http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Slim_River 1942: Battle of Singapore,Malay no Tora http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Singapore http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomoyuki_Yamashita 1942: Battle of the Java Sea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Java_Sea http://combinedfleet.com/battles/ 1942: Battle of the Coral sea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Coral_Sea http://combinedfleet.com/battles/

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1942: Battle of Midway http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Midway http://combinedfleet.com/battles/ 1942-1943: Battle of Guadalcanal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guadalcanal_Campaign 1943: Battle of Komandorsky Islands http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Komandorski_Islands http://combinedfleet.com/battles/Battle_of_the_Komandorski_Islands 1943: Battle of Attu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Attu 1943: Battle of Tarawa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tarawa 1943: Cairo declaration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Declaration 1944: Battle of China, Ichigo sakusen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ichi-Go 1944: Battle of Saipan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Saipan 1944: Battle of Palau http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Peleliu 1945: Battle of Iwojima http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Iwo_Jima
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1945: Battle of Okinawa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa 1945: Fire-bombing civilian targets http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo 1945: Hiroshima and Nagasaki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki 1945: Bearing the Unbearable http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyokuon-hs 1945: Battle of Manchuria http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Manchuria 1945: Battle of Taiwan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/228_Incident 1945-1950: Battle of Korea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War 1945-1950: Battle of Indonesia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_National_Revolution 1945-1949: Battle of mainland China http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Civil_War 1946-1954: Battle of Indochina http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Indochina_War 1954: Battle of Dien Bien Phu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dien_Bien_Phu
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1950: Battle of Cambodia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Cambodia 1959-1975: Battle of Vietnam http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War 1970: Battle of Laos http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laotian_Civil_W 1975: Fall of Saigon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Saigon A few other related web sites: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism_in_Asia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonialism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_colonialism

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20th century Statistics General http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/20centry.htm Monarchy http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/monarchy.htm Literacy http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/literacy.htm Korea http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/korea.htm China http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/chin-rev.htm http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/chin-cw1.htm http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/kmt-chin.htm http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/longmarc.htm http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/chin-cw2.htm British Empire http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/brit-emp.htm French Empire http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/frnc-emp.htm WW II in Europe http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/ww2-eto.htm
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Losses http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/ww2-loss.htm End of colonialism http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/3d-world.htm Communism http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/communis.htm US forces in the World http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/usaworld.htm 20th century death tolls http://necrometrics.com/20c5m.htm http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/korea.htm http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/chin-rev.htm

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Zen in War
The Pacic 80 years War
by Gbor Fabricius

Gbor Fabricius
All rights reserved ISBN # 978-4-9905783-1-2 Home Page: http://zen.naruhodo.com/zeninwar-book.html

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