1. Where in the he!! are these places?
2. Why should I care?"
Check out the map of the Sino-Japanese wars:
Posted on 08/18/2008 11:31:22 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
A squadron of twenty Japanese vessels, according to Chinese reports, on Tuesday anchored off Chuchwang, a few miles down the river from Matowchen, on the south bank, and began a bombardment of Chinese troop positions and artillery emplacements. A Central News dispatch from Juichang said that Chinese guns sank two Japanese ships, though this is not confirmed by Hankow military sources.
While Japanese ships yesterday continued their bombardments Japanese planes cooperated in bombing and strafing Chinese troops along the river bank, concentrating particularly on the reinforcements sent up to cope with the threatened Japanese landing of troops.
At Tashuhsia, a short distance below Chuchwang, the few hundred Japanese troops who had gained a foothold on the river bank were unable to make headway. Similarly north of Juichang a large Japanese force, said to total 7,000, operating from Kangkow, was still held up by the resolute Chinese defense of the hills north of the city.
On the north bank of the Yangtze Japanese ships yesterday intermittently shelled Chinese positions just east of Lungping. Further down the river the disclaimer Sunday of Chinese reports that the Chinese had retaken Shahochen was repeated yesterday with the reports that the Japanese were shelling Chinese entrenchments from that place.
The Japanese have resumed attacks from Susung and Hwangmei without success. In Shansi Province the Japanese are occupying the extreme southwest elbow, having taken Lingtaing, Wuwangtu, Pinglu and Maotsingtu.
A division is said to be concentrated at Anyi and Yungcheng and may again attempt to cross the Yellow River and cut the Lung-hai Railway. The Chinese admit that a minor offensive is under way in Chekiang, where the objective is Hangchow. It is thought that if Hangchow could be retaken the Japanese drive on Hankow would be seriously embarrassed. The offensive, so far, has netted the recapture of Fuyang, twenty miles from Hangchow.
Following up the recent attack on Tainan, Chinese guerrillas are also reported to have raided Taian, capturing the rail station and engaging the Japanese for a time within the south gate. Japanese planes yesterday bombed Changsha, reportedly causing civilian casualties of several hundred and extensive material damage.
The invaders’ naval air force, however, raced over the heads of the struggling Japanese infantrymen and fiercely bombed the city, which lies about 200 miles southwest of Kiukiang and about the same distance south and slightly west of Hankow.
Kiukiang is the Yangtze River base of Japanese operations against Hankow, the Chinese provisional capital.
The Japanese China Sea Fleet headquarters, in its report on the Changsha raid said:
“Despite bad weather, the fliers showered tons of bombs on Changsha’s east and south rail stations, scoring direct hits and inflicting terrific damage, including damage to military warehouses.”
[Dispatches from Hankow said the Changsha raid was the worst the city had yet experienced, with several hundred victims severely taxing available medical facilities.
[The American-operated Yalein-China hospital and Red Cross and League of Nations medical units handled the brunt of the rescue work. The city’s railroad area received the heaviest damage, the bombs demolishing several schools here.
[Other institutions struck included the Christian Missionary Emergency Refugee Hospital, in which a number of refugees were reported to have been killed.
[Hundreds were reported left homeless by the attack, swelling the total of more than 15,000 refuges now receiving food and shelter in a score of camps operated by an international group including American, British, German and Chinese missionary, medical and philanthropic organizations.]
Otherwise, however, the Japanese onslaught appeared checked. In the Hwangmei sector, twenty-five miles north of Kiukiang, nine Chinese divisions launched a counter-offensive that kept the invaders at bay.
The Japanese thrust toward the Peiping-Hankow railroad in Hupeh Province north of the Yangtze was met by about 200,000 veterans from near-by provinces who took strategic positions in Hupeh hills.
A Japanese column was reported advancing from Linching in the direction of Yungchi, on the border between Shenai and Shansi provinces, and another moving from Yunghen toward Pinglu.
The moves indicated the possibility that invaders might resume their offensive in this northern region to threaten the western section of the east-west Lung-hai railway.
The Japanese were driven out of this area in June by Yellow River floods after a steady advance inland.
TOKYO, Aug. 17 (AP).-The Cabinet approved today a broad program drawn up by five of the most important Ministers to speed the campaign in China with more drastic economic control at home and greater pressure by the armed forces.
The Cabinet did not disclose details of the program, but an official announcement said the fighting would continue until Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s regime had been crushed. This indicated the Japanese would try to drive further inland along the Yangtze River when and if Hankow falls.
The foreign office spokesman shied from answering a question as to the possibility of uniting the Japanese-sponsored governments of Nanking and Peiping, but newspapers said the Cabinet planned closer cooperation between the Central China and North China regimes.
The purpose of the cooperation would be to stabilize and reorganize conquered areas. Domei [Japanese official news agency] reported the five Ministers discussed the question of setting up an “organ which would be the central machinery dealing with Japanese participation in building up the new China.”
The foreign office was awaiting word from Moscow of the disposition of a Japanese protest that Soviet troops had violated the truce that on Aug. 11 ended the month-old Changkufeng incident on the Siberian-Manchukuoan border.
Moscow has made a similar protest to Tokyo.
Japanese authorities are watching closely the projected settlement in the disputed sector by a joint demarcation commission with a “view to determine the Soviet attitude for future settlement of all border problems of Manchukuo and Korea.”
Indicating that the Changkufeng crisis was regarded as ended, the air defense headquarters announced suspension of Tokyo’s control of outside lighting, effective tomorrow evening. The headquarters warned, however, that the control might be put into effect momentarily.
PEIPING, China, Aug. 17 (AP).-Both the French Embassy and the Commission of Foreign Diplomats, which administers the Peiping diplomatic quarter, tonight lodged strongly worded protests with Japanese authorities against the detention of two members of the French Embassy’s military guard.
The protests alleged the French soldiers had been seized by armed Japanese inside the diplomatic quarter and were held by Japanese Embassy police in the Japanese Embassy compound. This followed an early morning clash in a cabaret.
The Japanese refused all French requests that the soldiers be turned over to be dealt with according to their own laws.
The Japanese version is that the soldiers had a fight with Japanese nationals in a cabaret in which a Korean was injured. A Japanese party, some in uniform, followed them into the diplomatic quarter and seized them. The French version of the cabaret row was not available.
Fearing the factories and their homes would be bombed by the Japanese, the workers had demanded six months’ pay to finance their evacuation to a safer place. Their departure would have resulted in the closing of the plants.
The workers returned without the granting of their demands. Troops were stationed at the factories to prevent trouble.
The conclusion of a trade treaty with the United States may give United States business interests a new impetus as Germany and Japan were aided by the import control law.
Apparently the decorations given by Germany and the newspaper propaganda of Japan are more effective in promoting business than the Good Neighbor policy and the investment of millions of dollars, not only here but in other Latin American countries.
Germany, because of the compensated mark, has had the greatest advantage but Japan has bought practically nothing from Ecuador and has flooded the country with cheap goods.
Recently Chancellor Adolf Hitler included Dr. Francisco Banda, Ecuadorean consul at New Orleans, in the number of Latin Americans to whom he gave decorations of various classes.
“Mexico, the only nation that has refused to enter into the tragi-comedy of non-Intervention, is sending arms openly to the Spanish Republicans and now finds itself helping Franco’s allies to obtain fuel in order to continue their serial piracy.
“It is necessary to distrust the policy of governments that, thinking to aid their capitalists, are playing the game of the Fascist powers.”
In Shansi Province the Japanese are occupying the extreme southwest elbow, having taken Lingtaing, Wuwangtu, Pinglu and Maotsingtu.
I bet most readers who actually got this far in the story gave up here and went to the sports section. I probably would have.
Following up the recent attack on Tainan,…
Oh, oh. Look out, Tainan!
…in the magazine Hoy today…(From the final page 7 item.)
But I repeat myself.
YESTERDAY’S RESULTS
Boston 4, Philadelphia 3 (1st).
Boston 5, Philadelphia 0 (2d).
Detroit 4, Chicago 3 (1st).
Detroit 3, Chicago 2 (2d).
St. Louis 10, Cleveland 7.
New York at Washington, rain.
American League
……………………..Won….Lost…Percentage…….Games Behind
N. Y ………………...70……33…….680………………….-
Cleve………………...61……41…….598………………….8 1/2
Boston……………….57……44…….564………………….12
Wash..…………….....55……53…….509…………………..17 1/2
Detroit.………………51……55…….481………………….20 1/2
Chic.…………………43……55…….439………………….24 1/2
Phila...……………….38……65…….369………………….32
St. L………………….37……66….....359………………….33
GAMES TODAY
New York at Washington (2) .
Philadelphia at Boston.
Chicago at Detroit.
St. Louis at Cleveland.
National League
YESTERDAY’S RESULTS
New York 4, Brooklyn 2.
Boston 3, Philadelphia 0 (8 innings, rain).
Cincinnati 8, Chicago 4.
Pittsburgh 4, St. Louis 3 (10 innings).
……………………..Won….Lost…Percentage…….Games Behind
Pitts …………………65……39…….625………………….-
N. Y.………………...62……46…….574…………………..5
Cincin.………………59……48…….551…………………..7 1/2
Chic....………………59……49…….546…………………..8
Boston ………………51…...54……..486………………….14 1/2
Bklyn ……………….50…...56……..472…………………..16
St. L………………....46…...60……..434………………….20
Phila…………………32……72……..308………………….33
GAMES TODAY
Brooklyn at New York (3:15 P. M.).
Boston at Philadelphia.
Cincinnati at Chicago.
Pittsburgh at St. Louis .
The average American of 1938 no doubt asked:
1. Where in the he!! are these places?
2. Why should I care?
But, given the nature of Japanese aggression, the average American should have cared. It’s not that these flyspecks on the Japanese map mattered, it’s that the Japanese were engaging in a brutal war of aggression and conquest. That needs to be identified and stopped wherever it takes place. Whether its Lingtang or Gori.
How to stop it is just as big a question in 2008 as it was in 1938. In the democratic powers the leaders must first figure out a way to do it and then sell it to the voters. A tough proposition in an age of pacifism. Which existed then and does to now among the war is not the answer crowd.
A leader has to lead the voters not sell the them.
That was Roosevelt's problem problem in 1938. He wasn't willing to risk the political capital and alienate voters in a congressional election year. The result was a set of incremental sanctions without enough in the way of increased military posture to back them up. The sanctions, culminating in an oil embargo in late 1941 that just served to escalate tensions.
My "what if" question is, what would have happened if Roosevelt had slapped a full trade embargo on Japan in 1938, or before, raised our defense posture by militarizing Guam and the Philippines and tried to rally the Pacific Rim colonial powers to isolate Japan economically and diplomatically? Japan wasn't prepared to go to war with the US in 1938. By 1941 they were.
(And the Giants beat the Dodgers!!!)
1. Where in the he!! are these places?
2. Why should I care?"
Check out the map of the Sino-Japanese wars:
1. Where in the he!! are these places?
2. Why should I care?"
Since Joe Stilwell is to be an important character in the story of the war on the Asian mainland I shall post excerpts from time to time from Barbara W. Tuchman’s excellent history of Stilwell and his time in China. (Thanks again, Tainan.) At this time he was military attaché, charged with keeping the American military and political leadership up to speed on the situation in China. This, and all his subsequent China assignements, were just about impossible, but he carried it off to a remarkable degree.
Hankow was now cut off from Peiping by land and could only be reached from the north by ship via Shanghai to Hong Kong and from there by plane. When Stilwell arrived on August 26 [from Peiping-Homer] the Government had withdrawn and a sense of siege was descending. Remembering the great revolutionary days of Hankow in 1925-26, the Communists wanted to conduct a "people's defense" of the city after the example of Madrid which was still holding out after two years of siege. They urged the Government to organize an army of 150,000 workers, students and townspeople, to be led by an elite corps of youths with "the highest revolutionary consciousness." This project had small appeal for Chiang Kai-shek who had no desire to see workers' cadres established under Communist control and did not believe in any case that the Wuhan cities could be held against Japanese assault. Since two supposedly impregnable Chinese positions on the way up the Yangtze had been, in one case, abandoned without battle, and in the other, taken by ruse from the rear, he had some reason for his belief. But essentially the reason for the military ineffectiveness of China's defense was the deep cultural preference, fully shared by the Commander-in-Chief himself, in favor of outlasting over fighting.
Barbara W. Tuchman, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45, pg. 191
;)...watching things from over here.
"Although China's friends made extraordinary efforts, American isolationism remained stronger than sympathy. Polls showed only 2 percent of the public pro-Japanese against 74 percent pro-Chinese but these sentiments did not include a desire for involvement. At government level a sense of urgency was growing. The President, anxious to keep China on her feet, was abetted on the one hand by Secretary Morgenthau who, with a desperate sense of the need to resist Fascist aggression, believed support for China crucial, and restrained on the other hand by Secretary Hull who maintained an unbudging resistance to any "unneutral" gesture, including economic aid, which might involve the United States in the Sino-Japanese conflict. His caution was such that he refused to accept T. V. Soong as economic emissary because he was too prominently anti-Japanese.
"When the Treasury's agent in China, J. Lossing Buck, came to see the Military Attache on August 30, 1938, to be briefed on the military situation, Stilwell put forward the argument of Li Tsung-jen that America should aid herself by enabling China to buy arms. As reported by Buck to Secretary Morgenthau, "Colonel Stilwell. . . feels that the policy of our government should be more positive in the present situation and that help to China in the way of financial loans and military equipment is much better defense for us than only the building of our own defense equipment. A very small proportion of the cost of such defense, if given to China, would be much more effective."
"Morgenthau agreed. With strong conviction in the larger cause but limited knowledge of China, he thought there was "a bare chance we may still keep a democratic form of government in the Pacific," and strenuously urged the loan to China upon the President. In December 1938 a loan of $25 million was arranged through the Export-Import Bank."
Barbara W. Tuchman, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45, pg. 189-190
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