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 If, or when the war starts, where and what you are - North, South, young, old - is irrelevant. You all share in the responsibility of protecting our homeland and repelling the enemy. For this cause, you must be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice.
— Chiang Kai-shek
The Greater East Asian War was righteous and justified.
The Second Sino-Japanese War was, right behind the Second World War of which it was a part, the biggest and most costly war in human history. It was fought by Imperial Japan against China, beginning in the summer of 1937 and ending in the summer of 1945. The conflict was eclipsed by WWII in 1939 and brought into the wider war in 1941, with China and Japan formally joining the Allies and Axis respectively, and ended with the complete surrender of Japan to the Allied powers. It was also the largest war ever fought in Asia, with at least 10 million and as many as 30 million Chinese (accurate figures don't exist) and just short of 3 million Japanese military and civilian casualties during the course of the war.
The war is still within living memory, and what successive generations have been taught about it is is the subject of (fierce) controversy in East Asia. Generally speaking, nations best deal with shared negative experiences like war and imperialism when they treat the whole thing fairly impersonally, reach broad agreements on the rough facts of the matter without trying to demonize anyone, and do their best to move on. For example, Germany and Poland: whilst many Poles still don't forgive aspects of the conduct of the forces of Nazi Germany, most of today's Germans are sorry about what happened, and the great majority of Poles and Germans mutually regret the whole business and don't want that sort of thing to happen ever again between anyone, and like to leave it at that.
Things used to be fairly similar between China and Japan in the '50s and '60s, with both countries blaming a small clique of Japanese militarist leaders - thereby leaving out the uncomfortable issue of the behaviour of Japanese troops and Chinese Quislings - and the Americans and British. Communist China emphasized its own grass-roots patriotism and independence from the soviets, also seeking to play up the - actually very marginal - actions of Chinese Communist Guerrillas during the war and to portray the Nationalist faction as hopeless corrupt, immoral, un-patriotic, traitorous and a puppet of the Americans.
This broad agreement on the 'facts' of the matter changed in the '70s, when Japan became the world's no.2 economy and China - which had broken rather messily with the Soviets - normalised diplomatic and later economic and cultural relations with America. Japanese public opinion began dodging the uncomfortable aspects of the past by fudging some details and missing others, whilst playing up the suffering of the Japanese people as a result of the American fire-bombings, atomic bombings and ensuing occupation.
At roughly the same time, the Chinese Communists suddenly started to play up the foreign invasion angle of the war, demonising not just the Japanese military junta, but Japanese troops and the Japanese people generally. They also stopped portraying the Nationalists as American puppets, but continued to neglect their foes' critical contribution to the war effort whilst playing up their own part in resisting the 'savage dwarf-pirates' - to use a traditional racial slur.
This is more or less the status quo today, with the uncomfortable details of the war being glossed over or neglected entirely in Japan in favour of an innocent-and-misled-blameless-Japanese-civilian-population focus, and the uncomfortable details being covered in graphic detail in China as part of a greater 'victimisation narrative' which aims to make all Chinese people very glad the Chinese Communist Party under the Great Chairman Mao came along and single-handedly saved them from foreign imperialism.
The governments of the respective countries are not the only forces at work, however. Beginning in the late '70s and blossoming in the late '90s, neo-conservative nationalist groups in Japan have tried to emphasise the importance of giving the Japanese nation a positive, forward-looking outlook under the leadership of a strong centralised state. Of course, there is little room in this forward-looking narrative for dwelling on the past, especially the bad bits of it, and these groups think of the Second Sino-Japanese War as a war of Pan-Asian liberation from Western Imperialism. Likewise, they are quick to claim that Japanese atrocities have been massively exaggerated, and are based mostly on hearsay from anti-Japanese sources or fabricated wholesale, all in the name of shaming the Japanese people into being hesitant to form a strong state or military; with which, the foreigners fear, they might protect their own interests rather than remaining at the mercy of the foreign powers like America and China. Several textbooks have been written along just these lines, and are often singled out for criticism.
There are also differences in how history is taught in both nations. Japanese schools have a choice of around thirty to fifty textbooks, produced by various private companies, although subject to some editing and license requirements by the department of education. As one would expect, they vary in their portrayal of events; some are fairly objective, and others are ideologically charged. But when taken as a whole they have a readily apparent bias towards sanitising history, (quite a bit) more so than in contemporary 'Western' textbooks. Chinese schools, on the other hand, use precisely one periodically-updated textbook written by the Department of Education itself. The Department of Education is not particularly bothered by historical 'objectivism', which they are quick to dismiss as an unattainable and self-contradictory British academic fad. The German-Polish approach is held up as the standard to aspire to with regards to uncomfortable history as the text seeks to inform and explore the issues at work in order to promote some measure of understanding and reconciliation.
The war is still a very polarising event, and is certainly not a topic for polite conversation.
The Manchurian Incident:
On September 18, 1931, near the city Mukden in Manchuria (today Shenyang), a railroad owned by Japan's South Manchuria Railway was blown up (which was totally not a false flag operation). The Japanese military generals accused Chinese terrorists of this act, and used it as an excuse for the full-scale invasion of Manchuria. The civilian government in Tokyo was not consulted at all in this matter, but Emperor Hirohito quickly gave up on the idea of punishing the offenders, since at this point the civilian government was just a puppet of the Imperial Japanese Army.
The Japanese generals then decided to set up a puppet government in the occupied north, called Manchukuo ("the Manchu State") and placed the last emperor Pu Yi back on the throne. They weren't fooling anyone. The American media sarcastically called the new colony "Japanchukuo".
The League of Nations demanded that Japan withdraw its armies from Manchuria, but the Japanese public fully supported a war of expansionism in Asia. So the Japanese gave the international community the middle finger by withdrawing from the Security Council. This set the stage for an inevitable war, even though the Sino-Japanese War did not break out until 1937.
United Front:
By 1936, Chiang Kai-Shek (or Jiang Jieshi), leader of the Chinese nationalist party (Guomindang or GMD) which monopolised power in the Republic of China was determined to finish off the final communist soviet in the mountainous central-northern province of Yan'an. However, Zhang Xueliang, the anti-communist warlord of Xian, believed that the National Republican Army (essentially the army of the GMD) was not strong enough to destroy the communists in their stronghold and even if it was, the cost would be too great. He tried unsuccessfully to convince Chiang to join forces with the Dirty Commies but the Generalissimo would have none of it. Despite having sworn allegiance to Chiang, he eventually came to the conclusion that to keep China strong for the war with Japan he had to kidnap him and force him to negotiate with the communists. The Chinese Communist Party was contacted in secret and asked for a delegation to decide on the next step. After some deliberation, the GMD and CCP agreed to forge a united front against Japan. Since Chiang was agreed to be the only man who could lead China in such a war, the man himself was released. Zhang Xueliang, having done his work, turned over himself for arrest.
A Game of Marco Polo:
Japan had now become a dire military dictatorship. In 1937, the junta decided the time had come for the conquest of China. During the night of July 7, a lone Japanese soldier went missing and didn't turn up for his roll call the next morning. The man vanished near the Marco Polo Bridge on the Manchukuo-China border (named so after the traditional belief that Marco Polo crossed it on his way into Bicycle City), so the Japanese demanded a search. The Chinese refused to let them in and opened fire on the intruders, who answered with a massive tank and artillery barrage. The Japanese military junta, headed by General Tojo, turned this relatively small incident into a full-scale war between China and Japan.
The Chinese defenders were unprepared and in bad shape materially, so the Japanese easily wiped them out before beginning the ground invasion. The next day, Chiang declared this was the last straw, and began mobilizing China for total war. And with that, the Second Sino-Japanese War had begun.
The Battle of Shanghai:
The onslaught on the "Paris of the Orient" began on August 13. The Japanese expected the conquest of Shanghai to be over "in three days." Instead, they had not prepared for a million of Chiang Kai-Shek's elite troops, trained by German advisors, which he kept in reserve for this battle. Hell ensued, but the disarrayed Chinese proved no match for the Japanese in the end, who were supported by naval and aerial bombardment from the IJN, whose ships had a free run of the entire Chinese Coastline and the Yangtze River. The Japanese emerged victorious only after fierce urban warfare for three months, and it required a huge effort. Most of Chiang's best troops were killed by the shelling and house-to-house fighting; the battle also took a terrible toll on China's air force, since they had no domestic aircraft production. After the death of more than 300,000 men, the Chinese retreated from the city.
The only positive thing about this crushing defeat was that it raised foreign sympathy for China, especially from the USA. The Japanese, dismayed and furious over the unexpected Chinese resistance, were now hell-bent on revenge.
The Rape of Nanking:
Nanjing, which means "Southern Capital," was the capital city of China at the time. Once word spread that Shanghai was lost, the GMD government fled from the city — it was clear to everyone that Nanjing was a sitting duck. As the Japanese ground forces made their way to Nanjing, their air force began bombing the capital. Nanjing's defenses had several weaknesses, due to the breakdown of morale among the retreating soldiers from the battle outside the city walls. Nanjing fell on December 13th, and opened its gates for the Japanese expeditionary force. Their commander issued an order that simply said: "KILL ALL CAPTIVES." And so the Nanjing Massacre happened, also known as the Rape of Nanking. About 350,000 defenseless Chinese people were stabbed, mutilated, burned or ripped apart by the Japanese soldiers, in addition to various sexual tortures. Every woman in reach was violently raped — sometimes to death. The senseless torture and slaughter went on for six weeks non-stop.
These atrocities are still denied by certain Japanese ultra-nationalists, to the understandable anger of the Chinese. Despite the mountains of sickening images taken by the perpetrators themselves.
The Chinese had relocated their capital to Chongqing in the southern mountains, and continued the war of resistance from there. With casualties rapidly increasing on the Japanese side, their air force concentrated on carpet bombing of major cities to break the Chinese morale. Chongqing still holds the sad distinction of being the most heavily bombed city in the world.
China's Strategy:
China had one basic advantage—it's an enormous country, with the world's largest population. During this time, Mao Zedong and the CCP kept their truce with Chiang to fight together against the Japanese. Communists set up guerrilla resistance movements behind enemy lines, while also enforcing land reforms simultaneously to gain popular support among the peasants. The Communist activities were only partisan resistance rather than direct fighting, while the Nationalists tended to engage in traditional (and costly) combat. Only recently has the People's Republic of China moved in the direction of acknowledging this.
The goal of the Chinese was to prolong the war as long as possible and exhaust the Japanese. The strategy of "magnet warfare" was used to attract the Japanese to areas where they could be ambushed, flanked, or encircled. And it worked well. The Chinese understood that their numbers were important, not the lands they controlled. This endless guerrilla warfare only frustrated the Japanese, who responded with the "Three Alls Policy" — "kill all, loot all, burn all".
The Flood:
By the end of 1941, the Second Sino-Japanese War merged with World War II, with the Chinese joining the Allies. Japan now controlled the cities and transport lines in coastal China, but had no control over the huge countryside, nor the inland areas where most of the insurgency was based.
As the Japanese columns were advancing into the Chinese heartland, the panicked Chiang decided to destroy the dikes of the Yellow River to hamper the Japanese advance with floods. In June 9, 1938, the cataclysm began. The Yellow River's course was altered southwards for nine years following this incident, and the flood itself took thousands of civilian lives. This was due to the GMD not informing any civilians before setting off the flood, in order to achieve surprise. This desperate tactic only slowed the Japanese advance by a few weeks - but the flooding bought time for the GMD to reorganize from a disorderly retreat and created a logistical nightmare for the Japanese troops. As they advanced into the lawless countryside, the Japanese began unleashing germ weapons such as anthrax and bubonic plague on the Chinese civilian population.
Puppet States:
As in Manchuria, the Japanese created puppet states in China to help facilitate and legitimize their rule. One was created soon after the Marco Polo Bridge attack, inside Inner Mongolia. A nationalist official-turned-collaborator, Wang Jingwei, agreed to help the Japanese set up a Chinese puppet state based in Nanjing. To put on an image of legitimacy, Wang's regime used the same flag and sun symbol as the old government. The Japanese also set up warlords to rule over the other parts of the huge country. Les Collaborateurs had little power, and though they were allowed to have their own troops, these were in turn commanded by Japanese overseers. Almost a million Chinese peasants were forced to join the collaborator army (and be cannon fodder in frontal assaults).
Ichigo:
For three years after the outbreak of the Pacific War, the Chinese managed to fight the Japanese into an exhausted stalemate. Japan's invasion had bogged down by 1941, and they were unable to achieve a decisive victory, despite dedicating the majority of its troops and resources to the China front.
In 1944, while the naval war raged across the Pacific, the Japanese commanders in China decided to launch Operation Ichigo ("number one"). The main objectives were to seize the southern provinces of Hunan and Guangxi, the centers of Chinese resistance. If the NRA could be finally defeated in the field, the Japanese could then advance upriver to the ROC capital at Chongqing, ending the war in China. The secondary objective of the offensive was to destroy the allied airbases in Hunan and Guangxi, which were being used by American planes to harass Japanese bombers and disrupt the IJA's overstretched supply lines. Ichigo was the largest Japanese ground offensive of the entire war, and involved over 500,000 Japanese and 400,000 Allied troops. The GMD was caught by surprise and the airfields were either captured or evacuated, but the NRA managed to hold out by virtue of American training and lend-lease equipment, which had by this time made good on the GMD's losses at Shanghai. Operation Ichigo was a mixed success, but the course of the war had already been decided by events elsewhere.
Ichigo was the last successful Japanese offensive. Even as it drew to a close, Japanese cities were being fire-bombed by the US Air Force. Even the lowest Japanese grunt knew the war was lost, but surrender was unthinkable. Three generals launched one last, desperate offensive into Sichuan, but were beaten back. The Allied leaders then issued a final ultimatum that demanded the unconditional surrender of Japan on threat of "utter destruction". Given the numbers of Japanese civilian dead and the way the Third Reich had just gone down, High Command didn't expect for a moment this would actually work and had been planning an amphibious invasion of the Japanese Home Islands - Operation Downfall - which was set to begin in October. Naturally, Japan refused to surrender. The USAF then dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Soviet Union entered the war on the same day, and sent the Red Army storming into Manchukuo. Meanwhile, the GMD had managed to take back Guangxi and were preparing for an all-out offensive to retake the rest of southern China... when to the astonishment of everyone, Japan surrendered.
— General Tojo Hideki, 1946
Works set in this period:
The Second Sino-Japanese War showed examples of:
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alternative title(s): Second Sino Japanese War
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