Beginning World War II in Asia

Japan After World War I A valuable ally during World War I, the European powers and the United States recognized Japan as a colonial power after the war. In Japan, this led to the rise of nationalist leaders, who advocated uniting Asia under the rule of the Japanese Emperor.

Known as hakkô ichiu, this philosophy gained ground during the 1920s and 1930s as Japan needed increasingly more natural resources to support its industrial growth. With the onset of the Great Depression, Japan moved toward a militarist system with the army exerting growing influence over the emperor and government.

To keep the economy growing, an emphasis was placed on arms and weapons production with much of the raw materials coming from the United States. Rather than continue this dependence on foreign materials, the Japanese decided to seek out resource-rich colonies to supplement their existing possessions in Korea and Formosa. To accomplish this goal, the leaders in Tokyo looked west to , which was in the midst of a civil war between Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang (Nationalist) government, Mao Zedong's Communists, and local warlords.

Trouble in China The Chinese revolution led to end of the in 1911, and the formation of the Republic of China. Sun-Yat Sen emerged as a leader until his death in 1925. Sun-Yat Sen led the Nationalist in China with the goal of the country being a free, prosperous, and powerful nation. However, communist forces began to oppose the nationalists in the early 1920s, breaking out into a Civil War by 1927.

Invasion of Manchuria For several years Japan had been meddling in Chinese affairs, and the province of Manchuria, in northeast China, was seen as ideal for Japanese expansion.

On September 18, 1931, the Japanese staged an incident along the Japanese-owned South Manchuria Railway near Mukden (Shenyang). After blowing up a section of track, the Japanese blamed the "attack" on the local Chinese garrison. Using the "Mukden Bridge Incident" as a pretext, Japanese troops flooded into Manchuria.

The Nationalist Chinese forces in the region, following the government's policy of nonresistance, refused to fight, allowing the Japanese to occupy much of the province.

Unable to divert forces from battling the Communists and warlords, Chiang Kai-shek sought aid from the international community and the League of Nations. On October 24, the League of Nations passed a resolution demanding the withdrawal of Japanese troops by November 16. This resolution was rejected by Tokyo and Japanese troops continued operations to secure Manchuria. In January, the United States stated that it would not recognize any government formed as a result of Japanese aggression. Two months later, the Japanese created the puppet state of Manchukuo. Like the United States, the League of Nations refused to recognize the new state, prompting Japan to leave the organization in 1933. Later that year, the Japanese seized the neighboring province of Jehol.

The Second Sino-Japanese War Begins Fighting between the Chinese and Japanese resumed on a large scale on July 7, 1937, following the Bridge Incident, just south of . By the end of the year Japanese forces had occupied Shanghai, Nanking, and southern Shanxi province. After seizing the capital of Nanking, the Japanese brutally sacked the city in late 1937 and early 1938. Pillaging the city and killing nearly 300,000, the event became known as the "Rape of Nanking."

To combat the Japanese invasion, the Kuomintang and united in an uneasy alliance against the common foe. Unable to effectively confront the Japanese directly in battle, the Chinese traded land for time as they built up their forces and shifted industry from threatened coastal areas to the interior. Enacting a scorched earth policy, the Chinese were able to slow the Japanese advance by mid-1938. By 1940, the war had become a stalemate with the Japanese controlling the coastal cities and railroads and the Chinese occupying the interior and countryside. On September 22, 1940, taking advantage of France's defeat that summer, Japanese troops occupied French Indochina. Five days later, the Japanese signed the Tripartiate Pact effectively forming an alliance with Germany and Italy

Conflict with the Soviet Union While operations were ongoing in China, Japan became embroiled in border war with the Soviet Union in 1938. Beginning with the Battle of Lake Khasan (July 29-August 11, 1938), the conflict was a result of a dispute over the border of Manchu China and the Russia. Also known as the Changkufeng Incident, the battle resulted in a Soviet victory and expulsion of the Japanese from their territory. The two clashed again in the larger Battle of Khalkhin Gol (May 11-September 16, 1939) the following year. Led by General Georgy Zhukov, Soviet forces decisively defeated the Japanese, killing over 8,000. As a result of these defeats, the Japanese agreed to the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact in April 1941.

Marco Polo Bridge Incident

Background Relations between China and Japan were chilly, to say the least, even prior to the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. The Empire of Japan had annexed Korea, formerly a Chinese territory, in 1910, and had invaded and occupied Manchuria in 1931. Japan had spent the five years leading up to the Marco Polo Bridge Incident gradually seizing ever-larger sections of northern and eastern China. China's government, the Kuomintang led by Chiang Kai-shek, was based further south in Nanjing, but Beijing was still a strategical city.

The key to Beijing was the Marco Polo Bridge, near to the town of Wanping, as it was the only road and rail link between Beijing and the Kuomintang's stronghold in Nanjing. The Japanese Imperial Army had been trying to pressure China to withdraw from the area without success.

The "Incident" In the early summer of 1937, Japan began to carry out military training exercises near the bridge. They always warned the local inhabitants, to prevent panic, but on July 7, 1937, the Japanese commenced training without prior notice to the Chinese. The local Chinese garrison at Wanping, believing that they were under attack, fired a few scattered shots, and the Japanese returned fire. In the confusion, a Japanese soldier went missing, and his commanding officer demanded that the Chinese allow the Japanese troops to enter and search the town for him. The Chinese refused. The Chinese army offered to conduct the search, which the Japanese commander agreed to, but some Japanese infantry troops tried to push their way in to the town regardless. Chinese troops garrisoned in town fired on the Japanese and drove them away.

With events spiraling out of control, both sides called for reinforcements. Shortly before 5 am on July 8, the Chinese allowed two Japanese investigators in to Wanping to search for the missing soldier. Nonetheless, the Imperial Army opened fire with four mountain guns at 5:00, and Japanese tanks rolled down the Marco Polo Bridge shortly thereafter. One hundred Chinese defenders fought to hold the bridge; only four of them survived. The Japanese overran the bridge, but Chinese reinforcements retook it the following morning, July 9.

Meanwhile, in Beijing, the two sides negotiated a settlement of the incident. The terms were that China would apologize for the incident, responsible officers on both sides would be punished, Chinese troops in the area would be replaced by the civilian Peace Preservation Corps, and the Chinese Nationalist government would better control communist elements in the area. In return, Japan would withdraw from the immediate area of Wanping and the Marco Polo Bridge. Representatives of China and Japan signed this accord on July 11 at 11:00 am.

The national governments of both countries saw the skirmish as an insignificant local incident, and it should have ended with the settlement agreement. However, the Japanese Cabinet held a press conference to announce the settlement, in which it also announced the mobilization of three new army divisions, and harshly warned the Chinese government in Nanjing not to interfere with the local solution to the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. This incendiary cabinet statement caused Chiang Kaishek's government to react by sending four divisions of additional troops to the area.

Soon, both sides were violating the truce agreement. The Japanese shelled Wanping on July 20, and by the end of July the Imperial Army had surrounded Tianjin and Beijing. Even though neither side likely had planned to go into an all-out war, tensions were incredibly high. When a Japanese naval officer was assassinated in Shanghai on August 9, 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out in earnest. The Rape of Nanjing

In 1931, the Japanese occupied the Chinese province of Manchuria transforming it into a Japanese puppet state. It was the first step in Japan’s drive to control all of China. Six years would elapse before the Japanese took the next step in their plan of conquest.

In early July 1937, Japanese and Chinese troops clashed in Peking (Beijing) in an incident at the Marco Polo Bridge. Using this as justification, the Japanese launched a full-blown assault on the city at the end of the month utilizing massed infantry, tanks and airstrikes. It did not take long for the city and the surrounding area to fall to the Japanese.

The fighting moved to the south in August when the Japanese attacked Shanghai and pursued the retreating Chinese army up the Yangtze valley to the national capital at Nanking (Nanjing). The Japanese began their attack on that city early in December, forcing its surrender on December 13. Then the horror began.

The population of Nanking was subjected to an uncontrolled butchery that came to be known as "the Rape of Nanking." As the Japanese army poured into the city, fleeing residents were shot or bayoneted. Thousand of suspected members of the Chinese Army who had shed their uniforms for civilian clothing, were apprehended, their hands tied behind their backs and led en masse to killing fields where they were shot, beheaded, used for bayonet practice or killed in some other gruesome manner before being dumped into mass graves. Thousands of others were buried while still alive. Rape was rampant as thousands of women were repeatedly forced into sex and often murdered once the brutal attack ended. The carnage lasted for six weeks, but estimates of those murdered at Nanking are estimated anywhere from 40,000 to 300,000 lives.

John Rabe was a German businessman who had resided in China since 1908. He represented the China branch of the Siemens Company and lived in Nanking at the time of the Japanese invasion. As the Japanese approached, he joined other foreign nationals in establishing a “Safety Zone” within the city that would harbor only civilians and unarmed soldiers. It was hoped that, devoid of combatants, the Japanese would spare the Safety Zone. Rabe kept a diary of his experiences; this is his story on the day that the Japanese entered the city and he accompanies other members of the Safety Committee in a tour of the Safety Zone:

"December 13, 1937, Three of us committee members drive out to military hospitals that have been opened in the Foreign Ministry, the War Ministry, and the Railway Ministry, and are quickly convinced of the miserable conditions in these hospitals, whose doctors and nurses simply ran away when the shelling got too heavy, leaving the sick behind with nobody to care for them. . .

The dead and wounded lie side by side in the driveway leading up to the Foreign Ministry. The garden, like the rest of Chung Shan Lu, is strewn with pieces of cast-off military equipment. At the entrance is a wheelbarrrow containing a formless mass, ostensibly a corpse, but the feet show signs of life.

It is not until we tour the city that we learn the extent of the destruction. We come across corpses every 100 to 200 yards. The bodies of civilians that I examined had bullet holes in their backs. These people had presumably been fleeing and were shot from behind.

The Japanese march through the city in groups of ten to twenty soldiers and loot the shops. If I had not seen it with my own eyes I would not have believed it. They smash open windows and doors and take whatever they like. Allegedly because they're short of rations. I watched with my own eyes as they looted the cafe of our German baker Herr Kiessling. Hempel's hotel was broken into as well, as was almost every shop on Chung Shang and Taiping Road. Some Japanese soldiers dragged their booty away in crates, others requisitioned rickshas to transport their stolen goods to safety.

We run across a group of 200 Chinese workers whom Japanese soldiers have picked up off the streets of the Safety Zone, and after having been tied up, are now being driven out of the city. All protests are in vain.

Of the perhaps one thousand disarmed soldiers that we had quartered at the Ministry of Justice, between 400 and 500 were driven from it with their hands tied. We assume they were shot since we later heard several salvos of machine-gun fire. These events have left us frozen with horror.

...Mr. Han says that three young girls of about 14 or 15 have been dragged from a house in our neighborhood. Doctor Bates reports that even in the Safety Zone refugees in various houses have been robbed of their few paltry possessions. At various times troops of Japanese soldiers enter my private residence as well, but when I arrive and hold my swastika armband under their noses, they leave. There's no love for the American flag. A car belonging to Mr. Sone, one of our committee members, had its American flag ripped off and was then stolen.

December 16 All the shelling and bombing we have thus far experienced are nothing in comparison to the terror that we are going through now: There is not a single shop outside our Zone that has not been looted, and now pillaging, rape, murder, and mayhem are occurring inside the Zone as well. There is not a vacant house, whether with or without a foreign flag, that has not been broken into and looted.

...No Chinese even dares set foot outside his house! When the gates to my garden are opened to let my car leave the ground… women and children on the street outside kneel and bang their heads against the ground, pleading to be allowed to camp on my garden grounds. You simply cannot conceive of the misery.

I've just heard that hundreds more disarmed Chinese soldiers have been led out of our Zone to be shot, including 50 of our police who are to be executed for letting soldiers in. The road to Hsiakwan is nothing but a field of corpses strewn with the remains of military equipment. The Communications Ministry was torched by the Chinese, the Y Chang Men Gate has been shelled. There are piles of corpses outside the gate. The Japanese aren't lifting a hand to clear them away.

It may be that the disarmed Chinese will be forced to do the job before they're killed. We Europeans are all paralyzed with horror. There are executions everywhere, some are being carried out with machine guns outside the barracks of the War Ministry.

...As I write this, the fists of Japanese soldiers are hammering at the back gate to the garden. Since my boys don't open up, heads appear along the top of the wall. When I suddenly show up with my flashlight, they beat a hasty retreat. We open the main gate and walk after them a little distance until they vanish in the dark narrow streets, where assorted bodies have been lying in the gutter for three days now. Makes you shudder in revulsion.

All the women and children, their eyes big with terror, are sitting on the grass in the garden, pressed closely together, in part to keep warm, in part to give each other courage. Their one hope is that I, the ‘foreign devil’ will drive these evil spirits away."