Fighting on all Fronts (52 page)

24
    Quoted in P Chen-Main Wang, “Revisiting US-China Wartime Relations: A Study of Wedemeyer’s China Mission”,
Journal of Contemporary China
(2009), 18 (59), p242.

25
    M Schaller,
The US Crusade in China 1938-1945
(New York, 1979), p105.

26
    Quoted in Schaller, 1979, p105; Spector, 2011, p475.

27
    Chang Jui-te, “The Nationalist Army on the Eve of War” in M Peattie, E Drea and H van de Ven (eds),
The Battle for China
(Stanford, 2011), p104.

28
    Snow, 1941, Part 1, p48.

29
    M Selden,
The Yenan Way in Revolutionary China
(Harvard University Press, Harvard, 1971), p154.

30
    Fenby, 2003, pp408-409.

31
    See I Chang,
The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War ii
, Penguin USA, 1998 (Paper).

32
    
E Friedman et al,
Chinese Village, Socialist State
(Yale University Press, New Haven, 1991), p36.

33
    C A Johnson,
Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power
(Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1962), p56.

34
    Chalmers Johnson, for example, notes that in 1944 there were ten times as many Japanese nationals living in China as in 1937 (Johnson, 1962, p44).

35
    Mao Tse-tung,
Selected Works
, vol 4 (London, 1956), pp248-249.

36
    J W Garver, “Chiang Kai-shek’s Quest for Soviet Entry into the Sino-Japanese War”,
Political Science Quarterly
, vol 102, no 2 (summer, 1987), p32. For a summary of Sino-Russian relations see Snow, 1972, p407.

37
    Mao’s letter welcoming the new Comintern policy, quoted in S Schramm,
Mao Tse-tung
(Penguin, London, 1967), p109.

38
    Schramm, 1967, p112.

39
    Quoted in N Knight, “Mao Zedong and the Peasants: Class and Power in the Formation of a Revolutionary Strategy”, in
China Report
2004, no 40, p63.

40
    T Cliff,
Deflected Permanent Revolution
,
www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1963/xx/permrev.htm
.

41
    O Braun,
A Comintern Agent in China 1932-1939
(C Hurst, London, 1982), p40.

42
    Braun, 1982, p51.

43
    Quoted in Cliff, 1963.

44
    Braun, 1982, p134.

45
    Quoted in Selden, 1971, p73.

46
    N Knight, “Mao Zedong and the Peasants: Class and Power in the Formation of a Revolutionary Strategy,” in
China Report
2004, no 40, p73.

47
    Johnson, 1962, p157; Selden, 1971, p142.

48
    Selden, 1971, p73. See also Schramm, 1967, p115.

49
    T Cliff, 1963.

50
    See, for example, D S Goodman, “The Licheng Rebellion of 1941: Class, Gender and Leadership in the Sino-Japanese War,
Modern China
, vol 23, no 2 (April 1997), pp216-245; P M Coble, “Chiang Kai-shek and the Anti-Japanese Movement in China: Zou Tao-fen and the National Salvation Association, 1931-1937”,
Journal of Asian Studies
, vol 44, no 2, February 1985, pp293-310; and Donglan Huang, “Revolution, War, and Villages: A Case Study on Villages of Licheng County, Shanxi Province during the War of Resistance Against Japan”,
Frontiers of History in China
, 2011, no 6(1), p106.

51
    Johnson, 1962, p2.

52
    Selden, 1971, pp119-120.

53
    Snow, 1972, p77.

54
    Mao Tse-tung,
Selected Works
, vol 4 (London, 1956), p25.

55
    J Esherick, “Revolution in a “Feudal Fortress”, Feng Chongyi, D Goodman (eds),
North China at War
(Lanham, Maryland, 2000), p69.

56
    Huang, 2011, p106.

57
    Huang, 2011, p109. This is confirmed by another example given by Selden: “Third Township provides unique local data illustrating relationship between land revolution and political participation… The majority of the 134 who had become party members by 39 joined because they believed in the Communists’ commitment to redistribute land, improve standards of living, and abolish oppression… On one point the report is unequivocal. As late as 1939, after three years in which the united front was reiterated as a fundamental principle, only one person out of the total of 134 had joined the party primarily to resist Japan, and that was in 1937 long after Communist control and land revolution had been consolidated.” Selden, 1971, p110.

58
    Snow, 1972, p261.

59
    Snow, 1972, p469.

60
    See Snow, 1972, p47.

61
    Snow, 1972, p330.

62
    
Snow, 1972, p299.

63
    Snow, 1972, p296.

64
    Snow, 1972, p300.

65
    Snow, 1972, p296.

66
    Selden, 1971, p254.

67
    Huang, 2011, p115.

68
    Fenby, 2003, p322.

69
    Snow, 1972, p410.

70
    Snow, 1972, p410.

71
    SeeTai-Chun Kuo, “A Strong Diplomat in a Weak Polity: T V Soong and wartime US-China relations, 1940-1943”,
Journal of Contemporary China
, no 18, March 2009, pp219-231.

72
    This figure is for 1943 (Fenby, 2003), p408.

73
    Quoted in Fenby, 2003, p199.

74
    See for example, Schramm, 1967, pp210-214.

75
    Esherick, 2000, p79.

76
    See for example Mao,
On New Democracy
, in
www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_26.htm

77
    Selden, 1971, p135.

78
    D S G Goodman, “Revolutionary Women and Women in the Revolution: The Chinese Communist Party and Women in the War of Resistance to Japan, 1937-1945”,
The China Quarterly
, no 164 (December, 2000), p919.

79
    Goodman, 2000, p941.

80
    S MacKinnon, “The Tragedy of Wuhan, 1938”,
Modern Asian Studies
, vol 30, no 4 (October, 1996), p933.

81
    According to Fenby, 2003, p318.

82
    Fenby, 2003, p320.

83
    Quoted in Snow, 1941, Part 1, pp48-49.

84
    Selden, 1971, p174.

85
    For a discussion of this aspect, see K Gawlikowski, “Traditional Chinese concepts of warfare and CPC theory of People’s War (1928-1949)”,
26th Conference of Chinese Studies Proceedings: Understanding Modern China, Problems and Methods
(1979), pp143-169.

86
    Snow, 1972, p299.

87
    Johnson, 1962, p59.

88
    Quoted in Schramm, 1967, p196.

89
    Quoted in Schramm, 1967, p45. Snow gives a detailed discussion of partisan tactics (see Snow, 1972, p317).

90
    Johnson, 1962, p58.

91
    Huang, 2011, p115

92
    Selden gives the following figures for 1938: Workers Organisation 45,000; Youth National Salvation Association 168,000; Women’s Association 173,000; and Peasant Association 421,000 (Selden, 1971, p142).

93
    Snow, 1972, p468.

94
    Quoted in Johnson, 1962, p147.

95
    Braun, 1982, p49. Fenby quotes a Russian commentator who in 1943 wrote that “the Red Armies have long been abstaining from both active and passive action against the aggressors” (Fenby, 2003, p441).

96
    See D M Gordon, “The China-Japan War, 1931-1945, Historiographical Essay,”
The Journal of Military History
, vol 70, no 1 (January, 2006), pp169-170.

97
    Johnson, 1962, p72; Schramm, 1967, pp199-200. Snow quotes a Japanese source that suggested between 500,000 and 600,000 (Snow, 1972, p469).

98
    Snow, 1972, p469.

99
    Fenby, 2003, p461.

100
  
O E Clubb, “Manchuria in the Balance, 1945-1946”,
Pacific Historical Review
, vol 26, no 4 (November, 1957), p377.

101
  Quoted in Clubb, 1957, p381.

102
  Clubb, 1957, p379.

103
  Schramm, 1967, p218.

104
  Note accompanying the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance of 14 August 1945, in
American Journal of International Law
, vol 40, no 2, April 1946, p59.

105
  Schramm, 1967, p 218; Xiaoyuan Liu,
A Partnership for Disorder: China, the United States, and Their Policies for the Postwar Disposition of the Japanese Empire 1941–1945
(Cambridge University Press, 1996), p279.

106
  D G Gillin and C Etter, “Staying On: Japanese Soldiers and Civilians in China 1945-1949”,
The Journal of Asian Studies
, vol 42, no 3 (May, 1983), p499.

107
  Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers General Order no. One. This was formally accepted by the Japanese on 2 September.
www.taiwandocuments.org/surrender05.htm

108
  Act of Surrender—China Theatre, 9 September 1945,
www.taiwandocuments.org/surrender02.htm

109
  Quoted in Gillin and Etter, 1983, p501.

110
  Gillin and Etter, 1983, pp499-500.

111
  I Buruma,
Year Zero: A History of 1945
(Atlantic Books, London 2013), p193.

112
  Gillin and Etter, 1983, p511.

113
  
American Journal of International Law
, vol 40, no 2, April 1946, p53.

114
  American investigation report quoted in E D Hawkins, “Manchuria’s Postwar Economy”, in
Far Eastern Survey
, vol 16, no 3 (12 February 1947), p35.

115
  C P Fitzgerald,
The Birth of Communist China
(Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1964), p97.

116
  Fenby, 1961, p306.

117
  Fitzgerald, 1964, p97.

118
  Schramm, 1967, p225.

119
  K Marx, “The Bourgeoisie and the Counter-Revolution”,
Neue Rheinische Zeitung
, no 169, December 1848,
www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/12/15.htm
. For a discussion of this see R Day and D Gaido,
Witnesses to Permanent Revolution
(Haymarket Books, Chicago, 2011).

120
  L Trotsky, “Foreword to K Marx Parizhskaya Kommuna”, in R Day and D Gaido,
Witnesses to Permanent Revolution
(Haymarket Books, Chicago, 2011), p503.

121
  T Cliff, 1963.

122
  K Marx, “Feuerbach. Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlook D. Proletarians and Communism”,
The German Ideology
, part i,
www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01d.htm

Kaye Broadbent and Tom O’Lincoln

“Thousands die for the glory of a single general.” This classical Chinese saying was found on a telephone pole in 1945, according to Tokyo secret police reports.
¹
That such a thing occurred may seem surprising given the way the Japanese population has been portrayed as of one mind with the ruling elite. For example, in response to military aggression towards China at the time of the Manchurian Incident (1931), it was reported that “the populace was swept away by a nationalistic euphoria”.
²
And following the Marco Polo Bridge attack (outside Beijing) in 1937 “public opinion was marked by great patriotic fervor”.
³
The army developed a series of pamphlets which Borton notes indicated that: “As the crisis in Asia increased, persons from all classes in society—the political parties, businessmen, labourers and farmers—found…philosophical and religious justification for the national expansionist program”.
⁴

These and countless other examples portray the Japanese population as totally carried away with the war effort and possessed of a mindless unanimity—what the Japanese state called “100 million hearts beating as one”.
⁵
This perspective is symbolised by the
kamikaze
suicide flights which are used to show how fanatical the Japanese population was—with young men eager to die for the emperor. The individual soldier has also been caricatured in the same way: “He was cruel, and dirty, and bestial…he plundered and raped the natives”.
⁶
In reality, political uniformity was imposed on the Japanese population and it did encounter resistance.

Much of the English language literature on this period in Japan’s history focuses on Japan as a monolithic entity with the population united behind the militaristic goals of the state. This chapter documents another aspect of Japan’s history, that of resistance to the Japanese state’s military expansion. It focuses on both collective and individual acts of resistance. The banning of left wing groups, the forced amalgamation of unions into an industrial association,
Sanpō
, and the gaoling and torturing of political and union activists, did not stop the resistance.

There are numerous examples of individual resistance from the military, including within the ranks of the renowned
kamikaze
pilots, by peasants, Koreans forced into slave labour in the mines, workers and the intelligentsia. The resistance took the form of violent struggle, workplace sabotage and absenteeism and activists continuing their activism in the form of poetry, graffiti, jokes and publications. One union activist Yamashiro Yoshimune was gaoled for leading a miners’ strike in 1927; he continued his activities on his release in 1936 and was imprisoned again in 1940. He refused to renounce his Marxist views and convert to “Japanism” despite pressure from the authorities. Representing only the tip of the iceberg, this chapter indicates there is clear evidence that resistance to Japanese militarism occurred within Japan, and from many levels.
⁷