China

China was the most populous country in the world in 1941, with a population of some 400 million persons. Though China has one of the oldest civilizations in the world, the Renaissance in Europe left China behind, and Europeans equipped with firearms were able to progressively nibble away at the Chinese Empire. The corrupt and ineffective Qing Dynasty finally collapsed in 1911, leaving China politically fragmented and in economic ruin.

The Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-shek attempted with some success to unify and modernize the country against the opposition of local warlords. However, resistance from the remaining warlords and the Chinese Communists prevented complete unification, and the Japanese invasion in 1937 led to a brutal three-way war.

Initially, the Japanese encountered stiff resistance from German-trained Kuomintang divisions at Shanghai, and the Chinese Republican Air Force (whose ranks included foreign mercenaries and Russian “volunteers”) inflicted heavy casualties on unescorted Japanese bombers. But the defeat of the Chinese forces at Shanghai was accompanied by the destruction the best Chinese army formations, and improved Japanese fighters swept Chinese air forces from the skies. Thereafter the Japanese were able to go pretty much wherever they wanted. Nanking was conquered in December 1937, unleashing an orgy of destruction in which perhaps as many as a quarter of a million Chinese were murdered. Hankow (Wuhan) followed in April 1938, after which the Japanese were able to advance as far as the Yangtze Gorges at I’chang.

The Japanese advance then bogged down under its own logistical difficulties. The Japanese advance on Changsha was defeated by the Chinese in the spring of 1941, and the Kuomintang regime in Chungking failed to collapse under aerial bombardment. There followed an undeclared truce, punctuated by a vengeance campaign in the Chuchow area in April 1942 following the Doolittle Raid, that lasted until the Japanese Icho-go offensive of 1944. The Japanese controlled the railroads, rivers, and major cities of north and central China; the Communists controlled much of the countryside of north China; and the Kuomintang controlled the rest.

The Chinese contribution to victory in the Pacific War is difficult to assess. It is likely, of course, that there would have been no Pacific War in the 1940s were it not for the Japanese actions in China. When war broke out, the Japanese allocated just 11 divisions to the Centrifugal Offensive against the Allies, out of an army of over fifty divisions. Most of the rest remained in China. This supports the view that China was a quagmire that kept the Japanese from deploying their full strength to the Pacific, but it seems likely that the shortage of Japanese shipping would have been a serious constraint in any case. Certainly the contribution of China was far less than American strategists had hoped for at the start of the Pacific War.

With the Japanese surrender in 1945, a full-scale civil war broke out between the Kuomintang and the Communists. This ended in 1949 when the Kuomintang forces were forced to retreat to Taiwan (Formosa).

Ichi-go

The largest offensive attempted by the Japanese in China during the Pacific War was the Icho-go offensive of 1944, which involved up to 400,000 Japanese troops and 800,000 Chinese troops. Of these, the Japanese admitted about 30,000 casualties, while the Chinese suffered nearly 300,000 casualties.

The immediate objectives of the offensive were, first, to capture airfields in south China from which American air forces were preparing to carry out a strategic bombing campaign against southern Japan; second, to preempt any Allied counteroffensive from Yunnan; third, to establish land communications from Korea to Rangoon and bypass the increasingly tight American submarine blockade; and, fourth, to destabilize the Kuomintang government and possibly force China out of the war.

The offensive consisted of three main phases. The first, Ko-go, which commenced in April 1944, was an advance into Honan by 400,000 Japanese troops against about 100,000 defenders. This advance sought to clear the railroad between Chegchow and Hankow. The attacking force was spearheaded by three infantry and one tank division and supported by a large number of independent mixed brigades. Luoyang fell on 25 May 1944 and the railroad was secured by June 1944. The thirty defending divisions, led by T'ang En-po, enjoyed no support from the people of Honan, who were embittered by continuing taxation in a time of bitter famine and allegedly incited by Communist collaborators.

Japanese order of battle, Operation Ko-go

Kuomintang order of battle, Operation Ko-go

The second phase, To-go, was an advance into Hunan in June 1944 by a force of 360,000 Japanese spearheaded by 25 infantry divisions, a tank division, 11 independent mixed brigades, a cavalry brigade, and an air division. Transport was lavish by Japanese standards, consisting of 12,000 motor vehicles and 70,000 horses. The Chinese eventually reinforced the defending forces to a maximum strength of 800,000 troops, but were unable to hold Changsha. The Japanese then advanced to Hengyang where, to their surprise, the Chinese 10 Corps held the city for 47 days. The defenders enjoyed support from Chennault's 14 Air Force but held mostly through sheer courage. Meanwhile, the advance of 23 Army from Canton was delayed by Chinese counterattacks and the army actually lost touch with its base between 3 and 14 November. However, on 10 November 1944 the Japanese took Kweilin and were threatening Kweiyang. Fear of a Japanese advance clear to Chungking prompted Wedemeyer to airlift 23,000 troops into Kweichow.

The second phase of To-go and final phase of Ichi-go was an advance into Kwangsi in August 1944 by 100,000 Japanese troops against a roughly equal number of Chinese, though the Chinese rapidly reinforced the defenders. By the end of the year, the Japanese had secured the railroad between Hengyang and Canton.

Japanese order of battle, Operation To-go

Kuomintang order of battle, Operation To-go

The Ichi-go offensive attained almost all of its objectives. The American airfields were put out of action, though by the end of 1944 this no longer mattered much, since the Americans had recaptured Clark Field in the Philippines and sealed off Formosa Strait from the east. The rail link across central and southern China was secure. Nationalist China lost the best 10% of its troops and 25% of its remaining industrial base, putting it effectively out of the war. Again, at this point this no longer mattered much, since American forces were closing in on Japan from the south and east.

Critics of Stilwell point out that, because of his influence, the best Chinese troops were committed to Burma when Icho-go commenced, and Stilwell refused to leave the front in Burma to organize the defenses in central China. The most severe critics go so far as to suggest Stilwell deliberately refused to help in order to prove his point about the need for reform in the Chinese Army and perhaps to incite a coup d'etat against Chiang. This was the last straw for Chiang, who demanded Stilwell's recall in the middle of the Japanese offensive.

References

Dorn (1974)

Liu (1956)

Sih (1977)

Wilson (1982)

The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia (c) 2007-2008 by Kent G. Budge. Index