Not only Moscow foretold the Japanese action at Pearl Harbor. Chiang Kai-shek was sure something was in the wind, and he kept saying so in messages to the U. S. A. Embassy. But toward the end, in that last fortnight before December 7, the picture was confused in Chungking, just as it was in Washington, by Tokyo’s offer to talk matters over with the American State Department. Americans seized on this as a chance, and Chungking was very worried that there would indeed be a chance for a settlement at their expense. The choice offered to Washington was that in return for peace the Americans should force through a treaty between Japan and China by which Manchukuo be recognized and the other Japanese conquest accepted.
However, America did not give way. The Japanese attacked; the fire flared up. Germany and Italy declared war on America. Chiang, on behalf of China, declared war on Germany, Italy, and—at last—on Japan. The devious ways of diplomacy have seldom led to more of an anticlimax.
10 STILWELL VS. CHENNAULT 1941–43
Chiang now embarked on a new sort of life, heavily involved with foreigners. He held diplomatic discussions with the leaders of the United Nations, and military powwows with Western generals. In these unfamiliar circumstances he did his best to live up, more than ever, to the Confucian ideal of the gentleman. Seldom did he permit the mask to slip. Stilwell, however, was to be there when it happened.
And Chiang had a good deal to control. His emotions at the beginning of the all-in war must have been enough to flood a weaker-willed man. In spite of all the talk about the common struggle of the United Nations, Pearl Harbor was bound to mean different things to different countries. To the U.S.A. it was pure shock. To Britain it was like the pricking of a large, painful blister. To the Chinese it was relief that surpassed Britain’s. Until that last minute it had looked as if Japan would carry her point: Kurusu’s trip to Washington had scared them to death.
The practical advantages of the situation were brilliantly clear: America was in, and on China’s side. What was purely impractical, and plays no part in documentary history, nevertheless shouldn’t be ignored. Chiang had the intoxicating sensation of being justified at last. These Western people who had been so impatient of Chinese strategy, who had laughed as the Nationalist Army retreated and talked scornfully of the Japanese, were now in speedy retreat from those same islanders. In Hongkong, Singapore, and Manila foreigners were fighting for their lives—and fighting against Asiatics. If the Japanese were proud of Chiang Kai-shek for having withstood them so long and put it down to the training he had received at their hands, so Chiang was probably proud of the Japanese, much as he detested them, for putting Asia on the West’s prejudiced map. Let the foreigners handle it for a while and see if they could do any better against the Japanese than the Chinese had done. It did not look from where he was standing as if they would.
Before the end of December, America had swung into action. As our only defense in the Far East, China must be supplied with munitions and other help. The usual route from Hongkong had been cut off; the British were obviously fighting a losing battle there. From the new avalanche of supplies visualized by the strategists in Washington only the Burma Road was left, that much-contested life line. It had always been a source of trouble. It was long, difficult to keep in repair, fantastically dangerous, and too narrow to permit much volume of travel at a time.
Just before Pearl Harbor there had been formally organized in Chungking a group of American aviators who worked on volunteer status for China and the Chiangs under Colonel Claire Chennault. Chennault was instructor at the Air Force Cadet School. Some of these men had been flying in China ever since the Kuomintang first began buying American planes, having come over to demonstrate the merchandise and remained to pilot and teach. Others had hurried over to join up as they were released from their volunteer posts in Spain. It was a familiar joke that pilots from both sides of the Spanish War were likely to meet and work side by side in China. But political convictions were not important to them and they got on well enough with each other, mercenaries of the twentieth century.
As traffic on the Burma Road swelled in volume and got itself mixed up, as cargo was lost through pilfering and trucks broke down from mishandling, the air freight service into Chungking became more and more urgently important. The backbone of its organization was American, and it had been in action for months before the Japanese attack. Halfway down the road, over the border in Burma, was a plane factory backed by American and Chinese capital. Thus China had one asset ready to hand, a trained nucleus of an air force. In double-quick time the handful of men, called the American Volunteer Group or “Flying Tigers,” was incorporated into the U. S. Air Force.
Aside from all this it was America first in Chungking, for the very good reason that, among the United Nations, America was the only one to take China seriously. Chiang had envisaged a joint military council including Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia—the Commonwealth group—with Russia and the Netherlands. But Russia promptly contracted out of the Asian side of the war: Ambassador Litvinov explained to the U. S. Secretary of State, Hull, that his country’s energy was entirely taken up by the struggle with Germany. She would have no strength for coping with Japan, at least not for the time being, but he left open the possibility that Russia might join in against Japan later, when the German problem had ceased to press. This was bad news for the other United Nations, who had been counting on Siberian air bases from which to attack Tokyo.
Chiang suggested a meeting in Chungking of United Nations high brass, empowered to make plans for an all-Asia strategy of war and the defense of the widespread threatened area: China, Hongkong, Singapore, the Philippines, Burma, and the Dutch East Indies. In his opinion there should be a joint general staff based on Chungking, and it seemed to the Americans that some such arrangement would be a good thing. On December 22 General Brett for America and Wavell for England finally arrived in Chungking and joined a few lesser dignitaries for a conference. But Washington had learned that it is one thing to make these large, over-all plans and quite another to break them down into the working details that mean everything in war. Where were they to begin? Hongkong was practically lost and the positions of Singapore and the Philippines were very shaky. With Russia refusing to play, the answer to Japan could not be an immediate air offensive against her mainland. Should the Allies rush a joint army and navy to the East Indies? Or did Burma and Malaya come first? What about the threat to India if Burma was neglected, and what of Australia?
And there was a ticklish question that could not be thrashed out in the open. Some members of the conference, chiefly Britain, could not see Chungking as the focal point of their defense. They felt that Chiang didn’t matter enough. His resources couldn’t compare with theirs, and it would be wrong to give him a powerful voice in the allocation of their pool of men and material. America argued that China’s geographical position gave her importance in the scene. But the British with their history vis-à-vis China of genial condescension had long since written her off, and they had strong objections to thinking again at this crucial moment. Churchill was in Washington putting up a battle against Chiang in which worried exasperation had to be hidden by tact. He was later to say in his book, The Hinge of Fate, that he found an “extraordinary significance of China in American minds” which he considered “strangely out of proportion.” “I said I would of course always be helpful and polite to the Chinese, whom I admired and liked as a race and pitied for their endless misgovernment, but that Roosevelt must not expect me to adopt what I felt was a wholly unreal standard of values.”
This was hardly an auspicious beginning to an alliance sure to be sorely strained anyway over the limited material available. How much Chiang heard about Churchill’s arguments is unknown, but he could not have remained very long in ignorance of the general tenor of British sentiment.
The President smoothed it over, sending word to Chungking that as Australia, Britain, Holland, and America would have a supreme commander of their force
s in the Southwest Pacific theater—Wavell—Chiang ought to act as Wavell’s opposite number and command the China theater, including Siam and Indo-China, combining action with the Briton by means of a joint planning staff. Chiang accepted this adroit compromise and requested that Roosevelt appoint an American to be chief of the joint staff under him. And that is how Joseph Warren Stilwell happened to be sent to Chungking.
Would things have been different if someone else had been given the appointment—a less irascible, uncompromising character, someone who tried to understand the special problems he was bound to encounter? Stilwell seems to have been chosen partly because in 1935–39 he had served a tour in China as military attaché. What no one seems to have noticed in the rush was that even then his reports showed a strong dislike of Chiang.
Late in February he started out on the mission. By this time America and Britain had outlined their general strategy. Germany was to be defeated first, while Japan was to be approached from the east, across the Pacific, with whatever ships that could be spared. She must be contained, in the meantime, along the line of defense from Australia to India and Burma. The Japanese already encamped in China were to be bombed from Chinese airports, and supplies would be brought in over the Burma Road and stock-piled against a future push to drive them out. British and Dutch naval units were to guard the ports of Australia, Burma, India, and Ceylon; on land the troops were to be contributed by all the United Nations (except Russia), supporting an American force.
In Washington and London it looked all right, or, if not all right, at least as good as it could be at that stage. But in Chungking the picture was not so satisfactory. Held at any angle before the eyes—upside down, sideways, or right side up—the fact remained: China came last. And what if in the meantime the Japanese decided not to play the role of sitting duck there on the Chinese mainland? What if they moved farther inland?
However, objections from Chungking didn’t carry much weight. The worried leaders of American and British armed forces only retorted that perhaps it was not absolutely essential to defend Chungking anyway. General Marshall, for one, was dubious as to the importance of Chinese air bases; he shared Churchill’s misgivings about Chinese fighting ability. At the most charitable it could not be denied—nobody was trying to deny—that the Chinese were tired after their years of struggle. The Generalissimo mentioned the fact frequently in a marked manner. However, Stimson, the American Secretary of War, urged that the China theater be considered as of first importance, and Roosevelt agreed.
Stilwell was to supervise and control all U. S. defense aid for China. Under the Generalissimo he was to command all U. S. forces in China and such Chinese forces as might be assigned to him. He was to represent the U. S. on any international war council in China and act as chief of staff for Chiang. He was to improve, maintain, and control the Burma Road in China. Like other arrangements made under the pressure of early events some of these were outdated very soon. Even before Stilwell set forth, Rangoon was in grave danger and Lend-Lease material intended for China was diverted for its defense by the British.
Stilwell set out with a full set of prejudices. He was a man who leaped from prejudice to prejudice, and was seldom without a bag full of them. For one thing he heartily disliked the British, having already decided that they were getting too much out of Roosevelt. In this he was merely voicing the opinion of a large number of his colleagues in Washington, but Stilwell was perhaps unique in the catholicity of his disapprovals.
“Besides being a rank amateur in all military matters, F.D.R. is apt to act on sudden impulses,” he wrote in his diary. “On top of that he has been completely hypnotized by the British, who have sold him a bill of goods. It took the disaster in Hawaii to stop the flow of all our stuff to the Limeys. What they have gotten must be simply enormous.…”
Shortly before his appointment on January 1 he had observed:
“Trouble with unified command in Far East. Not as between British and ourselves, but among the British! The ‘Senior Service’ [British Navy] sits disdainfully aloof. Nobody can command them—it isn’t done. The arrogant Royal Air Force will have none of it.…
“Chiang Kai-shek acting up. Ho Ying-ch’in and he think the U. S. Air Force should come right over and protect them. Also that they should get everything they ask for. [China] peeved over British grab of Tulsa cargo for protection of Rangoon. Chiang Kai-shek ready to send 100,000 men into Burma, but Wavell refused the help.”
On January 24 he wrote to the War Department:
“The British have one brigade east of Rangoon and one more on the way. That’s what they thought sufficient to hold Burma. And the SUPREME COMMANDER, Wavell, refused Chiang K’aishek’s offer of two corps. [He] didn’t want the dirty Chinese in Burma.”
Could it be that loyalty to one of his allies was at last breaking in? No. The next day the general wrote, “The Burmese hate the Chinese and the British: maybe they are pretty right.”
Comment on the ways of wartime alliances couldn’t be more superfluous.
One of the first quarrels Stilwell stepped into was under way, hot and strong, before he arrived; a squabble about Chennault’s position. The airman, as commander of the American Volunteer Group, wanted to be completely independent. Stilwell decreed that he must be subordinate to Brigadier General Bissell, and this set Chennault against him from the start. Air power was becoming the most important factor in China’s defense. When Rangoon fell, the Road was cut off. But a new air lift was rapidly put into operation. Roosevelt was delighted to be able to present it to Chiang on a platter; in his mind it made up for the Lend-Lease material that had been promised to China and then diverted to hotter spots. The President was anxious about China’s state of mind. Chiang had warned him that he could not answer forever for his people’s capacity to resist.
Churchill insisted that this need not trouble Roosevelt; it would not make much difference, he said, if China did drop out of the struggle. But Roosevelt didn’t agree. At the beginning of 1942 he was considering the latest request Chiang had made, for a loan of five hundred million dollars from Washington and the equivalent of fifty million more from Britain. It seemed a lot of money; was it all really necessary? Wouldn’t it lead to graft and corruption? The Americans hesitated and rubbed their chins while Dr. Kung broke down the figures and explained how much was needed to pay the Army and shore up China’s economy. An attempt to persuade Russia to enter the bargain met flat refusal. In the end the Americans decided to grant it, and the loan was authorized with no strings attached. “Later, when the memories of emergency grew dim and the feelings of friendship with the Generalissimo grew tired, there was regret that we had not been more stubborn.… Much of the proceeds were used up in measures conceived as brakes on the course of inflation in China and the decline of value of the Chinese currency. These failed.… The loan conceived in a rush of vivid sympathy and alliance turned later into a cause of fault-finding.” (Herbert Feis, The China Tangle, p. 23.)
The feelings of Whitehall at being let in for this expense must have been inexpressible on the diplomatic level.
There had been one all-in conference between Chiang and the representatives of Britain and America a week after Pearl Harbor. Thereafter so much high brass came and went in Chungking that foreign generals soon ceased to be any novelty to either the Generalissimo or Madame. She usually acted as his interpreter, and a very demanding job it was, calling not only for accuracy, but a ceaseless flow of interpretation of less easily expressed things than mere words.
“In America this is the custom,” Mayling would have to interpolate. “He is not being offensive; it is merely an idiomatic expression.” Or occasionally, “I think he does mean to be offensive.”
On February 10 Chungking heard startling news. Chiang Kai-shek was actually traveling out of China; he had that day arrived by plane in Calcutta, en route for New Delhi for a conference. In all he was eleven days in India. In spite of British reluctance to facilitate the meeting he had a ta
lk with Gandhi. There was a slight awkwardness about that, because Gandhi couldn’t come to New Delhi and the authorities didn’t think it seemly for Chiang to go to him: they finally compromised and met in Bombay. Chiang also paid several visits to Nehru. Nehru was no stranger; he had visited Chungking in 1939, when he much impressed Hollington Tong by talking without interruption, save for the interpreter, all through a protracted air raid.
Tong was with the party in India, and he continued to be fascinated by Nehru. At a picnic, “as we grew more and more informal in our behaviour, Mr. Nehru took off his coat and began turning somersaults on the lawn. His daughter was upset at his lack of dignity.… We all felt that Mr. Nehru should have our moral support, so Mr. Chang Tao-fan … stripped off his outer coat and began to roll on the lawn himself.” Nehru’s daughter was so angry and humiliated that she refused to join the party at dinner. It was a homey little interchange that delighted the Chinese delegation. (Dateline: China.)
The interview with Gandhi had its effect. On the last day of the tour Madame broadcast the Generalissimo’s message to the nation. Chiang said that the British should give India her political freedom as soon as possible. This speech was irritating to the British, but it pleased the Indians, and the Chinese departed in a glowing haze of good will. They professed themselves satisfied that India was genuinely anti-Japanese. In truth this fact was never to become absolutely clear: Subhas Chandra Bose, who mobilized resident Indians in occupied Asia on behalf of the Japanese, was considered a hero by the Indians at home, not a traitor. Nevertheless, Nehru was charming; the Chinese were agreed on that.