Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Resilience: The Movement of Japan in the East

Episode Date: September 30, 2022

On today’s episode in our series, Resilience: The Wartime Incarceration of Japanese Americans, we’re going to take a step back from the American West Coast and talk about some of the events that were happening globally. Events that shaped the relationship between the U.S. and two Asian countries: China and Japan. What led Japan to attack Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941? Joining us is author and historian Craig Nelson. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello friends, welcome. Welcome to the third episode in our new series, Resilience, where we're talking about the events that led the United States government to carry out a mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Today, we're going to take a step back from the American West Coast and talk about some of the events that were happening globally. Events that shaped the relationship between the United States and two Asian countries, China and Japan. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. I want to quickly issue a content warning for this episode. We do touch briefly on wartime violence.

May not be suitable for small ears. On January 7, 1932, the U.S. government put China and Japan on notice. A few months earlier, two low-level Japanese army colonels began cooking up a plan. Japan's industries were growing, but its people were suffering. The Great Depression in the United States had a global impact, and the ripple effect meant that Japan was in the middle of its own economic recession. Looking for a way to bolster their economy and expand their land control, Japan set sights on China's region of Manchuria, which was rich in natural resources like coal, soil, minerals, and soybeans. But they were left with a conundrum. Invading China to take control

of the region would be seen by the world as an act of war. It was those two Japanese army men who became the catalyst. In the late evening of September 18, 1931, Lieutenant Komodo, who was on guard duty at the South Venturia Railway, was instructed by the colonels to place explosives near the tracks. At the time, the railway was operated by a private Japanese company. And note that Lieutenant Komodo didn't place the explosives on the tracks, but just far enough away to cause a small explosion without doing extensive damage to their own Japanese property. When the explosives detonated, only a tiny portion of the rail was damaged. In fact, a scheduled train passed by the site on the damaged track without difficulty 10

minutes later, and no one was hurt. However, the staged event gave Japan the opening they wanted. They blamed Chinese nationalists for the incident, using the explosion as an excuse to retaliate and invade the Manchuria region. The morning after the explosion, the Japanese army opened fire on the Chinese garrison nearby as a response to the alleged Chinese attack on the railway. The Chinese troops were outmatched against the more experienced Japanese troops, and when the fighting stopped, over 500 Chinese had been killed, to Japan's loss of only two. It took the Japanese army only a few short months to take control of the entire region. The Chinese army was untrained and unprepared,

and they did not have the resources to resist the Japanese. The Japanese declared the Manchuria region to be the new autonomous state of Manchukuo, though this new quote-unquote nation was actually under the control of the Japanese army that was stationed there. While the U.S. was not happy about the invasion, President Herbert Hoover was hesitant to support placing economic sanctions on either Japan or China as a means to curtail the conflict in the Far East. Instead, the U.S. Secretary of State, Henry Stimson, wrote what we call the Stimson Doctrine, which was basically a set of diplomatic notes sent to both China and Japan. In part, the doctrine

read, the American government deems it to be its duty to notify both the imperial Japanese government and the government of the Chinese Republic that it cannot admit the legality of any situation de facto, nor does it intend to recognize any treaty or agreement entered into between those governments or agents thereof which may impair the treaty rights of the United States or its citizens of China, including those that relate to the sovereignty, the independence, or the territorial and administrative integrity of the Republic of China, or to the international policy relative to China, commonly known as the open door policy. I mean, I am sure you did not follow all of that. The Stimson Doctrine was basically the United States' fancy way of saying that they would not recognize any changes made in China that would alter our access to assets, ports, and trade goods in China or our other Pacific territories. And because the United States also had claims on many Pacific territories at the time, including the Philippines, Guam, and Hawaii, they told China and Japan, we're not going to dole out any punishments right now, but we want you to know that we're watching. In the first half of the 20th century, the United States defended its interest in the

Pacific in a few different ways. One was with our commitment to cooperate with other powers like Great Britain and France, and another was through a policy called Open Door, which guaranteed us equal access to commercial opportunities in China. So if the Japanese took control of Chinese territories, it upended the balance. They were no longer playing by the rules. Of course, I do need to note that these rules were set up by global powerhouses, nations that had vested interest in resources that they could take from the people of China and claim as their own. During the 1920s and 30s, the United States had been ramping up our economic interests in the Far East. We spent a lot of time and resources trading and investing in China, and many American missionaries were sent to the East. Here's author and historian Craig Nelson to explain.

The United States had a tremendous love affair with China at this time. We sort of viewed the Chinese as being little brothers to us, that they were struggling against the Japanese the way we had struggled against the English, and that they were on their way to establishing a republic like us. And part of this was because Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Delanos, made their money in China, and partly it was because Henry Luce, the head of Time and Fortune and all these important magazines, had spent a childhood of missionary in China. And there was a huge bestseller at the time called The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. At home, Americans who had for so long distrusted Asians and Asian immigrants began to change their perceptions of China.

As Craig mentioned, this was in part because of the influence of a very important man, Henry Luce. Henry Luce was an American magazine tycoon who founded Time and Life, Fortune and Sports Illustrated, and was undoubtedly one of the most influential Americans of the 20th century. And Henry Luce was born in China. His parents were missionaries in the coastal province of Shandong, and Henry spent his entire childhood there. His experiences in China influenced his image of the country.

He was sent traveling through the country before reaching Europe and then Connecticut when he was a teenager. While he was in Connecticut, he would continue his education at a boys' prep school, but he always missed China greatly. Before he left, he wrote, I am now almost on the verge of another precipice. One was leaving home. Another is the leaving of a homeland. By 23, Henry was well-educated and bankrolled by an heiress,

and working in partnership with a few former Yale classmates, he started Time magazine. Over the next few decades, as Henry Luce's media empire grew, he often used it to advance his agenda on a number of global issues. He was most interested in the U.S.'s policies toward Asia and often called for greater U.S. support of China during Japan's occupation. In the early 1940s, Henry Luce became one of the driving forces behind the unification of several small aid groups into United China Relief. The organization raised millions of dollars of donations from American citizens to assist China as they fought back against Japanese control.

Remember, this was in the 1920s, 1930s, before the rise of communist China, which dominated the years after World War II and after the Japanese relinquished their power over the region. like Hollywood movie star Anna May Wong, whose career began in the silent film era of the 1920s, but spanned many decades in platforms, including film, television, radio, and stage. Anna was born in Los Angeles, and her career began when she was just 17. She was a total it girl from the start. Her Chinese heritage was seen as desirably exotic and non-threatening by American audiences. Off screen, she was one of the first influential stars to embrace the flapper style, and the media reported her as a fashion icon. There is a famous photo of Anna snapped in 1929 by a life photographer, Alfred Eisenstadt, who you may or may not know his name, but his work you definitely know. His most famous photograph was the one he would take in Times Square in 1945, the iconic VJ Day Kiss, which was a U.S. Navy sailor embracing a girl in celebration.

In the picture that Eisenstadt took of Anna May Wong, she's flanked by two German actresses and staring confidently into the camera, the epitome of grace, sophistication, and youth. race, sophistication, and youth. The Mayfair Mannequin Society of New York voted her the world's best-dressed woman in 1934, and in 1938, Look magazine named her the world's most beautiful Chinese girl. Henry Luce's Time magazine was her champion and regularly reported on her social life, but as famous as the actress was, racism prevailed. In 1935, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer refused to consider Anna for the leading role of the Chinese character O-Lan in the film version of Pearl S. Buck's best-selling novel The Good Earth, which depicts the rural living Chinese as a humble, moral people. Instead, MGM Studios cast a white actress to play the leading role in Yellowface.

During World War II, Anna took a step back from filming to dedicate her time and money to help the Chinese fight back against Japan. After the Japanese army took control of Manchuria back in 1931, they began to move north, taking raw materials and invading new areas. While the U.S. sent a somewhat weak response, a commission of inquiry from the League of Nations made a much more scathing report that criticized Japan's actions. Japan then left the League of Nations and continued to work on their control over China. By July of 1937, Japan had expanded its forces in China to an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 men and stationed most of them along the railways, which gave Japan control over the transportation of materials and resources. There had been many small skirmishes between the Japanese and Chinese along an important rail line

that connected Beijing with the port of Tianjin, but had recently begun to subside. Until one summer evening on July 7th, when a Japanese soldier was absent during military drills, the soldier's commander demanded that they be allowed to search inside the nearby town of Wanping, which was ringed by a wall, in order to find him. The townspeople in the Chinese army station there refused to let them inside. With tensions high, the Chinese army stationed there refused to let them inside. With tensions high, the Chinese army sent off warning shots to the Japanese army, which further escalated the situation. And soon the missing Japanese soldier was found somewhere else, but the damage had been done,

and reinforcements began to arrive on both sides. Even when a ceasefire was declared the next day, the battle continued. The Japanese commander general ordered his forces to shell the town, and while the Chinese forces held out for a few days, in the end, they were forced to retreat. They were forced to retreat. The clash called the Marco Polo Bridge incident is generally regarded as the start of the military conflict that was waged between Japan and China between 1937 and 1945. Some historians even consider July 7, 1937 as the alternative starting date for World War II. We commonly date September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland as the start of the war, but Japan's war on China set off many dominoes in the East and had far-reaching consequences.

Japan's war crimes against the Chinese people over the next several years became commonplace. What we think of the Nazis doing to the Jewish and other marginalized people in Europe, the Japanese were doing in China. Here's historian Craig Nelson again. They had mass killings. They had concentration camps. They used living people as targets for bayonet practice. They performed medical experiments, just like Mengele in the Nazi camps. They performed horrible medical experiments on the Chinese.

They had an entire bioweapon operation going on in Nanjing, the northern part of China. They blanketed them with poison gas, and it's estimated that they killed something like 10 million Chinese. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends, and together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office

with insane behind-the-scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! It is my girl in the studio! Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from The Office and our friendship with brand new guests, and we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Ladies 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink.

You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. Recently, an absolutely horrifying event from the Second Sino-Japanese War has been in the news. An antiques dealer from Minnesota posted on TikTok that a client had asked him to appraise an old World War II photo album. Inside, he says, were extremely rare photos of a massacre that happened in the Chinese city of Nanking, now known as Nanjing. The New Yorker reports, on December 13, 1937, the Japanese army entered what was then the Chinese capital city of Nanking.

Eyewitness reports by American missionaries and military officers, Nazi party members, diplomats, and foreign correspondents describe a range of atrocities committed by the invaders. They killed POWs, disemboweled and beheaded Chinese citizens, and according to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, which was held from 1946 to 1948, raped a conservative estimate of 20,000 Chinese women, and murdered more than 200,000 people. One Japanese veteran of the invasion later said, there are really no words to describe what I was doing. I was truly a devil.

While the United States, along with other countries, continued to criticize Japan, still they hesitated to execute any economic or military punishments. Our primary goal remained solely in safeguarding our own national interests in China. It wasn't until Japanese forces took aim at French Indochina with the goal of capturing oil-rich areas of the East Indies that the United States finally acted. Indochina, if you're not familiar, currently comprises five eastern countries, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam.

And in the spring of 1941, when Japanese troops invaded the area, much of the region was controlled by France. However, Germany's threat of control over France loomed large after Hitler's troops had overrun the country the year before. Germany and Japan were already Axis power allies through the signing of the Tripartite Pact in Berlin in September of 1940. So France, what we call Vichy France, what was under the influence of Germany, agreed to let the Japanese occupy its Indochina colonies. Here's a little brain tinkle about Vichy France. In May of 1940, when Hitler sent troops into the country, Parisians began to flee the city as quickly as they could. And a young couple, who were actually German Jews who had been living in Paris for just a few short years,

they tried to evacuate too. But they had waited too long, and every car, bus, train, bicycle out of the city was gone. And so Hans Reiersbach began buying spare parts. As quickly as he could, he built two bicycles, one for himself and one for his wife. And to his wife's bike, he attached a basket. And in that basket, as they rode out of France, sat a manuscript. sat a manuscript. Months later, the couple and the manuscript sailed out of Lisbon on a route to New York City. That man, Hans, and his wife, Margaret, connected with the new children's book editor at Houghton Mifflin. And you know the couple as Margaret and H.A. Ray, R-E-Y, and the manuscript as Curious George. The editor later said it took courage to print and publish colorful books in a gray wartime world.

She signed them to a four-book contract, and George has been delighting young readers ever since. Back in Indochina, Japan sent 30,000 troops into the city of Saigon and forces to a naval base in Vietnam about 800 miles from the Philippines, which was then a U.S. Commonwealth where American troops were stationed. The U.S. predicted, rightly, that Japan was setting their sights on an invasion of the Philippines. And responding to that threat, the United States finally took economic action against Japan. Here's Craig Nelson. Being part of the Axis powers with Germany and Italy, and that's what they planned to do. It was called Operation Number One, and it was going to take over everything from Burma and French Indochina and Vietnam and Indonesia, all the way to the

edge of India. It was going to take over Hong Kong and Singapore and all of the different colonies that the Europeans had at that time. On July 26, 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued an executive order that froze Japanese assets in the United States and placed an embargo on scrap metal, oil, and aviation fuel heading to Japan. An embargo, if you're not familiar with that term, means an official ban on trade or other commercial activity with a particular country. So in this case, the U.S. stopped sending key trade supplies to Japan. As part of trying to get the Japanese to stop attacking China, they started limiting the amount of oil they could get.

And at one point, they started limiting the amount of oil they could get. And at one point, they limited practically all of their oil. And that was the moment that the Japanese decided to attack. The U.S. also demanded that the Japanese withdraw from the areas they controlled in China and Indochina and place the forces in the Philippines under control of General Douglas MacArthur. Japan, sensing conflict with the United States was inevitable, began to plan their attack on Pearl Harbor. Thank you so much for joining me today. We have so much more to discuss in the next episode as Craig Nelson and I sit down to talk more about Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor. I'll see you soon.

Thank you so much for listening to Here's Where It Gets Interesting. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. If you enjoyed this episode, would you consider leaving us a rating or review or sharing a link to it on your social media? All of those things help podcasters out so much. Here's Where It Gets Interesting is written and researched by executive producer Heather Jackson. Our audio engineer is Jenny Snyder.

And it's hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. See you again soon. you