In Our Time - The Sino-Japanese War

Episode Date: May 8, 2014

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-45. After several years of rising tension, and the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, full-scale war between Japan and China broke out in the summer of 1937. The Japanese captured many major Chinese ports and cities, but met with fierce resistance, despite internal political divisions on the Chinese side. When the Americans entered the war following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese found themselves fighting on several fronts simultaneously, and finally capitulated in August 1945. This notoriously brutal conflict left millions dead and had far-reaching consequences for international relations in Asia.With:Rana Mitter Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China at the University of OxfordBarak Kushner Senior Lecturer in Japanese History at the University of CambridgeTehyun Ma Lecturer in Chinese History at the University of ExeterProducer: Thomas Morris.

Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time, for more details about in our time, and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk slash Radio 4. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, 10 miles southwest of the Chinese capital Beijing. A handsome and venerable stone bridge crosses the Yongding River. It's commonly known as the Marco Polo Bridge, because an earlier structure here was described by the Italian traveler in his account of his journeys through China in the 13th century. But DiMarco Polo Bridge is also known for an incident which occurred there on the night of July 7, 1937, sparking one of the century's most terrible conflicts, the second Sino-Japanese War.

A dispute over a missing Japanese soldier rapidly escalated, beginning a war that was to last another eight years. This conflict between Japan and China, the second in 50 years, was long and bitter and cost millions of lives. It was a huge significance for the future of Asia, although in the West, it's often been overshadowed by the contemporary events of the Second World War here. With me to discuss the Second Sino-Japanese War are Rana Mitter,

Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China at the University of Oxford, Barack Kushner, Senior Lecturer in Japanese History at the University of Cambridge, and Te Yun-Mar, a lecturer in Chinese history at the University of Exeter. Ranamita, China's last emperor was removed from power by a revolution in 1911. Would you give us a quick scratch of what happened politically between then and the 1930s? The Last Emperor was essentially forced to abdicate. He was just a boy child in 1911. And after that, for basically a decade and a half, China had a pretty chaotic system of government.

Technically a republic was formed. But in fact, most of China was controlled by militarists, sometimes known as warlords, who basically had their own armies, their own fiefdoms, and they battled with each other for the best part of 15 years to try and control the whole of China. Eventually, in the middle of the 1920s, a new movement emerged, which was the Nationalist Party, and this is sometimes written in the Chinese Romanization

as the Kuomintang or Guomindang. But the Nationalist Party originally led by Sun Yat-sen was then taken over by a figure named Chang Kai Shek, a military leader of some talent and some vision in certain ways, who basically, almost on horseback, certainly in the front of an army, managed to lead a revolution that through a combination of warmaking and also political negotiation, finally reunited China in a rather uneasy fashion at the end of the 1920s in 1927. But the experience of that decade and a half was really of a China that was split

apart and in some senses at war with itself. How did it any sense of being China, even in the late 1920s? Or was it, when did they say, I live in here, I live there, oh yes, and we're enjoying it. to this thing called China. Well, many of the outside powers, including Japan, had a vested interest in China being split up, and some of those people claimed that China was a geographical expression rather than an actual country at the time. I mean, obviously, there was a vested interest there. But I think it's fair to say that many things continue to hold the Chinese people together, a shared language, a shared long culture, their great figures like Confucius, the great thinker.

Above all, though, there was a growing sense of nationalism in early 20th century China, into the 1920s, many of China's youth in particular, many of the political figures, felt that China had to be reunited. And there was quite a widespread, quite a common sense that if they could just get rid of the imperialist powers from outside China and the disunity, the warlordism from within, then China would once again be reunited into one country. So in the end of the 1920s that is beginning to happen, what sort of shape was it in economically? In the 1920s, perhaps surprisingly, China was not necessarily doing badly. There were a great many aspects of its economy, including the ability to begin to export raw goods that were beginning to develop. Also, its economy was developing factories and entrepreneurs and early capitalists have begun to actually set up in places like Shanghai, then as now China's greatest commercial city. So despite the political disunity, there was actually a great deal of economic coherence.

to parts of China. But at that stage, it didn't really manifest itself fully in a united government. And the two had to take some time to come together. But we're still talking about a society that was, what, 80, 90% agrarian? Yes, that's very much the case. The China of today, which of course is much more urbanized, much more industrialized, was not the China of the 1920s. The vast majority of the people, let's say 90% lived out in the countryside

where many aspects of life were very traditional. Women no longer had bound feet by the 1920s. But in terms of working the fields, the ceremonies, the way in which people went through the agricultural calendar, these things were, as they might have been, in many cases, 30, 50 or 100 years before. But the administrative structures were still intact. They'd survived all the bumps and grinds of warlords.

China continued to have a central government, which was based until 1927 in Beijing. And this in many ways controlled aspects of China's government, including its foreign relations. but at the local level, provincial warlords, provincial militarists actually had a more direct power. I would just say that some of them, not all, but some of them were actually very progressive. A man named Yenshe Shan, who was warlord of Shanxi province in central China, actually undertook a great many anti-opium campaigns, pro-education campaigns.

So being under a warlord in China didn't necessarily mean that the government was bad, but it did mean that it was separated from Beijing. Parakusha, you could say that Japan had done almost the opposite of China. It had restored its monarch in the 19th century. How did the country then change in the 20th century? In relation to what Rana was just talking about how China is not unified, Japan quickly unifies after the major restoration, and it becomes, instead of a small country on the periphery of East Asia,

a very powerful modern country in East Asia and recognized in the world. What dates are we talking about? I were talking about from 1868 the major restoration until 1890, it is really moving very quickly and establishing a government it drags the emperor who's kind of hiding in Kyoto to Edo, which then becomes Tokyo. It has the first constitution and the first parliament in East Asia. It is able by 1895, having pulled soldiers and a navy from all over the country to beat the Qing dynasty that surprises the world as small. The Japanese upstarts are beating the Chinese. And in 19, in 19,

1905, it beats the Russians. And of course, that surprises the world. So by the early 20th century, Japan has arrived on the international stage in a very short time. How did you do it so quickly? It's almost not America's wrong with it. It's extraordinary, isn't it? It is extraordinary.

It did it in part by being a much smaller country geographically than China. It has a relative homogenous population. It didn't necessarily speak the same language. itself was not unified as a language until much into the 1930s and the 1940s. But there is a national consensus about how Japan needs to adapt and change in order to protect itself. It looks at the example of the Qing Dynasty crumbling. It looks at the example of European colonial powers coming into China and carving up sections, and it does not want that experience to happen to itself. So that's a big motivator to push it against that. In order to achieve this coherence

and unity. Did it have to change vital things, important things from its past? Well, it fundamentally changes. It creates an imperial ideology and imperial system that didn't really exist before. And really until the 1890s turned from the 19th the 20th century, not everyone

really understands what the emperor is. There is a massive education plan and a push to pull people into Shinto ideology that becomes two strains of national ideology, Shinto and the Emperor. And that's really one of the underlying or underpinning ideological elements to the growth of Japanese imperialism,

that it needs to fight, it needs to push against encroachment from abroad, but that Japan has a certain imperial expansion set of rights within itself. And that becomes very popular by the 1930s. You mentioned imperial two or three times. It began to have imperial aspirations almost saying, look, we're a proper country and I, like those in those, and those stay of empires, we want one too.

And the first big move they made, as I understand it, was it towards Manchuria. Well, actually, the first imperial movement is towards Taiwan in the 1870s. Right. So just after the Meiji Restoration, as you say, Japan is very interested in demonstrating it's an adult sitting at the adult table of imperial possessions or imperial powers. And that continues through 1895 when it actually gets Taiwan as a colonial possession. It moves into Korea in the beginning of the 20th century. And then it's by the late 1920s and early 1930s that it begins to move more strongly the military.

begins to move more strongly into Manchuria. I don't think you can necessarily say it's a political decision. The military takes on the Japanese Imperial Army almost adopts its own foreign policy. And it gets away with it? It gets away with it because by the time you get to the 1930s in Japan, you have a series of political assassinations of prime ministers. You have two attempted military coups in 1932 and 1936. So there is in part a culture of fear within,

among politicians. There is a growing military presence within the political administration and there's no clear domination, political domination over the military. Meiji had one inherent flaw which was that the military sat by itself and only the emperor controlled it.

And that meant in a sense unless the government itself was strong, the cabinet had strong leaders which they didn't in the 1930s the military runs amok as it does in Manchuria. So we're seeing a military country doing military things. We're seeing a military country do military things, but the politicians never leave the scene.

There's no fascist party that's ever elected in Japan, and the government does not get pushed out or exile. They continue to have elections and cabinets up until the end of the Second World War. Tell you and Ma, the relation between China and Japan had been fought for some time. Can you tell us how they came to a head in 37? Well, the relationship between China and Japan, actually, the fraught relation actually dates back to, I guess, the first sign of a Japanese war in 1894 to 95. And this had a lot to do, I think, in some ways, the thinking of the Japanese military in which in an era of intense Western imperial competition in East Asia. So in the late 19th century, the thinking was in order to protect the Japanese homeland from military's ambitions, you need to control vital territories on the continent that are close, such as Korea or even places that eventually become Turya. And this was crucial in the late 19th century because Korea itself was highly unstable.

and politically fraught and very weak. It was also then essentially a tribute or a vassal state or protectorate of Qing China, who itself was in this position of decline and had been subject to Western imperial aggression. So militarily couldn't really assert protect Korea from vulnerabilities of imperial dominance, other from Western empires. But the problem was that China at that point also wanted to reassert its dominance in Korea,

which counters the interests of Japan who was really worried about Russia coming in at this point. It was also around the area. So essentially there's competition between China and Japan to the extent that things came to blow in 1894. And the whole issue is about controlling the territory on the continent so that for Japan to control the territory so that it's independent from a foreign power. But this issue never really gets resolved and it mounts essentially turns into a war with Russia fighting over the same

territory, which secured Korea. But then it creates the issue of protecting Korea from imperialist kind of emissions. So it's almost a... and a domino effect. Well, can you just tell us, can we move to the main matter now? What were the relative strengths of the two countries by the mid-1930s?

Well, I think both Professor Kushner and Professor Amitter have said was that for Japan, in terms of relative strength, was highly uneven match-up between China and Japan. Japan essentially had industrialized more or less systematically by the late 19th century.

It was essentially a dominant, had a modern military that was able to defeat an imperial power like Russia, and that it was a sought-after allied in 1920s between Britain, Russia, and all the Western powers. It was so confident of his ability it actually was able to. to walk out the League of Nation over the issue of taking over Manchuria. So militarily and economically, it was much better placed and experienced in that realm. Well, China, I think you've mentioned earlier, was predominantly agricultural. And there was, as Professor Midder has said, tremendous industrial growth. And even though the military had prepared,

there were specific plans to develop Chinese military capacity in the early 30s. Before the war, none of this really came into fruition. Things about developing a national defense economy, making, allowing China to produce his own arms. Most of these didn't go into production by the time the war broke out. So we're there, Rana. Now, how did Japanese, what were the Japanese doing to provoke China? They had designs on China. So in the run up to 37, what were they up to?

How were they prodding the belly of the great beast? Well, in the mid-1930s, you essentially have the increasing clash between two major ideological forces in Asia, the rising force of Chinese nationalism on the mainland and the Japanese imperialism that Barack's been speaking about on the islands. and this manifests itself mostly in an increasing presence of Japanese troops actually in China itself. In the northern part where the nationalist government of Chiang Kai Shik doesn't really have full control. After 1927, Chankajek does set up a central government based in the city of Nanjing in central China.

And so his government has reasonable control over the south and central part of China, but up in the north in Manchuria and the area around Beijing, Tianjin, those sorts of cities in the north, They're increasing numbers of Japanese troops who are just pushing, pushing. They're making alliances with some of those local warlords that I mentioned to try and get local control. And then finally, in 1937, you get a sort of moment of confrontation where there is a very small clash, the one you mentioned at the beginning of the program, where soldiers near this Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing, go into quite a local confrontation. It's not something that looks like it's likely to expand.

But off the back of that, the Japanese then make demands that they should control the railway, rights in that part of northern China. And if Chiang Kai Shek had surrendered to that demand, then it would have essentially ceded the control of North China to Japan. Barak, Barakrishna, can you just give us a bit more detail about that Marco Polo bridge incident and how it was such a spark? It's a bit like the almost trivial incident that sparked the First World War, isn't it, something small, well, not small, shooting something, but still,

it's, in the scheme of things, it doesn't seem to be huge. No, in the scheme of things. A Japanese heard you went missing, and then there are war. That's right. I think kind of backtracking a bit from what Rana was talking about, we have to understand that the Japanese military has been there for decades. It's been there since the turn of the century with the Boxer Rebellion. And the troop numbers have expanded and expanded. But the 1937 incident, the Marco Polo Bridge incident, is not the first Japanese imperial military incident in China. It's on the back of the Japanese assassination of Zhang Zoolin,

who is a Chinese warlord in 1928. They blow up his train. And then it's on the back of the Manchurian incident in 1931, a very similar incident to the Marco Polo Bridge incident. So there's a cascading effect of Japanese military incursions in China, the establishment of the puppet kingdom of Manchukuo in 1932. And that builds. And so, as Rana was saying, there's this building tension between the Japanese military that has been encroaching for years already. And in some ways, this is the last step for the Chinese.

And the Japanese used the incident of a missing soldier. Turns out he just went to the bathroom and he comes back. So he actually hadn't disappeared at all. And that's the pretext. But it's not just the Chinese response. It's also the government back in Japan rubber stamping the Imperial Army's moves. And more importantly, the Japanese Imperial Army in China mobilizes more forces from Korea on its own. And they escalate the troop numbers in China.

And that also pushes things forward. And that was done without Tokyo. authorization. Tokyo only gave it after the fact. So the Japanese military has the pretext. In a sense, it's a conspiracy. They move things forward and they use that to kind of continue their domination of Manchuria and the rest of China. Briefly, what were the, did they have war aims at this stage? By that time, they have war aims, yes. Although the idea is that do not start a massive land war in East Asia. So the Japanese major general staff, because they've been, they have the influence of history. The Japanese have won. They've beaten the Qing dynasty. They beat the

Russians in all these skirmishes that ended in truces in China from the 1930s. They don't have to worry too much. And so they think that they're going to win pretty quickly. They'll dominate in Manchuria and then they'll occupy the north of China. And then we come to Eun Mar to the Chinese resistance. Can you tell us what that was and how it affected the Japanese advance? Well, before the Marco Polo Bridge incident, Chinese resistance had been Chinese resistance. There wasn't that much. Chen Kai Shek essentially adopted a policy of appeasement because the country wasn't ready for war. But when the Marco Polo Bridge incident occurred, popular anti-Japanese sentiment or nationalist sentiment was quite high for resisting.

And as well, the different warlords, and the communists and the nationalists all banded together to decide to have a united front to resist. But initially when the Japanese army attacked in the north, it was Chinese resistance was inadequate. And this goes back to the issue of warlords controlling areas. A lot of the militarists there, their armies actually fled rather than fought. And there's also, so that's one key issue of the kind of regional divide in terms of weakening Chinese resistance. And then the second issue was the arms gap.

Chinese was just much weaker in terms of defending itself because of its equipment, its artillery, its coordination and logistics. So even though they, in some places in North and Chinese put up fierce resistance, logistically speaking, as well as equipment-wise, they just couldn't defend themselves. And you see, however, in the South, you see much more kind of stronger stalwart fighting from the Chinese side. Rana. I mean, I think it's important to point that this moment is really a turning point, 7th of July, 1937 and what happens afterwards. Because it's the moment at which the Chinese decide that even though they're much weaker than the Japanese, they have to fight back and resist if the whole of China is not ultimately going to be invaded and occupied.

We have fantastic records actually from Chiang Kai Shek's own diaries, which were released to scholars a few years ago, where he actually mulls over these events, and there's a bit where he says, is this the moment for confrontation with the Japanese, talking about July 1937? On the one hand, he knew that if he did push China into war against Japan, then he'd be taking a vastly weaker country

up against this very strong, technologically advanced Japan. On the other hand, if he didn't, then essentially he'd be ceding Asia to the Japanese for a generation. So it was a really tough choice. Briefly, then I want to come to Shanghai. You want to go. I just wanted to say that as much as this is a turning point, it hasn't yet changed the game for Japan.

Japan is still being accepted by the rest of the world. In 1936, after the Nazi Olympics, it gets the mandate for the Olympics in 1940. So as large as much of an issue, obviously as this is, for the Chinese and for Japan, it hasn't pushed Japan yet out of the international community. That comes more in 1938. Rana, back to you for a second.

Between August and November, in 1937, the Japanese tried to take the city of Shanghai, as I understand it, and as we've heard for Te Yun, they sort of expected to march in, take it and march on. What really happened? The Battle of Shanghai in the summer and early autumn of 1937 is really a very important moment

in terms of China putting full forces into war against Japan. During the course of those months, you have something like 200,000 Chinese soldiers fighting against Japan. about 120,000 Japanese. So this is a very big series of battles. Trenches are dug in the streets of this great city of Shanghai, China's greatest commercial city, and the description of the city at that time during these months coming from Westerners is absolutely tragic. I mean, W.H. Orden and Christopher Isher would, in fact, visited shortly after that. They described the city as a cratered moonscape. So the city of Shanghai became basically the testing ground for Chinese resistance. Chiang Shack's government knew that they probably couldn't defend. Shanghai. It was too vulnerable to these huge numbers of troops that Barakas mentioned. But they knew it was really important to put up a very, very good show because the international community was in Shanghai. Maybe not so much diplomats, but certain number of diplomats, business people, missionaries,

writers, they all saw this battle. And by fighting hard, by making sure that China resisted rather than simply, you know, falling down in front of the Japanese soldiers, it was made very clear that China would not give its territory up easily. So in a sense you could have to be able to. So in a sense, argue that Shanghai was a tragically won propaganda victory for China, even though they had to retreat in the face of ultimately superior Japanese forces? And Shanghai was thought by some people back to be in the West, to be the sort of equivalence with supporting the Republicans in Spain, wasn't it? It was like good-minded people. Like Orden went and wrote about it, as very much as others, and he had written about Spain.

But then they moved to Nanking, the Japanese, and there was this, you tell us what happened in those six weeks there, which if it wasn't a turning point, it could well have been a defining point. Nanjing is both a turning point and a defining point in several aspects. It sees the worst of the Japanese military

excesses. It is a military run amok. There doesn't seem to have been a plan, obviously, for the massacre of Nanjing, what ultimately kills upwards perhaps of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of Chinese.

including the rape and pillaging of women and children. And it is, in a sense, the culmination of Japanese military frustration in China. The propaganda back in Japan said that they were going to have a quick and easy victory. Japan is not yet on a full mobilization footing for the military, and the soldiers have encountered resistance from Shanghai all the way to Nanjing. And when they breach the walls of the city, all no holds are barred. anymore. All the gloves are off. And in order to commandeer the city, they pretty much

run rampage throughout the entire city and throughout the extending area around. And this goes on for several months, as a matter of fact. One could say it goes on for four months. It doesn't end that quickly. Tell you, can you tell us what effect that had on the Chinese? And what effect it had on the Chinese political will because Chiang Kai Shek is there

but the communists are coming up as it were not so far on the outside. So can you give some idea of the disposition of Chinese forces and will there? In terms of response to the Nanjing Manchi massacre or generally? After the Nanjing massacre?

I think Rana might want to chime in here in terms of well in terms of I think at this point in the south there is a kind of determination nation to fight back. So there was a retreat at this point to further down the river. But there were in some, I think it hardened people's at least Chinese attitudes towards resisting or fervently.

But there were those, weren't there who were opposed to opposing? There were those who wanted to be on the side of the Japanese. Yeah, I mean, I think this is, I guess, the most famous, the famous of all. is Wang Jing Wei, who is a leader in the Chinese nationalist government and essentially a rival to Chiang Kai Shik for a long time. And he was the true heir of the father of the nation, Son Yat San. And I think he came, he in 1940 headed up the collaboration of this government in Nanjing, essentially a puppet government.

And after war was vilified for being a traitor. But I think he had actually a very, practical understanding approach to the situation that he understood China was outgunned and he saw what happened the way at one point I think

Chen Keshik had to blow a dyke that killed that allowed the flooding of central China that killed half a million people This is the Yellow River blowing a Yeah And for him this was the only way to not resist and negotiate with Japan was the only way for China to survive

and to retain some sort of independence. Otherwise, it would be an utter ruin. So for him, he saw himself as a nationalist approaching a really bad situation and trying to work with it. And he sincerely believed at the time that Japan would uphold its kind of commitment for Chinese independence.

One of the things that helps explain Wang Jin Wei's decision to become the petal, the laval, the quizzling of China at that time is where he was living. the national capital had had to move. Nanjing had been, you know, sacked and the massacre had taken place, and the Chinese nationalist capital had moved to Chongqing or Chongqing in the southwest. This city became probably the most heavily bombed city in Asia,

possibly even in the world during those years. There were Japanese air raids on a regular basis, destroying thousands of houses, burning thousands of people to death with incendiary bombs. And in that situation, you could understand why some elements of the Chinese leadership saw the misery around them and thought, nobody is coming to our assistance. China is fighting on its own against this immensely stronger enemy. It's time to negotiate.

Barat, question. How much so? How were they Japanese motoring between 38 and 40? How well were they doing, or in their terms? In a sense, it's the beginning of the end for the Japanese military in China. It gets stuck. And they get stuck in precisely the scenario that they had wanted to avoid, which was within a very short time by early,

1938, they own Wuhan, they own Shanghai, they own Anjing. The Chinese nationalist government will shift west to Chongqing, and the Japanese, by the end of 1939, will eventually control most of the urban areas from Beijing down to the south of China and on the southern coast. But that's it. They never managed to really get beyond the urban areas, and that's where they find themselves, ultimately, by 1940. And they're in precisely that worst-case dream or scenario, the nightmare that they had imagined. where they can't actually control China, but the military is firmly ensconced in it.

And that's where they stay until really the end as we move into 1943, 1944, and they make another push down to the southwest. Did Chiang Kai Shek run? Did Chiang Kai Shek see this as happening and say, this is enough containment for me, we will just go on, given that 85% of the people lived in the country, not in these cities which were controlled by the Japanese? Changkashek knew that it was impossible that his Chinese forces could win on their own against the Japanese. Although there were something like three to four million Chinese troops under arms during the course of the war,

they were always under-equipped, badly trained, and incapable ultimately of defeating the Japanese. But in some ways the choice that Changkajet made was a bit like the decision that Churchill made until 1941 and the Americans came in that Britain had to hold on and then wait for an ally to join them. And Chang knew that by keeping his strength in the southwest of China, in that temporary capital at Chongqing, continuing to harass the Japanese, carry out various set-piece battles and also use guerrilla activities, which the communists also took place in, they would keep the Japanese tied down in China's mainland. And of course, this is what the West noticed as well. As the Americans became more and more concerned by the situation in Asia,

they realised the centrality of that continuing Chinese resistance, even if it couldn't defeat Japan. And it's precisely that ramping up in that styming of the Japanese that forces the Japanese domestically to move their propaganda campaigns and their mobilization. And then we have the big event, one big event, other big event in 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and they brought the Americans into the Second World War. What significance did that have on the situation about which the three of you have been talking? Well, I think it was tremendous because it made what ostensibly was of an unaffectual. war between two countries into a global one in which China now is part of the ally powers

and part of the Allies coordinating strategy. And as Brana has said earlier, China's role was as seminal in holding down Japan while their attention so that the European theater could be taken care of first. So in in and what it and for for China this and was to enable China to do this, a huge influx of material aid, military supplies, and experts came in. Thousands of American experts came in to advise. And this came at a really crucial juncture because from 39 to 41, China was basically fighting it alone in these set pieces without any aid. And then America arrives to the defense. Yeah, in a kind of, in a calvary.

Yes. Wonderful. troops, of course. So, yeah. I mean, but the significance is that it actually elevates China into a position in which it becomes a great power in that it sits at the table. It is at the conferences. Chiang Kai Shek sits down with Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Yes. And so I think this is tremendous in terms of Chinese international status compared to when after Manchuria was taken, Chinese position wasn't really taken that seriously. I mean, it's important, I think, to understand this is a huge moment actually for the history of anti-imperialism as well.

This is the first time that a non-European, you know, you could say non-white leader, sits in equal standing with figures like Winston Churchill and Roosevelt. And it helped to give real ballast to the idea for the Allies that they were not just fighting a war, you know, to defend existing empires or the status quo, but rather to create a new world. And Chiang Shack's presence and China's presence as the named ally was central to that aim, also in fighting propaganda. Gander against the Japanese. Barak, I know you want to say something, but I'd like to develop the idea of, well, please do say what you wanted to say, but then I'd like to develop this idea of the influence of Pearl Harbor on this. Well, I was going to talk to that.

I mean, for the Japanese side, Pearl Harbor in some ways lengthens the amount of time that the Japanese have in China to further. There's still the question, why did they do it, isn't it? Are we going to pass that over? It seems mad, doesn't it? It does seem mad. There have been this idea growing in Japan of the inevitability of conflict with the U.S. Where did it come from?

It comes in part from the China Theater where they're unable to move forward as they wish they had. It comes from American moves in the later 1930s, an embargo in a squeezing of Japanese financial assets, and a cutting off of Japanese ability to get minerals and fuel from the rest of the world. Japan is not blessed with a lot of natural resources. And they begin this idea of the ABCD Block in Japan. the Americans, the British, the Chinese, and the Dutch. And in Japan, it begins this idea that unless Japan makes a bold move in order to control the South and get Indochina, Indonesia,

it won't have the means necessary to maintain its empire. And it is the greatest miscalculation of the Japanese. They thought that the U.S. would essentially sue for an early peace. And even though they had men of great understanding and talent about international politics and whatnot, They fail to really grasp how much and the might with which America will respond. But it's the fact that they do that, that then they become involved with the U.S. and war in the Pacific Islands, and the war of kind of atrophy in China continues.

And so the Japanese are fighting on two fronts. And they're in Burma. Well, they eventually get all the way to, yes, to the western part, eastern part of India and western part of East Asia. Where the Chinese fight as well. Where the Chinese fight as well. And so for the Japanese, they're fighting on two fronts. But to go back to the issue of the European war, the American involvement also gives primacy to the European theater. And that means the Chinese, as Ronna was saying, are kind of fighting it alone.

They're getting aid, but that they're all alone holding off the Japanese. And so you don't give any credit to Garveydale's view that actually it was the Americans who bombed Burl Harbor or got Pearl Harbor to be bombed. No. Now, just say, I'd raise it from Enlightenment. Absolutely not. He was very convinced. Can you tell us what state Japan was in by the end of the war?

We're moving towards the peace, the surrender, whatever it is? What state was Japan in then? Japan was in a desperate state by the last couple of years of the war. Essentially, large numbers of its troops at its peak, something like three quarters of a million, were still being held down on that quagmire in China, but now they were fighting a big war against the Americans and the Allies in the Pacific as well.

They were running out of resources. Much of their shipping had been sunk and destroyed, of course bringing supplies to the home islands and the colonies became much more difficult. And of course from 1944-45, you have the fire bombing of many Japanese cities. The fire-bombing of Tokyo in early 1945 actually killed in numbers many more people than the atomic bombings at the end. And yet all of this came together to try and in some ways persuade the Japanese government that they needed to push even harder into China to really finish it off rather than surrender. So Japan was in desperate states, but still unwilling to surrender in the face of overwhelming odds.

What do you, Mark, what do you think prompted the surrender? What we think, I thought, anyway, so that it was the dropping of the bomb. But then I learned from the notes here that, as Rana's pointed out, by that time, the Japanese were used to their cities being scorched, and this didn't seem all that different. And that wasn't the defining, that wasn't the, key reason why they decided to surrender. I think there was some discussion,

Barack might want to weigh in on this, some discussion even before the dropping of the bomb to settle for a suit for peace within, I think, at least within the Japanese government. But it's, I think even on the American side there was a decision as well. They were actually planning to planning to kind of land on Japan and actually attack it.

So part of it is about wearing down the population before this attempt to launch an invasion from China onto the home islands. Did Russia have any play in this? Yeah, there seem to be several factors. I mean, the common myth is that the atomic bombs bring about the end of the war. But certainly Japan had had peace feelers.

And in fact, they are stunned. Konoa is actually planning to go, former prime minister is planning to go to Russia for the last of the peace feelers. And they are stunned to hear that actually the Soviet Union is entering the war. So a combination of fear of the Soviet Union who Japan had lost against in the Battle of No Mono in 1939 and therefore decided not to go north, the dropping of the atomic bombs and the slow atrophy against the U.S. victory on Okinawa Island. All those elements come together.

But it's really only the emperor at the end of the day in several large, kind of high-level imperial committee meetings who says, we doesn't say the word surrender. He says we need to do the inevitable, we need to bear the unbearable, and in order to protect the country. To switch to China now, which is obviously the other half of our discussion,

Rana, what was there internal political situation at the end of the war? It was also desperate. China had basically thrown everything into the fuel tank to keep the war going. In other words, to keep men under arms and to try and make sure they didn't fall in the face of the Japanese association.

salt, particularly in mid-1944, there was one last big thrust called Operation Ichigō, number one, half a million Japanese troops thrusting into central China to try and make it surrender. And essentially, although that advance was stopped, a whole variety of things happened to try and, on Shanghai Shek's part, to mean that his government essentially was spending all of its last taxation revenues. It was even having to take grain out of the hands of the peasants to feed the armies, creating a massive famine in central China during that time. And by the end, the communists had gained massive strength. So the nationalists, you might say, under Chankajic, eventually won the war, but they lost the country because of the depredations that they put upon their population. And then briefly what we have is two major countries who've gone from, as it were, the Middle Ages to the modern age,

by force and by deliberation in a very short time, absolutely as it were flattened, almost literally in Sanjay. And yet a few decades later, up they pop, Japan dominating thought about economy at the end of the century, China dominating thought about the economy now. So, would you like to comment on that? Well, I think Rana has said in the sense of at the end of the war,

I think it was significant for the Chinese communists that the war actually created space for them to develop their organization, develop their army, the military, so that they actually had the capacity to take over the country afterwards. Ron, have you any, what's your comment on that? Essentially, China was laid open for a communist revolution,

which under the next, you know, fast-forwarding 40 years under Chairman Mao's leadership, obviously undertook a radical social revolution. But after that, although it has turned to capitalism in terms of its last, you know, kind of 20 years or so, it's also gone back to the memory of World War II as a means of trying to create nationalism today. So in a sense that World War II experience is, almost more important in the present day

as China thinks about its nation-state in the global order. It's almost the opposite for Japan. Japan loses the war but wins the peace. It becomes, in a sense, a satellite bulwark against communism under the American military project and power in East Asia. But the Japanese,

in order to become part of that American project, they have to subvert in a sense the memory of the war. Well, thank you all very much. Thank you, Therun Maw, Ran Amita, Barak Kushner. Next week we'll be talking about photos synthesis, the chemical process responsible for almost all life on earth.

Thank you very much for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. Can I say the inevitable our politics, the one thing that would have been said if we'd had more time that I would have got in there. But about the American role. I mean, I think one of the things that it struck me

as sort of, well, I think central to the way in which the war played out, is that the Americans and the Chinese fell out so badly during the course of that war. So it is true that they rode to the rescue with huge amounts of material and so forth. No troops, as I managed to go out, of course, that's the thing. But also, of course, Chankajek and the American commander-in-chief who he was sent as a sort of token of American cooperation,

General Vinegar Joe Stillwell, essentially fell out very, very quickly. Stillwell had no regard for Chankajek's command abilities and nicknamed him The Peanut. Whereas Chanco-Shek, as we now know from these diaries that have been released, absolutely despised his American commander-in-chief. And when you have two people who are at the top of the armed forces in China,

an American and a Chinese who can't see eye-to-eye, it really spelled a very, very bad result in terms of the cooperation between the two countries. Did you think, Teune, do you think we missed anything out that was essentially in this particular? Well, given the time we've got. Yeah, I think one of the, there's a few things. I think one of the issues about, in kind of the post-war order, was about, I think, the issue of Taiwan sovereignty in some sense, that it's one of the issues of contemporary issues in contemporary China

that is to recover lost territories. And Taiwan had been in Japanese colonies since 1995, but during the war itself, when Roosevelt and Churchill and Chenkechak got together in 1943 to hash out a kind of post-war settlement, Taiwan, as well as Manchuria, were slated to be a more or less restored, I want to put those in quotations to the Republic of China. And the operative word here is Republic of China.

And in some sense, this becomes problematic because Republic of China is associated with the nationalist who lost the civil war. And so when Mao came to power and declared the People's Republic of China in 49, in the middle of the start of the Cold War, it becomes very problematic. So in some sense, these territories,

not just Taiwan, but also territories like, the Sinkaku Island, Diao, are these kind of issues that are essentially simmering over from the kind of memory of the sign of Japanese war. Is this threatening each other over these islands? Is this sort of history repeating itself as fast? Or is it still... It does seem that way from our point of view here.

Why do you care about a small rock in the middle of the ocean? Well, we care about the small rock on the toe of Spain. That's right. Rocks can be tricky. Rocks can be tricky. I think it goes back to, in part, what Tame is talking about, that the Japanese Empire crumbles so quickly. And even though there had been planning, there's not as much preparation for it. And, of course, we can see this with the way in which boundaries.

It's not just between Japan and China. It's with China and most of the surrounding countries. They also have boundary issues. And that gets tied back to Japanese control of leaving quickly and the Americans coming in and not necessarily being clear about colonial lines of sovereignty before. It is remarkable this resurgence of these two powers, economic resurgence. I did read something. It was in a review, wasn't a book, but saying, talking about war and catastrophe, being great drivers of the economy. Is that anything to do with it?

In the sense, clearly, if you've had your entire landscape flattened, as with Germany as well, then it shows that you can start from the very beginning rather than having to kind of make, do, amend and patch up. Of course, China and Japan take two entirely separate routes. China decides, first of all, you know, its people decide that they're going to actually have a radical communist revolution, which provides a very different sort of economic model. I mean, it's influenced by the Soviets, but it's also about trying to be much more self-sufficient. One of the lessons of the war was that the world might never come to China's aid, so it had to build its own factories, it had to build up its own economy.

That led to that very inward-looking type of economics that you get in much of China through the Cold War. It's really only in the 1980s when it's seen that that's kind of a dead end, that Deng Xiaoping, the sort of paramount leader of that era, opens China up again to the world and makes into that kind of workshop which is exporting on this incredibly profitable basis. Taking a complete total airlift from the British Industrial Revolution.

The ways of working, the workshops, the factories, the line development and so on. But I have to kind of interrupt Ron. by I'm being offered something serious now. Tea or coffee. I would actually... Tea or coffee. It is to which.

Oh, coffee would be great. There are many more Radio 4, arts and discussion programmes to download for free. Find these on the website at BBC.com.ukuk slash radio four.