Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945 (59 page)

The tide had turned in Burma, though far less of the credit was due to Stilwell than the American press made out. Gauss was scathing about Nationalist failings, but also made another sharp point. Informed critics, he observed, were arguing that “we have not supplied the Chinese armies with arms; that the excursion into northern Burma was a mistake; and that the forces on the Salween which we did equip should have been assigned to the eastern front.”
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He did not need to point out that these decisions had not been Chiang’s, but Stilwell’s, backed by the SEAC commanders. The eventual victory had come at the same time that the Nationalists were paying a terrible price in east China. On August 8, just five days after the siege in Myitkyina was lifted, the siege of Hengyang ended with the fall of the city. The poor performance of troops in the Henan offensive showed that more troops might not have reversed the Japanese onslaught. But the Ichigô offensive—which Chiang had warned about, only to be discounted by Allied intelligence—was surely even more brutal because of the lack of the higher-quality Chinese troops that the Japanese faced in Burma. Stilwell had gotten his road and his revenge. Yet it would be December before the legacy of his obsessive project finally came to fruition. The Ledo Road from Assam had been connected to the Burma Road at Lashio, allowing supplies to move overland again from India to China. In the month of July 1945 some 5,900 tons of supplies were moved along the road. But by this stage the amounts of freight carried on the Hump flights dwarfed what the road could carry.
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Had the war lasted longer, of course, the road might have played a more significant role. The Ledo Road was renamed the Stilwell Road by Chiang Kai-shek, ostensibly as a tribute to the American’s determination in having it built, but perhaps with the implication that such a folly should bear the name of its author. By the time the road was any use, Stilwell himself had met a fate that he could not foresee as he fought in the jungles of Burma in the sweltering summer of 1944.

The road is known as Stilwell’s to this day. Huang Yaowu, just sixteen years old, gave a thought to those whose names would never be remembered. “I was very upset about my comrades who had sacrificed themselves. They had all come from Guangdong, and now they were no more.” He continued: “War is like this. Victory is hard to achieve, and once they are sacrificed, they are not even buried, because the advancing troops have no time to do it. Their bodies will be eaten by insects in half a day, and their families will never be notified or compensated.”

Huang’s blood brothers, with whom he swore that oath in the mountains, and whose bones still lie in the forests of north Burma, might at least have hoped that their deaths would be remembered by a grateful country. But fate had dealt them one more cruel blow. They had fought with the Nationalist Sixth Army, not the Communist Eighth Route or New Fourth Army, and within a few years they would be written out of the record in Mao’s China. “Really, later history has forgotten them,” Huang admitted many years later. “In my heart, they are martyrs who died for the motherland. They died for a good cause. But who remembers them now?”
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Chapter 18

Showdown with Stilwell

O
N SEPTEMBER
19, 1944, a car drew up at Huangshan, the mountain retreat of Chiang Kai-shek and Song Meiling near Chongqing. Out of the vehicle stepped General Joseph Stilwell, in a state of high excitement, with a message from President Roosevelt in his hand.

Stilwell knew that the note was explosive. “Mark this day in red on the calendar of life,” he gloated in his diary. “At last, at long last, F.D.R. has finally spoken plain words, and plenty of them, with a firecracker in every sentence.”
¹
At Huangshan a meeting was in progress between Chiang, Roosevelt’s personal emissary to Chongqing, Patrick J. Hurley, and senior officials including T. V. Soong, now back in favor, and the minister of war, He Yingqin. Stilwell called Hurley out of the meeting and showed him the message, saying that he had been ordered to deliver it to Chiang in person.

Hurley urged caution. The very same meeting from which he had been called was working out the new parameters of Stilwell’s responsibilities, as laid out in Roosevelt’s message. Reinforcements were going to be sent to Burma and Stilwell was to be made commander in chief. “Joe, you have won this ball game,” pleaded Hurley. If Stilwell delivered the message directly, he risked permanently damaging Chinese-American relations, potentially for generations to come.
²

That moment in September came after one of the worst years in the already wrenching Chinese war experience. That autumn, Japan’s Ichigô campaign was still driving a deadly path through central China, yet many of Chiang’s best troops remained in Burma. After the fall of Hengyang in August 1944, Chiang was in the depths of despair. The current disastrous situation, he wrote, was caused “not by [Japan] but by our Allies.” By now, he was convinced that “Roosevelt has already determined that he
has
to overthrow me.” Assailed by Sun Fo and the CCP, Chiang wallowed in self-pity. “The evil forces of the whole world are uniting to oppress and insult me,” he spat. “It’s like hell has opened up to swallow me.”
³

In private, Chiang contemplated taking a very bold step. “If it’s necessary at last,” he wrote, “I should prepare to resign my military and political positions.” To do so would force the Americans’ hand. “Roosevelt thinks I can’t and don’t want to resign, so he oppresses me without any concern . . . He wants to use Chinese troops to make war, otherwise he’d have to send over a million American troops to East Asia to sacrifice themselves.” Chiang mulled over the possible responses to the pressure that he felt Roosevelt was placing on him. At this point some 27,739 US troops were stationed in China, of whom 17,723 were Army Air Force troops.
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Roosevelt might take the opportunity to brush Chiang aside. On the other hand, it was possible that his “resignation might be a disadvantage to the US war effort against Japan, so they would have to change their attitude toward me,” and cease to insult Chiang and China. Or the US might sit by while a “puppet” such as Sun Fo was placed in office. Then, as the military and political situation worsened, the Americans would call on Chiang again, as “they would have no choice but me,” and would deal with him with a new sincerity.
⁵
Two days later, Chiang decided that resignation was not an option: “it’s too dangerous for the country.” He reflected on the many problems that might flow from his departure, from Sun Fo’s supposed closeness to the USSR to the threat of provincial militarists uniting with the CCP and the Japanese against the National Government, and the CCP contaminating the nation’s youth and education system with their thinking.
⁶

This appeared a self-serving (if private) decision, but Chiang’s threat was not an idle one. He had resigned before, most notably at the height of the Manchurian crisis in winter 1931. On that occasion, Sun Fo had indeed taken over as premier, only to find that none of the Nationalist factions, whether their power lay with the military or finance, would accept his rule. Chiang was back in power by the start of 1932, and Chinese politics had learned that Chiang was the indispensable man who could hold the country together. If Roosevelt was now flirting with Sun Fo, then perhaps he needed to be taught the same lesson.

But in 1944 the situation was very different from 1932. Sun Fo was still not a credible alternative, nor were the Americans as close to him as Chiang imagined, but the same was not true of the CCP. On August 31, the same day that Chiang decided against resignation, the American ambassador, Clarence Gauss, met him to discuss the need for compromise between the Nationalists and the Communists. Chiang “did not seem to realize that time is on the side of the Chinese Communists,” Gauss wrote later, nor that the “Government’s influence and control in Free China is deteriorating if not yet disintegrating.” Gauss suggested that the solution might be some kind of cross-party war council, but Chiang had given the idea no more than polite acknowledgment.
⁷

Actually, Chiang understood the agenda very well. All of this drove him into an even greater rage:

Pressure has become greater every day, both internally and from abroad. The psychological pressure from the Americans is especially great. They’re hoping to force me to cooperate unconditionally with the Communists, hoping I’ll accept Stilwell . . . This is imperialism fully-exposed.
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Stilwell was unquestionably winning the war for Washington’s ear. He made it clear that he regarded the critical situation in Burma as having been caused by Chiang’s unwillingness to offer him further support. On September 7 Hurley had arrived at Chongqing to firm up details of the new structure under which Stilwell would be given operational command of all Chinese troops, including (supposedly) the Communists. Just over a week later, Chiang and Stilwell confronted each other once again at a meeting called by the former. Stilwell had returned from Guilin, a city on the edge of collapse in the face of Japanese invasion, and in his diary he made no secret of the fact that he considered Chiang responsible: “Disaster approaching at Kweilin [Guilin] . . . what they ought to do is shoot the G-mo and Ho [Minister of War He Yingqin] and the rest of the gang.”
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Now Chiang asked for the X Force in northeast Burma at Myitkyina to move further east and relieve the village of Longling. Stilwell refused, insisting that the troops needed to rest, but Chiang declared that unless the troops moved within a week he would have to withdraw the Y Force from Burma and use it to defend Kunming, the capital of Yunnan. “Crap and nonsense” was Stilwell’s verdict.
¹⁰
Following this confrontation, on September 15, Gauss came to see Chiang to press again for a broadening of the leadership to include members of the other parties. Chiang was angered at the request.
¹¹
However, the pressure was about to mount yet further.

On September 16 Roosevelt and Churchill were at the second Quebec Conference (“Octagon”) discussing major decisions about the European front, including the establishment of occupation zones in Germany after the defeat of Hitler’s regime. The president’s mind was on other matters when he received Stilwell’s complaint, passed on by George Marshall, that Chiang was refusing to provide relief for the troops in Burma. (The fact that Chiang had sent the 200th Division and 10,000 fresh troops was not mentioned.)
¹²
Roosevelt’s reaction, understandably, was fear that a disaster might be about to happen in Burma, a particularly unattractive prospect just a few weeks before the presidential election. Marshall’s staff now drafted a note, to be signed off by the president, to express his deep concern at the turn of events in Burma (at least as they had been reported). This note demanded that not only should Chiang not withdraw his troops from north Burma, but that he should send yet more reinforcements to back them up. Roosevelt declared that if Chiang cooperated with Stilwell and Mountbatten, then “the land line to China will be opened in early 1945 and the continued resistance of China and maintenance of your control will be assured.” But if Chiang did not provide ground support for the Burma offensive, then land communications with Free China would be cut off. The warning became starker: “For this you must yourself be prepared to accept the consequences and assume the personal responsibility.” Roosevelt’s tone was firm: “I have urged time and time again in recent months that you take drastic action to resist the disaster which had been moving closer to China and to you.” One demand, above all, was made clear: to place “General Stilwell in unrestricted command of all your forces.”
¹³
The note was perhaps the most uncompromising that had even been written to Chiang.

This was the message that Stilwell insisted on delivering in person that September day in 1944. The irony was that Chiang was about to concede all of Stilwell’s key demands: the command of the Chinese armies was to be handed over to a foreigner. There was therefore no need for the note—written in such hard, indeed offensive, terms toward a fellow head of state—to be delivered verbatim. Yet Stilwell insisted. Hurley attempted to soften the blow by asking that Chiang read the Chinese translation, which later turned out to have been even more blunt than the original. Chiang read the note and said simply “I understand,” while appearing nervous. Then he turned his teacup upside down. The gesture indicated that the meeting was over, and with it, any chance whatsoever of continued cooperation with Stilwell, or of the American being placed in command of the millions of men who made up the armed forces of the Republic of China.
¹⁴

The delivery of Roosevelt’s note was a watershed. For this short moment of satisfaction, Stilwell would pay a very heavy price. US-China relations for the next quarter century would pay an even heavier one. Arguably they are still paying some of that price today.

Chiang showed no emotion when Stilwell presented him with the letter, but once he was alone with his brother-in-law T. V. Soong, he burst into tears, and raged that the letter was the product of Stilwell’s actions. It was a fair accusation, since Roosevelt and Marshall had believed Stilwell’s implication that it had been Chiang’s refusal of support that had worsened the Burma situation. Soong called up Joseph Alsop, the American journalist who was close to both Soong and Chennault, and asked him for help in drafting a response. The letter to Roosevelt made it clear that Stilwell was no longer welcome in China. Yet Chiang delayed sending it, and meanwhile took pains to strengthen the southwestern front in Guangxi, persuading General Bai Chongxi to accept command in the Fourth and Ninth War Zones.
¹⁵
Meanwhile Stilwell gloated, sending his wife a letter containing a five-verse piece of doggerel. The first stanza gives the flavor of the acid whole: