Japanese - Soviet Border Clash

On July 11, 1938 fighting broke out between Soviet and Japanese forces near Khasan, where the borders of Manchuria, Korea and Siberia meet. The fighting, which would continue for about a month, was initiated by the Japanese Kwantung army which expected victory in part because they expected the Soviet army to be weakened by the recent political purges of its officer corp and in part because they were Japanese and the Russians were not.

In the event although the two sides were roughly equal in number the Soviets were superior in armor, artillery and aircraft and the Japanese could make no progress against them. In the end there was a cease fire (August 11th) and an agreement (August 14th) to refer the matter of the correct boundary to a joint Soviet-Japanese border commission.

This was a setback for the Japanese who were motivated in part by a resentment over the 500 aircraft and other military supplies that the Soviets had sent to China since July of 1937. The Japanese had hoped to exert some deterrent effect on Soviet military aid to China. In May, the Japanese had used diplomacy to persuade Germany to withdraw its military advisors from China.

You may have noticed that the pace of postings about military events between China and Japan has slowed over time. This is emblematic of the fact that at this time the pace of Japanese offensive operations had become glacial. This did not prevent the Japanese from picking a fight with the Soviets and the Japanese continued to maintain large forces facing the Russians and to maintain as well fantasies of an option to “strike north”. The 1938 clash was Japan’s first encounter with a better equipped enemy in the period covered by this blog and should have been a clue that superiority in number and quality of weapons and equipment counted for more than the Japanese, with their faith in the power of superior morale and fighting spirit, preferred to believe.

As an aside I want to mention That I am struck by how fluid the situation was between 1936 and 1939. The occasions on which countries behaved in conflict with their ultimate alignment after the United States entered the war were numerous and significant. There will be more examples of this phenomenon as events unfold.

Chinese Destroy Yellow River Dikes to Block Japanese Advance

On June 4, 1938 at the orders of Chiang Kai-shek  Chinese engineers destroyed the Yellow River dikes near the town of Chengchow. Sources disagree whether it was primarily unsuspecting Japanese invaders or unsuspecting Chinese peasants who were washed away by the resulting flood but I suspect it was the Chinese peasants. At the time the Chinese put out the story that Japanese bombers had hit the dikes demonstrating that they did not want to claim credit for the result.

The Yellow River known as “China’s sorrow” because of its periodic natural flooding had by this time become more like a giant aqueduct than a typical river as a result of Chinese flood control measures and the steady buildup of silt as the river flowed toward the sea. In the region where the flooding occurred the riverbed was between 23 and 29 feet feet above the surrounding plain. Paradoxically the water level was low in 1938 because the spring rains were unusually light and the Chinese had to work hard to get a real flood going.

They succeeded however and the resulting flooded area, 30 miles long and 10 miles wide, temporarily halted the Japanese advance and created in its local area a line of demarcation that held up for the next six years. The flooding also came at a tremendous human cost in lives and the destruction of farms and agricultural land. However, the Chinese were once again out of options as they desperately sought time to rebuild their forces and evacuate and relocate factories necessary for the war effort. Further trading of space for time could not resume until these industrial evacuations were complete.

The use of deliberate flooding of your own territory comes at a very high price and is usually a tactic employed by the weak against the strong. I am reminded of the story of Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands who just before World War I was watching a joint military review with Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany and in response to a boast of the Kaiser that the soldiers of the German Guards unit marching past were all six feet tall is said to have remarked that “when we open our dikes the water is seven feet deep.” Subsequently, Dutch neutrality was respected by Germany in World War I for whatever reason.

Machiavelli was among the first and most famous to explore moral issues of national leadership. He argued that leaders of states could not allow themselves to be bound by standards of personal morality in matters of state. Although there are important matters of degree which can change the quality of their acts, it seems that all national leaders must inevitably have some blood on their hands and this is certainly true of Chiang  Kai-shek.  However, Chiang’s actions on this occasion were both effective and  driven by military necessity.

There is some speculation that the  destruction resulting from the flooding  gave  a boost to the Communist cause and  undermined Nationalist legitimacy. I don’t think we will ever know how much this was really so. A study of the period reveals plenty of other reasons the Communist cause prospered in China and the subsequent  political costs would have mattered little in 1938 with the immediate Japanese threat requiring action in the short term. Machiavelli would probably have approved of this decision even as he shook his head in dismay over many others.

League of Nations Condemns Japanese Use of Poison Gas

On may 14, 1938 the League of Nations issued a resolution condemning the use of poison gas by Japan in its war with China. The gases in question, mustard gas and Lewisite, were used against both Chinese regular troops and guerrillas.

Poison gas seems to have had a particular reputation at this time that caused many people’s capacity for moral outrage to be mobilized against it. You could bomb, burn, shoot and stab all you wanted and while you might be judged on the basis of whom you did this to, you would not be judged as evil per se based on your methods. Use poison gas however and that was evil per se. Franklin Roosevelt, who as president of the United States during World War II authorized or acquiesced in all manner of killing and mayhem was adamant and explicit that the United States would not use poison gas (e.g. at Iwo Jima where it could be argued that the Japanese would be just as dead but would suffer less while American casualties would be much less - no the Japanese had to be bombed, burned, shot and stabbed “by hand” and at great cost in American killed, crippled and wounded.)

As a child growing up in the 1950’s I gradually became aware that, a few pacifists aside, general opinion among the adults around me who had grown up in the the 1930’s was that I could be killed by nuclear blast or radiation and that would be very unfortunate. On the other hand I could take comfort in the fact that many Russian children would suffer the same fate in retaliation. On yet the other hand however, if I was killed by poison gas that would be outrageous and clear evidence of the Soviet capacity for unmitigated evil.

Which is to say that in the 1930’s being condemned for the use of poison gas was a real public relations disaster if what you were hoping for was the good opinion of the American people. The League of Nations condemnation was another victory for China in its battle for American public opinion. It was another step in the establishment of an American view that, after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese were deserving of no mercy in the course America’s pursuit of just retribution and that virtually any means to get there (except, of course, poison gas) was legitimate.

Richard Overy in his book on World War II, Why the Allies Won, has a chapter on the competing claims of the two sides for the moral high ground. I give him credit for including such a chapter although I believe it has a lot of unsupported claims and a lot of discussion that doesn’t lead to useful conclusions. However, I do understand him to make one important point which is that for the United States and Britain to believe that they were fighting a just war made necessary by the evil qualities of their opponents was an important and sustaining motivational factor for two countries that could not employ, ideology, coercion, a sense of aggrieved nationalism or a claim that national survival was at stake to the same extent that their opponents did.

The Condor Legion

The Condor Legion was Nazi Germany’s most notable contribution to Francisco Franco’s Nationalist cause in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939. Hitler also contributed weapons, natural resources etc. but the Condor Legion was the only significant military unit sent to Spain by Germany.

I was in high school when I first heard the term “Condor Legion”. It immediately conjured in my mind visions of a large, fierce and formidable air force. It was only later that I learned that a Condor is a vulture, albeit a distinctively large and spectacular  one.

And so it was with the Condor Legion. You might think of it as a decisive force in a campaign to promote fascist ascendancy and solidarity throughout Europe. Not quite. Hermann Goering testified at Nuremberg that Hitler was at first reluctant to commit significant forces to Spain but when Goering pointed out the learning opportunities the Fuehrer brightened at the prospect.

It has also been argued that Hitler was careful to make sure his intervention, quantitatively much less than was provided by Mussolini’s Italy, didn’t end the war too fast i.e. before Italy’s role in aiding Franco thoroughly destroyed any remaining good relations Italy had with Britain and France.

The first German intervention was a small unit of Junkers Ju-52 transport planes which were used to ferry troops and supplies of the Spanish Army of Africa across the Straits of Gibraltar to Spain past the Spanish navy which had by and large remained loyal to the government and was blocking transfer by sea. The Army of Africa was an elite force which possessed most of the recent combat experience in the Spanish army putting down rebellions both major and minor in Spain’s African possessions. It included Moroccans who fought fiercely for the  Nationalists.  (Although they had never flown  before and  suffered extensively from air sickness, the Germans had to post guards to prevent the Moroccans from sneaking onto and overloading the transport planes.) It also included the (at this time almost entirely Spanish and all volunteer) Spanish Foreign Legion whose motto was “Long Live Death” - Francisco Franco was the Legion’s first Deputy Commander at its founding in 1920. These troops were decisive in giving the Nationalist revolt a firm footing in 1936.

Very shortly thereafter the first German volunteers were sent to Spain posing as a tourist group of photographers, engineers and salesmen. Once in Spain this thin pretense was dropped and the volunteers were incorporated into the roles available under the Condor Legion organization which contained five major groupings.

These were (1) the bomber group - initially composed of Ju-52s which were considered suitable as bombers at the time; (2) the transport group - Ju52s in their air transport role ; (3) the fighter group  - Heinkel He51s a fighter design that was considered obsolete well before 1939;  (4) The flak group for antiaircraft defense and (5) a small ground force for airfield security. In keeping with the small German presence the Spanish provided some personnel. For example, the flak personnel were Spanish commanded by Spanish officers under overall German supervision. Aircraft maintenance was provided by Lufthansa civilians already working in Spain.

I won’t do a campaign history here. There are books for that. A good source is a book that I relied on heavily for this mini-essay i.e. Peter Elstob’s “Condor Legion” which is weapons book no. 35 in the Ballantine’s Illustrated History of the Violent Century series.

So what did the German’s learn at Spanish expense and for a relatively small fee in blood and treasure as these things go? First, they needed better planes. After the first encounters with Russia’s agile biplane fighter the Polikarpov I-15 out went the He-51s and the Ju-52’s were consigned exclusively to the transport role. The new German fighter was the very successful Messerschmidt Me-109B (later also the C and E series) and the bombing was taken over by He-111’s and Dornier Do -17’s.

The Germans practiced dive bombing, first with the Henschel Hs 123A and later with their world war II mainstay the Ju-87 Stuka. They practiced aerial bombing of cities, most infamously, thanks to Pablo Picasso, Guernica. More practically and frequently they bombed Madrid and other fiercely defended Spanish towns and cities. It was in Spain that they practiced the sequence of a first wave of attack with 2000 pound bombs aimed at the largest buildings, a second wave with 500 pound bombs to break up the rubble and smaller buildings and make them burn more readily, a third wave with incendiaries and, after an interval to let people come out to fight the fires, a fourth wave armed with anti-personnel fragmentation bombs.

Shortly after the initial formation of the Condor Legion, the Germans added a small but high tech ground force composed of tanks, machine gun units and flak in a ground role. This allowed the Germans to practice the employment of tanks, close air support techniques and the use of flak as an anti-tank weapon. (It always stuns me to recall that the first German General Staff paper on the anti-tank potential of the 88mm anti-aircraft gun was written in 1919.) The Germans also operated in cooperation with Spanish infantry and artillery.

Despite my snarky comments at the beginning of this essay (vultures etc.) the Condor Legion was helpful to the Nationalists all out of proportion to its small numbers. Once the Germans grasped the value of Spain as a learning laboratory for Blitzkrieg, the volunteer system was scrapped and Germany’s most promising military personnel, officers, pilots and others, were assigned to and rotated through the Condor Legion to hone their skills

The Spanish Civil War

For the most part I have ignored the Spanish Civil War in this blog. It started in 1936 before the period I am covering and does not involve direct participation by any of the World War II belligerents. To call it a proxy war between the Axis powers of Germany and Italy and the Soviet Union would be at best a gross oversimplification.

Still, it is probably worth mentioning that on April 15, 1938, Good Friday that year, Nationalist forces captured the town of Vinaroz on Spain’s eastern Mediterranean coast thus splitting off Catalonia from the rest of Republican Spain. You might compare this to the fall of Vicksburg or even Savannah in the American civil war. Thus split in two, the Spanish  loyalists never recovered and Francisco Franco’s path to power was advanced considerably.

Having given the events in Spain another look, I think it might be worth doing a mini-essay on the German Condor Legion. A surprising number of the weapons and methods that contributed to early German successes in World War II were tested and practiced by the Condor Legion in Spain. Expect the essay soon. I will probably have another chronological post or two on Spain as well.

Chinese Victory at Taierhchuang

After the Japanese cleared the Shantung Peninsula , they linked up with units which had driven south from Peking and moved further south intent on capturing Hsuchow. Another force moved out of Nanking driving toward Hsuchow from the south. The combined Japanese force amounted to eight full Japanese divisions, elements of three others and five independent brigades.

Against these the Chinese committed sixty-three of their much smaller and less heavily equipped divisions. The Japanese used their superior firepower to grind down and destroy numerous Chinese units as they advanced. Secure in their confidence in victory, the Japanese allowed a salient to develop in their lines and this was when the Chinese struck to pinch off the salient at the town of Taierhchuang. As I noted earlier, the Chinese had resolved at the beginning of the year to defend more actively as they withdrew. They had been doing so with small attacks on the flanks and an increasing guerrilla presence but on this occasion they outdid themselves.

And so on March 25, 1938 the surviving Japanese troops withdrew from the Taierhchuang salient after two weeks of intense fighting. Once again the Chinese had staked their best troops and equipment (including 100 aircraft) to make a stand. Many of their troops in this battle were drawn from the surge of patriotic volunteers, including many students, that came when full scale fighting, especially at Shanghai, erupted the previous year. This group was above average in both motivation and education compared to the average Chinese recruit.

The result of the battle was the severe mauling of two Japanese divisions. Japanese casualties were estimated to be somewhere between 16,000 to 30,000 depending on which account you want to believe. Chinese casualties were also heavy, perhaps roughly equal to those of the Japanese.

Some have described the Chinese victory as Pyrrhic since Chinese casualties were high and came disproportionately from their best and brightest young men. Others have tried to argue that this was no victory at all. However, these arguments tend to focus on the number of casualties or possession of the ground. (The Chinese possessed the field immediately after the battle but withdrew a short time later.) The strategic results of the battle are perhaps more interesting and informative. The Japanese felt compelled to commit two more divisions from Nanking to their offensive. They added three more divisions to the mission of providing security over occupied Chinese territory. The Japanese who had begun their campaign in China with 15 divisions were now committing 31 divisions and were slowly starting to draw more forces from their elite formations watching the Russians on the Manchurian border.

The Chinese used the lull in operations to withdraw further and prepare defenses deeper into China while continuing to build up their guerrilla effort. Their seems little doubt that by the more complex standards of modern twentieth century warfare the Chinese had won an important victory. The battle also had an impact on Japanese thinking, making significant inroads into the fading Japanese belief that victory in China could be achieved quickly or cheaply.

Anschluss or Meanwhile in Europe

On March 12, 1938 German troops marched into Austria to enforce Hitler’s demand for the annexation of Austria to Germany. The way was made smooth by an internal coup the previous night by the Austrian Nazi Party. The legitimate Austrian government of Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg was by this time powerless to do anything. Schuschnigg’s last minute appeals to Britain and France for assistance came to nothing. Schushnigg was arrested and imprisoned under conditions of abuse and solitary confinement that caused him to lose 58 pounds during his first year of confinement. He survived however to the point where on May 1, 1945 a Gestapo officer showed him his name on a list of those who, on Heinrich Himmler’sorders, were to be executed before they fell into Allied hands. On May 4, 1945 he was freed by American troops before the execution orders could be carried out. He has told his own story in his book Austrian Requiem.

The German invasion became a victory parade as a combination of Nazi subversion and substantial genuine support for unification undermined any possibility of Austrian resistance. An account of the events can be found here . Perhaps a victory parade was all the Germans could handle. According to German army reports, Hitler’s fledgling Panzer forces suffered a vehicle breakdown rate of somewhere between thirty and seventy percent on their march to Vienna. Hitler’s secret police and political operatives were more practiced and efficient. During the first few weeks of occupation Himmler’s Gestapo arrested 79,000 Austrians in the Vienna area alone. Repressive secret police methods and the absence of a secret ballot meant that a referendum to ratify “unification” (perhaps more accurately annexation) on April 10th produced a 99.75% “yes” vote in Austria. Interestingly the corresponding “yes” vote in Germany was slightly less - 99.08%

Other developments in the rise of Germany under Hitler e.g. the reoccupation of the Rhineland, the restoration of the Saar after 15 years of occupation and German rearmament in violation of the original terms of the Versailles treaty happened before the time period covered by this blog. The Anschluss was significant not only for its addition of seven million people and the associated resources to Hitler’s Reich, which could not be justified as a restoration of the status quo ante, but also for its blatant violation of the Versailles treaty which prohibited German and Austrian unification. The passive response of Britain and France set the tone for the remaining time before the outbreak of war.

I will close with an excerpt of the remarks in Parliament of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain who said ” In appraising recent events it is necessary to face facts, however we may judge them, however we may anticipate that they will react upon the international position as it exists to- day. The hard fact is–and of its truth every hon. Member can judge for himself–that nothing could have arrested this action by Germany unless we and others with us had been prepared to use force to prevent it.

I imagine that according to the temperament of the individual the events which are in our minds to-day will be the cause of regret, of sorrow, perhaps of indignation. They cannot be regarded by His Majesty’s Government with indifference or equanimity. They are bound to have effects which cannot yet be measured. The immediate result must be to intensify the sense of uncertainty and insecurity in Europe. Unfortunately, while the policy of appeasement would lead to a relaxation of the economic pressure under which many countries are suffering to-day, what has just occurred must inevitably retard economic recovery and, indeed, increased care will be required to ensure that marked deterioration does not set in.

This is not a moment for hasty decisions or for careless words. We must consider the new situation quickly, but with cool judgment. . . . As regards our defense programs, we have always made it clear that they were flexible and that they would have to be reviewed from time to time in the light of any development in the international situation. It would be idle to pretend that recent events do not constitute a change of the kind that we had in mind. Accordingly we have decided to make a fresh review, and in due course we shall announce what further steps we may think it necessary to take.”

 Pathetic as this response undoubtedly was, I am reluctant to pile on poor Neville Chamberlain. Other political leaders have taken their countries to war, death and ruin simply on the grounds that it would have been embarrassing to back down. I am not sure that the willingness to endure “humiliation” in an effort to preserve peace is a fault we want to condemn without reservation. In retrospect standing up to Hitler was a course which was both feasible and correct. However, estimating your strength relative to the enemy remains an error prone exercise to this day and Chamberlain got no support for a strong stand from his military, his political allies or other countries. Chamberlain, a man who loyally served in Churchill’s cabinet in 1940, had the misfortune to be the wrong man in the wrong job at the wrong time.

Another Book Review

Turner Publishing is at it again. They have sent me a review copy of Historic Photos of World War II: Pearl Harbor to Japan. Once again the photos have been selected, captioned and accompanied by text written by Bob Duncan. The Pacific War was a very different experience from the war in Europe. On the ground it was dominated by island fighting and the island fighting  commands a large proportion of the pictures in the book. This suits me well because, as I have mentioned before, my father fought on Iwo Jima and my uncle fought on Guam.

Island fighting was relatively short compared with European land campaigns but was also correspondingly intense.  The well chosen photographs capture that intensity. In discussions at the dinner table my father would tell me stories of marines who, having survived one or two island combats , would become convinced that this next assault landing would be their last. The stories that survived were of course about the marines who didn’t. Frequently such a story accompanied the death of a marine who received the Congressional Medal of Honor or another decoration for bravery posthumously.

So many photos dramatize the island fighting that I came away with a sense that the naval war, the air war, the home front and the weapons and equipment did not get their fair share. This may be unfair as the Pacific Ocean and the pacific war  (there’s an irony for you) were both vast in scope. The war was also uniquely American in a way that the European war was not. Still the previous volume on Europe did a better job of capturing the essence of the American effort there. Although the individual photographs are excellent, the whole is not greater than the sum of the parts. Still, for those like me who have a special interest in the island war the book is more than sufficient when seen as a book primarily on that topic and I would recommend it on that basis.

Once, again I have an argument with Mr. Duncan’s  captions and text. I have been fortunate not to have experienced war to any great degree but I have studied it enough, have enough capacity for empathy and have lived long enough not to be moved in the way intended by triumphalism and nostalgia.  Cliched writing doesn’t help either.

Maybe I am being too harsh. It’s a photography book and the photographs are well chosen and very evocative of an important aspect of World War II - the island fighting in the Pacific. Accepted as such it is a very enjoyable and worthwhile book for those who share that interest.

Now that I have seen this book and the earlier one on Europe, I notice the Turner Publishing “Historic Photos of….” series everywhere. At my local Borders Books I saw that they did a very nice job with local and civil war history in my community of Alexandria, Virginia. The series is a worthwhile one and nicely fills a valuable niche. If historic photography interests you, see what they have at your local bookstore or on their website.

What Will 1938 Bring?

Happy new year everyone. Yes, I am still here and have been researching items for the coming year. The pace of entries will continue to be relatively slow though as we all know that won’t last as the war spreads and the pace of events quickens.

As China and Japan surveyed the situation seventy years ago here is what they saw. After the fall of Nanking Japan made an approach through the German ambassador to China offering peace terms. However, these were very harsh involving a range of territorial and economic concessions as well as payment of indemnities and acceptance of Japanese garrisons. The Chinese rejected them out of hand.

The Chinese had drafted over 928, 000 men in 1937 and would call up even more in 1938. The Chinese army was organized into 210 infantry divisions, 11 cavalry divisions, 35 independent infantry brigades and 6 cavalry brigades. These forces were frequently a third or even a fourth the size of their Japanese counterparts and lacked everything except numbers, basic weapons and the will to resist.

In particular, they lacked the logistical support, modern heavy weapons and quality leadership necessary to conduct extended offensive operations. It was because of these deficiencies that the Japanese were still confident of victory as 1938 began. The Japanese now had 50 divisions committed but only 26 were directly engaged with the Chinese. 24 were still watching the border with the Soviet Union.

So the Japanese controlled important major cities such as Peking, Shanghai and Nanking. However, much of the countryside they nominally controlled was still in Chinese hands. When Chinese army units were bypassed they tended to dig in where they were rather than retreat. Both Nationalists and Communists were organizing guerrilla resistance as well.

Chiang Kai-shek is sometimes underestimated as a Chinese leader because of his substantial flaws which were particularly frustrating to American policy goals both in World War II and after. However, he was a leader of world historical impact and not without abilities that he used in service of sustained Chinese resistance. He remained steadfast in his determination to resist the Japanese. He traded space for time, relocated Chinese war industries, raided and counter-attacked where he could and mobilized and motivated China’s considerable population to fight on while winning the battle for international, and especially American, public opinion.

After the fall of Nanking and as their peace proposals were being rejected (They issued a rather bizarre statement 70 years ago today complaining that the Chinese government “still fails to understand the sincerity of the Japanese government.”) the Japanese contented themselves first with clearing the Shantung peninsula and capturing the strategically well located port of Tsingtao for a base.

The Japanese quickly took Tsingtao by amphibious assault in a three day battle from January 10-12 1938. Now a battle for the peninsula, it’s railroads and a link up with another Japanese force attacking from the north will soon begin.

Rape of Nanking

On December13, 1937 the Japanese completed their occupation of Nanking and commenced an orgy of massacre, rape, arson, looting and destruction that went on for weeks. All of this was on an enormous scale that was more likely have occured in 1237 than in the supposedly civilized twentieth century.

It began with a Japanese army that had been marching and fighting for weeks without respite and moving deeper into hostile territory amidst an understandably increasingly hostile population. Then came the order to kill the prisoners. The Japanese were holding about 90,000 Chinese army troops as prisoners and lacked both the inclination and quite possibly the ability to properly feed and house them. As with all controversial matters accounts vary but that large numbers of Chinese army prisoners were killed is beyond reasonable dispute.

That done, the Japanese moved on to the defenseless civilian population. About half the population of the city had fled but as often happens those with the least access to transportation, information and good advice remained. A reasonable estimate of Chinese civilian deaths is 200, 000 - 300,000 with 20,000 to perhaps as many as 80,000 women and girls - as well as some men - raped. The Japanese military command made no organized effort to stop the atrocities. On the contrary, many if not most Japanese officers participated in and encouraged their men to participate in what went on. A reasonably accurate account of the events can be found here .

Those who wish to argue about the number of deaths, the quality of the evidence, Iris Chang’s book etc. should not come talking to me. For me the evidence about what happened is clear enough. So, however, is the sad fact that the Nanking massacre was part, albeit a particularly egregious part, of the normal human condition. Anyone who looks at enough history should recognize that.

Ignorance of history is also part of the human condition and it does not surprise me that most people know little or nothing of these events. It should be noted though that these events were page one news in America at the time. Some thought the reports too much to be believed but evidence suggests that enough sunk in to contribute to the slow mobilization of American public opinion against the Japanese.

I have two family stories that relate to these events. I have some personal experience that information about these events was always out there. I knew about them as a child from reading the account in the family’s Encyclopedia Britannica-the 1956 edition as I recall-specifically the article on World War II. More vividly around the same time I was a regular watcher of a documentary history program, hosted and narrated by Walter Cronkite, called The Twentieth Century. I recall seeing film footage of Japanese soldiers shooting civilians in Nanking. There was also footage of Japanese soldiers preparing to bury civilians alive. Then a cut to subsequent footage of Japanese soldiers trampling on the freshly churned earth which appeared, at least to this child’s imagination, to writhe with the struggles of the freshly buried but not yet dead.

Sometime around the same time, my father told me the story about how as a young Marine on his way to Iwo Jima and ultimately to the occupation of Japan he found himself on leave in Hilo, Hawaii. He didn’t have a good time. The town was pretty much shut down and he felt that all of the townspeople were giving him hateful looks or ignoring and avoiding him. He was in uniform at the time. Over the family dinner table he expressed to me his bafflement over what had gone on at the time.

Later, I came across a brief reference to how the survivors of the 1st Marine Division, after months of combat on Guadalcanal, returned to Hawaii and went on leave in Hilo. They pretty much tore up the town. I told my father about this and his reaction was pretty much “mystery solved”. I think it was mostly if not all drunkeness, brawling and vandalism. I am most definitely
not suggesting even remotely any moral equivalence with Nanking.

Still, we’re not supposed to take out our frustrations on innocent civilians in lesser ways either. I will save for a later post my father’s stories about taking, or not taking, prisoners on Iwo Jima.