Sino-Japanese Wars – Old Magazine Articles

SACO: Training Guerrillas in China
(All Hands Magazine, 1945)

“Another Now It Can Be Told story – one of the best kept secrets of the Pacific war – came out last month when it was revealed that a U.S. naval group had been operating with Chinese guerillas behind the Jap lines in China. Their combined efforts, the Navy disclosed, had been a vital factor in the smashing blows of the Pacific Fleet against Jap-held islands, the Jap Navy and, finally Japan itself.”

The Japanese Subversives
(Coronet Magazine, 1943)

These are the observations of an American woman in fascist Japan; the writer was Joy Homer. In this article she tells of her travels to Tokyo in 1940 where she was asked to secretly address those small groups that silently wished for a republican form of government while silently opposing their country’s imperial conquest of China.

The Japanese Subversives
(Coronet Magazine, 1943)

Japanese Atrocities in China
(Liberty Magazine, 1942)

Hallett Abend (1884 – 1955) was an American journalist who lived in China for fifteen years. He covered the Sino-Japanese War during its early years and had seen first-hand the beastly vulgarity of the Japanese Army. After Pearl Harbor, the editor at Liberty turned to him in hopes that he would explain to the American reading public what kind of enemy they were fighting:

“In four and a half years of warfare [in China], the Japanese have taken almost no prisoners… Chinese prisoners of war are shot.”

Nationalist Chinese Trained by U.S. Army
(Yank Magazine, 1943)

This article will come as a surprise to the historical revisionists who run the Chiang Kai-Schek memorial in Taipei where U.S. involvement in W.W. II is oddly remembered only as having been the nation that sold oil to the Japanese. It is a well-illustrated Yank Magazine article filed from India regarding the military training of Chinese infantry under the watchful eye of General Joe Stilwell’s (1883 – 1946) American drill instructors.

Nationalist Chinese Trained by U.S. Army
(Yank Magazine, 1943)

Scorched Earth – the Film
(PM Tabloid, 1942 )

Directed by Ben Mindenburg, Scorched Earth was released in April of 1942 in order to show the beastliness of the Japanese military in China.

Nanking Falls
(The Literary Digest, 1937)

Exactly four months after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese hostilities on the Shanghai peninsula’ a New York Herald Tribune correspondent cabled from Shanghai last week, ‘Nanking, China’s abandoned capital, for the third time in it’s more than 2000 years of history, was captured by an alien foe when the Japanese military forces completely occupied the city.’ …To this, Quo Taichi, Chinese ambassador to England, replied defiantly: ‘Capture of Nanking will by no means mark the end of China’s resistance.’

The Japanese Homefront
(Ken Magazine, 1938)

This 1938 article concerned the gas rationing and and other assorted inconveniences that the Japanese population had to suffer during the Sino-Japanese conflict. The reporter was surprised to discover that the general citizenry was kept in a reasonable state of ignorance as to their military’s intentions in China:

Some attention is paid to the sacrifices made by the Japanese industrial classes, such as the Yasuda, Iwasaki, and Mitsui families.

Japan On The March
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1938)

To the colossal giant that is China, furious little Japan delivered a one-two punch last week. Small divisions of the Emperor’s troops first took Canton and then Hankow. So easily did both fall that Britons in Hong Kong declared darkly:’It looks like dirty work.’