Read Online The Man Who Loved China by Simon Winchester - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Simon Winchester
Ads: Link
famous war photographs of all timeâthat of a burned, crying baby sitting on railway tracks in the midst of a bombed, ruined cityâbrought the war into households around the world. There was a tidal wave of sympathy from a public who saw a vulnerable but determined China being pulverized and humiliated by the forces of evil from Japan.
But no foreign government took action; no one helped. The Chinese, isolated and alone, fell back, and back, and backââthe tragedy of the retreat,â in the words of a Chinese officer, âbeing beyond description.â Japanese amphibious forces landed in November and, supported by bombers from the island then called Formosa and by heavy battleships moored in the Huangpu River, they poured inland along both banks of the Yangzi, their advance not even briefly halted by the carefully built copy of the Hindenburg Line behind which the Chinese had naively thought they might defend themselves.
City by city, eastern China collapsed entirely. The Japanese forces left behind scenes of total ruin: all the buildings smashed, thousands dead, wandering dogs feeding on piles of corpses, and the few survivors staggering through the wreckage like ghosts. Within a month, by the middle of December, Japanese troops were at the old walls of Nanjing, Chinaâs capital, which was Gwei-djenâs home.
The story of the next seven weeks of savagery, of the unutterably terrible ârape of Nanking,â is now as well known as any of the atrocities of the European war. For Gwei-djen, unable to communicate with her family during that winter, the situation was almost unbearable. As it happens, her family survived; but tens of thousands of others died, and often in unimaginably awful waysâgang-raped, bayoneted, set ablaze, beheaded, evisceratedâand the terrified Chinese government was compelled to leave for a new fortress stronghold in the western mountains, Chongqing.
The West still did precious little to help. In America there was great public sympathy for the plight of the Chinese, and its leaders were seen as symbolic heroes. Chiang Kai-shekâs face stared down from the cover of Time magazine, not least because the publisher, Henry Luce, who had been born in China of missionary parents, knew and liked him and his American-educated wife. President Roosevelt offered soothing wordsâhis family, too, had long and intimate links with China, the Delanos having been partners in one of the greatest Chinese tea-shipping firms, and his mother having spent much of her childhood in the family mansion in Hong Kong, Rose Hill.
But the presidentâs words were hardly matched by any actions of consequence, at least in the first four years of the war. Neutrality was the policy to which the American government was committed, and neutrality was what (certainly in September 1937, two months into the conflict) more than ninety percent of the American public demanded, no matter how sorry they felt for China. Not even the lethal Japanese bombing attack in December 1937 on the American gunboat the USS Panay , moored off Shanghai, caused Washington to change its mind. The Japanese said it had all been a dreadful mistake, apologized, made offers of compensation, and organized a campaign of letter-writing from Japan in which schoolgirls sent handwritten (and identically phrased) condolences to the Americanembassy in Tokyo. At this stage in its plans Japan wanted no military entanglement with the Americans. Washington continued to say it was appalled by what was happening in China but could and would do nothing. It could not, and would not, become involved. The Neutrality Act did not allow it.
In Cambridge Joseph Needham was apoplectic. He was even more furious when the British government made it perfectly clear there would be absolutely no policy of sanctions against the Japanese. No matter what was happening in China in the late 1930s, Britain would stay out of the conflict.
Not even
But no foreign government took action; no one helped. The Chinese, isolated and alone, fell back, and back, and backââthe tragedy of the retreat,â in the words of a Chinese officer, âbeing beyond description.â Japanese amphibious forces landed in November and, supported by bombers from the island then called Formosa and by heavy battleships moored in the Huangpu River, they poured inland along both banks of the Yangzi, their advance not even briefly halted by the carefully built copy of the Hindenburg Line behind which the Chinese had naively thought they might defend themselves.
City by city, eastern China collapsed entirely. The Japanese forces left behind scenes of total ruin: all the buildings smashed, thousands dead, wandering dogs feeding on piles of corpses, and the few survivors staggering through the wreckage like ghosts. Within a month, by the middle of December, Japanese troops were at the old walls of Nanjing, Chinaâs capital, which was Gwei-djenâs home.
The story of the next seven weeks of savagery, of the unutterably terrible ârape of Nanking,â is now as well known as any of the atrocities of the European war. For Gwei-djen, unable to communicate with her family during that winter, the situation was almost unbearable. As it happens, her family survived; but tens of thousands of others died, and often in unimaginably awful waysâgang-raped, bayoneted, set ablaze, beheaded, evisceratedâand the terrified Chinese government was compelled to leave for a new fortress stronghold in the western mountains, Chongqing.
The West still did precious little to help. In America there was great public sympathy for the plight of the Chinese, and its leaders were seen as symbolic heroes. Chiang Kai-shekâs face stared down from the cover of Time magazine, not least because the publisher, Henry Luce, who had been born in China of missionary parents, knew and liked him and his American-educated wife. President Roosevelt offered soothing wordsâhis family, too, had long and intimate links with China, the Delanos having been partners in one of the greatest Chinese tea-shipping firms, and his mother having spent much of her childhood in the family mansion in Hong Kong, Rose Hill.
But the presidentâs words were hardly matched by any actions of consequence, at least in the first four years of the war. Neutrality was the policy to which the American government was committed, and neutrality was what (certainly in September 1937, two months into the conflict) more than ninety percent of the American public demanded, no matter how sorry they felt for China. Not even the lethal Japanese bombing attack in December 1937 on the American gunboat the USS Panay , moored off Shanghai, caused Washington to change its mind. The Japanese said it had all been a dreadful mistake, apologized, made offers of compensation, and organized a campaign of letter-writing from Japan in which schoolgirls sent handwritten (and identically phrased) condolences to the Americanembassy in Tokyo. At this stage in its plans Japan wanted no military entanglement with the Americans. Washington continued to say it was appalled by what was happening in China but could and would do nothing. It could not, and would not, become involved. The Neutrality Act did not allow it.
In Cambridge Joseph Needham was apoplectic. He was even more furious when the British government made it perfectly clear there would be absolutely no policy of sanctions against the Japanese. No matter what was happening in China in the late 1930s, Britain would stay out of the conflict.
Not even
Similar Books
