The contribution made by the peoples of China to the cause of liberating humankind from the scourge of Nazi fascism and Japanese militarism and ending World War II was colossal.

On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Chinese people's war of resistance against Japanese aggression and the victory of the worldwide Anti-Fascist War, the peoples of the world pay homage to the 35 million Chinese who died in that war and all the heroes who faced the Japanese onslaught and its unprecedented brutality. They join the Chinese people in recalling the events of the war, the leadership of Mao Zedong, one of the outstanding revolutionary anti-imperialist fighters of the 20th century and in recognizing their contributions.

On September 3, 2025, the People's Republic of China celebrated this historic victory. Events have recalled the events which took place and the heroism of the people, fully aware that their exceptional courage and ingenuity pinned down some 1.86 million Japanese soldiers, 50 per cent of its total force, preventing their deployment elsewhere.

Japan has never recognized the heinous crimes it committed in China during its 14 years of occupation.

Due to the Japanese aggression, between 1939 and 1945, China suffered the loss of some 3.4 million troops, second only to the Soviet Union which lost 7.5 million.

Between 1942 and 1945, the Japanese military carried out the Three-Alls Policy against the Chinese people: kill all, burn all and loot all. Besides committing massacres of civilians like the Rape of Nanjing and using biological and germ warfare against the people, the Japanese abducted close to 200,000 Chinese women and girls, forcing them into sex-slavery for the Japanese military. Close to 100 million people were displaced and became refugees.

On the auspicious occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Chinese peoples victory, the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) pays its deepest respects to the heroic Chinese people and the peoples of Asia who, organized and led by the communists, stopped the Japanese aggressors in their tracks. Along with the Soviet Red Army and the antifascist forces of the world, they secured the peace.

CPC(M-L) salutes the Chinese people and their stunning accomplishments in liberating China and turning it into a modern nation, second to none.

CPC(M-L) also pays tribute to the Canadian communist, Dr. Norman Bethune, whose internationalism and selfless medical services to the Chinese people's war of resistance are the foundation of the fraternal ties of peace and friendship between the Canadian and Chinese people. This friendship is bound to prevail as together the peoples of the world rise to the challenge of coming revolutionary storms.

CPC(M-L) decries the absence of a high-level Canadian delegation in Beijing for China's Victory Day Celebrations. Canada has joined the U.S. and NATO countries in boycotting the celebrations, thus refusing to acknowledge China's contributions to the fight against Nazi fascism and Japanese militarism. So too, these warmongering governments boycotted this year's Victory Day celebrations in Russia on the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi fascism in Europe.

CPC(M-L) also condemns Canada's participation in war exercises the U.S. is holding in the Asia-Pacific to threaten China. Particularly shameful are the war exercises held on the occasion of the V-Day celebrations, with Japan playing a leading role.

Japan's deployment of its armed forces at this time, beyond the limits of self-defence, as part of the U.S. war preparations in the Asia Pacific, is contrary to the wishes of the Japanese people who continue to stand with the anti-fascist, anti-war forces today. The people of Okinawa and the Japanese peoples are demanding the removal of U.S. bases and organizing to stop the Japanese ruling circles from revising the country's Constitution to remove Article 9. Article 9 is part of the victory over the fascists and militarists, which specifically bars Japan from waging war and states that "land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained." While military forces do exist today, contrary to the Constitution, the demand is for them to only be used for self-defence purposes.

For Canada to condone this and refuse to join the celebrations, is unacceptable. While the government boycotts the 80th Anniversary events, the peoples of Canada and worldwide join the Chinese peoples in celebrating these victories. They recognize that the significance of China's victory over Japan and contributions to ending World War II can never be over-estimated.

CPC(M-L) calls on all Canadians and Quebeckers to go all out to strengthen the friendship between the peoples of our two countries and not permit attempts to incite animosity against the people whose origins lie in China, many of whose ancestors have built this country since the end of the last decades of the 19th century.

(Photos and graphics: Xinhua, CGTN)

China Militantly Celebrates 80th Anniversary

Grand parade in Tienanmen Square in Beijing, September 3, 2025

On September 3, China culminated celebrations of the 80th anniversary of its victory over Japanese aggression and in the World Anti-Fascist War with a grand parade in Tienanmen Square in Beijing, (see TML In the News for Xinhua report). The celebrations have highlighted China's sacrifice and valuable contributions to these victories and its readiness to face whatever threatens its sovereignty today. Military units from a number of countries which helped China share the burden of the war also participated in the grand military parade.

On August 28, Chinese Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Hong Lei held a press conference where he announced the participation in the celebrations by 26 heads of state and government, from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Cambodia, Cuba, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, the Maldives, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Republic of the Congo, the Russian Federation, Serbia, Slovakia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Zimbabwe.

A spokesperson from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also informed that 50 people from 30 European countries – former political dignitaries, high-level officials, diplomatic envoys to China, and friendly personages had confirmed their attendance at China's Victory Day commemorations. The spokesperson noted that during China's resistance to Japanese occupation and militarism, "many European countries and friends provided valuable human and material resources to support China's war of resistance against Japanese aggression, and some of them even sacrificed their precious lives. Those touching stories will forever be remembered by the Chinese people."

He added that China stands ready to work with all peace-loving countries and peoples to establish an accurate view of history, jointly defend the outcomes of the WWII victory and the post-war international order, and safeguard world peace and stability.

At noon on September 3, a state reception was held for foreign state leaders and guests. In the evening, President Xi Jinping hosted a cultural event at the Great Hall of the People where he also spoke about the significance of the celebrations.

In the lead up to this commemoration numerous other events and activities have taken place for several months, including forums and meetings, exhibitions, film festivals, art programs and others with a particular focus on highlighting China's pride in playing a decisive role in defeating the Axis powers in World War II by defeating imperialist Japan.

Celebrations in China and Around the World

Tian'anmen Square, ready for V-Day Parade September 3.

Rehearsals for V-Day parade throughout August.

Press centre for events commemorating 80th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War holds group interview, Beijing, September 2, 2025.

Public art installations and floral displays set up across Beijing leading up to V-Day.

Commemorative stamps issued by China Post on September 3, 2025.

Chinese People's War Memorial Hall opened a special exhibition For National Liberation and World Peace in July. Every year, some 60 million people visit sites across China that commemorate the resistance war against Japan and China's role in the victory of the World Anti-Fascist War.

Chinese-Russian joint exhibit of young artists opens in Beijing, August 7, 2025

Chinese Embassy in Bangladesh hosts a seminar to mark V-Day, Dhaka, September 1, 2025.

Event, titled Experience China -- A Symphony of Stories of Friendship between the Peoples of China and the United States, hosted at Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC, August 29, 2025.

China and Tunisia hold joint seminar on Victory in WWII, Tunis, August 22, 2025.

Canada-China friendship organization in Montreal organizes Flowers of May June 7, 2025 celebrating Victory Day. Bottom photo: Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) presents greetings with red carnations for community elders present.

(Photos: Xinhua, CGTN.)

China's Decisive Role in Victory of World
Anti-Fascist War

– Steve Rutchinski –

Victory over Japan is celebrated in Chongqing, the wartime capital of China, September 3, 1945.

The Second World War ended in Europe when Germany surrendered on May 9, 1945 and the Red Flag was hoisted over the Reichstag in Berlin. In Asia, the war against the Japanese militarists continued in China and elsewhere in Asia until the defeat of Imperial Japan on August 15 and the official surrender of Japan aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945.

The official narrative about WWII in the East is that the war ended when Japan was forced to surrender after the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9, taking the lives of close to 200,000 people. The fact is the million-strong Kwantung Army, part of the Japanese forces based in Manchuria, fought on against the Chinese forces and the Soviet Red Army which joined the war against Japan on August 9. The war ended after the collapse of the main Japanese forces on August 16, with sporadic fighting continuing until August 26, 1945.

Little information is provided by official historians in the west about China's decisive contribution to the peoples' victory in WWII. The 80th anniversary celebrations in China on September 3 show the world China's significant contributions to the anti-fascist struggle and to ending WWII. They honor and celebrate these great achievements, joined by peoples worldwide. Led by the Communist Party of China and the revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, the Chinese people made heroic sacrifices and outstanding contributions to the anti-fascist victory, as did the Koreans, Filipinos, Malaysians, Indonesians, and other peoples of East Asia. The achievements also show the falsification of history about the role of the U.S. in WWII, and in becoming the main pro-fascist, anti-communist force after the war.

Mao Zedong leading Chinese guerilla forces in 1944.

The failure of most historians to acknowledge China's contributions is deliberate. Like the denial of the decisive role of the Soviet Red Army in defeating the Nazis, this purposeful falsification of history is used to justify the plans of the U.S./NATO today, including Canada, for aggression against China and Russia, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Iran and others.

In May of this year, the British historian Rana Mitter, author of Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945, was interviewed by China Daily and said that it is necessary and important to give China its due as one of two countries, the other being the Soviet Union, that withstood the worst of the fighting during WWII. He pointed out that Japanese aggression in China began on September 18, 1931, when Japanese forces blew up a section of railway near Liutiaohu, a false-flag operation staged to justify bombing the city. Japanese aggression expanded to full-scale war in 1937 following a skirmish between Chinese and Japanese troops at the Lugou Bridge near Beijing. In all, the Chinese people fought for 14 years to liberate their country from Japanese militarism.

Today, to its shame, Canada has joined the U.S., Britain, Australia, France, and other countries in boycotting the September 3 celebrations in Beijing to mark the liberation of China from the Japanese imperialists and the victory of the World Anti-Fascist War. The Canadian state is promoting anti-China vitriol, defaming the Chinese people, and instigating attacks against those of Chinese origin in Canada by claiming they are spies of the Chinese state intent on undermining Canadian institutions. It actively promotes anti-communist propaganda to denigrate the contributions of the Chinese people and the communist-led resistance in other countries of Asia that helped defeat the Japanese militarists and contributed to the victory of the peoples over the Axis powers. In lockstep with the U.S., the Carney Liberal government plans to spend tens of billions of dollars to build up Canada's military and engage in provocations in the Asia Pacific region to threaten China and the DPRK in the name of defending "Canadian values, freedom and democracy."

Recognizing the decisive contribution of the Chinese people and the peoples of Asia in defeating Japanese militarism is not only important for the historical record. It is the foundation upon which the Chinese and other peoples of Asia join with the people of Canada, the U.S. and worldwide to prevent another World War, and underscores stepping up our efforts to make Canada a Zone for Peace.

Historic Photos

Chinese Resistance Against Japanese
Aggressors in World War II

Left: Late in the evening on January 28, 1932 Japanese troops launch an attack on Shanghai.
Right: Japanese army sets fire to countless villages in their "kill all, burn all and loot all" campaigns.

Japanese troops captured Nanjing in December 1937 and embarked on a campaign of murder, rape
and looting. Left: Troops enter the city. Right: Japanese troops buried many residents alive.

Left: Japanese troops massacred countless people and threw them into mass graves. Shown are
bones of Chinese people killed in the Pindingshan Massacre in northeast China. Right: Ditch filled
with victims of Japanese massacre.

Left: During the "December 9 Movement" in 1935, Beijing students held mass rallies calling on
the people to resist Japan and liberate the country. Right: Women's self-defence team of Beishan
Village in Hebei Province.

Left: Third detachment of the New Fourth Army fighting in Tongling-Fanchang area to stop the enemy from advancing west to Wuhan. Right: In the Spring of 1938, the New Fourth Army advanced to the Yangtze river valley, where they carried out guerilla war behind the enemy lines and set up Central China anti-Japanese democratic bases.

Left: Northeast Anti-Japanese Allied Army kept up their fight against the invaders for long years in northeast China. Right: Mao Zedong (middle) and Zhu De (left) review troops assigned to participate in the general counteroffensive. At right the commander of the 359th Brigade, Wang Zhen.

Left: Mao Zedong with the members of the Indian Aid China Medical Mission in Yan'an on March 15, 1939: Mao Zedong (fifth from left), B.K. Basu (left), D.S. Kotnis (second from left), D. Mukerji (fourth from left), M. Atal (second from right) and M. Cholkar (right). Right: Canadian doctor, Norman Bethune, operating on a wounded soldier of the Eighth Route Army in Taihang Mountains in October 1939.

Left: In order to smash the Japanese army's blockade, a "Great Production Movement" was organized in the liberated areas which solved many of the problems caused by the Japanese blocking needed goods. Right: People of Dalian rejoice as Soviet soldiers enter the city in August 1945.

(Photos: An Illustrated History of China's War of Resistance Against Japan)

In Memory of Canada's Legendary Internationalist Dr. Norman Bethune

Bethune's Historic Contributions to China Live On

– Philip Fernandez –

Head of Datong Red Culture Museum shows visitors photographs
highlighting the work of Dr. Norman Bethune.

As part of celebrations to mark the 80th anniversary of the Chinese people's victory over the Japanese imperialists during the Second World War, China is remembering the many international friends who came to her aid during her 14-year war.

At the top of this list is Dr. Norman Bethune, the Canadian communist and internationalist who arrived in China in January 1938, after serving with the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion of the International Brigades in support of the democratically-elected Spanish Republican government fighting the onslaught of the Francisco Franco fascists and their Nazi allies. He died in China at his post on November 12, 1939, after cutting himself while operating on a wounded soldier. He persisted with his work but contracted an infection and developed sepsis. With no medicine with which to treat it, Bethune died.

Mao Zedong meets Bethune in 1938
Artist's depiction

Mao Zedong, the leader of the Communist Party of China which organized and led the Chinese people's resistance against the Japanese aggressors, wrote the essay In Memory of Norman Bethune, in December 1939, paying tribute to this communist revolutionary doctor. Mao wrote among other things:

"He arrived in Yan'an in the spring of last year, went to work in the Wutai Mountains, and to our great sorrow died a martyr at his post. What kind of spirit is this that makes a foreigner selflessly adopt the cause of the Chinese people's liberation as his own? It is the spirit of internationalism, the spirit of communism [...] Comrade Bethune's spirit, his utter devotion to others without any thought of self, was shown in his great sense of responsibility in his work and his great warm-heartedness towards all comrades and the people. Every communist must learn from him."

This year in the Wutai region where Dr. Bethune worked till his death, the places he worked and lived have been refurbished to draw attention to his work and contributions. At the Datong Red Culture Museum, visitors can gain an appreciation of the work that Dr. Bethune performed when he lived in the area for about three months. Ren Dong, head of the museum notes that during his short stay Bethune performed 700 surgeries and in addition treated more than 1,000 soldiers and individuals. Dr. Bethune also trained dozens of frontline surgical staff, prepared training manuals for medical workers and organized operating rooms and first aid stations in the region.

Monument commemorating students of military medical school Norman Bethune helped set up ambushed by Japanese soldiers.

A sculpture featuring Norman Bethune on his way to visiting wounded soldiers at Baiyintuo in Hebei Province, northern China.

Dr. Bethune also improvised and recycled materials because of the lack of medical and sterilization supplies. He paid close attention to maintaining the highest medical standards to save lives and minimize infection. At a memorial exhibition at the "Bethune Ward" at a war-time hospital, visitors are shown a steel box where surgical equipment was placed before being sterilized.

Bust of Dr. Bethune in front of Shanxi Bethune Hospital in Taiyuan.

Tang Jinhui, the Party Secretary of Shanxi Bethune Hospital in Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi Province, notes that he and his colleagues are proud that their hospital is named after Dr. Norman Bethune. The name reminds the staff, local visitors, and people in the region that he lived and worked in Shanxi for almost two years.

Dr. Bethune treated wounded soldiers under extremely harsh conditions. He was innovative, among the first to create mobile surgical units. This was a development copied much later by the U.S. Army and came to be known as Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) units in the Korean War. He also designed a battlefield surgery tool kit that could be easily packed and transported to ensure these mobile units could function.

Dr. Bethune created a model hospital ward to demonstrate and teach modern antiseptic techniques, crucial for preventing infections and that helped significantly reduce the mortality rate among the wounded. He trained young peasants in basic medical and surgical skills. He condensed the training into intensive, short-term programs (one year for doctors, six months for nurses) to quickly get staff to the front lines.

"We revisit the influence of Bethune's spirit on China's medical sector because its value is not just about saving lives during wartime. It has deeply shaped the direction of modern medicine's evolution in China," Tang emphasized.

In the spirit of Norman Bethune, the Bethune Hospital staff continues to provide medical support to China's remote regions and is part of China's medical mission to Africa.

Bethune Remembered in Canada

Bethune's birthplace in Gravenhurst, Ontario is now a museum.

Left: Commemorative stamp honours Bethune. Centre and right: Statues of Bethune at Concordia University in Montreal and the University of Toronto where he attended medical school.

(Photos: Xinhua, Shanxi Bethune Hospital.)

Story of How Photographer Wu Yin-hsien Came to Take Photo of Dr. Norman Bethune at Work

In May, 1972, in the magazine China Reconstructs, photographer Wu Yin-hsien told the story of how he came to take the iconic photo of Dr. Norman Bethune at work in a field hospital in China in 1939.

Thirty years ago, when I first took up the camera in Shanghai, I used to photograph -- anything that was pretty -- birds, flowers, anything that met what I considered my artistic standard. Though I came from a poor family and thought well of the working people, yet I felt the workers, peasants and soldiers could not be the main subjects for photographic art. Sometimes by chance I did take some pictures of rural scenes and the life of the poor. But this was chiefly because they caught my fancy; I sought only after beauty of form, effects in light and shadows. I was not clear whom photographic art should serve.

In 1938, the year after the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, I went to Yan'an. The broad vistas of the liberated areas opened my eyes, and a change began to take place in the way I thought and felt and my approach to photographic art.

Not long after I reached Yan'an I joined the film team of the General Political Department of the Eighth Route Army, which was led by the Chinese Communist Party. In 1939 I went with the film team into the revolutionary base areas and shot the long documentary Yan'an and the Eighth Route Army. During that period, I lived with the workers, peasants and soldiers. Hence the film reflected rather well the militant spirit of the army and people – their unity in the common effort to resist Japanese aggression, and the way the people's leaders shared the hardships with the army and the people.

It was during this period that I took my photo of Doctor Norman Bethune at work. If I had looked at that scene with the feeling and preferences I had had in Shanghai, I would perhaps have considered the subject a far cry from my "artistic standard." But when I went deep into the actualities of life's struggles, I thought differently. I learned that Dr. Bethune had made light of travelling thousands of miles to China to help our country. And when I saw him wearing straw sandals and a white apron around his waist, bending over the crude "operating table," all his attention concentrated on saving the wounded, I was so moved by his proletarian internationalism that I could not but record it with my camera.

I think the photographer must know and understand his subject before he can create a good picture. I lived with Dr. Bethune for two months at the Shansi-Chahar-Hopei front. Once he spent three days and three nights without rest, operating on wounded soldiers. When the wounded were out of danger, he learned that another comrade was hurt at the front. He threw his bag over his shoulder and went 20 kilometres to give treatment. His operating room was an old temple, and at first, he did not even have surgical instruments. With the help of a blacksmith, he had scissors and scalpels forged, and with the carpenter he made splints, apparatus for applying traction and a portable "operating theatre" that fitted over the backs of two donkeys. Within a few months he had treated more than 500 wounded back to health. Comrade Bethune's "great sense of responsibility in his work and his great warm-heartedness towards all comrades and the people"[1] will always be remembered.

Note

1. From Chairman Mao's article In Memory of Norman Bethune.

Wounds

– Excerpt from an essay by Dr. Norman Bethune, 1939 –

...What is the cause of this cruelty, this stupidity? A million workmen come from Japan to kill or mutilate a million Chinese workmen. Why should the Japanese worker attack his brother worker, who is forced merely to defend himself. Will the Japanese worker benefit by the death of the Chinese? No, how can he gain? Then, in God's name, who will gain? Who is responsible for sending these Japanese workmen on this murderous mission? Who will profit from it? How was it possible to persuade the Japanese workmen to attack the Chinese workman -- his brother in poverty; his companion in misery?

Is it possible that a few rich men, a small class of men, have persuaded a million men to attack, and attempt to destroy, another million men as poor as they? So that these rich may be richer still? Terrible thought! How did they persuade these poor men to come to China? By telling them the truth? No, they would never have come if they had known the truth. Did they dare to tell these workmen that the rich only wanted cheaper raw materials, more markets and more profit? No, they told them that this brutal war was "The Destiny of the Race," it was for the "Glory of the Emperor," it was for the "Honour of the State," it was for their "King and Country."

False. False as hell!

The agents of a criminal war of aggression, such as this, must be looked for like the agents of other crimes, such as murder, among those who are likely to benefit from those crimes. Will the 80,000,000 workers of Japan, the poor farmers, the unemployed industrial workers -- will they gain? In the entire history of the wars of aggression, from the conquest of Mexico by Spain, the capture of India by England, the rape of Ethiopia by Italy, have the workers of those "victorious" countries ever been known to benefit? No, these never benefit by such wars. Does the Japanese workman benefit by the natural resources of even his own country, by the gold, the silver, the iron, the coal, the oil? Long ago he ceased to possess that natural wealth. It belongs to the rich, the ruling class. The millions who work those mines live in poverty. So how is he likely to benefit by the armed robbery of the gold, silver, iron, coal and oil from China? Will not the rich owners of the one retain for their own profit the wealth of the other? Have they not always done so?

It would seem inescapable that the militarists and the capitalists of Japan are the only class likely to gain by this mass murder, this authorized madness, this sanctified butchery. That ruling class, the true state, stands accused.

Are wars of aggression, wars for the conquest of colonies, then, just big business? Yes, it would seem so, however much the perpetrators of such national crimes seek to hide their true purpose under banners of high-sounding abstractions and ideals. They make war to capture markets by murder; raw materials by rape. They find it cheaper to steal than to exchange; easier to butcher than to buy. This is the secret of war. This is the secret of all wars. Profit. Business. Profit. Blood money.

Behind all stands that terrible, implacable God of Business and Blood, whose name is Profit. Money, like an insatiable Moloch, demands its interest, its return, and will stop at nothing, not even the murder of millions, to satisfy its greed. Behind the army stand the militarists. Behind the militarists stand finance capital and the capitalist. Brothers in blood; companions in crime.

What do these enemies of the human race look like? Do they wear on their foreheads a sign so that they may be shunned and condemned as criminals? No. On the contrary. They are the respectable ones. They are honoured. They call themselves, and are called, gentlemen. What a travesty on the name, Gentlemen! They are the pillars of the state, of the church, of society. They support private and public charity out of the excess of their wealth. They endow institutions. In their private lives they are kind and considerate. They obey the law, their law, the law of property. But there is one sign by which these gentle gunmen can be told. Threaten a reduction on the profit of their money and the beast in them awakes with a snarl. They become ruthless as savages, brutal as madmen, remorseless as executioners. Such men as these must perish if the human race is to continue. There can be no permanent peace in the world while they live. Such an organization of human society as permits them to exist must be abolished.

These men make the wounds.

Bethune in China

Various scenes from Bethune's work to assist the Chinese people's fight against Japanese aggression.

Bethune established a model hospital at Sungyen Kou -- its opening is shown in the first row.
Bottom row: medical equipment made from materials on hand.

Unacceptable U.S.-Japan Military Provocations

Resolutely Oppose U.S.-Japan Military Provocations Against China as It Celebrates 80th Anniversary of Victory Over Japan

– Nick Lin –

As China celebrates the 80th anniversary of the Chinese people's victory over Japan in World War II and the victory of the worldwide anti-fascist war, provocative U.S.-led war drills targeting China are taking place in the Asia-Pacific region. Disgracefully, the Japanese military is playing a prominent role. In addition, troops from more than a dozen countries are involved either directly or as observers including Canada, the Republic of Korea, Indonesia, Australia, Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands.

On August 25, the U.S. began leading the Pacific Vanguard joint maritime drills out of Guam, with participation from Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and the Republic of Korea.

Since 2021, Japan has stepped up its role as the U.S.'s leading ally in the Indo-Pacific, particularly since the April 2021 announcement of the "Japan-U.S. Global Partnership for a New Era" which included a policy alignment with the U.S. regarding the Taiwan Strait and supporting Taiwan's "sovereignty" against China. In September 2024, a destroyer from the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) conducted Japan's first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait, a direct provocation against China.

The danger posed by these war exercises is well-known by the peoples of the entire Indo-Pacific region with the participation of Japan considered a particularly terrible affront to all the peoples who faced the brutal Japanese aggression during World War II. Nobody is confused about the aggressive aim of these exercises conducted along with the armed forces of the U.S./NATO countries and allies.

Contrary to the wishes of the peoples of the Indo-Pacific region for peace, Rear Admiral Natsui Takashi of the misnamed JMSDF, falsely claimed that war games serve peace and their aim is to guarantee a "free and open Indo-Pacific." He said: "Pacific Vanguard is a valuable opportunity for us to demonstrate our high-end tactical capabilities. A free and open Indo-Pacific promotes the prosperous socio-economic activity that has benefited the region. Our deepening partnership with the Republic of Korea Navy, Royal Australian Navy and U.S. Navy in Guam symbolizes this stability and shared deterrence that upholds peace in the Indo-Pacific." These war games are part of U.S. promotion of "peace through strength," hiding that such war preparations are in fact a crime against the peace.

Also on August 25, the U.S.-Indonesia Super Garuda Shield exercises led by the U.S. and Indonesian militaries began in and around the Indonesia archipelago involving 6,500 soldiers from 13 countries. It goes until September 4.

On August 30, 2025, the Chinese Foreign Ministry denounced the U.S. for deploying the Typhon mid-range missile system in Asian countries and stated: "We urge Japan to take a hard look at its history of aggression, follow the path of peaceful development, act prudently in military and security areas, and refrain from further losing the trust of its Asian neighbours and the international community."

From September 11-25, the U.S.-Japan military war games Resolute Dragon will take place across Japan and Okinawa involving 1,900 U.S. Marines and 12,300 Japanese troops. For the first time, the U.S. Typhon mid-range missile system will be deployed as part of the war exercise, near Hiroshima. According to the U.S. military, Resolute Dragon "highlights the importance of interoperability and our shared dedication to peace, security, and a free and open Indo-Pacific." Other missiles systems are also being deployed in Japanese islands near Taiwan. "Interoperability" for the U.S. means using these war drills to impose U.S. command over the various military forces.

Japan has yet to acknowledge the brutality and scale of its crimes in the Second World War, let alone atone or make amends for crimes against the peoples of China, Korea, Myanmar, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and other countries. Contrary to Japan's constitution, which forbids use of the military for aggressive purposes, Japan is now rapidly rearming as part of the U.S.-Japan Military Alliance. Japan has significantly increased its military budget and has plans to purchase some 400 Tomahawk missiles and other weapons from the U.S., against the opposition of the peace-loving Japanese people.

The people of Japan yearly condemn and demand Never Again! on the anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing. They regularly demonstrate to demand removal of all U.S. bases, troops, and ships. This is their contribution to peace and security, not the war games.

The U.S. took control over Japan after 1945 and first of all suppressed the Japanese people's striving for self-determination and peace led by the Communist Party of Japan and a broad workers' and social movement. The U.S. put former war criminals in power to rule over the people and jailed and persecuted anyone who stood up to the U.S. occupation.

The people of Japan, as part of blocking Japanese militarism after the war, put into their constitution Article 9. It forbids Japan from going to war and for use of the military for aggressive, offensive purposes. The U.S. took advantage of this constitutional process to provide loans for Japanese industry and other concessions. The aim was to recruit Japan as a partner in the Anglo-American Cold War campaign against the Soviet Union, China, and others. The just claims of the peoples of China and other Asian peoples for compensation and reparations were blocked by the U.S.

The San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1952 with Japan was signed without the participation of the People's Republic of China, the Soviet Union, Korea, and other countries which had suffered under Japanese militarism. Against the demand of the peoples of the region, the treaty paved the way for Japan to revive its former militarism, through rearming its military and today its strategic alliance with the U.S. and its "Indo-Pacific Strategy." With U.S. backing, Japan continues to refuse to take full responsibility for its atrocities committed in WWII.

(With files from Government of China, Stars and Stripes.)

For Your Information

The Rape of Nanjing

Posted below is an item published by the BBC on April 11, 2005 recounting the atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army known as the Rape of Nanjing.

Between December 1937 and March 1938 one of the worst massacres in modern times took place. Japanese troops captured the Chinese city of Nanjing and embarked on a campaign of murder, rape and looting.

Based on estimates made by historians and charity organisations in the city at the time, between 250,000 and 300,000 people were killed, many of them women and children.

The number of women raped was said by Westerners who were there to be 20,000, and there were widespread accounts of civilians being hacked to death.

Yet many Japanese officials and historians deny there was a massacre on such a scale.

They admit that deaths and rapes did occur, but say they were on a much smaller scale than reported. And in any case, they argue, these things happen in times of war.

The Sino-Japanese Wars

In 1931, Japan invaded Chinese Manchuria following a bombing incident at a railway controlled by Japanese interests.

The Chinese troops were no match for their opponents and Japan ended up in control of great swathes of Chinese territory.

The following years saw Japan consolidate its hold, while China suffered civil war between communists and the nationalists of the Kuomintang. The latter were led by General Chiang Kai-shek, whose capital was at Nanjing.

Many Japanese, particularly some elements of the army, wanted to increase their influence and in July 1937, a skirmish between Chinese and Japanese troops escalated into full-scale war.

The Japanese again had initial success, but then there was a period of successful Chinese defence before the Japanese broke through at Shanghai and swiftly moved on to Nanjing.

Chiang Kai-shek's troops had already left the city and the Japanese army occupied it without difficulty.

'One of the Great Atrocities of Modern Times'

At the time, the Japanese army did not have a reputation for brutality.

In the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, the Japanese commanders had behaved with great courtesy towards their defeated opponents, but this was very different.

Japanese papers reported competitions among junior officers to kill the most Chinese.

One Japanese newspaper correspondent saw lines of Chinese being taken for execution on the banks of the Yangtze River, where he saw piles of burned corpses.

Photographs from the time, now part of an exhibition in the city, show Japanese soldiers standing, smiling, among heaps of dead bodies.

Tillman Durdin of the New York Times reported the early stages of the massacre before being forced to leave.

He later wrote: "I was 29 and it was my first big story for the New York Times. So I drove down to the waterfront in my car. And to get to the gate I had to just climb over masses of bodies accumulated there."

"The car just had to drive over these dead bodies. And the scene on the river front, as I waited for the launch... was of a group of smoking, chattering Japanese officers overseeing the massacring of a battalion of Chinese captured troops."

"They were marching about in groups of about 15, machine-gunning them."

As he departed, he saw 200 men being executed in 10 minutes to the apparent enjoyment of Japanese military spectators.

He concluded that the rape of Nanjing was "one of the great atrocities of modern times".

'The Memories Cannot Be Erased'

A Christian missionary, John Magee, described Japanese soldiers as killing not only "every prisoner they could find but also a vast number of ordinary citizens of all ages."

"Many of them were shot down like the hunting of rabbits in the streets," he said.

After what he described as a week of murder and rape, the Rev. Magee joined other Westerners in trying to set up an international safety zone.

Another who tried to help was an American woman, Minnie Vautrin, who kept a diary which has been likened to that of Anne Frank.

Her entry for 16 December reads: "There probably is no crime that has not been committed in this city today. Thirty girls were taken from the language school [where she worked] last night, and today I have heard scores of heartbreaking stories of girls who were taken from their homes last night -- one of the girls was but 12 years old."

Later, she wrote: "How many thousands were mowed down by guns or bayoneted we shall probably never know. For in many cases oil was thrown over their bodies and then they were burned."

"Charred bodies tell the tales of some of these tragedies. The events of the following ten days are growing dim. But there are certain of them that lifetime will not erase from my memory and the memories of those who have been in Nanjing through this period."

Minnie Vautrin suffered a nervous breakdown in 1940 and returned to the US. She committed suicide in 1941.

Also horrified at what he saw was John Rabe, a German who was head of the local Nazi party.

He became leader of the international safety zone and recorded what he saw, some of it on film, but this was banned by the Nazis when he returned to Germany.

He wrote about rape and other brutalities which occurred even in the middle of the supposedly protected area.

Confession and Denial

After the Second World War was over, one of the Japanese soldiers who was in Nanjing spoke about what he had seen.

Azuma Shiro recalled one episode: "There were about 37 old men, old women and children. We captured them and gathered them in a square."

"There was a woman holding a child on her right arm... and another one on her left."

"We stabbed and killed them, all three -- like potatoes on a skewer. I thought then, it's been only one month since I left home... and 30 days later I was killing people without remorse."

Mr. Shiro suffered for his confession: "When there was a war exhibition in Kyoto, I testified. The first person who criticized me was a lady in Tokyo. She said I was damaging those who died in the war."

"She called me incessantly for three or four days. More and more letters came and the attack became so severe... that the police had to provide me with protection."

Such testimony, however, has been discounted at the highest levels in Japan.

Former Justice Minister Shigeto Nagano denied that the massacre had occurred, claiming it was a Chinese fabrication.

Professor Ienaga Saburo spent many years fighting the Japanese government in the courts with only limited success for not allowing true accounts of Japanese war atrocities to be given in school textbooks.

There is also opposition to the idea among ordinary Japanese people. A film called Don't Cry Nanjing was made by Chinese and Hong Kong film-makers in 1995 but it was several years before it was shown in Japan.

War of Resistance Against Japanese Imperialism (1937-1945)

– Israel Epstein –

TML is posting below Chapter 16 of the book From Opium to Liberation, by Israel Epstein, first published in 1956. It recounts China's heroic efforts to check the Japanese imperialists and liberate China which was a great contribution to the victory over fascism in World War II.

[...] On July 7, 1937, the Japanese army launched its attack on Lukouchiao (Marco Polo Bridge). After some days of fierce fighting, it occupied nearby Peking. On August 13, Japanese naval and land forces began a combined assault on Shanghai, where Chinese troops held them off for three months.

Breaking with the tradition of semi-colonial domination of China, Tokyo now tried to reduce China to a complete colony. The Chinese people were faced with the biggest crisis in their history.

Within China, the civil war ceased and the Kuomintang and Communist Party reached an agreement. The Red Army received the designation of the New Fourth and Eighth Route Armies. In the revolutionary bases under its leadership, the Communist Party brought other united front groups into participation in local councils and governments. The policy of confiscating landlord estates for the benefit of the peasantry was changed to one of reducing rents and interest. The eight-year war for national survival, in which all armies, parties and groups were tested, now began.

In the first stage of the hostilities, i.e. until the fall of Hankow and Canton in October 1938, the Kuomintang put up a certain amount of resistance, and some of the troops under its command fought tenaciously and well. But even at this period, Chiang's tactics were passive, opportunist and treacherous.

Internally, he attempted the impossible task of facing the enemy with only one part of his armies, keeping the rest in reserve against the people and jealously preventing every form of popular organization and initiative in the struggle. And even in this early phase he entered into negotiations with the Japanese on two occasions. The first was through the Germans, on the eve of Japan's occupation of his capital, Nanking, in 1937. The second was in 1938, through his own emissaries.

Internationally, Chiang kept looking over his shoulder at the League of Nations and his Anglo-American masters, hoping that they would pull him out of the mess. He did not use the closer relations the Soviet Union established with his government, and the aid it gave to China, as a means of strengthening China's own resistance. Instead he hoped to embroil the U.S.S.R. itself in a war with Japan, enabling him to bargain once more with the foe and even to switch sides.

But even when the Chinese people united to fight for survival, and acknowledged him as head of state, Chiang preserved the outlook he had acquired in his youth as a commodity-exchange speculator in Shanghai. He thought and acted only in the narrow interests of his clique. While the soldiers and people fought and died for their country, he remained a servant and stooge of foreign interests and policies. The most striking expression of this is that, for four and a half years after Japanese attack on China in 1937, Chiang did not declare war on Japan. But it took him only two days to do so after Japan attacked the United States and Britain in December 1941.

From early 1939 onwards, Chiang did practically no fighting against the Japanese. He preferred to let them concentrate their forces against the people's armies led by the Communist Party, which operated mainly in the enemy's rear. In the meantime he himself renewed anti-Communist attacks and provocations.

These internal manoeuvres had their counterpart in Chiang's foreign policy. After the outbreak of the European war brought temporary successes to the Axis, he proved that he was just as ready to double-cross Britain and America, if need be, as he was to betray his own people. Following the fall of France, he resumed direct secret touch on the highest level with Japan. At the height of the war, Tokyo's Foreign Minister Matsuoka spoke to his Nazi counterpart, Von Ribbentropp, of "Chiang Kai-shek, with whom he was in personal contact, who knew him and trusted him".[1]

After Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Kuomintang planned a large-scale resumption of civil war. The signal for the all-out attack on the areas led by the Communist Party was to be the Nazi capture of Moscow. Afterwards, some of the leading elements of the Kuomintang intended to adhere to the Axis. But like so many of the dreams of reactionaries throughout the world, this one was punctured, along with Hitler's offensive, by the heroic efforts of the Soviet people and army. The whole episode demonstrated once more how closely the fortunes of the socialist state were bound up with the interests of the Chinese people as of all others.

When the United States entered the war in December 1941, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, Chiang declared war on Japan and the other Axis powers. Now the Kuomintang plan was to sit tight until it was rescued both from Japanese appetites and from its own people by America, which it regarded as invincible. But in 1942-43 Japan gained a series of big victories over the Anglo-American forces in the Pacific. Chiang Kai-shek's government at once resumed undercover contact with Tokyo, using open traitors as well as the Nazi Walter Stennes. At one point it actually allowed an important Japanese secret service official, Kuroda, to reside under its protection in China's wartime capital, Chungking.

In this phase, Chiang Kai-shek ordered 57 of his generals to go over to the Japanese with 500,000 troops so that, paid and equipped by Japan, they could fight against the Communist-led armies in North and Central China. His reckoning was simple. If the Axis won, these troops would form a bridge for his own change of sides. If the Allies won, they would be useful too. Having returned, under the Japanese flag, to occupied areas from which the regular Kuomintang armies had been driven, they would be in ideal positions for the subsequent civil war.

In the next phase, 1944-45, the naval and air power of Japan waned. Her shipping lines became powerless against American attacks. Her land forces, therefore, violated the unwritten truce in the Kuomintang areas. They attacked them again, in order to complete a line of communications by rail from Manchuria to the Indo-China border.

Chiang put up no defence. Instead he used all the arms he had obtained from the United States, and his crack units trained by American officers, to blockade and in some cases attack areas held by the people's forces. To the Japanese fronts he sent not fighting troops but negotiators.

Every one of these facts has since been thoroughly documented, exposed and proved. Many, indeed, were made known at the time, not only by indignant Chinese patriots but also by some American officers and diplomats, among- them General Stilwell,[2] supreme commander of the U.S. forces in China until removed in 1944. These men, though they too wanted to consolidate wartime and post-war U.S. dominance in China, wanted more active struggle against the Axis. Many of them were themselves unaware of the full perfidy of the "grand strategy" of Chiang-Japanese-American collaboration against the Chinese people, already being prepared for the post-war years. Some resisted it when it came into the open, and later paid the penalty by being hounded out of American official life or, like Stilwell himself, to premature death.

But the real history of China and the Far East was not being made by Chiang, the Japanese or the American politicians and generals. The future was being forged by the Chinese people and their revolutionary leadership. In these same years, they grew so much in strength, experience and political foresight, that they could no longer be defeated or manoeuvred out of the fruits of their struggle as they had been in 1927.

While the ruling Kuomintang clique was betraying not only the nation as a whole but the soldiers in its own armies, and amassing fabulous wealth by robbing the people in its own areas, the forces led by the Communist Party held high the banner of the national liberation war. In the fire of ceaseless battles against the invaders, they multiplied in numbers and influence. The small northwestern town of Yan'an, where Mao Tse-tung and the Communist Party Central Committee were quartered, became the lodestar for all that was healthy, forward-looking and patriotic in China. Here was the mighty smithy in which the future leaders of the whole country were shaped and educated.

During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Imperialism, the Communist Party came to be recognized, by all strata of Chinese society in which love of the homeland was not dead, as the. Party of the Nation. Its membership grew from some 40,000 in 1937 to 1,200,000 in 1945.

The widespread mobile and guerilla warfare, waged in every corner of the nominally Japanese-occupied .areas under the Party's guidance, awoke hundreds of millions to hope, confidence and decisive action. It produced innumerable talented military and political leaders from the ranks of the masses -- creating an armed force of unprecedented proportions, which was truly "the Fist of the People." At the end of the heroic Long March in 1935, the Chinese Red Army had been reduced to only 30,000 men. By 1945 the people's army had grown, in constant battles, to 910,000 with more than 2,500,000 armed auxiliaries in the people's militia.

Vast liberated areas were formed in all places where the people's forces wrested back territory from the Japanese invaders, from the frozen north to the sub-tropical southern island of Hainan. The leadership in these areas was exercised by the party of the Chinese working class. The peasants, who formed the overwhelming majority of their population, gained not only full political rights but great economic amelioration in the shape of sharp reductions in rents and interests (to preserve the anti-Japanese unity of all possible sections of the population, redistribution of land was not then undertaken). Patriotic elements of all classes were represented in their administration under which political, economic and cultural policy alike served the needs of the people and the national war.

In 1937, the Communist Party had only one revolutionary base, in a poor and drought-stricken corner of the Northwest, with a population of 1,500,000. By April 1945, five months before Japan's surrender, the Liberated Areas contained 95 million people with their own well-organized local administration. These areas were the seedbed, and prototype of the People's Republic of China today.

After the first two years of the eight-year war, the Kuomintang "front" was dormant. The Liberated Areas bore the brunt of constant and bitter armed struggle with over 60 per cent of all the Japanese troops in China. They also faced 95 per cent of the Chinese quisling troops under Japanese command (including those who had gone over to the enemy on Chiang Kai-shek's orders).

Throughout this time, the Kuomintang subjected the Liberated Areas to military and economic embargo. It cut them off from all sources of supply in its own rear areas. It gave them no share of the supplies that came in from America and the Soviet Union for the purpose of the anti-Japanese war. Instead, it diverted these supplies to equip the forces blockading the Liberated Areas, so that these troops became the best-equipped in the whole Kuomintang army. It also directly attacked the people's forces on many occasions. The most notorious was the treacherous ambushing and massacre of the headquarters column of the Communist-led New Fourth Army early in 1941.

The popular forces fought the immeasurably better-armed Japanese by constant guerilla and mobile actions. They refrained from attacking the large and well-entrenched enemy garrisons in the cities, by frustrating every enemy attempt to clamp control on the countryside. At the same time the quisling forces, composed largely of drafted Chinese peasants, were defeated or neutralized by a variety of methods: military and political. Altogether, in the course of the war, over 960,000 casualties were inflicted on .the enemy by the Eighth Route and New Fourth Armies, which also captured very large amounts of equipment.

Toward the Kuomintang, a flexible policy of "unity and struggle" was adopted. Militarily, its attacks were always beaten back, "tit for tat," but every care was taken to wage such conflicts "with a just reason, with advantage and with restraint," and not to allow clashes to develop into a large-scale civil war which would play into the hands of the Japanese and the extreme reactionaries. Politically, the Communist Party exposed each Kuomintang provocation to the people of the entire country, calling on them to consolidate and enforce the anti-Japanese united front. It also took care to make the facts known to democratic opinion abroad.

No military action was taken to break the Kuomintang's economic blockade. Instead, the Liberated Areas gave a striking demonstration of the way all the resources of the nation should and could have been mobilized. They successfully enlisted the people of the rural hinterland in an organized upsurge of agriculture and small-scale (largely handicraft) industrial production. On the base of the village and small-town economy alone (the Liberated Areas had no cities or substantial towns at the time), they created not only the resources for war but also a better-fed, better-dressed army and population than could be seen in the Kuomintang areas -- which had far more resources and enjoyed the benefits of foreign aid. The people's armies, when not actually fighting, themselves produced a large part of their own sustenance, minimizing the burden on the peasants.

At the same time, the Liberated Areas also became the cultural centre of the nation, radiating optimism and confidence. In all these ways they not only consolidated their military and economic strength but won the admiration of ever greater numbers of the Chinese people, including those in the Japanese-occupied and Chiang Kai-shek-controlled regions, where the Communist Party was underground or in semi-legality and stringent censorship sought to suppress news of its achievements.

The Liberated Areas were a magnet of attraction not only for the people of China. Here the leader of the Japanese Communist Party, Sanzo Nosaka, led a heroic group of his compatriots, including many former prisoners of war, in struggle against the enemy that was theirs as well as China's -- the Japanese imperialists. Here one met Korean, Vietnamese, Indonesian and other patriots. The young Indian physician Dwarkanath Kotnis died while serving the wounded in the front lines. The American revolutionary writer Agnes Smedley marched with the Eighth Route and New Fourth Armies to gather material that aroused so many of her own countrymen to a realization of the world-wide glory and significance of the struggle of the common people of China. Here the Canadian surgeon and Marxist-Leninist, Dr. Norman Bethune sacrificed his life to be commemorated by Mao Tse-tung as a model of proletarian internationalism for all to learn from.[3] Yenan was a wellspring of the fighting friendship of the Chinese and foreign peoples against all alliances of Chinese and foreign reactionaries.

Such were the results of the two lines of action, that of the Kuomintang on the one hand and that of the Communist Party on the other, in the war against Japan. One led to disintegration, reaction and constant defeats. The other, the line of people's war, laid the groundwork for the victory of the Chinese people over Japanese imperialism. More than this, it provided the foundation for the subsequent triumph of the century-old anti-feudal, anti-imperialist revolution in China against all foreign and domestic foes, a mighty victory for all the peoples of the world.

Now let us look at certain phases of the international environment in which the Sino-Japanese War took place.

President Roosevelt of the United States, as early as 1937, had called for "quarantine of the aggressors" and expressed sympathy for their victims. But in fact, U.S. monopolies had stepped up sales of oil, scrap iron and other military material to Japan, which could not have waged war without them. In 1938, such war supplies constituted 67 per cent of the total U.S. exports to Japan. In 1939, the proportion rose to 70 per cent. Despite much anti-Japanese talk, Washington began to take economic action against the aggressor only in 1941. In other words, it acted only when it became clear that Japan would not confine herself to attacking China or fight the Soviet Union, but that she had decided on "southward" advance against U.S. and British spheres of power in Asia. Even after this, however, U.S. diplomats were still trying to negotiate a "Far Eastern Munich". In this deal, they offered to let Japan keep her conquests in Northeast China (Manchuria), which is nearest the Soviet Union, if she did not impinge too much on their interests elsewhere. The talks were actually in progress when Japan attacked in Hawaii.

The inter-imperialist struggle between the United States and Japan was very real and sharp. But the United States government, right up to the moment of actual hostilities, was trying to settle it at the expense of China and the Soviet Union, hoping later to subordinate the new Japanese empire economically by the well-tested means of the dollar.

After Pearl Harbour, the tactics of ruling groups in the United States had of course to change. Now they were waging war with China as an ally. But their policy gradually emerged as an effort to enmesh this ally in such a way as to make it a virtual U.S. colony, to the permanent exclusion not only of the national aspirations of the Chinese people but also of rival imperialist influences. China was flooded with American officers, officials and advisers, military, economic and educational. These scolded the Kuomintang regime for its hopeless corruption and inefficiency, and proceeded to install American commanders and comptrollers, and the most "trusted" pro-American Chinese officials, in every department. of military and civil life.

In occasionally urging Chiang Kai-shek to negotiate with the Communist Party instead of plunging into civil strife while the war with Japan was still on, the United States also had its own calculations. In these the interests of the war against Japan held a major place only while its issue still hung in the balance. By 1944, the whole emphasis was on "saving the Kuomintang from itself," on holding it back from prematurely launching civil war until it could be groomed into a shape in which it would stand a chance, after the war, of destroying the people's revolution.

The United States government advanced itself as a mediator between the two parties. In doing so, it pursued the vain hope that it could "negotiate" the anti-imperialist force represented by the Liberated Areas and the People's Army out of existence. It intended to use this cheap way of cancelling the most solid gains made by the Chinese people in a hundred years of bitter experience and effort, the precious guarantee of the future which they had built and cemented with their blood. In addition it tried to employ its "neutral" position for military and political espionage in the Liberated Areas.

Great Britain, in the years 1937-41, was concerned chiefly with buying off Japan. She turned over to the Japanese occupying forces in China's maritime ports the revenues of the Chinese Customs, which she had long controlled. In North China, the British-dominated Kailan Mining Administration happily supplied the invaders with coal. In March 1938 it called on Japanese troops to suppress a strike of Chinese miners, which was done with great bloodshed.[4] On June 27, 1938, the British government offered to mediate between China and Japan. This was done, in the words of a British writer,[5] "without the least suggestion that one side might be more responsible than the other for the outbreak of the war." A Japanese victory was regarded as inevitable in London and on November 1, 1938, Prime Minister Chamberlain declared complacently, says the same author, "that he did not believe that, when the Sino-Japanese war was concluded, the new capital to develop China could be supplied by Japan alone; China could not be reconstructed without some help from Britain." In the middle of 1939, in negotiations between its Ambassador in Tokyo Sir Robert Craigie and Japanese Foreign Minister Arita, the British government formally agreed that, in its extraterritorial concession in Tientsin, the Japanese forces would have the right "to suppress or remove any such acts or causes as will obstruct them or benefit their enemy". Dutifully, it handed over for execution a number of Chinese engaged in patriotic resistance.

Not only did Britain seek an accommodation with the Japanese invaders at China's expense but she again resorted, during this period, to her old habit of utilizing China's misfortunes to grab territory. In 1936, when the massive Japanese attack on China was obviously coming, the arbitrarily-drawn "McMahon line" inside Tibet, never recognized by any Chinese government, was first entered on an official British map as a "border" rather than a mere claim.[6] Even in the succeeding war years when Britain was fighting against Japan as China's ally, she moved her Indian troops into one point after another. In May 1944, to cite an instance, one such encroachment was protested by the Tibetan local authorities in Lhasa. Though then themselves enmeshed in British influence, they could not swallow the "McMahon line" any more than could the central government of China. In December, the British tried to overcome Lhasa's objections by proposing another "line," south of Tawang, which was also refused. In April 1945, shortly before the war's end, the Tibetans again protested against the intrusion of British-Indian soldiers at Walong. During the same period, China's land borders were subjected to trespass in other parts of Tibet, in the Aksai Chin region of Sinkiang province, and from the direction of Burma.

In 1940, London acceded to Japanese pressure to close the Burma Road, the only safe channel through which China was able to receive supplies from the West, and offered its services in arranging a Sino-Japanese "settlement."

Following the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941, Britain began gradually to concentrate on a long-range policy of saving her positions in China and the rest of East Asia, both from the national liberation movements and from increasing American encroachment.

The policy of the Soviet Union was to aid all countries attacked by Fascist aggression, regardless of social system or form of government. Immediately after the Japanese invasion in 1937, the U.S.S.R. signed a non-aggression pact with China, extended credits to her and began to supply her with military and other materials across the northwestern border. A Soviet volunteer air group, which was constantly kept up to strength, played a great role in knocking out Japanese air raiders over Nanking, Hankow and other cities. Even the American air general Chennault, a Chiang Kai-shek man all through, was compelled to admit in a book written in 1949 that, "From the outbreak of the war in the summer of 1937 to the end of 1942 the bulk of China's foreign aid was Russian."[7]

The violently anti-Communist and anti-Soviet Madame Chiang Kai-shek, wartime chief of the Kuomintang's Aeronautical Commission, shamed the United States with the contrast between its actions and those of the U.S.S.R. She wrote in a U.S. mass-circulation magazine:

Eighty per cent of Japan's war supplies come from America ... and 95 per cent of the aviation gasoline which was used by Japan in her ruthless bombing was American.

Throughout the first three years of resistance Soviet Russia extended to China for the actual purchase of war supplies and other necessities, credits several times larger than the credits given by either Great Britain or America. ...

Furthermore, at the meetings of the League of Nations it was Russia who took an uncompromising stand in support of China's appeal that active measures should be adopted to brand Japan as the aggressor ... when Japan protested that the aid extended to China by Russia was a breach of neutrality, Russia did not wilt, or surrender, or compromise, but continued to send supplies. ...

I may point out that Russian help has been unconditional throughout.[8]

On two occasions, largely in retaliation for this help, Japan attacked the territory of the Soviet Union and its ally the Mongolian People's Republic. Both times, at Lake Khasan (Changkufeng), not far from Vladivostok in 1937 and at Khalkhin-Gol in Mongolia in 1939, Japan sustained major defeats.[9] The Khalkhin-Gol battles alone cost her 660 planes, large numbers of tanks and no less than 25,000 men killed. These unflinching rebuffs were the reason Japan did not take kindly to western promptings that she satisfy her ambitions by an incursion into Siberia, preferring to try her luck along what she considered the "line of least resistance" in the South Pacific.

Finally, after breaking the back of the Hitler aggressors in 1941-45, the Soviet Union honoured its engagements to the other Allies and struck a swift and powerful lightning blow at Japan's biggest concentration of land forces in Manchuria, making certain that the Tokyo militarists could no longer continue the war from Chinese soil and plunging them into final defeat. Participating in that blow were the forces of the Mongolian People's Republic.

The "decisive role of the atom-bomb" is a myth manufactured in Washington for political ends, and strenuously propagated throughout the world after the event. In the military judgment of the anti-Soviet U.S. air force general Chennault, expressed on the day of Japan's surrender, "Russia's entry into the Japanese war was the decisive factor in speeding its end, even if no atomic bombs had been dropped."[10] And two American policy analysts, one of whom later became Secretary of the Air Force in the government of President Truman, later revealed frankly that the decision to use the inhuman weapon was a political one:

Why then did we drop it? Or assuming that the use of the bomb was justified, why did we not demonstrate its power in a test under the auspices of the United Nations on the basis of which an ultimatum would be issued to Japan?

No, any test would have been impossible if the purpose was to knock Japan out before Russia came in or at least before Russia could make anything but a token participation prior to a Japanese collapse.[11]

The atom-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not, as then represented, a necessary weapon to defeat the Japanese militarists and conclude the war against Fascism.

The atomic weapon was unleashed to overawe the peoples with U.S. power and, in international relations, to make sure that the Soviet Union would have no voice in the post-war settlement in Japan. This was done at a time when, as testified by its architect, U.S. Under-Secretary of State Joseph Grew, the policy of the United States was already to preserve the Japanese emperor on his throne, and to forestall a revolution in that country.

Israel Epstein was born in Warsaw in 1915 to a Jewish communist family. He and his parents moved to China when he was 15, to escape discrimination they faced in Europe. Epstein would come to prominence as a journalist, and was a collaborator with fellow author Edgar Snow. He eventually became editor of China Today and also joined the Communist Party of China. He died in 2005.

Notes

1. Document Aufz. RAM 1941, March 29, 1941 of the German Foreign Ministry, captured and published by the U.S. government.

2. Cf. The Stilwell Papers, edited by T.H. White, New York, 1948.

3. Mao Tse-tung, In Memory of Dr. Bethune (1939), Selected Works, Vol. III.

4. The annual report of the Kailan Mines, printed in the London Times of December 30, 1938, expressed appreciation of "a better understanding with the Japanese authorities . . . who are showing every disposition to protect the Administration and assist in the production and transport of Kaiping coal". In the same year, the dividend paid to shareholders in the mines was 71/2 per cent as against 5 per cent in the year preceding, and, mainly to meet Japanese military purchases, new shafts with a capacity of 1 million tons a year were planned by this British concern. v. Jones, F. C., Shanghai and Tientsin, New York, 1940, p. 171.

5. Luard, Evan, Britain and China, London, 1962, pp. 45-46.

6. Except for the 1936 map referred to the majority of official survey of India maps, during the period of British rule, either showed this boundary where China said it was or described it as "undemarcated."

7. Chennault, Claire L., Way of a Fighter, New York, 1949, p. 61.

8. Liberty Magazine, New York, January 21, 1939.

9. Khalkhin-Gol, Col. S. N. Shishkin, Military Publishing House, U.S.S.R. Ministry of Defence, Moscow, 1954, p. 56.

10. New York Times, August 15, 1945.

11. Cousins, Norman and Finletter, Thomas K., Saturday Review of Literature, June 15, 1946.

Both the above quotations are cited in Military and Political Consequences of Atomic Energy, by P. M. S. Blackett, former member of the British government's Advisory Committee on Atomic Energy (London, 1948).

(Republished in TML Weekly, September 5, 2015)

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80th Anniversary of Victory in the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War