CHINA'S ROLE IN WORLD WAR II This research pape

World War II began at different times for different nations. For Britain, France, Poland and Germany, it began in 1939, for Italy in 1940, for Russia in June 1941, for the United States with the Pearl Harbor attack and the German declaration of war in December 1941. For China and Japan, it began with the clash of arms on the Marco Polo Bridge near Peking in July 1937. The principal significance of the first phase of the Sino-Japan War between 1937-1945 to the broader world war is that it helped draw Japan and United States into conflict in the Pacific.

Ever since it enunciated its Open Door policy toward China at the turn of the century, the United States had supported the territorial and political integrity of China and opposed its dismemberment at first by the European colonial powers and later Japan. As Schaller points out, "during the first half of the twentieth century, an almost unimaginable chaos engulfed China," revolution, warlordism, famine, civil

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island-hopping campaign in the Pacific made Chinese air bases irrelevant. The American army and FDR more sensibly saw China as tying up huge numbers of Japanese soldiers who otherwise would be deployed against the Allies. Over one million Japanese troops were stationed in China by 1941. When then Brig. General Joseph Stilwell was sent to China as military head of Lend-Lease to China and Chief of Staff to Chiang in 1942, he was instructed by Chief of Army Staff George Marshall to do his best to build a modern Chinese army to fight the Japanese. However, Stilwell faced insuperable obstacles: (1) the immediate loss of his best supply route, over the Burma Road, which was lost to the Japanese in early 1942; the Japanese took advantage of British bumbling and the unpopularity of the British among the Burmese. Inter-allied wrangling among the Americans, the British and the Chinese bedeviled efforts in the China-Burma-India theater throughout the war, but it lessened after Vice Admiral Louis Mountbatten took over Southeast Asia Command (SEAC) in late 1943. Schaller says that "neither Chinese nor British commanders wished to sacrifice men and material for an area they considered marginal" (93). (2) antagonistic relationships betwee
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Approximate Word count = 2898
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)