Chiang Kai-Shek by Emily Hahn

Author:Emily Hahn
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504016278
Publisher: Open Road Media

10 STILWELL VS. CHENNAULT 1941–43

Chiang now embarked on a new sort of life, heavily involved with foreigners. He held diplomatic discussions with the leaders of the United Nations, and military powwows with Western generals. In these unfamiliar circumstances he did his best to live up, more than ever, to the Confucian ideal of the gentleman. Seldom did he permit the mask to slip. Stilwell, however, was to be there when it happened.

And Chiang had a good deal to control. His emotions at the beginning of the all-in war must have been enough to flood a weaker-willed man. In spite of all the talk about the common struggle of the United Nations, Pearl Harbor was bound to mean different things to different countries. To the U.S.A. it was pure shock. To Britain it was like the pricking of a large, painful blister. To the Chinese it was relief that surpassed Britain’s. Until that last minute it had looked as if Japan would carry her point: Kurusu’s trip to Washington had scared them to death.

The practical advantages of the situation were brilliantly clear: America was in, and on China’s side. What was purely impractical, and plays no part in documentary history, nevertheless shouldn’t be ignored. Chiang had the intoxicating sensation of being justified at last. These Western people who had been so impatient of Chinese strategy, who had laughed as the Nationalist Army retreated and talked scornfully of the Japanese, were now in speedy retreat from those same islanders. In Hongkong, Singapore, and Manila foreigners were fighting for their lives—and fighting against Asiatics. If the Japanese were proud of Chiang Kai-shek for having withstood them so long and put it down to the training he had received at their hands, so Chiang was probably proud of the Japanese, much as he detested them, for putting Asia on the West’s prejudiced map. Let the foreigners handle it for a while and see if they could do any better against the Japanese than the Chinese had done. It did not look from where he was standing as if they would.

Before the end of December, America had swung into action. As our only defense in the Far East, China must be supplied with munitions and other help. The usual route from Hongkong had been cut off; the British were obviously fighting a losing battle there. From the new avalanche of supplies visualized by the strategists in Washington only the Burma Road was left, that much-contested life line. It had always been a source of trouble. It was long, difficult to keep in repair, fantastically dangerous, and too narrow to permit much volume of travel at a time.

Just before Pearl Harbor there had been formally organized in Chungking a group of American aviators who worked on volunteer status for China and the Chiangs under Colonel Claire Chennault. Chennault was instructor at the Air Force Cadet School. Some of these men had been flying in China ever since the Kuomintang first began buying American planes, having come over to demonstrate the merchandise and remained to pilot and teach.

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