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One thing which makes Chiang’s position unique among world leaders is the influence and power exercised by his wife.… Madame Chiang has been at times a decisive personality, perhaps second to none but her husband.
—EDGAR SNOW
AFTER THEY conquered Shanghai, the Japanese moved up the Yangtze River. The roads were jammed with refugees fleeing before the enemy and soldiers ordered to withdraw from the broken city. Razing everything on their way— cities, villages, and farming communities—enemy soldiers arrived in Soochow, famous for its silk industry and the main defense enclave between Shanghai and Nanking. In order to gain access to the city, the advance Japanese guards put on hoods to disguise their nationality. Once inside the walls, they plundered and burned and dragged off hundreds of women for enforced prostitution.
In September, the Japanese took Paoting, a city on the railway line between the old capital of Peiping and Hankow. Again they attacked centers of learning, burning all the schoolbooks along with the library and the laboratory equipment of the medical college in a bonfire that lasted a full week. By this point in the invasion, brutality and savagery had taken hold of the invaders. In an orgy of murder, pillage and rape, some 30,000 Japanese soldiers ravaged the city and its inhabitants. “A self-defeating ferocity accompanied them like a hyena of conquest,” said Tuchman, “growing more ravenous by what it fed on.”
A week earlier, May-ling had made a special broadcast for the United States in which she again criticized the Western nations for their silence in the face of Japanese aggression. “Japan is acting on a preconceived plan to conquer China,” she said. “Curiously, no other nation seems to care.… All treaties and structures to outlaw war and to regularize the conduct of war appear to have crumbled, and we have a reversion to the day of savages.”
Five days later, the generalissimo gave a press conference for foreign journalists. “He looked fit and smiling,” according to one reporter.
… He sat behind a mahogany Chinese desk in a corner of the room, facing the visitors, who gathered round his desk in a semicircle. Madame Chiang Kai-shek, in a serious black dress and plain black pumps, sat on her husband’s right, slightly in front of him and interpreted for the Generalissimo.… Both of them expressed gratitude for the visit of foreign corespondents to Nanking despite the Japanese bombings, and especially for the sympathy shown and the accurate reports published in the world press concerning China’s struggle against Japanese aggression. Commenting on America’s attitude, the Generalissimo declared that China was fighting not only for her own existence, but to uphold the principles of the Nine-Power Treaty and the Covenant of the League of Nations. Therefore, he contended, it was up to all the signatories of these instruments to support China’s struggle.
Not only the interpretation but the message and wording clearly originated with the generalissimo’s wife.
Before its ground troops reached Nanking, Japan sent bombers, and on October 12, May-ling wrote an article describing what it was like to observe a Japanese air raid of the capital.
The alarm sounded fifteen minutes ago… and I came outside as I always do… 2:42 p.m.… Three heavy Japanese bombers come through a blue cleft between the piles of cumulus.… Three more follow. Anti-aircraft guns put clusters of black smoke puffs around the first three. Now they are bobbing up about the second three. Here come three more—so there are nine altogether. High above the clouds I hear pursuit planes.… The sound of machine gun fire is now high above me and, above the clouds, the pilots are fighting. The nine bombers proceed in steady progress across the city.… 2:46 p.m. Great spouts of flame; columns of smoke and dust ascend. They have dropped several bombs. Then they scatter.… 2:50 p.m. There is a dogfight in the north-west.… The combatants are sweeping in and out of the clouds.… 2:56 p.m.… High in the air, a little to the west there is a dogfight. Another is going on over the city, in full view of all who can see. A Chinese Hawk is chasing a Japanese monoplane. They are looping and turning and diving—and zooming up again.… The Japanese plane seems to stall in mid-air. He is hit. The Hawk sweeps round to attack again. The Japanese pauses awhile, then goes into a headlong dive; flames stream out; the doomed machine is heading for a thickly populated part of the city.… Orange flame with a long comet tail of smoke, cleaves through the sky. The Hawk flies in circles, watching his enemy crash.
… 3:20 p.m. There is now no sound in the skies. The raid lasted about 40 minutes. So I shall go, as usual, and inspect the damage and find out the score of gains and losses.… People are in the streets as if nothing unusual had occurred.
Three years earlier, the generalissimo’s wife had taken on the title of secretary-general of the Chinese air force. “Aviation,” according to Claire Lee Chennault, the American pilot who created the group known as the American Volunteer Group (AVG) or “Flying Tigers,”* was “strictly an Occidental export to the Orient.” While the Japanese learned to fly from the French, the Chinese looked primarily to the Russians, Americans, and Italians to supply them with aircraft and instruct them in their use.
Colonel Claire Chennault was a highly controversial figure who engendered love or hate in nearly everyone he met. Handsome in a craggy, bulldog way, he impressed Winston Churchill, who met him at one of the summits during the war. “My God, that face,” the prime minister muttered. “Thank God, he’s on our side.” Chennault had learned to fly during World War I, although he was not sent into combat, and he had remained in the army after the war as a flying instructor with a reputation as a superb tactician. In 1934, Chennault supervised the Flying Trapeze Army Air Show, “the most spectacular air troupe ever organized in the history of military and civil aviation,” according to Royal Leonard, the Young Marshal’s former pilot, who worked later for the Chiangs. Three years after the air show Chennault was retired from the air force. The official reason was that he was deaf, but most observers believe it was because he had written a book on strategy in which he advocated developing all kinds of aircraft, especially fighter escorts, in opposition to the “bomber generals” in Washington, who believed that waves of bombers sent on the attack could protect themselves. Shortly after being retired, Chennault received a wire from Lieutenant Colonel Lucius Roy Holbrook II, of the U.S. Army Air Corps, asking him to come to China for three months to make a confidential appraisal of the Chinese air force for Madame Chiang Kai-shek.
May-ling’s brother T.V. had organized the first Chinese air force, arranging for an American mission to establish flying schools patterned after those in the United States. Some twenty Army Air Corps reserve officers set up schools in Hangchow in 1932, but two years later the United States refused to help the generalissimo put down a rebellion in Fukien province, where the rebels had withdrawn inside an old walled town. It was clear that nothing but airpower could be used to force them out. A “half-dozen rickety crates” from the Nationalist government finally broke enough holes in the ancient walls to allow the infantry to get through and rout the insurgents. It was not until then that Chiang Kai-shek saw the need for a Chinese air force.
Irritated by the U.S. refusal to help subdue the rebels, the Chinese turned to the Italians, who sent forty pilots, along with a hundred engineers and mechanics, to Asia—the former to teach flying, the latter to set up a factory to assemble Italian planes. By the time Chennault arrived in June of 1937, the Italians “were in complete control of the Chinese Air Force and had cornered the Chinese aviation market. Italian military pilots swaggered around Nanking in full uniform,” said Chennault, who had written “peasant” as his occupation on his passport. “General Scaroni [head of the Italian mission] roared through the streets in a big black limousine, his uniform dripping medals and gold braid. The elaborate ceremony and flowery courtesy of the Italians impressed the Chinese more than the brusque efficiency of Americans. It was an excellent deal for the Italians. The mission cost them nothing, since its expenses were paid out of Italy’s share of the Boxer indemnity. Chinese orders for Italian military
planes soared to many, many millions of dollars and helped finance expansion of Italy’s aircraft industry, which was already preparing for war.” Not only was the mission an economic windfall for Italy, but, Chennault claimed, the Italians used their position in Asia to help the Japanese. “In contrast to the German military mission, then in China, the Italians did all they could to sabotage China,” he wrote, offering as “final evidence of the Italians’ sabotage” their recommendation that the Chinese stop buying combat planes just two months before the Japanese invaded Shanghai. “It was no coincidence that Mussolini later became the first official to suggest that China accept Japan’s peace terms or that Wang Ching Wei*… use the Italian embassy in Hankow to maintain communications with the Japanese.”
Not only was the mission an economic and strategic windfall for Italy, but, according to Chennault, the Italians did little to help the Chinese air force, since they graduated everyone, competent or not, from pilot school, while the Americans had given licenses only to those who deserved them. “However,” Chennault explained, “the Generalissimo was pleased with the Italian method,” since those who trained as pilots were from a socially superior stratum of society, and if they did not succeed in graduating, there were the inevitable protests from important families. “The Italian method solved this social problem,” Chennault said, “and all but wrecked the air force.” Chennault also blamed the Italians for the habit of not removing a plane from the official roster even after it had been wrecked and scrapped for parts—a practice resulting in a roster of 500 planes, of which only 91 could fly.
“I reckon you and I will get along all right in building up your air force,” Chennault told May-ling when they first met. “I reckon so, Colonel,” she drawled in her best Georgia accent. But Chennault had barely started his assessment of the Chinese air force when the Japanese attacked the Marco Polo Bridge in early July 1937. He immediately volunteered his services to the generalissimo, who sent him to Nanchang to train fighter pilots. “Combat training at Nanchang was a nightmare I will never forget,” said Chennault. Aside from a few American-born flyers from Canton and some pilots who had been trained by the American mission, the rest of the trainees, who had learned to fly from the Italians, were, in Chennault’s words, “a menace to navigation.”
The Chiangs were spending part of the summer of 1937 in Kuling, the resort in the mountains above Nanking, when they summoned Chennault and General P. T. Mow,* the acting chief of the Chinese air force at Nanchang, for a meeting. According to one of the Americans stationed with Chennault, Mow was “a crackerjack pilot, a likeable fellow, and… very capable of running the Air Force, while the ‘figurehead’ chief, General Chow Chin-jou, the trusted man of Chiang Kai-shek… took a back seat.” When the gentlemen arrived, Chiang spoke first to General Mow:
“How many first-line planes are ready to fight?” he asked.
“Ninety-one, Your Excellency,” said the nervous general.
At that point, according to Chennault, Chiang turned “turkey red” and began pacing up and down the porch of the house—“loosing long strings of sibilant Chinese that seemed to hiss, coil, and strike like a snake.” Madame Chiang stopped translating for Chennault, as Mow, standing at attention, turned pale.
“The Generalissimo has threatened to execute him,” Madame whispered to the American. “The Aero Commission records show we should have five hundred first-line planes ready to fight.”
As Chiang began to simmer down, he asked Chennault how many planes his survey showed.
“General Mow’s figures are correct,” said Chennault.
“Go on,” Madame urged the American, “tell him all of the truth.” With May-ling translating, Chennault told the generalissimo what was wrong with the Chinese air force.
The next time Chennault was called before the generalissimo, it was early August and Chiang was back in the capital of Nanking, which was preparing for war. Street vendors were selling gas masks while government workers covered the roofs of important buildings with gray paint. Chiang was under tremendous public pressure, primarily from students and the press, to end his policy of withdrawal and entrapment. “Stand and fight,” the newspapers demanded; “an end to compromise.”
Chennault claimed that he and Donald were “the only foreigners present” at several meetings that took place between the Chinese warlords and the generalissimo in the Nanking Military Academy. Pushed by the warlords, Chiang announced that China would fight the aggressor, even if it was inadequately prepared. He sent the air force north to Kaifeng, a major railway junction on the Yellow River and the only natural barrier left between the Japanese in Peiping and the Chinese in Nanking. Madame Chiang, who had heard that the Japanese were preparing to occupy Shanghai—they would begin their attack on August 13—summoned Chennault. She was, he said, “greatly agitated.”
“You must go to Shanghai immediately and warn American officials to evacuate their nationals and protect their property before it is too late,” she told him.
Chennault, who had sent his luggage on to Kaifeng, pointed to his only clothes, the khaki shorts and green polo shirt he was wearing. May-ling, he said, “threw a handful of money” at him. “Buy new clothes,” she said. “But get to Shanghai as fast as you can.”
He got there a few hours after the last Japanese citizens had left the International Settlement, bought a white summer suit (standard wear for foreigners in Shanghai), and went directly to the U.S. Consulate. But the official he saw didn’t believe him. He moved on to the China National Aviation Corps offices and repeated the warning. The men there, he said, were “highly amused”; they gave him permission to recruit pilots from their roster if, in fact, there was a war, “but of course there would be no war.” He found the same attitude wherever he went in Shanghai.* Even the next day, which turned out to be the day before the invasion, no one seemed concerned by the Japanese warships that had already begun arriving in the Whangpoo River.
On the evening of the assault on Shanghai, there was a “big war council meeting” in Nanking, and the next day May-ling asked Chennault to take over the Chinese air force. His efforts eventually led to what he referred to as “Black Saturday,” the day Chinese bombs, aimed at a Japanese warship, hit the International Settlement. Absolving himself of responsibility for a disaster that seriously damaged China’s image in the world, Chennault explained that the weather over Shanghai that day was “bad for high-level bombing” and that Chinese bomber pilots had been trained to bomb from an altitude of 7,500 feet. “Rather than turn back… the Chinese pilots went on down below the overcast to make their bomb runs at 1,500 feet in a shallow dive that boosted their air speed above their accustomed bomb run. They violated orders to avoid the International Settlement and failed to adjust their bomb sights for the new speed and altitude. As a result their bombs fell short of the Idzumo [the warship that was their target] and smack into the middle of the International Settlement.”*
By the time, the Japanese got to Nanking, however, Chennault had had a chance to work with the Chinese pilots. On one particular day, fifty-two Japanese bombers came roaring over, according to Royal Leonard, “in right and stately formation like a Gilbert and Sullivan chorus.” The Japanese were perfectly predictable, and from past performances, Chennault knew that they would maintain a constant speed of 160 mph. and a constant altitude of around 11,000 feet. The Chinese “in their obsolete Hawk-35s and P-26s, went up like monkeys on an invisible rope,” Leonard continued. “Up in the sky they waited. The Japanese bombers thundered toward their goal.… The Chinese pilots swarmed over them like bees. They got under the bellies of the bombers, behind their tails, and let go bursts of machine-gun fire. It was an old Flying Trapeze stunt.” The same sequence of events took place on the next two days. At the end of the third day, the Japanese squadron limped home. Forty-four planes had been shot down. The Chinese under Chennault had lost only five planes and no pilots, and he had vindicated his theories about the invincibility of bombers.
“We love Chennault, we called him Leather Face,” recalled one Chinese pilot. “… He looked after us, was concerned for us. He said to the KMT: ‘How come you give my flying students only two buns, a bowl of rice and some salt vegetable. Their health will weaken if they keep on eating that diet. No, you have to give them some meat.’ The KMT was very corrupt, they squeezed your money. But immediately there was a change and we were given meat. Chennault was good to us.”
Known as the civilian adviser to the secretary of the Commission for Aeronautical Affairs, Chennault, who never held an official position with the Chinese government, was the virtual commander of the Chinese air force as well as its adviser on ground tactics. For this, he was paid handsomely by Chiang Kai-shek. In addition, Madame Chiang—whom he called a “princess”—gave him his own plane, a $55,000 so-called Hawk Special,* and a Packard limousine, which she had used in the past. Even when directing combat operations for the Chinese air force, the American never issued orders, only “suggested” what was to be done. These suggestions often came with an endorsement from the generalissimo, requesting that they be followed “without fail.” It was only later, Chennault said, he learned “that ‘without fail’ on the G-mo’s orders meant that the penalty for failure was a firing squad.”
Chennault was “greatly disturbed” in 1941 when he was informed that, due to jealousy in the ranks, his messages to Chiang were no longer to be sent via May-ling but directly to the generalissimo himself. “Your assistance and support are essential,” he wrote her. “… I hope you will remember that I undertook my present duties relying on you to serve as liaison between me and the Generalissimo. As I have so often told you, past experience has shown that when you do not serve in this capacity, interested persons take the opportunity to persuade the Generalissimo to issue unacceptable orders and otherwise make it very difficult for me to work for you and China.”
The Last Empress Page 37
