Sino-Japanese War 1937-1945

On July 7, 1937, Chinese and Japanese troops engaged near the Marco Polo Bridge, north of Peking (Beijing); Japan used this incident as a pretext for war. War brought about a temporary reconciliation between the Chinese Nationalist and Communists on July 15th to combat the Japanese. The Japanese invasion moved swiftly; Tientsin fell on July 30th, Peking the next day. Within four months Japan had conquered most of northeast China and advanced to the Yellow River in the south. On the coast, Chinese troops made a determined defense of Shanghai from August 8th until the city fell on November 8th, with massive casualties on both sides. In the drive to reach the Nationalist Chinese capital of Nanking, Japanese forces sunk an American gunboat (killing 3 crewmembers) resulting in the Panay Incident; Nanking fell on December 13th and Japanese troops sacked the city, massacring up to 100,000 Chinese civilians. Japanese conquests continued in 1938: along the coast, Canton fell on October 21st; Hankow fell on October 25th (forcing the Nationalist government to relocate again, to Chungking). The scale of Japanese offensives in 1939 was much smaller than in 1937-38 but the success of the invaders made China increasingly dependent on the Burma Road supply route. In 1940, Japanese attacks continued in the Yangtze Valley. During 1941, Japan launched a series of punitive expeditions, to prevent a Chinese recovery and to secure their lines of communication, while China received combat air support from American volunteers organized into the Flying Tigers.

The war situation changed drastically after Japan attacked the Americans and British on December 7-8, 1941. China became a member of the Allies fighting the Axis and its war with Japan became a part of the larger war, World War II. In the remaining years of the war, China was no longer alone. However, the Chinese armed forces were too weak to take advantage of the Japanese military preoccupation with the war in the Pacific and so the Chinese theater of war was mostly dormant in 1942-43. In 1944 the Japanese launched new offensives aimed at securing their gains and expanding in China, even as Japan was forced on the defensive elsewhere. Even so, Japan only managed to control the cities it occupied and the major lines of communication, it was never able to occupy countryside.

With the Japanese surrender on September 2, 1945, China emerged from the war nominally a great power but actually a state economically prostrate and on the verge of all-out civil war. The situation was further complicated by an Allied agreement at the Yalta Conference in February 1945 that had brought Soviet troops into Manchuria to hasten the termination of war against Japan. Although the Chinese had not been present at Yalta, they had been consulted; they had agreed to have the Soviets enter the war in the belief that the Soviet Union would deal only with the Nationalist government. After the war, the Soviet Union, granted a sphere of influence in Manchuria by the Yalta agreement, dismantled and removed more than half the industrial equipment left there by the Japanese. The Soviet presence in northeast China enabled the Communists to move in long enough to arm themselves with the equipment surrendered by the withdrawing Japanese army. The problems of rehabilitating the formerly Japanese-occupied areas and of reconstructing the nation from the ravages of a protracted war were staggering.

Notes

[1] The Correlates of War battle deaths listed here are for the period July 7, 1937 and December 6, 1941. Losses for the World War II period are not included. It is unclear whether Manchukuo or Chinese guerrilla battle deaths are included.

References

Clodfelter, 660-8; COW130; China - A Country Study; Japan - A Country Study; Kohn, 452-3.

Category

Inter-State War

Region

East Asia

Belligerents

China, Chinese, Japan, Manchukuo

Dispute

Teritory

Initiation Date

July 7, 1937

Termination Date

September 2, 1945

Duration

8 years, 1 month, 27 days
(2980 days)

Outcome

Imposed Settlement
(Chinese victory)

Fatalities

Total: 1,000,000
China: 750,000^[1]
Japan: 250,000^[1]

Magnitude

5.0