Vital role of a small bridge against the Japanese army

BY TOMOYOSHI ISOGAWA THE ASAHI SHIMBUN

China withstood eight years of relentless Japanese onslaught during the Second Sino-Japanese War. How did the Chinese manage that? Hearing that part of the answer lay in a small bridge in a small town in Yunnan province, far from major cities such as Beijing and Nanjing, I decided to see this bridge for myself.

There were three main supply routes. From right to left:Hong Kong Route, French Indochina Route, Burama Route

The Wanding Bridge, which connected China and Burma(present-day Myanmar), was originally made of stone, but was later rebuilt with iron. Traffic across the bridge is blocked by a chain strung at the center of the bridge, and a billboard proclaims: "China-Myanmar boundary.Do not cross. "A national flag of Myanmar can be seen at the Myanmar side of the bridge.(TOMOYOSHI ISOGAWA)

Nie Er (1912-1935)

"We are in the dry season now, but it rained yesterday," said my driver, a member of the Naxi ethnic minority who mostly inhabit Yunnan province. Palm fronds and the leaves of rubber and banana trees swayed on the roadside. A river ran along the road, and just beyond the river lay Burma, now called Myanmar by the ruling military junta.

Wanding, home to about 10,000 people, is a town in the city of Ruili at the western end of Yunnan province. The bridge I was seeking was in a busy section of the town. Called the Wanding Bridge, it actually turned out to be two bridges of different ages, laid side by side. The older bridge with wood planking was closed to traffic. At its other end was Myanmar.

During the Second Sino-Japanese War, military supplies rolled into China from the United States and Britain across the Wanding Bridge, along what was called an En-Sho route in Japanese--one used by foreign powers that supported Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang army.

Supply route vital to China

As the war spread southward to Shanghai, Chiang temporarily relocated the seat of his government from Nanjing to Chongqing in the hinterland, hoping to buy time. The Yunnan city of Kunming and its environs became the Chinese Army's rear base, complete with a munitions factory, and the survival of Chiang's nationalist government came to depend on supplies flowing into Kunming.

In December 1937, the Kuomintang government started construction of the Dianmian Road from Kunming to Burma, then a British colony. Kunming and Wanding are about 960 kilometers apart, and a completely new road had to be laid over a stretch of about 550 km from the Wanding side. There were steep mountains to be scaled and wide rivers to be crossed, and some 200,000 local residents were mobilized for this daunting project. When the road was completed in August of the following year, more than 3,000 workers were said to have died.

Across the Wanding Bridge, the road continued into Burma (See Map). At Lashio, which is about 190 km from the Chinese border, the road connected to a railway, thus forming a major transportation artery that enabled supplies unloaded on the Indian Ocean coast to be transported via Rangoon (now called Yangon) by rail to Lashio and then on to Kunming and Chongqing.

There were multiple En-Sho routes, and the Japanese military severed them one by one, working inland from the Pacific coast. In October 1938, the Japanese occupied Guangzhou and severed the Hong Kong route. In 1940, Japanese troops advanced into northern French Indochina (present-day Vietnam) and blocked the railway route into China. As a result, the Dianmian Road literally became China's lifeline. Anywhere from between several thousand tons and more than 10,000 tons of materiel and gasoline were hauled along this road each month.

In January 1942, only a few weeks into the Pacific War, Japanese forces advanced into Burma. The Kuomintang army dispatched an expeditionary force into Burma, where it fought alongside the British army.

Shi Mingkun, an 81-year-old resident of Wanding, recalled the scene of departure of the Burma-bound expeditionary force. As trucks carrying soldiers in gray uniforms rumbled past, townspeople tossed packs of cigarettes to the troops. If a truck came carrying female soldiers, the people ran up to them to offer cups of fresh-brewed imported coffee. Shi was a young girl at the time, and she just watched.

"Were those women soldiers glad for the coffee?" I asked. Shi shook her head vigorously and replied, "No, no. Some were, but many looked sad. They were going to war, weren't they?"

The expeditionary force, some 100,000 strong, was defeated in Burma. More than half the troops were reportedly killed or injured.

The Japanese advanced into Yunnan province after overrunning Burma.

"I fled to an ethnic minority village in the mountains," Shi said. "For a long time, I survived on whatever I could gather or hunt in the wild."

After supplying the Kuomintang government for nearly four years, the Dianmian Road was finally severed, but the U.S.-Chinese allied forces made do by airlifting massive volumes of military supplies from India. However, the supply planes had to negotiate treacherous flight paths that practically hugged the rugged Himalayan peaks, and about 600 aircraft were reported lost due to rough weather or attacks from Japanese aircraft.

In spring 1944, China, Britain and the United States went on the counteroffensive, mounting two-fronted attacks from the Indian and Yunnan province borders to trap the Japanese. At the same time, the allies also built a new road between Wanding and Ledo in eastern India to keep supplies flowing into China. In contrast, the Imperial Japanese Army suffered serious supply shortages, and this resulted in a series of desperate suicidal campaigns in Yunnan province.

Thus, in the eight years since the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the Imperial Japanese Army proved incapable of obliterating China's supply lines.

In downtown Wanding, I saw a huge posterboard depicting Premier Chou En-lai and his Burmese counterpart shaking hands and walking together. The scene was from December 1956--11 years after the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War--when the two leaders visited Wanding to attend an event to promote friendship between Chinese and Burmese citizens living along the China-Burma border. The poster also carried a poem in large print, extolling the bilateral friendship. A commemorative hall stood nearby.

As I gazed at these sights, a recent Chinese news item popped into my mind. It was about a plan to lay a gas and oil pipeline from a port town in Myanmar to Yunnan province. This is intended to secure the transport of oil from the Middle East and Africa to Chongqing by way of Myanmar and Yunnan province, which means China can always count on a stable supply even if a blockade is erected in the Strait of Malacca. The report concluded that this project is of critical strategic importance.

I left Wanding, thinking, "The En-Sho route is still alive."

Re-appraisal of Kuomintang's role

Kunming, a city in the highlands with an elevation of 1,891 meters, is home to about 6 million people.

I visited professor Xu Kangming, who is researching the Second Sino-Japanese War at Yunnan University.

"At a military conference in August 1937 (shortly after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident), Long Yun, governor of Yunnan province, proposed the construction of the Dianmian Road and Dianmian Railway," he explained. "The proposal was accepted by Chiang Kai-shek, who ordered his government to consult with the Yunnan provincial government."

The railway was never built, but the road supported China for a long time, for which Yunnan deserved credit, according to Xu.

Somewhat puzzling, however, is the fact that not many Chinese people are familiar with the town of Wanding and the battles that took place in Yunnan province. When I asked the reason, Xu replied: "That probably had to do with the civil war (between Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party)."

The Kuomintang-led Nationalist government and the Communist Party agreed to a cease-fire, so they could fight the Japanese together. But regional skirmishes continued throughout the Second Sino-Japanese War. For the Communists, Kuomintang remained their enemy. Even though the Kuomintang's contribution to China was historical fact, the Communists remained reluctant to teach this fact to the postwar generation. This, according to Xu, is the reason for the nation's "short memory" of the Kuomintang-led battles in Yunnan province and Burma.

But there are signs of change.

In 2005, President Hu Jintao mentioned the Kuomintang's contribution to the nation in his speech to mark the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Hu said: "The armies of Kuomintang and the Communist Party, both of which fought the Japanese, assumed their respective responsibilities on the war front as well as in the rear arena to resist the Japanese and mount strategic counterattacks against them."

Why Hu made such a speech needs some explaining. After its defeat in the civil war, Kuomintang relocated to Taiwan, where it remained in power until 2000. Today, Kuomintang is an opposition party trying to block the ruling Democratic Progressive Party's move toward Taiwan's independence. On this score, Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party are on the same page, and they have begun to reach out to one another.

Before too long, the day may come when the Chinese people know more about the battles in Yunnan province and Burma.

During the war, many factories and schools relocated to Kunming.

"The influx of dozens of companies from the east became an opportunity for Kunming's industry to grow," noted Wu Baozhang, professor of Yunnan Normal University, researching modern Yunnan history.

Among the newcomers were ironworks and machinery makers. Aircraft were built in Kunming during the war. Not only did Yunnan province lie on a vital supply route on which China's survival depended, but it also served as an important rear base.

The birth of a national anthem

Lake Dianchi (also known as Lake Kunming) lies about 4 km southwest of Kunming. Along the west shore of the lake soar the Western Mountains or Xishan, where the tomb of the composer Nie Er stands.

Born in Kunming. Nie Er's best-known work is "March of the Volunteers." This was originally the theme song of the 1935 film "Sons and Daughters in a Time of Storm," but it soon became an anthem of anti-Japanese resistance fighters. The lyrics, written by poet and playwright Tian Han, are as follows:

Arise! All who refuse to be slaves!

Let our flesh and blood become our new Great Wall!

As the Chinese nation faces its greatest peril,

All forcefully expend their last cries.

Arise! Arise! Arise!

May our million hearts beat as one,

Brave the enemy's fire, March on!

Brave the enemy's fire, March on!

March on! March on! On!

When this was chosen as the Chinese national anthem in 1949, there was controversy over the line about China facing "its greatest peril," which was no longer the case at the time. However, Premier Chou En-lai reportedly ended the controversy by pointing out the importance of being prepared even in times of peace.

During the Cultural Revolution, the poet Tian Han was purged and the national anthem was temporarily banned, but the lyrics remain the same to this day.

Having fought in the Second Sino-Japanese War was one of the moral foundations on which the Communist regime stands, and the same may also be said of China itself. The national anthem, born of that war, seems to symbolize this fact.

In 1935, Nie Er was bound for Europe and the Soviet Union for his studies, and stopped in Japan along the way. According to a Chinese magazine article, Nie Er had composed the "March of the Volunteers" just before he left China, and put the finishing touches while he was in Japan. This means the Chinese national anthem was actually completed in Japan.

A few months later, he drowned while swimming in the Shonan area southwest of Tokyo. He was only 23, but his work will live on forever. I imagine it will be heard many times during the Beijing Olympics next year.

I doubt that every Chinese citizen recalls the Second Sino-Japanese War every time they sing the national anthem. But I do sense their resolve to keep the collective national memory alive.

Nie Er (1912-1935)

Born in Yunnan province, Nie Er went to Shanghai when he was around 18 and became a violinist for an opera troupe. He joined the Communist Party before long, and composed many revolutionary, anti-Japanese songs.

According to reference materials in a museum near his tomb in Kunming, the Communist Party heard rumors that China's reactionary elements were about to arrest Nie Er on April 1, 1935, and the party officially approved his travel to Japan so he could proceed to Europe and the Soviet Union for his studies.

On April 15, Nie Er left Shanghai for Japan. Three months later, on July 17, he drowned while swimming at Kugenuma Beach in Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture. There is a memorial cenotaph in Fujisawa, which is keeping up its "friendship city" relations with Kunming.

Fact File: 'En-Sho' Routes

En-Sho literally translates as "support Sho," Sho being the Japanese pronunciation of Chiang. The routes were used by the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union to send materials, oil and other supplies to the Kuomintang government of Chiang Kai-shek, which they supported. The United States initially remained neutral. But the Americans started providing loans to China at Chiang's request, and later expanded military aid to China as the war escalated with Japan's occupation of French Indochina.

Upon declaring war on the United States and Britain, Japan occupied European and American colonies one after another. France and the Netherlands had already surrendered to Nazi Germany on the European front, and it became vitally important for the United States and Britain to help China resist Japan. For this reason, the Americans and the British supported China materially and strategically.

As China's survival depended on En-Sho routes, U.S. and British forces fought along with the Chinese Army to defend the routes. The biggest battles over these routes were fought in Yunnan province and Burma.

In 1942, Chiang was appointed Supreme Allied Commander in China at U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's recommendation, and Washington sent Gen. Joseph Stilwell of the U.S. Army to the China-Burma-India Theater as Chiang's chief of staff. Thus, what had started out as Japan's war with China escalated into a war in which Japan had to fight China, the United States and Britain.

The Soviet Union, too, kept sending supplies to China via its own route from Xinjiang until the signing of the Japan-Soviet Neutrality Pact in 1941. The Soviet Union's objective was to keep the Imperial Japanese Army preoccupied in China, so that the Red Army could concentrate on the war in Europe with Nazi Germany.

Fact File: French Indochina

French Indochina was a federation formed of four French protectorates and one directly ruled colony in Southeast Asia where present-day Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos lie.

France began dispatching troops to Indochina in the mid-19th century, and made Cochinchina in southern Vietnam a directly ruled French colony, while Tonkin (northern Vietnam), Annam (central Vietnam) and Cambodia became French protectorates.

But since China's Qing dynasty was Vietnam's suzerain at the time, the Franco-Chinese War erupted in 1884. As a result of this war, Qing ceded control of Vietnam to France. In 1887, France established a federation of these three protectorates and one directly ruled colony, and added Laos in 1893.

The governor-general of French Indochina was appointed by the French president. France encouraged large-scale cultivation of rice and rubber in French Indochina, as well as coal production for export. The federation also built railways leading to China.(IHT/Asahi: December 28,2007)