210: The Pacific War 1944: From the Cairo Conference to the Marianas Turkey Shoot

History That Doesn't Suck - Prof. Greg Jackson

This episode of History That Doesn't Suck explores the overlooked role of China as a key Allied power during World War II, focusing on the formation and exploits of the

Key takeaways

• The Flying Tigers were a volunteer force of American pilots who fought for China before the U.S. officially entered WWII, operating under a legal loophole to avoid direct conflict.

Main topics

• The formation and early combat of the Flying Tigers
• China's role as a key but overlooked ally in WWII

Notable quotes

"Japan's open-season bombings on China are over."

Conclusion

The episode underscores how pivotal China's resistance was to the Allied war effort and reveals the complex interplay of

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Hello, friends. Professor Jackson here. I want to introduce our newly launched show, Government That Doesn't Suck. I know across the aisle even, some, if not many of you are already thinking, but our government does suck. I get it. And yet, if that's our mindset, how can we ever improve it? That question is exactly what drives our new show. Government That Doesn't Suck explores the ways our American system of government functions or fails to. Each episode blends historical narrative with insightful conversations featuring experts. You can catch these new episodes during the off weeks of History That Doesn't Suck. Our upcoming schedule features topics like space exploration, the interstate and highway safety, the development of the internet, and the National Weather Service. In other words, when you pull up the weather app via the internet before you set out to drive on a freeway, you're benefiting from at least a few aspects of our government that don't suck. This new podcast features its own dedicated feed, which is available on whichever platform you are currently using. To listen, simply search for and follow Government That Doesn't Suck or go to htdspodcast.com. Speaker 1 (1:19) It's December 20th, 1941. We're in southwestern China, in the Yunnan province's capital city of Kunming. And Claire Lee Chenault is at his newly established headquarters, likely poring over maps and charts, doing all he can to make sure his volunteer pilots are ready to strike the Japanese Air Force the moment they get the chance. See Claire, or Old Leatherface, as the nearly 50-year-old, hard-of-hearing World War I vet and feisty Louisianan is known. May have been pressed to retire from the U.S. Army Air Corps a few years back, but he was quick to accept an offer abroad. Now, he holds the rank of colonel in the Chinese Air Force. Nor is he the only American here. Back in April, President Franklin Roosevelt quietly authorized reserve officers and enlisted men in the U.S. military to resign. if they wanted to join the ranks of old Leatherface's flyboys in China, the American Volunteer Group, or the AVG. With Japan having laid waste to China for years at this point, as we learned back in episode 193, it was a slick way to get American flyers into Chinese skies without the U.S. declaring war on Japan. That loophole doesn't feel so important a little less than two weeks out from the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, but no matter. What's important in the moment is this. The AVG is in China. And now, with Kunming still reeling from a deadly bombing just two days ago, old Leatherface has brought his boys to town, ready to give Japan a fight if they again dare to strike this vital city through which American-lend lease and other foreign supplies supporting the embattled Republic of China flow. At 9.45 a.m., Claire's phone rings. It's commander of the Chinese 5th Air Force and chief of staff for the AVG, Colonel Wang Xiuming. Speaker 2 (3:06) Japanese bombers crossed the Yunnan border at Lao Kai. Speaker 1 (3:11) Claire snaps to it as his pilot scrambles. This is it. This is the American volunteer group's moment. It's time to inspire the beleaguered Chinese people with a forceful show of American might. Or to confirm that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was but the beginning of the end for all who oppose the Empire of the Rising Sun. No pressure. Old Leatherface has a red flare fired, the signal for takeoff. And with that, 8 to 10 Curtis P-40s from the Panda Bear, aka 2nd Squadron, each one likely wearing the AVG's fierce shark-tooth paint job under its roaring single engine, tear down the runway. Taken to the sky, they form two formations, one of which ascends to provide top cover patrolling over the city, the other off to hunt. Both groups soon disappear into the clouds. On the ground, Claire listens as one of his squad leaders, Jack Newkirk, radios back. Speaker 2 (4:10) And it's sighted 60 miles east. Attack him. Speaker 1 (4:16) Then, silence. Minutes pass. Still silence. With a heavy heart, Claire calls up the Adam and Eve's first squadron. Fourteen shark-toothed P-40s tear into the sky. Charlie Bond is thrilled as the well-trained but fresh to the fight pilot will later write, this time it was the real thing. Speaker 1 (4:42) Numbering among the first squadron reinforcements, he's soaring at roughly 20,000 feet, somewhere to the southeast of Kunming, peering through the clouds, looking for the enemy when, yes, that's them. Ten Mitsubishi Type 97 bombers. In turn, the Japanese bombers spot the Americans. Immediately, they cut from their flight path and turn back toward their base at Hanoi. But Charlie and the rest of the Adam and Eves are in hot pursuit. Pushing to full throttle or close to it, indicating a speed of 225 miles per hour, the P-40's grinning shark teeth grow closer and closer to the fleeing Japanese tails. Caught somewhere between the nerves and excitement of his first taste of battle, Charlie double-checks his oxygen mask and gun switch. He homes in, feels his heart pounding, and... What? Nothing? Oh, shoot. The nervous pilot checked his gun so many times he locked it. Too close to the Japanese to do anything but break off, he circles back around. This time, he's got it. Charlie lets it rip. His .50 cal machine gun tears at the Japanese bombers, right as other Americans do the same. They're on top of each other. It's nothing short of a miracle that the Americans don't kill one another with friendly fire. Meanwhile, the Japanese fire back in kind. But as they do, two are smoking. The Americans continue to hit the lot of them from every direction. With fuel getting low, Adam and Eve leader Robert Sandy Sandal calls his boys off. They fly back to Kunming. And oh, are these young flyboys ecstatic. While the full outcome of this engagement is yet to be known, they clearly got the better of the Japanese, which feels so good right after Pearl Harbor. And they've sent a clear message to friend and foe alike. Japan's open-season bombings on China are over. Speaker 1 (6:54) Welcome to History That Doesn't Suck. I'm your professor, Greg Jackson, and I'd like to tell you a story. Speaker 1 (7:15) Of the 10 Mitsubishi bombers that set out to strike Kunming that morning, only one makes it back unscathed. Claire Lee Schenelt is rightly proud of his American volunteer group, or the Flying Tigers, as the press soon nicknames them. Altogether, the Flying Tigers down upwards of 300 enemy aircraft and fight more than 50 air battles on behalf of China. According to the National Museum of the United States Air Force, they win every single one. The unit disbands on July 4th, 1942, shortly after the long-shot Doolittle raid we heard about in episode 193, and not for any failure, but because, well, Uncle Sam wants his flyboys back, and most return to their respective branches. China, or the Forgotten Ally, as historian Ron Aminter so aptly describes it, is all too often forgotten in our account of World War II. Today, it enters our American story. as President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill meet the nation's leader in Cairo, Egypt. And since we want to be well prepared for that sit-down, we'll start with some recent Chinese history that will help us better understand its leader, the Generalissimo Zheng Kaisheng, a man just as, if not more afraid of internal challenges from Mao Zedong as he is of any challenge from Japan. And with that understanding, we'll then join the Generalissimo in Cairo and meet his American advisor, Vinegar Joe Stilwell, as well as one of his generals, Frank Merrill, who takes command of an elite force sent to carve a supply path from Burma, or Myanmar, into China. But with much to do, we won't stay in Burma. Rather, we'll head back to the Pacific Ocean, where General Douglas MacArthur and his Navy buddy, Admiral William Bolhalsi, are hopping toward the end of Operation Cartwheel, which is to say they're choking off Japan's stronghold on Rabaul. We'll do plenty of hopping ourselves as we wrap up this campaign, but we'll join Doug as he braves the dangers of Los Negros Island. Finally, as Operation Cartwheel finishes its last turn, we'll turn to the Central Pacific, where the Japanese are looking to fulfill their dream of a gigantic, decisive sea battle. One that will take place amid the American invasion of the Mariana Islands. We'll soar through the skies with ace pilot Alex Verashu, then witness the brutal fight for Saipan. An island that will put the Americans within bombing range of the Emperor in Tokyo himself. So much to do, so little time. So let's not waste a minute, and we begin by backing things up to get acquainted with our forgotten ally. Rewind. Speaker 1 (9:59) The Qing dynasty's collapse takes generations, but here it is in just a few beats. Between opium wars, foreign powers carving out spheres of influence, an emptying treasury, and a Han majority tired of a ruling Manchu minority, the sick man of Asia, as turn-of-the-century China is known, is already on the brink. A brink that doesn't hold as the regent-run court of the young emperor Puyi tries to shore up its financial woes by nationalizing the railroads in 1911. It's a play that pushes local leaders over the edge, leading one province after another to declare independence and the boy emperor to abdicate. This ends nearly three centuries of Qing rule and more than 2,000 years of a Chinese empire. Speaker 1 (10:43) Back from exile, revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen has three principles that he believes can rebuild China. One, anti-imperialist nationalism. Two, democracy. And three, a form of socialism called the people's livelihood. Sun is liked and embraced as the father of the nation. But that's no match for an army, specifically General Yuan Shikai's army. Sun soon finds himself bowing out to this general with imperial ambitions. But the power vacuum proves too much for Yuan as well, who, after gutting Sun's infant republic, overreaches for a crown, fails, and dies in 1916. Thus it is that, as World War I rages and Japan happily gobbles up territory, China is thrown into a warlord era. And it's in this warlord chaos that two heirs of Sun's three principles, nationalist Zheng Kaisheng and communist Mao Zedong, learn the same lesson. Get power. Hold power. Speaker 1 (11:46) We now enter the 1920s. A young library assistant at Peking University, Mao Zedong becomes a founding member of the Chinese Communist Party, or the CCP. Now, I covered Marxism in episode 151 and its Leninist and Stalinist subsets in 186, but let's recall that Karl Marx was about the city-dwelling working class rising against the bourgeoisie, not an agricultural peasantry uprising. Which is why it matters that this peasant-born library assistant is increasingly looking to the peasants for his revolution. Heresy to an old-school Marxist. But log this idea away. Mao's peasantry thinking is a key part of his own developing take on communism. Yet another subset that we'll come to call Maoism. Speaker 1 (12:38) In the same decade, Zheng Kaixue is running hard and fast with the Guoming Dong Party, that is, the nationalists. More than that, he's a military man, one trained in China and Japan. And as the commandant of the Huangpo Military Academy as of 1924, he's got youthful leaders looking to him. These two separate children of Sun Yat-sen's principles, the Nationalists and the Communists, manage to play together in the sandbox for the next few years. Mao even runs propaganda for the Nationalists, while Zhang launches his northern expedition against the warlord threat in 1926. Through their alliance, the United Front, the Communists and Nationalists are bringing the warlord era to an end. But as the external threats recede, a question arises among these Sun Yat-sen descending siblings. Who will receive the full inheritance? Yang gets the better of the communists in 1927, slaughtering thousands in the Shanghai Massacre and leaving the communists all but broken. This student of the 1910s' brutal lessons on power appears to have done his homework, and by 1928, Zhang is the effective leader of a mostly unified China. He is, as the West calls him, the Generalissimo. But all but broken isn't broken, and the Generalissimo knows it. This is a civil war. Years pass. As they do, Chiang Kai-shek's drive, his obsession with stomping out this lingering threat grows just as Mao's peasant-powered influence does. Zheng pushes for a full-on communist hunt, which Mao answers by carrying out an incredible retreat, generally thought to be 6,000 miles, known as the Long March. By its end in 1935, Mao emerges as the paramount leader of China's communists. Nationalist leaders are frustrated with Zheng Kaisheng. Imperial Japan has been carving off parts of northern China since 1931, yet here he is, still more focused on fighting communists. than the external threat. In short, they feel that General Lee Simo's eye is on the wrong ball, and in December 1936, his own generals effectively kidnap him, a moment known as the Xi'an Incident, and force Zhang to give up his civil war and take on divided China's shared enemy of Japan. Indeed, with the Rising Sun's aggression leading to the Marco Polo Bridge and rape of Nanjing the next year,