Christmas in China, 1942

Eighty years ago, thousands of US servicemen had ended up in the interior of China as a result of the Sino-American alliance formed to defeat Japan, and by December 1942, the young Americans were getting ready to mark Christmas. For many, it was the first time to pass the holiday abroad, away from their families. Plunged into a radically different society, the potential for culture shock was obvious.

This situation, filled with tension and emotion, is described in Peter Harmsen’s new book Darkest Christmas: December 1942 and a World at War, available here and here, which takes the reader on a tour of the world during the holiday eight decades ago.

Below is an excerpt from the chapter about China, about a very special Christmas party organized by China’s powerful spymaster Dai Li (above left). Among the guests was the American officer Milton E. Miles (above right):

It seemed as if it was going to be a bleak Christmas for Milton E. Miles, a US Navy observer and intelligence officer in China’s wartime capital of Chongqing, deep inside the continent-sized country. Two cargo ships, the LaSalle and the Reynolds, had been on the way with much-needed supplies for waging war against Japan, and both had been sunk in the Indian Ocean. To lift the mood a little, Miles’ closest Chinese partner, the sinister spy chief Dai Li, who could be charming if he wanted to, invited him and several other American officers to a Christmas party on December 24. The Chinese pulled out all the stops to make it a success. There were paper hats and fake moustaches, and a huge cake decorated with a rose made from three-inch-thick icing.

The American officers, all craving sweets after months in the austere Chinese hinterland, were eager to dig into the cake, and Miles managed to gulp down a large chunk before he realized the ugly truth: the Chinese cooks had not had the ingredients they needed, and the so-called icing was in fact colored lard. Daniel “Webb” Heagy, a US Navy officer, also had a taste and mischievously held back his knowledge, encouraging the man next to him, Marine Major John “Bud” Masters, to have a go. “Don’t hold back, Bud,” he said. “There is plenty.” The American officers were all seated around Dai’s table and had to eat the horrifying dessert with an assumed air of utter delight. “Webb, incidentally, played a trick on Bud by telling General Dai how much our Marine Corps major had enjoyed his piece, whereupon our genial host personally helped him to more,” Miles wrote in his memoirs.

Categories: Media, War

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