One of the strangest military operations of World War Two featured Japanese opposing Italians on Chinese soil. In September 1943, when Italy signed an armistice with the Allies, abandoning its Axis partners, Japanese forces moved swiftly to seize Italian military assets in areas under its control, including China. This also involved moving in and occupying…
The diorama “China’s Holy Guardians” is master modeler Chang Chung-fu’s take on the 1937 battle of Shanghai, featuring some of China’s elite German-trained troops. This extremely detailed piece of art shows intimate knowledge of the period, not just reflected in the uniforms and equipment, but also in small details such as the damaged architecture, the…
German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels had a big problem in the summer of 1937. War had broken out between China and Japan, and Germany was staying neutral, even though a sizable number of German officers were active in China as advisors to the army’s best divisions. Goebbels was part of a group of Nazi leaders…
When Japan occupied northeast China in 1931 and 1932 and turned the area into the puppet state of Manchukuo, it also took over a minority of several thousand ethnic Russians who had fled their homeland following the Communist Revolution a little more than a decade earlier. Some of these Russians became loyal citizens of…
As the war in the Asia-Pacific progressed, life as a New Zealand missionary in partly Japanese-occupied China became more difficult. After the Allies declared war on Japan in 1941, the Japanese Military placed guards on the Mission Compound in order to restrict the movement of European staff. As ‘prisoners of war’, they were to…
Southern China was an area in desperate crisis in the late 1930s. Up north, the densely populated areas near Shanghai and Beijing had fallen to the victorious Japanese Army, and now the soldiers of the Rising Sun were approaching. New Zealand missionaries were there to alleviate the suffering, and also to take photos of…
When war broke out between China and Japan in the 1930s, tens of thousands of foreigners became unwilling spectators of the bloody events. Among the witnesses were Presbyterian missionaries from New Zealand, who found their activities increasingly under stress, especially after the Japanese invaders moved south in 1938, forcing the New Zealanders to work…
Daniel Jackson, a US Air Force pilot and the author of several books on military history, has done extensive research on the role of American aviators in China during World War Two. On a field trip from December 2 to 9, 2018, he turned his attention to the neighboring theater of Thailand. This is his…
On August 23, 1937, Shanghai was only getting used to war when a bomb, probably dropped by accident, hit a busy part of Nanjing Road, gutting Sincere Department Store and causing severe damage to Wing On Department Store. An official count said 173 people were killed in the explosion, while another 549 were injured….
On August 23, 1937, ten days after Shanghai had become the scene of a merciless battle between Chinese and Japanese forces, tragedy struck right in the middle of the city. A huge explosion hit the busy intersection of Nanjing Road and Zhejiang Road in Shanghai’s international district, causing widespread carnage. The blast was caused by…
