British soldier Patrick McGowan was just 25 when he was killed by Japanese bullets during the battle of Shanghai in the fall of 1937. McGowan, of the Royal Ulster Rifles, was posted on the outskirts of the city’s International Settlement, primarily charged with preventing illegal entry into the area and ensuring that the battle did…
Daniel Jackson, author of Famine, Sword, and Fire: The Liberation of Southwest China in World War II, recently visited China in search of the remains of US air crews missing in action since World War Two. This is his account: Kun Shi, the Confucius Institute director at the University of South Florida, and I embarked…
The war between China and Japan that broke out in 1937 was a modern media war involving the international press as an actor in the game for public opinion. This was especially the case in the early stages of the war, when it was waged over cities along the Chinese east coast easily reached by…
Kaname Harada, a Japanese fighter ace during the war in China and the Pacific, took part in the conquest of China’s capital Nanjing in late 1937, and shortly afterwards bore witness to the horrific slaughter of unarmed prisoners and civilians in the city, an experienced that marked him for decades. Dan King, the author of…
The article, featuring the extraordinary story of Chinese agent Li Jui, was written by Richard Duckett, a history and international relations scholar at Reading College. It was first published on Dr. Duckett’s blog (click here), and is reproduced with his kind permission. His book Special Operations Executive in Burma will be published by IB Tauris…
In the afternoon of July 7, 1937, soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Regiment of the Japanese Army stationed at the city of Fengtai near the old capital of Beijing, assembled in the area north of Marco Polo Bridge. It was going to be another long night out in the Chinese countryside. Maneuvers like these…
Eighty years ago, Tuesday, July 6, 1937, was the last day of peace in Asia. The following day, Chinese and Japanese forces would clash at Marco Polo Bridge near the ancient capital of Beijing, triggering an all-out war between the two Asian nations and in turn setting in motion complex chains of events which would…
This article, the last in a series of three, is an after-action report on a wargame based on the battle of Nanjing in 1937. The report is written by G. Jökull Gíslason, an Iceland-based wargamer and historian with a special interest in the Second Sino-Japanese War. It shows how wargames and simulations can add an extra dimension to the study of past…
This article, the second in a series of three, is an after-action report on a wargame based on the battle of Nanjing in 1937. The report is written by G. Jökull Gíslason, an Iceland-based wargamer and historian with a special interest in the Second Sino-Japanese War. It shows how wargames and simulations can add an extra dimension to the study of past…
This article is written by G. Jökull Gíslason, an Iceland-based wargamer and historian with a special interest in the Second Sino-Japanese War. It shows how wargames and simulations can add an extra dimension to the study of past events. China in World War II has been a fascinating subject for me and I have been looking into…
