Kamikaze – ”Divine Wind” – became the symbol of Japan’s last desperate fight against the overwhelming power of the United States, as young pilots hurled their explosives-laden planes against American ships during the last months of the war in the Pacific. In the west it has come to epitomize the horrors of facing an…
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 the especially the cases in the early stages of the war, when it was waged over cities along the Chinese east coast easily reached by foreign journalists….
Since the US engagement in World War II was to a significant extent directed towards Asia, it is no surprise that a large part of American poster art of the war years had Asian themes. The representation of Asians, however, differed greatly depending on whether friend or foe formed the subject matter. As the examples…
During the three-month battle of Shanghai in 1937, volunteers of the Red Swastika Society were a ubiquitous sight, present wherever their help was needed. At hospitals, nurses and doctors of the society did their utmost to alleviate the suffering caused by modern weapons, and in the city’s ports its volunteers were instrumental in helping civilians fleeing…
One of the most prolific foreign photographers during the three-month battle for Shanghai in 1937 was American-born Malcolm Rosholt. Since he was a westerner, it was possible for him to cover both the Chinese and the Japanese side of the intense battle, and the result was some of the most dramatic images to emerge from the epic…
The battle of Shanghai in 1937 was unique in many ways. For example, it was recorded more exhaustively in the western media than any other battle in China’s long war with Japan. This was because of the presence, in the city’s international districts, of foreign journalists and photographers. The latter left a treasure trove of…
A full six years have been officially added to the length of World War Two in China. In an announcement earlier this week, the Ministry of Education in Beijing declared that the war lasted from 1931 until 1945, a departure from the previous conventional wisdom, which had the War of Resistance against Japan go on…
This is part of an occasional series on German espionage networks in China during World War Two. In 1943, one of the key German intelligence operations in China was a radio station run from a building in Shanghai’s Rue Petain. It was in the French sector, by then under Japanese control. Activities in the building…
China’s leader Chiang Kai-shek tried something new in late 1936 when his armies were faced with the attacks of Chinese puppet troops fighting for the Japanese. He lured them with cash in a bid to make them defect over to his side. The offer came at a time when forces loyal to the Japan-backed Manchukuo regime…
The Allied victory in the war in Asia in 1945 meant the end of not just Japanese imperialism in the region, but also, paradoxically, European imperialism. An example of this is the fate of a French treaty port in south China in 1945. This article is part of a large online project — End of Empire — launched by…
