With their immediate impact and their appeal to the emotions, images have been used in war propaganda since ancient times. Therefore, it’s no surprise that they were employed in China too during the eight-year struggle against Japan. They were extra useful because China at the time was a society where illiteracy was widespread. (After all,…
China and Germany were involved in close military cooperation in the 1920s and 1930s, manifested for example in the dispatch of a small but influential corps of German advisors to the Chinese Army. The cooperation also involved rather large shipments of German weapons and equipment to China. Among these weapons was the 15 cm schwere Feldhaubitze…
Author and scholar Ben Judkins describes the Dadao, or ‘big saber’, a weapon that saw use even during the war with Japan in the 1930s and 1940s. This is the first of two installments of an article first published on Judkins’ blog Kung Fu Tea. The Dadao as a Paramilitary and Militia Weapon Selection bias is…
Author and scholar Ben Judkins describes the Dadao, or ‘big saber’, which, despite the pre-modern technology used, played an important role in the Second Sino-Japanese War, and in Chinese military history in the 20th century more generally, in addition to having a long afterlife in popular culture. But the role and legacy of the legendary…
Seventy-seven years ago, on July 7, 1937, Chinese and Japanese soldiers clashed at Marco Polo Bridge outside Beijing. Although no one could know it at the time, it was the start of an eight-year war in which millions would die, mostly Chinese and mostly civilians. It was later to merge into conflicts in other theaters…
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and western positions in East Asia in December 1941, China became a full-blown member of the Allied war effort against the axis. This also meant that Chinese soldiers were set to the Burma theater to participate in the fight against the Japanese Army there. Some never returned. They…
History in perhaps its broadest sense means finding what can be known about the past and presenting the facts in the form of a coherent narrative. That narrative doesn’t have to be a text. It can be a painting, a movie, or a diorama. For decades, hobby modelers have found ingenious ways to depict nearly…
Not long after the capitulation of Allied forces in the Dutch East Indies on March 5, 1942, a military delegation from countries allied to Japan visited the areas where the fiercest battles took place for a close inspection. This is an account of their visit, with accompaying photos, first carried on the excellent website Arawasi….
The photo above shows Chinese civilians kowtowing to Japanese infantry marching by. Whether they have been forced to do it, or if it is a voluntary attempt to avoid being targeted by an invader known for his brutality towards the local population, we don’t know. It is also possible the action was merely performed for…
The ‘knee mortar’ was among the most peculiar weapons that the Japanese Army brought with it to battlefields in China and elsewhere in the 1930s and 1940s. This detailed article about the Type 89 Heavy Grenade Discharger is reproduced from Teri’s WWII Japanese Handgun Website, with their kind permission. For much, much more on all aspects…
