Latest Patreon Talks: The Significance of The Recent Philippine Elections, Economic Fallout of Ukraine War

The lat­est Patre­on talks parse the clan­des­tine glob­al eco­nom­ic land­scape, high­light­ing the elec­tion of Fer­di­nand Mar­cos’ son as pres­i­dent of the Philip­pines, the new Pacif­ic, anti-Chi­na alliance and the impend­ing fall­out from sanc­tions imposed on Rus­sia and Belarus. Ukrain­ian tele­vi­sion anchor quotes Adolf Eich­mann ver­ba­tim in this video from UKRAINE 24. This video of Ukraine’s top mil­i­tary med­ical offi­cer dis­cussing an order to cas­trate Russ­ian males is an eye-open­er. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash dri­ve con­tain­ing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fas­cist books on easy-to-down­load PDF files.

Memorial Day Weekend Special on KFJC-FM

On Sun­day, 5/29, from 7 until 10pm and Mon­day, 5/30, from 6 until 7pm, KFJC-FM observes Memo­r­i­al Day Week­end by fea­tur­ing Dave Emory’s research on the fun­da­men­tal inter­re­la­tion­ship of fas­cism, mon­ey, war and mur­der. Ukrain­ian tele­vi­sion anchor quotes Adolf Eich­mann ver­ba­tim in this video from UKRAINE 24. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash dri­ve con­tain­ing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fas­cist books on easy-to-down­load PDF files.

Sunken Treasure

We sus­pect that a dynam­ic in the con­tro­ver­sy over Chi­na’s claim of sov­er­eign­ty over the South Chi­na Sea has lit­tle or noth­ing to do with “Free­dom of Nav­i­ga­tion” or any oth­er pre­ten­sions by the U.S. and its allies. An aspect of the post­war glob­al econ­o­my that has large­ly elud­ed pub­lic aware­ness con­cerns the Japan­ese loot­ing of the liq­uid wealth of Asia dur­ing the Sec­ond World War. Inter­est­ed researchers are emphat­i­cal­ly encour­aged to read “Gold War­riors” by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave. The vol­ume is a hero­ic, mas­ter­ful analy­sis and pen­e­tra­tion of the Asian wing of the car­tel sys­tem that spawned fas­cism, as well as the real­i­ties of the post-World War II eco­nom­ic land­scape. In addi­tion to trea­sure delib­er­ate­ly and mas­ter­ful­ly secret­ed in elab­o­rate­ly dis­guised and boo­by-trapped sites all over Japan­ese-occu­pied Asia, much of the loot was scut­tled at sea and also lost when ships car­ry­ing the trea­sure were sunk. It may well be that some of the inhab­it­ed islands in the South Chi­na Sea are sites for Gold­en Lily ships delib­er­ate­ly scut­tled for lat­er sal­vage and recov­ery. ” . . . . In the last year of the war, Japan also hid large quan­ti­ties of bul­lion at sea, delib­er­ate­ly scut­tling ships includ­ing the cruis­er Nachii, sunk with all hands in Mani­la Bay by a Japan­ese sub­ma­rine that then machine-gunned all the Japan­ese crew mem­bers who came to the sur­face. The gold aboard the Nachii was recov­ered from its hulk in the late 1970s by Pres­i­dent Mar­cos. . . .” WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash dri­ve con­tain­ing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fas­cist books on easy-to-down­load PDF files.

Golden Lily Veterans Involved with 1965 Indonesian Coup

The “Deep Pol­i­tics” detailed by the bril­liant Berke­ley pro­fes­sor Peter Dale Scott in his opus “Amer­i­can War Machine” set forth the involve­ment Japan­ese war crim­i­nals Sasakawa Ryoichi and Kodama Yoshio in the Indone­sian coup of 1965. That epic blood­let­ting saw the engi­neers of the event kill a mil­lion peo­ple (some put the toll as high as three mil­lion.) In addi­tion to being prime movers behind the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, Sasakawa Ryoichi and Kodama Yoshio were lynch­pins of the per­pet­u­a­tion of the oper­a­tional foun­da­tion of Japan­ese fas­cism under the aus­pices of the LDP in the post­war peri­od. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.

Rare Journalistic Glimpse of Japanese Political and Historical Revisionism

In numer­ous pro­grams, we have cov­ered the re-insti­tu­tion of Impe­r­i­al Japan­ese fas­cism in the after­math of World War II. That re-con­sti­tu­tion embraced the polit­i­cal, finan­cial and indus­tri­al ele­ments of the Japan­ese pow­er elite pri­or to, and dur­ing, World War II. Review­ing a recent film set against the back­ground of Unit 731 (a rel­a­tive rar­i­ty in, and of, itself), “The New York Times” not­ed the insti­tu­tion­al­ized his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism that is part of con­tem­po­rary Japan­ese life. ” . . . . In Tokyo, black vans often prowl the streets spout­ing pro­pa­gan­da that rewrites the country’s role in the war. And pub­lish­ers churn out books dis­put­ing the most basic facts about atroc­i­ties. . . .” WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.

FTR#1214 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 21

This pro­gram con­cludes the series.

Intro­duc­ing the expan­sion of Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence with Chi­ang and his Kuom­intang fas­cists into U.S. Cold War pol­i­cy in Asia, we present Ster­ling Seagrave’s rumi­na­tion about Stan­ley Horn­beck, a State Depart­ment flack who became: “. . . . the doyen of State’s Far East­ern Divi­sion. . . .”

Horn­beck “ . . . . had only the most abbre­vi­at­ed and stilt­ed knowl­edge of Chi­na, and had been out of touch per­son­al­ly for many years. . . . He with­held cables from the Sec­re­tary of State that were crit­i­cal of Chi­ang, and once stat­ed that ‘the Unit­ed States Far East­ern pol­i­cy is like a train run­ning on a rail­road track.  It has been clear­ly laid out and where it is going is plain to all.’ It was in fact bound for Saigon in 1975, with whis­tle stops along the way at Peking, Que­moy, Mat­su, and the Yalu Riv­er. . . .”

Next, the pro­gram high­lights key aspects of the career of Ching-Ling Soong, aka Mme. Sun Yat-sen.

Sis­ter of Ai-Ling (aka Mme. H.H. Kung), Mae-ling (aka Mme. Chi­ang Kai-shek) and T.V., T.A. and T.L. Soong, she had a long and remark­able career. 

For the pur­pos­es of this descrip­tion, we re-print mate­r­i­al from FTR#1202.

The fate of the Third Force or Third Option formed by Mme. Sun Yat-sen (nee Ching-ling Soong) and Teng Yen-ta, a per­sis­tent crit­ic of Chi­ang Kai-shek, was pre­dictable.

Dis­il­lu­sioned with Com­mu­nism after a sojourn in Moscow, Mme. Sun Yat-sen part­nered with Teng Yen-ta, who rec­og­nized Chi­ang’s fas­cism and, yet, felt that the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty (at that point in time) was over­ly loy­al to Moscow and was­n’t doing enough for the Chi­nese peas­antry.

Both Ching-ling and Teng Yen-ta sought an alter­na­tive to both Kuom­intang fas­cism and the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty.

Find­ing the demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism pro­posed by Ching-ling and Teng Yen-ta unac­cept­able, Chi­ang had the British and Amer­i­can police author­i­ties arrest him in the Inter­na­tion­al Con­ces­sion in Shang­hai, after which he was tor­tured for many months.

Ching-ling was report­ed to have vis­it­ed Chi­ang to plead for Teng Yen-ta’s release. Chi­ang had  already dealt with him in char­ac­ter­is­tic fash­ion: “ . . . . Days ear­li­er, on Novem­ber 29, 1931, near­ly a year after his arrest, Ten Yen-ta had been tak­en from his cell at Chiang’s com­mand and was slow­ly stran­gled with a wire. The exe­cu­tion­er was said to be famous for keep­ing vic­tims alive for half an hour while he tight­ened his grip. In his office, Chi­ang had remained silent while Ching-ling plead­ed for a man already dead, enjoy­ing the spec­ta­cle of her momen­tary vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. . . .”

Next, we recount Mme. Sun’s encounter with a Kuomintang/Green Gang agent.

After rebuff­ing his polit­i­cal approach, Mme. Sun Yat-sen demol­ished his  polit­i­cal per­sona.

. . . . “Soong: ‘There is only one way to silence me, Mr. Tai. Shoot me or imprison me. If you don’t then it sim­ply means that you admit you are not wrong­ly accused. But what­ev­er you do, do it open­ly like me, don’t . . . sur­round me with spies.’

Tai: ‘I shall call again upon my return from Nanking.

Soong: ‘Fur­ther con­ver­sa­tions would be useless—the gulf between us is too wide.’

As Tai Ch’i‑tao and his wife left, the old man turned and—his tongue flick­ing over dry lips (he was a very ner­vous man)—hissed out a part­ing bit of ven­om: ‘If you were any­one but Madame Sun, we would cut your head off.’

Ching-ling smiled. ‘If you were the rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies you pre­tend to be, you’d cut it off any­way.’. . .”

Infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed by Ster­ling Seagrave–of which Mr. Emory was not pre­vi­ous­ly aware–indicates that the CCP is more nuanced than Amer­i­cans have been led to believe.

Although resist­ing mem­ber­ship in the Com­mu­nist Par­ty and attempt­ing to re-start the Third Option on the eve of Chi­ang’s capit­u­la­tion and flight to Tai­wan, Mme. Sun Yat-sen was installed as one of three Vice-Chair­men of the gov­ern­ment.

Again, this is not some­thing of which Mr. Emory was aware until read­ing this book.

“ . . . . Ching-ling sold many of her remain­ing pos­ses­sions to sup­port pro­grams of the Chi­na Wel­fare League she had found­ed. In 1948, with the Chi­ang regime ready to flee and the Com­mu­nists on their way to vic­to­ry, she took part in a last attempt to orga­nize an alter­na­tive to both com­mu­nism and fascism—a new ver­sion of the Third Force. It was called the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Com­mit­tee, and Ching-ling was named its hon­orary chair­man. Its con­stituen­cy was the pow­er­less. . . .”

“ . . . . When the People’s Repub­lic came into exis­tence, Ching-ling became one of the three non-Com­mu­nist polit­i­cal lead­ers cho­sen as Vice-Chair­men of the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment in Peking. . . .”

Mme. Sun (Ching-ling Soong) man­i­fest­ed a strong­ly inde­pen­dent ide­o­log­i­cal stance, which, while anti-fas­cist and anti-impe­ri­al­ist, sought (as we have seen) a “Third Force” or “Third Option” between Com­mu­nism and Chi­ang’s nar­co-fas­cism.

That inde­pen­dence of mind, demon­strat­ed through decades of social strug­gle, plus out­right jeal­ousy on the part of Madame Mao led to defama­tion and per­se­cu­tion dur­ing the dis­as­trous Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion, with Mme. Sun nar­row­ly escap­ing the rav­ages of the Red Guard.

“ . . . . Dur­ing the Red Guard ram­pages of the 1960’s, the job of pro­tect­ing Madame Sun became nerve-rack­ing. Posters appeared denounc­ing her, and it was not safe for her to go any­where. . . .”

“ . . . . In the sum­mer of 1966, Pre­mier Chou En-lai was forced to warn the Red Guards to cease their ver­bal attacks on Madame Sun, and to stop putting up posters accus­ing her of being a bour­geois reac­tionary. On Sep­tem­ber 21, 1966, in Shang­hai where the Red Guard move­ment fre­quent­ly got out of con­trol, a mob stormed Ching-ling’s house on the Avenue Jof­fre and loot­ed it. Ching-ling was not in Shang­hai at the time. She let the inci­dent pass with­out com­ment. Her chief adver­sary was the wife of Chair­man Mao, who appar­ent­ly resent­ed the fact that Ching-ling was always men­tioned as the woman of high­est rank in Chi­na.

“ . . . . When the Red Guard move­ment abat­ed, and Madame Mao and the cel­e­brat­ed Gang of Four were tried in a people’s court as coun­ter­rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies, Ching-ling’s life set­tled back into a tran­quil twi­light. . . .”

“ . . . . On May 16, 1981, Soong Ching-ling was named hon­orary Pres­i­dent of Chi­na. . . . She suc­cumbed to leukemia on May 29, 1981, in her Peking home. . . . But, in an inter­view once with writer Han Suyin, Ching-ling put into words the lega­cy she had learned most bit­ter­ly from the time of the Soongs:

The Soong Dynasty con­cludes with an epi­logue which is note­wor­thy in sev­er­al respects. The prose is of a char­ac­ter that one does not see any­more. Elo­quent, poignant, pas­sion­ate and yet, at the same time, bit­ing­ly, iron­i­cal­ly humor­ous, Seagrave’s writ­ing is remark­able in, and of, itself.

Beyond the prose, the epi­logue is remark­able for the elab­o­rate his­tor­i­cal metaphor that it presents: dis­cus­sion of the cor­rup­tion and bru­tal­i­ty of the late Manchu Dynasty and the Dowa­ger Empress, whom Sea­grave refers to as “The Old Bud­dha.” (He lat­er pub­lished a vol­ume about her reign titled The Drag­on Lady.)

Seagrave’s dis­cus­sion of the Dowa­ger Empress’s intrigues and bru­tal mur­der of the Pearl Con­cu­bine con­sti­tutes a metaphor for the lethal, con­sum­mate­ly cor­rupt gov­ern­ment of Chi­ang Kai-shek and his pup­pet mas­ters, the Soongs.

As for­eign armies were approach­ing Peking dur­ing the Box­er Rebel­lion, “The Old Bud­dha” made arrange­ments to flee the palace known as The For­bid­den City, don­ning a dis­guise and tak­ing the Emper­or with her.

When the Emper­or sought to remain in Peking to nego­ti­ate with the for­eign armies and enlist­ed the assis­tance of his favorite consort—the Pearl Concubine—in order to per­suade the Dowa­ger Empress.

The Pearl Con­cu­bine had resist­ed con­form­ing to the will of the Dowa­ger Empress, and “The Old Bud­dha” took this occa­sion to elim­i­nate this ele­ment of resis­tance to her palace intrigues, a long­time obsta­cle to her polit­i­cal orders.

“ . . . . The Pearl Con­cu­bine had been a thorn in the Dowager’s side, inter­fer­ing with palace intrigues by giv­ing inde­pen­dent advice to the Emper­or. It was time to dis­pose of her. The Dowa­ger bel­lowed orders. Two eunuchs seized the Pearl Con­cu­bine. In ter­ror, the Emper­or went to his knees and begged for her life. But the eunuchs car­ried the strug­gling girl to the nar­row well by the Palace of Peace and Longevi­ty, turned her upside down in her shim­mer­ing cocoon of silks, and flung her shriek­ing into its maw. Because the well was so nar­row, the eunuchs jumped on her to force her down. . . . .”

Ster­ling Sea­grave then sets forth the mur­der­ous nature of the late Manchu rule of the Dowa­ger Empress—a metaphor for the bloody cor­rup­tion of Chiang’s fas­cist gov­ern­ment.

“ . . . . The For­bid­den City is a grave­yard of souls, drowned, behead­ed, throt­tled, flayed alive, to silence them in the inter­ests of state. Here, mur­der was not an act of pas­sion but an instru­ment of rule. Judi­cial mur­der. Impe­r­i­al mur­der. Silence by assas­si­na­tion. To sti­fle those who would inter­fere, who would object, who would ques­tion, who would say no. . . .”

Ster­ling Sea­grave then piv­ots to the Soong fam­i­ly: “ . . . . The oth­ers passed through life like a team of pick­pock­ets through a car­ni­val crowd, doing what they did best, while the rubes watched geeks bite heads off live chick­ens. There are those who insist that May-ling remained inno­cent through­out by virtue of her tun­nel vision. It is not for me to say, except that these peo­ple also believe in vir­gin birth.

“They were a fam­i­ly that could stand togeth­er in front of a mir­ror (Ching-ling miss­ing from the group by choice), all cast­ing reflec­tions except Ai-ling. She cast no reflec­tion at all. What medieval con­clu­sion can we draw? . . . .”

Sea­grave con­cludes with a ref­er­ence to Har­ry Truman’s launch­ing of an FBI inves­ti­ga­tion of the Soong fam­i­ly. (We dis­cussed this in FTR#1205 .)

“ . . . . Of all the peo­ple who might have act­ed, I won­dered why Har­ry Tru­man did noth­ing. . . . . Per­haps he con­clud­ed that so many promi­nent peo­ple were involved it would not be good for the nation as they say. So near­ly every­one stayed silent. Nobody spoke for the vic­tims. Who, then, will speak for the con­cu­bine in the well? . . .”

The pro­gram reviews the death threats and intim­i­da­tion that the authors of Gold War­riors received over the pub­li­ca­tion of this and oth­er books.

“. . . . Many peo­ple told us this book was his­tor­i­cal­ly impor­tant and must be published—then warned us that if it were pub­lished, we would be mur­dered. An Aus­tralian econ­o­mist who read it said, ” I hope they let you live.” He did not have to explain who “they” were. . . .

“. . . .

We have been threat­ened with mur­der before. When we pub­lished The Soong Dynasty we were warned by a senior CIA offi­cial that a hit team was being assem­bled in Tai­wan to come mur­der us. He said, ‘I would take this very seri­ous­ly, if I were you.’ We van­ished for a year to an island off the coast of British Colum­bia. While we were gone, a Tai­wan hit team arrived in San Fran­cis­co and shot dead the Chi­nese-Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist Hen­ry Liu.

When we pub­lished The Mar­cos Dynasty we expect­ed trou­ble from the Mar­cos fam­i­ly and its cronies, but instead we were harassed by Wash­ing­ton. Oth­ers had inves­ti­gat­ed Mar­cos, but we were the first to show how the U.S. Gov­ern­ment was secret­ly involved with Mar­cos gold deals. We came under attack from the U.S. Trea­sury Depart­ment and its Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice, whose agents made threat­en­ing mid­night phone calls to our elder­ly par­ents. Arriv­ing in New York for an author tour, one of us was inter­cept­ed at JFK air­port, pass­port seized, and held incom­mu­ni­ca­do for three hours. Even­tu­al­ly the pass­port was returned, with­out a word of expla­na­tion. When we ran Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion queries to see what was behind it, we were grudg­ing­ly sent a copy of a telex mes­sage, on which every word was blacked out, includ­ing the date. The jus­ti­fi­ca­tion giv­en for this cen­sor­ship was the need to pro­tect gov­ern­ment sources, which are above the law.

Dur­ing one harass­ing phone call from a U.S. Trea­sury agent, he said he was sit­ting in his office watch­ing an inter­view we had done for a Japan­ese TV network—an inter­view broad­cast only in Japan­ese, which we had nev­er seen. After pub­lish­ing The Yam­a­to Dynasty, which briefly men­tioned the dis­cov­ery that is the basis for Gold War­riors, our phones and email were tapped. We know this because when one of us was in a Euro­pean clin­ic briefly for a med­ical pro­ce­dure, the head nurse report­ed that “some­one pos­ing as your Amer­i­can doc­tor” had been on the phone ask­ing ques­tions.

When a brief extract of this book was pub­lished in the South Chi­na Morn­ing Post in August 2001, sev­er­al phone calls from the edi­tors were cut off sud­den­ly. Emails from the news­pa­per took 72 hours to reach us, while copies sent to an asso­ciate near­by arrived instant­ly. In recent months, we began to receive veiled death threats.

What have we done to pro­voke mur­der? To bor­row a phrase from Jean Ziegler, we are “com­bat­ing offi­cial amne­sia.” We live in dan­ger­ous times, like Ger­many in the 1930’s when any­one who makes incon­ve­nient dis­clo­sures about hid­den assets can be brand­ed a “ter­ror­ist” or a “trai­tor. . . .”

Despite the best efforts of the Amer­i­can and Japan­ese gov­ern­ments to destroy, with­hold, or lose doc­u­men­ta­tion relat­ed to Gold­en Lily, we have accu­mu­lat­ed thou­sands of doc­u­ments, con­duct­ed thou­sands of hours of inter­views, and we make all of these avail­able to read­ers of this book on two com­pact discs, avail­able from our web­site www.bowstring.net [no longer online–D.E.] so they can make up their own minds. We encour­age oth­ers with knowl­edge of these events to come for­ward. When the top is cor­rupt, the truth will not come from the top. It will emerge in bits and pieces from peo­ple like Jean Ziegler and Christophe Meili, who decid­ed they had to ‘do some­thing.’ As a pre­cau­tion, should any­thing odd hap­pen, we have arranged for this book and all its doc­u­men­ta­tion to be put up on the Inter­net at a num­ber of sites. If we are mur­dered, read­ers will have no dif­fi­cul­ty fig­ur­ing out who ‘they’ are. . . .”

Ster­ling’s fears about Opus Dei and his and Peg­gy’s prox­im­i­ty to Spain–the seat of that orga­ni­za­tion’s pow­er  turned out to be pre­scient. On Christ­mas Day of 2011, he nar­row­ly escaped assas­si­na­tion while return­ing home. He felt that the attempt on his life may well have been moti­vat­ed by the pub­li­ca­tion of the Span­ish lan­guage edi­tion of Gold War­riors.

. . . . Sea­grave will be remem­bered warm­ly by Ver­so staff for his live­ly cor­re­spon­dence. In a 2011 email, he described an attempt on his life that fol­lowed the Span­ish pub­li­ca­tion of Gold War­riors: 

“A hired thug tried to mur­der me on the ser­pen­tine road lead­ing up to our iso­lat­ed house on the ridge over­look­ing Banyuls-sur-Mer, and near­ly suc­ceed­ed.  (We’ve had sev­er­al seri­ous death threats because of our books.) The road was very nar­row in places, with tar­mac bare­ly the width of my tires. At 10 pm Christ­mas night, in 2011, after vis­it­ing Peg­gy at a clin­ic in Per­pig­nan, as I turned the final hair­pin, I clear­ly saw a guy sit­ting on a cement block path lead­ing up to a shed for the uphill vine­yard. He was obvi­ous­ly wait­ing for me because we were the only peo­ple liv­ing up there on that moun­tain shoul­der.  He jumped up, raised a long pole, and unfurled a black fab­ric that total­ly blocked the nar­row­est turn ahead of me. I tried to swerve to avoid him (not know­ing whether he also had a gun), and my right front dri­ve wheel went off the tar­mac and lost trac­tion in the rub­ble.

The car teetered and then plunged down through a steep vine­yard on my right side, rolling and bounc­ing front and rear, 100 meters into a ravine where it final­ly came to rest against a tree. Thanks to my seat­belt and air bag, I sur­vived. I don’t know how many con­cus­sions I got on the way down, but I man­aged to squeeze out the driver’s door and fell onto the rub­ble. I got up on my left hand and knees, but my right shoul­der caved in. (Turned out lat­er that I had frac­tured my right shoul­der, and all the lig­a­ments there had torn loose.) I passed out and remained uncon­scious for 14 hours.  After 12 hours, a vigneron dri­ving up the next morn­ing saw my wrecked car and body.

 He called the Gen­darmerie on his portable, and I was hoist­ed out uncon­scious by a chop­per and flown to an old Vic­to­ri­an-era hos­pi­tal in Per­pig­nan where they did noth­ing but keep me doped on mor­phine for two weeks — no X‑rays or seri­ous med­ical care.  Final­ly, friends in Banyuls got me (and Peg­gy) trans­ferred to a clin­ic on the beach there, where Peg­gy and I shared a room while we both recov­ered. I got my right shoul­der lig­a­ments fixed by an excel­lent sur­geon in Per­pig­nan.  (Peg­gy did not know it then but she had an ear­ly stage of can­cer.) I still have a hair­line frac­ture in my right shoul­der.

I attribute the event to stay­ing too long in one place, so the spooks even­tu­al­ly tracked me down.  We had been liv­ing for years on a sail­boat, mov­ing from Hol­land to Britain to Por­tu­gal to Spain and final­ly to France, where we found — in Cat­alo­nia — an ide­al vil­lage at the Mediter­ranean end of the Pyre­nees. In ret­ro­spect, I’m sor­ry I agreed to move ashore for Peggy’s sake, and sold the beau­ti­ful 43-foot boat I had  built from a bare hull. It was very com­fort­able, but Peg­gy want­ed a house. We nev­er did find the right house in Banyuls — so we spent 18 years restor­ing a 13th cen­tu­ry Tem­plar ruin on the shoul­der of the moun­tain.  Made me an easy tar­get. Def­i­nite­ly a bad deci­sion. I think it was the Span­ish edi­tion of Gold War­riors that made me the easy tar­get. 

In FTR#‘s 1107, 1108 and 1111, we set forth the high­ly sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the death (and prob­a­ble mur­der) of author Iris Chang. A ring­ing endorse­ment by Ms. Chang graces the cov­er of Gold War­riors.

Ms. Chang’s sig­na­ture work–The Rape of Nanking–detailed one of the ini­tial events in Japan’s loot­ing of Chi­na dur­ing World War II, an act which the U.S. signed off on and prof­it­ed from in the post­war years.

At the time of her alto­geth­er sus­pi­cious death, she was work­ing on a book about the Bataan Death March, at the very time that sur­vivors of that event and oth­er Japan­ese World War II atroc­i­ties were suing Japan­ese zaibat­sus that had employed U.S. POW’s as slave labor.

The suit was rebuffed by U.S. courts.

When Mr. Emory inter­viewed Ster­ling Sea­grave in 2009, he declined to dis­cuss Ms. Chang’s death, which he, too, believed to be mur­der.

FTR#1205 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and The Kuomintang, Part 12

Con­tin­u­ing our series on the regime of Chi­ang Kai-shek–all but beat­i­fied dur­ing the Cold War–we draw still more on a mag­nif­i­cent book–The Soong Dynasty by Ster­ling Sea­grave. Although sad­ly out of print, the book is still avail­able through used book ser­vices, and we emphat­i­cal­ly encour­age lis­ten­ers to take advan­tage of those and obtain it.

Sev­er­al lis­ten­ers have said that they were able to obtain the book because it is still in print! I hope so! PLEASE buy it, read it, and tell oth­ers about it, either through con­ven­tion­al means and/or through social media. (Mr. Emory gets no mon­ey from said pur­chas­es of the book.)

We also draw on anoth­er, alto­geth­er remark­able work by Peg­gy and Ster­ling Seagrave–Gold War­riors.

The Rape of Nanking–the sub­ject of Iris Chang’s best-sell­ing, non­fic­tion book, saw the begin­ning of the Gold­en Lily oper­a­tion.  The loot­ing of Chi­na (as well as the rest of Asia) by Japan and the sub­se­quent Amer­i­can fus­ing of the Japan­ese war loot into the clan­des­tine U.S. econ­o­my is undoubt­ed­ly a major irri­tant to the Chi­nese.

The loot­ing of Chi­na by Japan–and by exten­sion the U.S.–manifests on top of the cen­turies’ old loot­ing of that coun­try by Britain and the rest of the Euro­pean colo­nial pow­ers, the U.S. as a whole, the Chi­ang Kai-shek/­Green Gang alliance and the over­lap­ping Soong clan.

Chi­nese insis­tence on access to tech­nolo­gies devel­oped by firms estab­lish­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing con­cerns on their soil may be seen as an his­tor­i­cal reac­tion to what the coun­try was sub­ject­ed to at the hands of the above inter­ests.

In the pas­sage below, note the intel­lec­tu­al and cul­tur­al plun­der­ing of Chi­na by Japan, as well as the loot­ing of their eco­nom­ic wealth–a phe­nom­e­non of which the Amer­i­can occu­pa­tion forces were aware and with which they ulti­mate­ly col­lud­ed.

Loot­ing of Chi­na was com­pound­ed by joint U.S. and Kuom­intang secret­ing of gold from soon to be Com­mu­nist-occu­pied Chi­na in the post-World War II peri­od (over­lap­ping the Chi­nese civ­il war.) This episode could be seen as an exten­sion of Chi­ang’s loot­ing of the gold of pri­vate investors from the Bank of Chi­na (with the active col­lab­o­ra­tion of the Green Gang) just before the Gen­er­alis­si­mo decamped for Tai­wan.

” . . . . As Chair­man Mao’s forces advanced through Chi­na in 1948 . . . Britain and the U.S. dread­ed the prospect that one of the world’s largest stocks of gold–worth $83-bil­lion at cur­rent prices–would fall into com­mu­nist hands. So it was decid­ed to extract the gold reserves from Chi­na before the com­mu­nists could seize them. The CIA pro­vid­ed the means for this bul­lion res­cue mis­sion . . . .”

Note that the joint U.S./Kuomintang loot­ing of gold from post­war Chi­na was done with the col­lab­o­ra­tion of ele­ments of CIA, as well as the Strate­gic Air Com­mand.

The Fed­er­al Reserve Notes and Fed­er­al Reserve Bonds were to be giv­en to Chi­nese finan­cial inter­ests hold­ing the gold in order to con­vince them to part with the bul­lion.

” . . . . These two CAT [Civ­il Air Transport–a CIA air­line lat­er renamed Air Amer­i­ca] B‑29s, loaded bil­lions of dol­lars’ worth of FRNs and FRBs, were on their way to Malaysia on a round­about route to South­west­ern Chi­na by way of Thai­land and Bur­ma. . . .”

Note, also, that one of the air­craft in a U.S. flight that was downed in the Philip­pines by a typhoon was car­ry­ing ura­ni­um for pos­si­ble use in a “dirty bomb” attack on Chi­na.

” . . . . The B‑50, which had recent­ly been built by Boe­ing to car­ry nuclear weapons for the Strate­gic Air Com­mand (SAC), had a car­go of 117 can­is­ters of Ura­ni­um. At this time, Wash­ing­ton was seri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing drop­ping “dirty bombs” on Red Chi­na and North Korea. . . .”

As not­ed above, Chi­ang Kai-shek and Mme. Chi­ang Kai-shek (nee Mae-ling Soong) were aware of the oper­a­tion and prof­it­ed from it: ” . . . . He [CAT and for­mer Fly­ing Tiger pilot Eric Shilling] gold us Gen­er­alis­si­mo and Mme. Chi­ang Kai-shek were ful­ly informed of the flights . . . . Shilling was invit­ed to the pres­i­den­tial palace where Mme. Chi­ang praised him, telling hi: ‘I did not go to bed until i knew that you had land­ed safe­ly. . . .”

One can but guess if Mme. Chi­ang’s con­cern for Shilling’s well being was ground­ed in the fact that she and Chi­ang ben­e­fit­ed great­ly from the FRNs that were involved in the oper­a­tion: ” . . . . A CIA friend told me that these FRNs were all over the world, not only in the Philip­pines. He said Chi­ang Kai-shek’s fam­i­ly owned large quan­ti­ties. . . .”

Next, we review the fact that T.L. Soong—T.V.’s younger broth­er: “ . . . . who had been in charge of Lend Lease dur­ing World II, and whose Amer­i­can roots were in New York City, became some­thing of an enig­ma. Sources in Wash­ing­ton said T.L. worked as a secret con­sul­tant to the Trea­sury Depart­ment in the 1950’s, engaged in what they would not say. Trea­sury claims it has no record of a T.L. Soong what­ev­er. . . .”

Was T.L. Soong’s Trea­sury con­sul­tan­cy exe­cut­ed in con­junc­tion with the CAT gold extrac­tion mis­sion described above?

The pro­gram con­cludes with exam­i­na­tion of the results of an inves­ti­ga­tion ordered by Pres­i­dent Tru­man into the affairs of the Soong fam­i­ly and their klep­to­crat­ic asso­ciates in what became known as the “Chi­na Lob­by.”

An FBI probe into the family’s doings (and, by exten­sion, those of the Kuom­intang) yield­ed a report that was still heav­i­ly redact­ed in 1983 when the Sea­graves obtained a copy of it.

Pres­i­dent Tru­man summed up the find­ings of the inves­ti­ga­tion into the Soongs, the Kungs and their asso­ciates: “ . . . . ‘They’re all thieves, every damn one of them. . . . They stole sev­en hun­dred and fifty mil­lion dol­lars out of the [$3.8] bil­lion that we sent to Chi­ang. They stole it, and it’s invest­ed in real estate down in Sao Paulo and some right here in New York. . . . And that’s the mon­ey that was used and is still being used for the so-called Chi­na Lob­by.’ . . . .”

Truman’s gaug­ing of the Soong family’s ill-got­ten gains was under­es­ti­ma­tion: “ . . . . In May of 1949, a few months after May-ling’s vis­it [May-ling Soong, aka Mme. Chi­ang Kai-shek], Tru­man heard of alle­ga­tions made by bank­ing sources to mem­bers of Con­gress that the Soongs and Kungs actu­al­ly had $2 bil­lion salt­ed away in Man­hat­tan. . . .”

We note that even the FBI was dealt with in a less than can­did fash­ion by some of the banks that held Soong and Kung fam­i­ly deposits: “ . . . . ‘It would appear,’ an FBI agent not­ed lacon­i­cal­ly, ‘that high bank offi­cials had pre­pared a flat state­ment for issuance to the Bureau in this mat­ter.’. . .”

Even Fed­er­al gov­ern­ment agen­cies were also less than enthu­si­as­tic about coop­er­at­ing with the FBI inves­ti­ga­tion: “ . . . . The FBI was reluc­tant to ask Trea­sury for a copy [of bureau­crat­ic forms sub­mit­ted by the Soong fam­i­ly] because it believed that senior Trea­sury offi­cials were close to T.V. and might reveal the inves­ti­ga­tion to him. [Recall that his broth­er T.L. may well have been a con­sul­tant to the Trea­sury Department—D.E] . . .”

 The FBI also ran across evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries that may well have run from the clan­des­tine loot­ing of Chi­nese gold reserves described in the sec­ond major ele­ment of this pro­gram. “ . . . . On the West Coast, oth­er agents dis­cov­ered the cold trail of a Chi­nese plot to fly huge quan­ti­ties of gold from Chi­na to an out-of-the-way pri­vate air­port in the Los Ange­les sub­urb of Van Nuys. . . .”

Inves­ti­ga­tion of the digs of H.H. Kung’s fam­i­ly yield­ed some of the most sor­did infor­ma­tion. [H.H. was mar­ried to Ai-ling Soong, elder sis­ter of Mme. Chi­ang Kai-shek and sis­ter to the Soong brothers—T.V., T.L. and T.A.]. “ . . . . Accord­ing to the news­pa­pers, sev­er­al Chi­nese ser­vants in the sum­mer had been brought from Hong Kong osten­si­bly to work in the Chi­nese Embassy found them­selves vir­tu­al pris­on­ers of the Kungs in Riverdale. [At that point in time, the Chi­nese Embassy would have been that of the Tai­wan-based Kuom­intang.] . . . . In des­per­a­tion, they escaped togeth­er, but were cap­tured and brought back. . . . the hap­less ser­vants were taught a les­son when they were hung from the ceil­ing and whipped. . .  H.H. Kung . . . did not deny any of his ser­vants’ . . . charges. . . .”

FTR#1203 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and The Kuomintang, Part 10

Con­tin­u­ing our series on the regime of Chi­ang Kai-shek–all but beat­i­fied dur­ing the Cold War–we draw still more on a mag­nif­i­cent book–“The Soong Dynasty” by Ster­ling Sea­grave. Although sad­ly out of print, the book is still avail­able through used book ser­vices, and we emphat­i­cal­ly encour­age lis­ten­ers to take advan­tage of those and obtain it.

(Mr. Emory gets no mon­ey from said pur­chas­es of the book.)

We begin by resum­ing analy­sis of the polit­i­cal and pro­fes­sion­al destruc­tion of U.S. mil­i­tary and State Depart­ment ele­ments that cor­rect­ly gauged Chi­ang Kai-shek and the [inevitable, down­ward] tra­jec­to­ry of his regime.

Just as Gen­er­al Still­well was removed as top mil­i­tary offi­cer in the China/Burma the­ater because of his appro­pri­ate, accu­rate, vehe­ment crit­i­cism of Chi­ang Kai-shek’s pri­or­i­ti­za­tion of fight­ing the Com­mu­nists over fight­ing the Japan­ese, State Depart­ment offi­cers who accu­rate­ly fore­cast the deci­sive ascent of the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty over the KMT were pun­ished for their stance.

(Stilwell’s replace­ment by Gen­er­al Wede­mey­er was noteworthy—particularly in light of the back­ground and behav­ior of Wede­mey­er.

In addi­tion to being part of a polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary milieu that infused iso­la­tion­ist ori­en­ta­tion toward involve­ment in World War II with pro-fas­cist sen­ti­ment, Wede­mey­er appears to have presided over an act of con­sum­mate treason—the leak of the Rain­bow Five Amer­i­can mobi­liza­tion plan for World War II to anti-FDR pub­lish­er Robert J. McCormick, of the Chica­go Tri­bune.)

The Chi­na watch­ers’ advice was not only ignored, but cast as “sub­ver­sive” dur­ing the anti-Com­mu­nist witch hunts of the McCarthy peri­od.

“ . . . . The eyes and ears of the U.S. Gov­ern­ment in Chunk­ing were a hand­ful of old Chi­na hands . . . . The Chi­na watch­ers’ mes­sage essen­tial­ly was that no mat­ter how much Wash­ing­ton want­ed Chi­ang Kai-shek to ‘run’ Chi­na, he was about to lose it to the Com­mu­nists. . . . The observers in Chungk­ing were accused of being in favor of what they predicted—in favor of com­mu­nism. In fact, they were only warn­ing their gov­ern­ment of a course of events that now seemed cer­tain. . . . Wash­ing­ton react­ed with deep sus­pi­cion and hos­til­i­ty and insist­ed on nail­ing the Amer­i­can flag the more tight­ly to the mast of Chiang’s sink­ing ship . . . .”

As we shall fur­ther explore, the cog­ni­tive per­cep­tion of Chi­na in this coun­try was shaped by the Soong fam­i­ly.

The Chi­na watch­ers’ advice was not only ignored, but cast as “sub­ver­sive” dur­ing the anti-Com­mu­nist witch hunts of the McCarthy peri­od.

“ . . . . Amer­i­can pol­i­cy was thus based upon the per­son­al­i­ties of the Chi­angs, the Soongs and the Kungs, rather than upon the events, the nation or the peo­ple. This was a trib­ute to the Soongs’ extra­or­di­nary stage­craft. . . .”

Ster­ling Sea­grave filed a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act request, which obtained an FBI report on the Soongs. Heav­i­ly redacted—even in 1985—it revealed the Soongs machi­na­tions on both sides of the Pacif­ic.

“ . . . . The Soong fam­i­ly . . . . ‘prac­ti­cal­ly had a death grip.’ The Soongs ‘have always been mon­ey mad and every move they made was prompt­ed by their desire to secure funds.’ . . . . ‘there was a gigan­tic con­spir­a­cy to defraud the Chi­nese from mate­ri­als they would ordi­nar­i­ly receive through [Lend-Lease] and to divert con­sid­er­able of this mon­ey to the Soong fam­i­ly.’. . .”

After dis­cussing the extreme mar­i­tal dif­fi­cul­ties of Chi­ang Kai-shek and Mme. Chi­ang Kai-shek (the for­mer Mae-ling Soong, whose mar­riage to Chi­ang had been arranged by H. H. Kung and his Machi­avel­lian wife Ai-ling—the for­mer Ai-ling Soong), the infor­mant iden­ti­fies Mrs. Kung as the sin­is­ter, dead­ly and manip­u­la­tive fig­ure that she was.

Exem­pli­fy­ing the scale of the treach­er­ous, cor­rupt prac­tices of the clan was a diver­sion of Lend-Lease aid: “ . . . . The infor­mant then told the FBI that one of the ways T.V. divert­ed Lend-Lease funds into his own pock­et was illus­trat­ed by reports reach­ing Chunk­ing that a freighter car­ry­ing six­ty new Amer­i­can bat­tle tanks and oth­er very expen­sive war materiel fur­nished by Lend-Lease had been sunk. As a mat­ter of fact this ‘freighter nev­er left the West Coast with any tanks; the tanks were nev­er made . . . . this is a pos­i­tive illus­tra­tion of the man­ner in which the Soongs have been divert­ing funds from Lend-Lease inas­much as the mon­ey was allo­cat­ed for the 60 tanks. . . .”

Again, a key fac­tor in the polit­i­cal clout wield­ed by the Soongs was their extreme wealth, great­ly aug­ment­ed by insti­tu­tion­al­ized cor­rup­tion, includ­ing (and espe­cial­ly) T.V. Soong’s appro­pri­a­tion of much of the Lend-Lease mate­r­i­al des­ig­nat­ed for Chi­na.

In addi­tion to the out­right theft of Lend-Lease mate­r­i­al by Chi­ang Kai-shek’s Green Gang gen­er­al staff and their sale of much of that to the Japan­ese ene­my they were sup­pos­ed­ly fight­ing, T.V. Soong—using his broth­er T.L Soong’s admin­is­tra­tive con­trol of the Lend-Lease pro­gram for China—maneuvered hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars’ worth of U.S. aid into the pri­vate cof­fers of the Soong fam­i­ly.

As the KMT regime decayed and rela­tions between the Soongs and Chi­ang fol­lowed suit, T. V. increas­ing­ly turned his ener­gies to the Amer­i­can side of the Pacif­ic, and appoint­ed T.L. to over­see the Amer­i­can side of Lend-Lease! “ . . . . T.V. used his posi­tion as For­eign Min­is­ter to issue his broth­er T.L. Soong a spe­cial diplo­mat­ic pass­port, and sent him hur­ried­ly to New York. T. L. was actu­al­ly being whisked out of Chi­na to take over as chief pur­chas­ing agent and admin­is­tra­tor of all U.S. Lend-Lease sup­plies before they left for Chi­na. Since the very begin­ning, T.L. had been in charge of Lend-Lease at the Chi­nese end. . . .”

Next, we review the fact that T.L. Soong—T.V.’s younger broth­er: “ . . . . who had been in charge of Lend Lease dur­ing World II, and whose Amer­i­can roots were in New York City, became some­thing of an enig­ma. Sources in Wash­ing­ton said T.L. worked as a secret con­sul­tant to the Trea­sury Depart­ment in the 1950’s, engaged in what they would not say. Trea­sury claims it has no record of a T.L. Soong what­ev­er. . . .”

Next, we review the fact that T.L. Soong—T.V.’s younger broth­er: “ . . . . who had been in charge of Lend Lease dur­ing World II, and whose Amer­i­can roots were in New York City, became some­thing of an enig­ma. Sources in Wash­ing­ton said T.L. worked as a secret con­sul­tant to the Trea­sury Depart­ment in the 1950’s, engaged in what they would not say. Trea­sury claims it has no record of a T.L. Soong what­ev­er. . . .”

The con­clud­ing seg­ments of the pro­gram are drawn on anoth­er mag­nif­i­cent work by the Sea­graves: Gold War­riors.

Before wind­ing up the broad­cast, we “dol­ly out” to syn­op­size the rela­tion­ship between the Japan­ese invaders of Chi­na, the Green Gang gang­sters, the Kuom­intang regime of Chi­ang Kai-shek which front­ed for the Green Gang and col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Japan­ese, Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions and Japan­ese colo­nial inter­ests in Korea and Tai­wan.

This overview fore­shad­ows the polit­i­cal con­sor­tium that—in the post­war peri­od, became the Asian Peo­ples’ Anti-Com­mu­nist League, a key com­po­nent of what was to become the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: Green Gang boss Tu Yueh-sheng’s con­trol of Shanghai’s boom­ing gam­bling and over­lap­ping broth­el busi­ness­es; syn­op­tic review of the rela­tion­ship between Tu Yueh-sheng and the Green Gang and Chi­ang Kai-shek; Chiang’s sanc­tion­ing of Tu to con­trol the KMT’s drug traf­fick­ing; the sym­bi­ot­ic, coop­er­a­tive rela­tion­ship between the invad­ing Japan­ese and the Green Gang, cement­ed by Gen­er­al Doi­hara and Kodama Yoshio on the side of the invaders and Green Gang/KMT oper­a­tives the Ku broth­ers (one of whom was Tu’s har­bor boss in Shang­hai and the oth­er of whom was a top KMT gen­er­al); review of the Japan­ese devel­op­ment of the nar­cotics busi­ness in Manchuria; the Japan­ese use of their Manchuri­an nar­cotics enter­prise to sub­vert Chi­na by increas­ing the population’s addic­tion rate; review of Chi­ang Kai-shek’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Manchurian/Japanese nar­cotics enter­prise; the role of Japan­ese zaibat­su and oth­er col­o­nized areas in the Japan­ese nar­cotics busi­ness.

“ . . . . The [opi­um] was con­vert­ed into mor­phine and hero­in at fac­to­ries in Manchuria, Korea and Tai­wan, then smug­gled direct­ly across the strait on motor­ized junks, to main­land ware­hous­es owned by Mit­sui, Mit­subishi and oth­er con­glom­er­ates. An army fac­to­ry in Seoul that pro­duced over 2,600 kilos of hero­in in 1938–1939 was only one of sev­er­al hun­dred fac­to­ries in Manchuria, Korea, Tai­wan, and in Japan­ese con­ces­sions in main­land cities like Han­kow. . . .”

We con­clude the pro­gram with analy­sis of pow­er broker–Kodama Yoshio who helped insti­tu­tion­al­ize the col­lab­o­ra­tion between Chi­nese KMT, Kore­an and Japan­ese fas­cists. Note­wor­thy, as well is Kodama’s close rela­tion­ship between with the CIA and the Japan­ese Impe­r­i­al fam­i­ly in the postwar/Cold War peri­od.

Kodama Yoshio epit­o­mizes and embod­ies the oper­a­tional and ide­o­log­i­cal struc­ture of the Asian Peo­ple’s Anti-Com­mu­nist League, the Asian branch of what was to become the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: Kodama’s accu­mu­lat­ed for­tune of 13 bil­lion dol­lars in World War II dol­lars; Kodama’s close rela­tion­ship with Japan­ese Emper­or Hiro­hi­to, who allowed him to stash some of his wealth in the Impe­r­i­al Palace; Kodama’s dom­i­nant posi­tion in the nar­cotics traf­fic, dur­ing and after World War II; Kodama’s dona­tion of 100 mil­lion dol­lars to the CIA (equiv­a­lent to 1 bil­lion dol­lars in today’s cur­ren­cy); Kodama’s con­tin­ued dom­i­nance in the glob­al nar­cotics traf­fic, dur­ing the time he was on the CIA’s pay­roll; Kodama’s cozy rela­tion­ship with Prince Higashiku­ni, Emper­or Hiro­hi­to’s uncle, who facil­i­tat­ed Kodama’s oper­a­tions, includ­ing his close rela­tion­ship with the U.S.

FTR#1201 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 8

Con­tin­u­ing our series on the regime of Chi­ang Kai-shek–all but beat­i­fied dur­ing the Cold War–we draw still more on a mag­nif­i­cent book–The Soong Dynasty by Ster­ling Sea­grave. Although sad­ly out of print, the book is still avail­able through used book ser­vices, and we emphat­i­cal­ly encour­age lis­ten­ers to take advan­tage of those and obtain it.

(Mr. Emory gets no mon­ey from said pur­chas­es of the book.)

The broad­cast begins with review of the denoue­ment of the Siang inci­dent, detailed in FTR#1200.

Points of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion include:

1.–Eventually, Chi­ang grudg­ing­ly agreed to the coali­tion, appar­ent­ly after T.V. Soong saw to it that Chi­ang got a sig­nif­i­cant amount of mon­ey. “ . . . . The Young Mar­shal gal­lant­ly accept­ed all blame for the Sian Inci­dent, allow­ing Chi­ang to wash his hands in pub­lic and wipe them on him. (Inter­est­ing­ly he was put up at T.V. Soong’s home in Nanking.) He had done Chi­na a his­toric ser­vice by bring­ing about the long-sought unit­ed front, what­ev­er its lat­er fail­ings. . . .”
2.–Chiang’s reluc­tant agree­ment was trum­pet­ed by Hen­ry Luce: “ . . . . He put them [Chi­ang and Mme. Chi­ang] on the cov­er of Time’s first issue of 1938 as ‘Man and Wife of the Year.’ May-ling Soong Chi­ang now became an even big­ger inter­na­tion­al celebri­ty. . . .”
3.–As was his wont, Chi­ang broke his promise to the Young Mar­shal and Gen­er­al Yang. Laud­ed by Hen­ry Luce and his asso­ciates as an Exem­plary Chris­t­ian, Chi­ang promised an amnesty on Good Friday—a promise he prompt­ly broke. “ . . . . In his Good Fri­day mes­sage to Chi­na that spring of 1937, Chi­ang referred to the Sian Inci­dent and said pious­ly, ‘Remem­ber­ing that Christ enjoined us to for­give those who sin against us until sev­en­ty times sev­en and upon their repen­tance, I felt that that they should be allowed to start life anew. . . .”
3.–Similar treat­ment was afford­ed Gen­er­al Yang: “ . . . . The Young Marshal’s co-con­spir­a­tor, Gen­er­al Yang, despite the Good Fri­day amnesty, was impris­oned when he came back from Euro­pean exile and lan­guished for eleven years in one of Tai Li’s spe­cial deten­tion camps near Chungk­ing. His wife went on a hunger strike in protest and was allowed to starve her­self to death. . . .”

On his last trip through Chi­na before decamp­ing to Tai­wan, Chi­ang ordered the exe­cu­tion of Gen­er­al Yang and his sur­viv­ing fam­i­ly: “ . . . . As long as he was in Chunk­ing any­way, the Gen­er­alis­si­mo stopped by police head­quar­ters to fin­ish off one remain­ing bit of ‘per­son­al’ busi­ness. In the Chunk­ing prison, there was still a pris­on­er who was very spe­cial. It was Yang Hu-Cheng, the war­lord who had joined the Young Mar­shal to kid­nap Chi­ang in the Sian Inci­dent. . . . For eleven years, Yang, a son, and a daugh­ter (along with a loy­al sec­re­tary and his wife) lan­guished in Tai-Li’s con­cen­tra­tion camp out­side Chunk­ing. Now, before leav­ing Chi­na for good, Chi­ang made this spe­cial trip just to sign Yang’s death war­rant. The old man, his son, his daugh­ter, his sec­re­tary, and the secretary’s wife were all tak­en out and shot. . . .”

A sig­na­ture episode in China’s World War II his­to­ry is what became known as the New Fourth Army Inci­dent.

Key points of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion include:

1.–When the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Fourth Army, act­ing under the aus­pices of the accord wrest­ed from Chi­ang at Sian, was prepar­ing a cam­paign that would have dis­turbed a sym­bi­ot­ic rela­tion­ship between the Japan­ese and Tu Yueh-sheng, it was ambushed by Kuom­intang gen­er­al Ku Chu‑t’ung. Ku Chu‑t’ung was the broth­er of Tu Yueh-sheng’s pow­er­ful har­bor boss Ku Tsu-chuan. “ . . . . Chiang’s defense of Chi­na was being por­trayed by T.V. Soong as a valiant defi­ance against Japan­ese hordes car­ried out assid­u­ous­ly by KMT gen­er­als. If so, it was pro­ceed­ing in a curi­ous fash­ion. Chi­ang was engag­ing in as lit­tle actu­al fight­ing as pos­si­ble. . . . Chi­ang was hus­band­ing his resources for a renew­al of his war with the Com­mu­nists. Once holed up in Chungk­ing, he let the peo­ple fend for them­selves. . . .”
2.–Worth not­ing in this con­text is the fact that Chi­nese troops were capa­ble of defeat­ing the Japan­ese in bat­tle and enjoyed cel­e­bra­to­ry sup­port from the country’s pop­u­lace when they did so. This dynam­ic became cen­tral to the entreaties made (in vain) by Gen­er­al Joseph Stil­well lat­er in the war and his sub­se­quent dis­missal and replace­ment: “ . . . . On only one occa­sion, a KMT army under Gen­er­al Li Tsung-jen proved that Chi­nese sol­diers could whip the Japan­ese when they had the will to do so, in the bat­tle of Taier­chuang in April 1938. Th Japan­ese in this instance were bad­ly beat­en and the peo­ple of Chi­na were elat­ed. But Chi­ang ordered the army not to pur­sue, and with­in weeks of Taier­chuang the Japan­ese had recov­ered the ini­tia­tive. . . .”
3.–Typical of the lethal­ly incom­pe­tent con­duct of the war by Chiang’s KMT armies was the Yel­low Riv­er dikes inci­dent. “ . . . . One of Chiang’s few attempts to slow the Japan­ese led him to dyna­mite the dikes on the Yel­low Riv­er. With­out warn­ing of any kind, three provinces, eleven cities, and four thou­sand vil­lages were flood­ed, two mil­lion peo­ple were made home­less, and all their crops were destroyed. The Japan­ese were only bogged down for three months. . . . Chiang’s gov­ern­ment tried to put the blame on the Japan­ese and the Tai­wan gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to do so today. [1985—D.E.] . . .”
4.–Taking prece­dence over fight­ing the Japan­ese was Chiang’s political/military pri­or­i­ti­za­tion of wag­ing civ­il war against the Com­mu­nists: “. . . . By 1940–41, Chiang’s sphere of influ­ence had shrunk while the Com­mu­nists’ area had, expand­ed at the expense of the Japan­ese. In the red area, sol­diers, gueril­las, and peas­ants were fight­ing furi­ous­ly and with results. But, each time the reds enlarged their perime­ter, Chi­ang had his army attack the Com­mu­nists instead of the Japan­ese, to keep his rivals from mak­ing ter­ri­to­r­i­al gains. It was a war with­in a war. Chi­ang had half a mil­lion sol­diers occu­pied blockad­ing the red area in the North­west. . . .”
5.–Chiang’s anti-com­mu­nist strat­e­gy reached an extreme with the New Fourth Army Inci­dent. When a com­mu­nist army moved into an area in which the Green Gang and Japan­ese had estab­lished a coop­er­a­tive rela­tion­ship, it was ambushed: “ . . . . Part of the Unit­ed Front agree­ment involved putting Mao’s Red Army under joint KMT com­mand. . . . In 1941, the [Com­mu­nist] New Fourth Army was assigned to oper­ate under joint KMT-CCP com­mand along the south bank of the Yangtze Riv­er with­in the orbit of the Green Gang. . . .”
6.–Green Gang’s dope rack­ets had con­tin­ued in the area: “ . . . . The gang’s oper­a­tions had not seri­ous­ly dimin­ished because of the war. The gang oper­at­ed under the Japan­ese occu­pa­tion much as it had before, although Big-eared Tu, bear­ing the rank of gen­er­al in the KMTR, wide­ly moved to Chunk­ing. In his absence, the Shang­hai gang head­quar­ters was left in the hands of Tu’s har­bor boss, Ku Tsu-chuan. As a com­ple­ment Gen­er­alis­si­mo Chi­ang gave all mil­i­tary respon­si­bil­i­ties for the low­er Yangtze riv­er to Ku’s broth­er, Gen­er­al Ku Chu‑t’ung. . . .”
7.–The New Fourth Army was going to move against a rail­way. “ . . . . This was an area in which there was coop­er­a­tion between the Green Gang and the Japan­ese. In return for per­mit­ting its opi­um smug­gling and under­world oper­a­tions to go on unin­ter­rupt­ed, the Green Gang guar­an­teed the secu­ri­ty of Japan­ese gar­risons and enter­pris­es in the Yangtze Val­ley. . . .”
7.–“ . . . . Gen­er­al Ku, in con­sul­ta­tion with Chi­ang Kai-shek, decid­ed that the New Fourth Army was a threat to this fief­dom. . . .”
8.–Taking a safer route—to avoid being sent to an area which would have fed them into a Japan­ese ambush, the New Fourth Army left key parts of its troops and sup­port per­son­nel behind.
9.–“ . . . . sud­den­ly, ear­ly in Jan­u­ary, 1941, Gen­er­al Ku fell upon it with a much greater force and mas­sa­cred all but the head­quar­ters con­tin­gent and its women cadres and nurs­es. All five thou­sand com­bat sol­diers left behind as a guard were slain. Accord­ing to sur­vivors, the men of the head­quar­ters staff were then butchered. The KMT gen­er­al who had been com­mand­ing the New Fourth was arrest­ed, while the CCP polit­i­cal com­mis­sar of the unit—who had escaped the 1927 Shang­hai Massacre—was bru­tal­ly mur­dered. Mean­while the Com­mu­nist nurs­es and women polit­i­cal cadres, many of them school­girls, were being and raped repeat­ed­ly by hun­dreds of sol­diers. They were kept in army broth­els near the attack site for a year and a half. The women con­tract­ed vene­re­al dis­eases and some com­mit­ted sui­cide, singly and with each other’s help. . . .”
10.–General Ku Chu‑t’ung was reward­ed for this by Chi­ang, who made him com­man­der-in-chief of al KMT armies.

The pro­gram then reviews Gen­er­al Ku Chu-t’ung’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with Kodama Yoshio and the Japan­ese to–among oth­er things–re-sell them Amer­i­can Lend Lease goods that were flown Over the Hump or trav­el­ing via the equal­ly per­ilous Bur­ma Road. 

T.V. Soong’s broth­er T.L. Soong was in charge of the Lend-Lease pro­gram to Chi­na dur­ing World War II.

The col­lab­o­ra­tion between the Japan­ese and the Kuom­intang offi­cer corps—who, it must be remem­bered, were also king­pins of the Green Gang crim­i­nal syndicate—was a con­sis­tent pat­tern. The KMT avoid­ed fight­ing the Japan­ese when­ev­er pos­si­ble, and formed com­mer­cial rela­tion­ships with the invaders:  “ . . . . bar­ter­ing Amer­i­can Lend-Lease mate­ri­als for Japan­ese con­sumer goods. For­tunes were made. The only KMT armies that did fight were those under Stilwell’s con­trol in Bur­ma . . . .”

Embody­ing the cor­rup­tion that was part and par­cel to the Kuom­intang military’s offi­cer corps (mint­ed at the Wham­poa acad­e­my), was Gen­er­al T’ang En-po. In addi­tion to his col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Japan­ese invaders, he viewed his mil­i­tary com­mis­sion as license to steal and betray the men under his com­mand, as well as Chi­na and the Amer­i­can and oth­er Allies with which Chi­ang was offi­cial­ly arrayed.

Key points of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis:

1.–General Tang En-po’s close asso­ci­a­tion with the Ku broth­ers and the Green Gang.
2.–General Tang En-po’s role in blow­ing up the Yel­low Riv­er dikes.
3.–His bar­ter­ing of Amer­i­can Lend-Lease mate­ri­als to the Japan­ese.
4.–His plun­der­ing of the peas­ants in areas under his mil­i­tary com­mand.
5.–His theft of pay from the troops under his com­mand.
6.–His army’s total capit­u­la­tion to the Japan­ese when the invaders launched their Oper­a­tion Ichi­go offen­sive of 1944.
7.–General Tang En-po was reward­ed by Chi­ang with the com­mand of 14 KMT divi­sions com­pris­ing the Third Front Army.
8.–His cozy rela­tion­ship with the Japan­ese who sur­ren­dered to his army at the war’s end.

Although the U.S. polit­i­cal leadership—as a whole—were blind to Chiang’s fas­cism, anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic behav­ior and the insti­tu­tion­al­ized cor­rup­tion of his regime, the same was not true of many U.S. fight­ing men.

One of Chiang’s detrac­tors was a cel­e­brat­ed Marine Corps fli­er and mem­ber of Claire Chennault’s Fly­ing Tigers named Gre­go­ry “Pap­py” Boy­ing­ton.

Boy­ing­ton despised Chi­ang, Mme. Chi­ang and was loath to die in a P‑40 for some­one he rec­og­nized as a tyrant.

When the Gen­er­alis­si­mo and Mme. Chi­ang vis­it­ed the base of the Amer­i­can Vol­un­teer Corps (“The Fly­ing Tigers”), Boy­ing­ton and sev­er­al of his fel­low “Tigers” got liquored up and buzzed Chi­ang and wife, forc­ing both to “hit the deck.”

There was a prime-time TV series craft­ed on the tem­plate of Boyington’s Marine Corps squadron called “Ba, Ba Black Sheep” with the late Robert Con­rad play­ing Pap­py Boy­ing­ton.

Among the vehe­ment crit­ics of Chi­ang Kai-shek and Mme. Chi­ang Kai-shek were U.S. fly­ers who had to make the run “Over the Hump”—the dan­ger­ous air sup­ply route that crossed the Himalayas.

(As we have already seen, U.S. Lend Lease mate­r­i­al that was flow through that route into Chi­na was often sold to the Japan­ese ene­my by cor­rupt Kuom­intang offi­cers, politi­cians and Green Gang func­tionar­ies.)

Fly­ing “Over the Hump” caused high casu­al­ties among Army Air Corps fly­ers, and when they dis­cov­ered the lux­u­ry items that Mme. Chi­ang includ­ed in her per­son­al bag­gage, they were out­raged. That out­rage found expres­sion.

FTR#1200 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 7

Con­tin­u­ing our series on the regime of Chi­ang Kai-shek–all but beat­i­fied dur­ing the Cold War–we draw still more on a mag­nif­i­cent book–The Soong Dynasty by Ster­ling Sea­grave. Although sad­ly out of print, the book is still avail­able through used book ser­vices, and we emphat­i­cal­ly encour­age lis­ten­ers to take advan­tage of those and obtain it.

(Mr. Emory gets no mon­ey from said pur­chas­es of the book.)

The pro­gram begins with review of the struc­ture of Chiang’s fas­cist infra­struc­ture, his secret police cadres in par­tic­u­lar.

Key points of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion include:

1.–Chiang trans­lat­ed his admi­ra­tion of Hitler and Mus­soli­ni into the most sin­cere form of flattery—imitation: “ . . . . Chi­ang believed that fas­cism stood on three legs—nationalism, absolute faith in the Max­i­mum Leader, and the spar­tan mil­i­ta­riza­tion of the cit­i­zens. The New Life Move­ment [the chief pro­mot­er of which was Madame Chi­ang Kai-shek] was the pop­u­lar man­i­fes­ta­tion of Chiang’s fascism—a toy for his wife and the missionaries—and it was com­ic enough not to be tak­en seri­ous­ly by for­eign­ers in gen­er­al. The mis­sion­ar­ies . . . . were now eager­ly climb­ing aboard the New Life band­wag­on. . . .”
2.–There were three over­lap­ping orga­ni­za­tion­al ele­ments to Chiang’s fas­cist cadres—the Blue Shirts, the CBIS (Cen­tral Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion and Sta­tis­tics) which was run by the Ch’en broth­ers and the MBIS (the Mil­i­tary Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion and Sta­tis­tics which was run by Tai Li. Both Ch’en broth­ers and Tai Li were Green Gang asso­ciates of Chi­ang Kai-shek: “ . . . . Chiang’s fas­ci­na­tion with Hitler result­ed in the cre­ation of a new secret soci­ety mod­eled on Hitler’s Brown Shirts and Mussolini’s Black Shirts. Chi­ang called his the Blue Shirts, though he denied their exis­tence repeat­ed­ly. They were an off­shoot of his two secret ser­vices, the par­ty gestapo under the Ch’en broth­ers, and the mil­i­tary secret police under Tai Li. . . .”
3.–The CBIS was the Kuomintang’s secret polit­i­cal police: “ . . . . Chi­ang came to depend heav­i­ly on the two nephews of his Green Gang men­tor . . . . Ch’en Ch’i‑mei. The old­er nephew, Ch’en Kuo-fu, who had orga­nized and head­ed the dri­ve that recruit­ed sev­en thou­sand Green Gang youths for the Wham­poa Mil­i­tary Acad­e­my had since then been giv­en the respon­si­bil­i­ty of set­ting up a gestapo orga­ni­za­tion with­in the KMT. As head of the KMT’s Orga­ni­za­tion Depart­ment, his job was to puri­fy the par­ty and the Nanking gov­ern­ment con­tin­u­al­ly. To guar­an­tee the loy­al­ty of each par­ty mem­ber, Ch’en Kuo-fu built a spy net­work that touched every gov­ern­ment agency. To run this new appa­ra­tus, he select­ed his younger broth­er, Ch’en Li-fu [edu­cat­ed at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh in the U.S.—D.E.]. Both the Ch-en broth­ers were “blood broth­ers” of Chi­ang Kai-shek, hav­ing tak­en part in a Green Gang cer­e­mo­ny after the death of their uncle. . . . Li-fu . . . . became the direc­tor of Chiang’s secret service—the Cen­tral Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion and Sta­tis­tics (CBIS), the euphemism cho­sen for the KMT’s polit­i­cal secret police. . . .”
4.–“China’s Himmler”—Tai Li—headed the MBIS: “ . . . . While the CBIS spied, con­duct­ed purges and polit­i­cal exe­cu­tions with­in the par­ty, large-scale pub­lic ter­ror­ism was the province of its mil­i­tary coun­ter­part the Mil­i­tary Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion and Sta­tis­tics (MBIS) was run by “China’s Himm­ler,” Tai Li—for twen­ty years the most dread­ed man in Chi­na. . . . Tai Li had spent his youth as a Green Gang aide to Big-eared Tu and was edu­cat­ed at Tu’s per­sona expense. In 1926, he was one of the Green Gang recruits enrolled at Wham­poa Acad­e­my. . . . All clan­des­tine oper­a­tions in Chi­na, except those con­duct­ed by the Ch’ens, were his respon­si­bil­i­ty dur­ing the 1930’s. . . .”
5.–Supplementing and over­lap­ping both CBIS and MBIS were the Blue Shirts: “ . . . . Both of these secret police orga­ni­za­tions were sup­ple­ment­ed by the Blue Shirts. Although it was a repli­ca of the Euro­pean fas­cist cults, the Blue Shirts also emu­lat­ed Japan’s dread­ed Black Drag­on Soci­ety, the most mil­i­tant secret cult of the Impe­r­i­al Army. [The orga­ni­za­tion that helped spawn Kodama Yoshio—D.E.] The Blue Shirts job was to reform Chi­na the hard way, by knock­ing heads togeth­er, car­ry­ing out polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions, liq­ui­dat­ing cor­rupt bureau­crats and “ene­mies of the state.” . . . . They were offi­cered by old Green Gang class­mates from Wham­poa. . . .”
6.–Exemplifying the homi­ci­dal bru­tal­i­ty of Chiang’s secret police cadres was the liq­ui­da­tion of six of China’s most impor­tant writ­ers: “ . . . . The extreme was soon reached with the hor­rif­ic end of six of China’s fore­most writ­ers, all fol­low­ers of the lead­ing lit­er­ary fig­ure of the [1911] rev­o­lu­tion [led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen], Lu Hsun. . . . He [Chi­ang] ordered his secret police to arrest the writ­ers. Lu Hsun elud­ed arrest but six young lead­ers of the group—including Feng Kung, China’s best-known woman writer—were tak­en into cus­tody and forced to dig a large pit. They were tied hand and foot, thrown into the pit, and buried alive. . . .”

A fun­da­men­tal dynam­ic of Chi­ang Kai-shek’s regime was his stead­fast refusal to use his mil­i­tary forces to fight the invad­ing Japan­ese. (Japan invad­ed Manchuria in 1931 and the Sino-Japan­ese War preceded—and then overlapped—World War II.)

Chi­ang and his forces fre­quent­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Japan­ese and “the Gen­er­alis­si­mo” stead­fast­ly refused to com­mit Kuom­intang armies against them, pre­fer­ring to hus­band his com­bat­ants for use against the Chi­nese Com­mu­nists. (This ide­o­log­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of Chiang’s dic­ta­tor­ship won him favor with the Axis pow­ers, as well as dom­i­nant ele­ments of the Amer­i­can pow­er elite. As will be seen in future pro­grams, Chiang’s stance led to the replace­ment of Gen­er­al Joseph Stil­well with Albert C. Wede­mey­er as chief mil­i­tary advis­er to the KMT.)

Chief among Chiang’s crit­ics was T.V. Soong, who—correctly—forecast that Chiang’s mil­i­tary pos­ture would pro­pel the Chi­nese pop­u­lace into align­ment with the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty whose fierce, suc­cess­ful mil­i­tary resis­tance to the Japan­ese was rec­og­nized as man­i­fest patri­o­tism.)

“ . . . . Shak­en by what he had observed of the Japan­ese assault, T.V. Soong began to draw some dan­ger­ous con­clu­sions. ‘If Chi­na is placed before the alter­na­tive of com­mu­nism and Japan­ese mil­i­tarism with its mil­i­tary dom­i­na­tion, then Chi­na will choose com­mu­nism.’ This rather dar­ing state­ment, giv­en dur­ing an inter­view with Karl H. von Wie­gand in March, 1932, placed T.V. in direct oppo­si­tion to Chi­ang Kai-shek. It was all the more icon­o­clas­tic for being made by a rich financier and Finance Min­is­ter. . . .”

T.V. Soong—in that same interview—noted that the West­ern pow­ers had pas­sive­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Japan­ese attacks on Manchuria and Shang­hai: “ . . . . ‘The League [of Nations—D.E.] and the big pow­ers looked on. They even per­mit­ted the Inter­na­tion­al Set­tle­ment to be used as a base of oper­a­tions. Can you be sur­prised that Chi­na would turn to Com­mu­nism or Sovi­etism, if that were to unite the coun­try, rather than sub­mit to for­eign mil­i­tary dom­i­na­tion?’ . . . .”

We con­clude with dis­cus­sion of a major event in the his­to­ry of Chi­ang Kai-shek’s con­ser­va­tion of his mil­i­tary resources to fight the Communists–what has become known as the Sian inci­dent.

 The Sian Inci­dent was very important—though lit­tle recognized—event in the his­to­ry of Chi­na: the “kid­nap­ping” of Chi­ang Kai-shek by Kuom­intang mil­i­tary offi­cers who were intent on form­ing an anti-Japan­ese coali­tion called for by Madame Sun Yat-Sen (Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s wid­ow and the for­mer Ching-ling Soong.)

This became known as the Sian inci­dent, named after the locale in which Chi­ang was tak­en into cus­tody and held.

Inspired by the suc­cess of Mao Tse-Tung’s forces in fight­ing the Japan­ese, a mass stu­dent protest move­ment pre­cip­i­tat­ed the call by Mme. Sun Yat-sen, which was put into action by “The Young Mar­shal,” Chang Hsueh-liang. He was sup­port­ed in this by the forces of Gen­er­al Yang Hu-cheng.  “ . . . . Mean­while, Mao Tse-Tung’s Com­mu­nist forces reached Yenan at the end of the Long March, and began ral­ly­ing anti-Japan­ese nation­al­ism to their side. To many stu­dents, the authen­tic hero­ism of the Red Army com­bined with this blunt stand against Tokyo was a siren call. On Decem­ber 9, 1935, ten thou­sand Peking stu­dents demon­strat­ed against Japan. The protest drew nation­wide atten­tion and Madame Sun Yat-sen emerged from seclu­sion in Shang­hai to sup­port the stu­dents by launch­ing a Nation­al Sal­va­tion League. . . .”

Key points of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion include:

1.–The Young Marshal’s return to Chi­na after kick­ing nar­cotics admin­is­tered to him Tai-li’s secret police (this dur­ing a recu­per­a­tive sojourn in Europe): “ . . . . When the Young Mar­shal returned to Chi­na in 1934„ he was trans­formed. Gone were the nar­cotics, and in their place was a tough new nation­al­ism. He decid­ed that China’s sal­va­tion lay in per­suad­ing Chi­ang to stand firm against Tokyo. He had long talks with T.V. Soong in Shang­hai about how to engi­neer this, and T. V., who must have real­ized that a pow­er­ful mil­i­tary lever had fall­en into his hands, burned the mid­night oil with the dap­per Manchuri­an gen­er­al, explor­ing all pos­si­ble maneu­vers against Chi­ang . . . .”
2.–“ . . . . Ear­ly in 1936, the Young Mar­shal qui­et­ly instruct­ed his troops on the fron­tier to stop shoot­ing at red guer­ril­las. He had reached the con­clu­sion that most of China’s Com­mu­nists were dri­ven into the arms of the CCP by the degra­da­tion of the coun­try at the hands of Chi­ang and the for­eign pow­ers. Chi­nese, he decid­ed, should no longer fight Chi­nese while the nation was being rav­ished by for­eign invaders. . . .”
3.–The Young Mar­shal then met, and reached agree­ment with Chou En-Lai, lat­er the For­eign Min­is­ter of Chi­na under Mao Tse-tung. “ . . . . That June, he met pri­vate­ly with Chou En-Lai to see if they could put aside dif­fer­ences and devel­op a joint strat­e­gy. He came away with his con­vic­tion reaf­firmed that the answer lay in a unit­ed front He was good to his word. All mil­i­tary action halt­ed, liai­son was set up between their two head­quar­ters, and bureaus of the Nation­al Sal­va­tion League were orga­nized through­out north­west­ern Chi­na. . . . Word of this ‘treach­ery’ reached Chi­ang Kai-shek at Nanking. . . .”
4.–Chiang refused to join the nation­al­ist coali­tion: “ . . . . When the Gen­er­alis­si­mo arrived, the Young Mar­shal told Chi­ang that his anti-red cam­paign that his anti-red cam­paign should be scrapped and a unit­ed front formed with Mao Tse-Tung. The time had come for a patri­ot­ic war, not a civ­il war. Chi­ang hot­ly reject­ed the argu­ment . . . .”
Chi­ang pub­li­cized his deter­mi­na­tion to con­tin­ue with his anti-com­mu­nist anni­hi­la­tion cam­paign: “ . . . . On Decem­ber 4, 1936, the Gen­er­alis­si­mo returned to Sian to announce that he was going ahead with the anni­hi­la­tion cam­paign, to begin on Decem­ber 12. . . .”
5.–In com­bi­na­tion with Gen­er­al Yang, the Young Mar­shal decid­ed to take Chi­ang hostage and extract his con­sent to a nation­al­ist coali­tion: “ . . . . At 5:30 in the morn­ing of Decem­ber 12—the day the new anni­hi­la­tion cam­paign was to begin—Chiang Kai-shek was star­ing out the back win­dow of his bed­room at the moun­tain beyond the gar­den wall. In the dark­ness, four trucks loaded with 120 armed sol­diers rum­bled to a halt at the gates. The bat­tal­ion com­man­der in the lead truck demand­ed that the gates be opened. The sen­tries refused. The men in the trucks opened fire. . . .”
6.–Despite being tak­en cap­tive, Chi­ang refused to form a nation­al­ist coali­tion: “ . . . . At Sian, Chi­ang stub­born­ly resist­ed the Eight Demands. ‘He refused to turn our guns against the ene­my,’ the Young Mar­shal explained in a pub­lic address to a huge crowd in a Sian park on Decem­ber 16, ‘but reserved the for use against our own peo­ple.’ . . .”
7.–Eventually, Chi­ang grudg­ing­ly agreed to the coali­tion, appar­ent­ly after T.V. Soong saw to it that Chi­ang got a sig­nif­i­cant amount of mon­ey. “ . . . . The Young Mar­shal gal­lant­ly accept­ed all blame for the Sian Inci­dent, allow­ing Chi­ang to wash his hands in pub­lic and wipe them on him. (Inter­est­ing­ly he was put up at T.V. Soong’s home in Nanking.) He had done Chi­na a his­toric ser­vice by bring­ing about the long-sought unit­ed front, what­ev­er its lat­er fail­ings. . . .”
7.–Chiang’s reluc­tant agree­ment was trum­pet­ed by Hen­ry Luce: “ . . . . He put them [Chi­ang and Mme. Chi­ang] on the cov­er of Time’s first issue of 1938 as ‘Man and Wife of the Year.’ May-ling Soong Chi­ang now became an even big­ger inter­na­tion­al celebri­ty. . . .”
8.–As was his wont, Chi­ang broke his promise to the Young Mar­shal and Gen­er­al Yang. Laud­ed by Hen­ry Luce and his asso­ciates as an Exem­plary Chris­t­ian, Chi­ang promised an amnesty on Good Friday—a promise he prompt­ly broke. “ . . . . In his Good Fri­day mes­sage to Chi­na that spring of 1937, Chi­ang referred to the Sian Inci­dent and said pious­ly, ‘Remem­ber­ing that Christ enjoined us to for­give those who sin against us until sev­en­ty times sev­en and upon their repen­tance, I felt that that they should be allowed to start life anew. . . .”
9.–Similar treat­ment was afford­ed Gen­er­al Yang: “ . . . . The Young Marshal’s co-con­spir­a­tor, Gen­er­al Yang, despite the Good Fri­day amnesty, was impris­oned when he came back from Euro­pean exile and lan­guished for eleven years in one of Tai Li’s spe­cial deten­tion camps near Chungk­ing. His wife went on a hunger strike in protest and was allowed to starve her­self to death. . . .”