While these punishing blows took effect, some argued in favor of landing troops on the Asian mainland. Lieutenant General Albert C. Wedemeyer, U.S. Army commander in China, wrote that “establishment of a lodgment on the coast would of course electrify the Chinese and cause them to redouble their efforts to gain land contact and thus open communications.”7 Admirals Nimitz and Spruance advocated seizing the Chusan Islands group, southeast of Shanghai, and the nearby Ningpo peninsula, on the southern side of the Yangtze river estuary. Their objective was to establish a bridgehead into China,
...more
