Susan in NC’s Reviews > Stilwell and the American Experience in China: 1911-1945 > Status Update

“…all Chinese troops were withdrawn from the Peiping-Tientsin area leaving the Japanese in control. The lack of a concerted policy or plan of defense and the vain sacrifice of the men at Lukouchiao and Tungchow enraged Stilwell. The Chinese had missed so many good opportunities that “you can’t help getting thoroughly disgusted with them.”…”

“ On July 29 Japanese planes bombed Tientsin concentrating on Nankai University…Throughout their campaign in China, as formerly in Korea, the Japanese intentionally attacked places of education as the source of national consciousness.”

“Alone, without his family who had gone to the coast… his mood was low. “The atmosphere is sad and gloomy,” he wrote to Win, “and there is a pall over everything. Jesus, to think that the blow has actually fallen already is enough to make you sick physically….This may be the end of this chapter or only a lull before a bad storm—no way of telling yet. In any case, North China is gone.”

“When Chiang’s words were broadcast in Peiping, bugles sounded and gongs…the Japanese took over control of Peiping within the week. Stilwell’s temper mounted at their charges of Chinese provocation, claims of “self-defense,” acts of brutality and at his own country’s lack of response.”

“Stilwell adopted the unorthodox practice for a military attaché of keeping a file of his radios to G-2 on the table in his office for journalists to consult. His object, he told Barrett, was to make available as much accurate information as possible “so that the world would get a true picture of Japanese aggression as it developed south of the Wall.””

“ Stilwell had been learning what he could about the Communists for some time and evidently sharing his information with fellow attachés. A note from the British Embassy in February 1936 thanked him for “a most interesting brochure on the Chinese Communist situation.””

“ After locating and identifying army units he was able to report, “No evidence of planned defense against further Japanese encroachment. No troop increase or even thought of it. No drilling or maneuvering.””

“…took him back in memory to his first arrival in Peking in 1920—“the cool crisp days of fall with a breeze in the trees…the newness of everything. The kids were little and we had a lot yet in front of us. Not so good now….What made up that feeling? The newness of things?…No worries; promise of strange and interesting things to come…” Stilwell was fifty-three with but ten years to live.”

“He traveled not by the direct rail route but through the interior by bus, car, riverboat, ferry and foot. After a 30-mile hike from one remote country town to the next on the way to Kweilin, an acquaintance wrote, “You are probably the only one in the American Embassy who ever travelled over that part of the country.””