It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Chinese group plans to recover WWII American plane from lake
By SAM McNEIL 1 of 6 Han Bo, chairman of the China Adventure Association, talks about an insole found during an exploratory dive at the crash site of a fighter plane from the legendary Flying Tigers group of American pilots that crashed in a lake during World War II at his office in Beijing on Saturday, Sept. 5, 2020. The Flying Tigers, who were sent to China in 1941 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt before Washington joined the war, have long been one of the most potent symbols of U.S.-Chinese cooperation. The Tigers fought Japanese invaders from December 1941 until they were absorbed into the U.S. military the following July. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
BEIJING (AP) — A Chinese group plans to try to recover a fighter plane from the legendary Flying Tigers group of American pilots that crashed in a lake during World War II.
The Flying Tigers, who were sent to China in 1941 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt before Washington joined the war, have long been one of the most potent symbols of U.S.-Chinese cooperation. The Tigers fought Japanese invaders from December 1941 until they were absorbed into the U.S. military the following July.
The Curtiss P-40 crashed in 1942 in Dianchi Lake near Kunming, the southwestern city that was the Tigers’ base.
“We hope the project of salvaging the P-40 can be a warm current in the cold wave and ease people’s worries about Chines-U.S. ties,” said Han Bo, chairman of the China Adventure Association, a nongovernment group that promotes outdoor activities and historical monuments.
The Tigers were credited with shooting down almost 300 Japanese aircraft while losing 14 of their own pilots. Their battles were some of the earliest American aerial victories in the war.
“Before the P-40 planes were deployed, the Japanese planes had the advantages in China,” said Han.
The body of the P-40’s pilot, John Blackburn, was recovered after the crash and returned to the United States. The plane sank into the lakebed.
Han said his group found the wreckage using magnetic surveying equipment in 2005 but couldn’t safely lift it out of the silt. He said divers recovered a shoe insole and a wire used to control the plane’s rudder.
The group plans to build a barrier around the aircraft, remove the silt and then lift it by crane to the surface, Han said.
“Now the technology is ready,” he said.
The group is trying to raise 30 to 40 million yuan ($5 to $7 million) in public donations to pay for salvaging the plane, Han said. The plan is to display it in a museum but it hasn’t been decided where.
Han said he is inviting surviving Flying Tigers and their families to visit for the raising of the wreckage.
——
Associated Press researcher Henry Hou contributed to this report.
The Curtiss P-40 Warhawk is an American single-engined, single-seat, all-metal fighter and ground-attack aircraft that first flew in 1938. The P-40 design was a modification of the previous Curtiss P-36 Hawk which reduced development time and enabled a rapid entry into production and operational service.
The First American Volunteer Group (AVG) of the Republic of China Air Force in 1941–1942, nicknamed the Flying Tigers, was composed of pilots from the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC), Navy (USN), and Marine Corps (USMC), recruited under President Franklin Roosevelt's authority before Pearl Harbor and commanded by ...
Jul 24, 2020 - A few hundred of Americans became the heroes of China in 1941-- flying warplanes featured a tooth-filled shark on their nose, destroying ...
Margaret Kincannon, daughter of a veteran of Flying Tigers, takes pictures of wreckage from Flying Tigers bombers displayed at an exhibition in Huimin Village in Anqing City, east China's Anhui Province, Sept. 10, 2024. (Xinhua/Guo Chen)
HEFEI, Sept. 11 (Xinhua) -- Jeffrey Greene, 70, was deeply moved by the sight of wreckage from Flying Tigers bombers displayed at an exhibition in Huimin Village in Anqing City, east China's Anhui Province.
Greene, chairman of the Sino-American Aviation Heritage Foundation, was part of a delegation of foundation members and descendants of Flying Tigers veterans visiting the exhibition on Tuesday.
Greene said that it was the first time he saw and touched the remains of bombers in the very place where his father served during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. "It's a memory I will carry with me for the rest of my life."
The Flying Tigers, formally known as the American Volunteer Group of the Chinese Air Force, was formed in 1941 by U.S. General Claire Lee Chennault. They came to China to help the Chinese people fight the invading Japanese troops.
The Anhui section of the Yangtze River was a key supply route during the war, and several Flying Tigers planes crashed in the region due to combat or mechanical failures.
In 2013, a local fisherman named Ma Jinbing and others from Huimin Village accidentally retrieved parts of three Flying Tigers planes from the river, including landing gears, engines and fuselage sections.
"We caught these pieces in our fishing nets. As soon as we realized their importance, everyone stayed on shore day and night to protect them," said Ma, 56, adding that the local government soon built an exhibition hall to house these historic remains.
Since its opening, more than 600,000 people have toured the exhibition hall. "The real-life, moving historical stories between the Chinese and American people continue to resonate deeply with visitors," said Wang Maofang, a senior volunteer docent.
Data shows that more than 2,000 Flying Tigers personnel died during the war, and over 200 in distress were rescued by the Chinese people.
Nearly 95 percent of downed pilots from the Flying Tigers were saved by the Chinese, and no matter where they parachuted, they would be rescued, according to Chennault's memoir Way of a Fighter.
The Chinese government has long honored this profound historical bond. Earlier this month, the country released, for the first time, a list of 2,590 anti-Japanese aviation martyrs from the United States, most of whom were from the Flying Tigers.
Numerous museums, memorials and heritage parks focusing on the Flying Tigers have been established, and friendship school programs have been launched in several provinces, including Sichuan, Hunan and Yunnan.
Greene highlighted the importance of fostering understanding and stronger communication between Chinese and American youth. He noted that his foundation plans to assist in upgrading the Flying Tigers exhibition hall and expanding the friendship school program in Anhui.
"With face-to-face exchanges, we can understand each other better and develop better relationships," said Margaret Kincannon, daughter of a veteran.
Jeffrey Greene, chairman of the Sino-American Aviation Heritage Foundation, has a touch of the wreckage from Flying Tigers bombers displayed at an exhibition in Huimin Village in Anqing City, east China's Anhui Province, Sept. 10, 2024. (Xinhua/Guo Chen) (Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Zhong Wenxing)
Feature: Flying Tigers' legacy nourishes a lasting bond in China-U.S. friendship
By Tan Jingjing, Huang Heng (Xinhua) 13:40, September 27, 2024
LOS ANGELES, Sept. 26 (Xinhua) -- An exhibition of historical photographs at California State Polytechnic University (Cal Poly), Pomona, has brought to life the enduring bond forged between the Flying Tigers and the Chinese people amidst the turmoil of World War II.
Flying Tigers Lieutenant Robert Mooney sacrificed his young life to protect residents of Xiangyun in China's Yunnan Province. People of Lanping in Yunnan Province built an airstrip with their own hands to rescue American pilot Robert Walroth. Both communities undertook relentless efforts to search for missing American Captain James Fox and his Chinese crew ...
The exhibition, as part of a cultural exchange program organized by Yunnan Province in Los Angeles, records how the Flying Tigers helped Chinese people in their fight against Japanese invaders, and how Chinese people came to the aid of U.S. pilots, showcasing their remarkable courage and friendship.
"The Flying Tigers are not only heroes of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, but also ambassadors of China-U.S. friendship. Their spirit, symbolizing the upholding of justice, the advocacy of peace, and the pursuit of win-win cooperation, stands like an eternal lighthouse, guiding the development of China-U.S. friendship," said Lai Yong, head of the Yunnan cultural exchange program delegation.
During World War II, U.S. General Claire Lee Chennault led the Flying Tigers, a group of American volunteer pilots, to China to help the Chinese people expel invading Japanese forces.
The Flying Tigers created the extremely dangerous "Hump Route" over the Himalayas to provide critical supplies to the Chinese troops fighting the Japanese invaders.
"The Flying Tigers were not only a group of brave pilots but also a symbol of unity, courage and collaboration in the face of adversity," said Wen Cheng, professor and associate chair at the Civil Engineering Department of Cal Poly, Pomona.
"Their efforts during World War II paved the way for the strong partnership that our nations share today. As we honor their legacy, we also reflect on the importance of international cooperation, friendship, and mutual respect -- values that continue to shape our future together," Cheng said.
"Let us continue to build bridges of understanding and cooperation between China and the United States, just as the Flying Tigers did over 80 years ago," he added.
Nell Chennault Calloway, granddaughter of General Chennault, described the U.S.-China relationship as one of the most important in the world. She told Xinhua that the spirit of the Flying Tigers is about helping each other and uniting as one, upholding justice and defending peace, and also about valuing and renewing U.S.-China friendship.
"As we celebrate the 45th anniversary of the reunification of China and the United States, we must also celebrate the personal ties that bind us together," Calloway said.
From students studying abroad to entrepreneurs forging business partnerships, from cultural exchanges to scientific collaborations, these personal connections form the foundation of bilateral relations, she said.
Yunnan Province has played a unique role in China-U.S. exchanges and cooperation, not only during wartime but also in today's context. The people of Yunnan honor the Flying Tigers by preserving and restoring historical sites, establishing memorial halls and monuments like the Hump Memorial, and naming schools in their honor.
Over the years, Yunnan Province has maintained close links with the U.S. side, establishing sister-province relationships with Texas and Delaware. Additionally, five pairs of sister-city connections have been forged between Yunnan's cities and autonomous prefectures and their counterparts in the United States.
Feature: A "Flying Tigers" veteran's bond with China
Source: Xinhua Editor: huaxia 2023-11-04
KUNMING, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Harry Moyer, a 103-year-old U.S. veteran, usually playful and humorous, burst into tears as he sang the song "Auld Lang Syne" with teachers and students at a school in Kunming, southwest China's Yunnan Province.
"It's one of the best things that have happened to me on this trip," said Moyer, wearing a hat embroidered with the pattern of the "Flying Tigers."
From Thursday to Friday, an over 30-member delegation of the Flying Tigers veterans and their descendants visited Kunming, the starting point of "the Hump," a vital airlift route over the Himalayas and the primary way the Allies supplied China between 1942 and 1945 in World War II.
On Friday, they went to the Kunming Foreign Language School, which commemorates "the Hump" route. They watched a musical play showing the Flying Tigers' adventure to open "the Hump" route. Over eight decades of memories came flooding back to Moyer during the play.
In 1941, Moyer was still a sophomore when the U.S. government recruited pilots, and he did not hesitate to sign up. He was then deployed to the Mediterranean theater to fly a P-40 fighter.
After he completed his mission in 1944, he had a choice, whether to go home or to go to China.
"I chose to go to China because I wanted to fight for China," he recalled, adding that he has always believed it was the right choice.
The Flying Tigers spirit is an example of how the United States and China can overcome great challenges together, Moyer said, adding that only when people meet and communicate more can they understand each other and avoid misunderstandings.
Moyer and the students together planted a cypress next to the monument named "the everlasting spirit of 'the Hump,'" wishing that the tree and the friendship between the United States and China become stronger.
"When we sang the friendship song in different languages, I knew this friendship transcends national boundaries," said Sarah Moyer, granddaughter of Harry Moyer, adding she will pass on this friendship.
The American Volunteer Group’s 3d Pursuit Squadron, “Hell’s Angels.” The AVG had three squadrons, this one named after a movie about WWI flying. Note that many of their hats are Chinese. [Courtesy: National Museum of the U.S. Air Force.]
On December 20, 1941, a bunch of volunteer American mercenary pilots faced a squad of Japanese bombers to protect China.
The American Volunteer Group (AVG)—better known as the “Flying Tigers”—would go on to down nine out of 10 Japanese bombers in the first of many air battles in a seven-month campaign that helped keep Japan from expanding into China.READ MORE: 80 Years Later, The Flying Tigers Still Endure
Here’s a photographical look back at that amazing group.
The American Volunteer Group flew the Curtiss P-40. It was heavy, sturdy, well-armored, and had self-sealing fuel tanks. Its superior diving speed figured in AVG tactics of attacking from altitude, breaking off, and regaining altitude. The P-40 was not suited to close-turning dogfights with light, nimble Japanese Zero fighters. [Courtesy: National Museum of the U.S. Air Force.]
American maintainers work on an AVG P-40 while a Chinese soldier stands guard. Images like this showed cooperation and common goals. Maintenance was a challenge, as spare parts were scarce, the aircraft were constantly in combat, and the group had fewer technicians than it needed. [Courtesy: National Museum of the U.S. Air Force.]
Armorers work on a 3d Pursuit Squadron P-40B’s guns. The P-40B was well-armed with two .50-caliber and four .30-caliber guns. This punch made the AVG’s diving attacks against comparatively light Japanese aircraft effective. [Courtesy: National Museum of the U.S. Air Force]
Captain Claire Chennault at the Air Corps Tactical School, Maxwell Field, Montgomery, AL, in 1932. [Courtesy: National Museum of the U.S. Air Force]
Claire Chennault (far right) with Chinese head of state Chiang Kai-shek and Madame Chiang. Chennault dealt directly with national leaders on war-fighting policy. [Courtesy: National Museum of the U.S. Air Force]
Primitive maintenance was the rule for the American Volunteer Group. Here, a Chinese crew works on a P-40 fighter. [Courtesy: National Museum of the U.S. Air Force]
Major General Chennault. Note the Chinese wings over his right pocket, along with his USAAF Command Pilot’s wings. [Courtesy: National Museum of the U.S. Air Force]
The American Volunteer Group (AVG) was popularly known as the Flying Tigers because of their aircrafts' distinctive shark's mouth paint scheme. The Flying ...
Friday, September 17, 2021
'Flying Tiger' ace WW2 pilot dies at 103 P40 MUSTANG
The Flying Tigers operated out of Burma in the early 1940s in support of Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek against the Japanese, conducting dangerous missions over occupied China and shooting down hundreds of enemy bombers
JONATHAN DANIEL GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File
Issued on: 17/09/2021 -
Washington (AFP)
An ace US fighter pilot and one of the last surviving members of the swashbuckling "Flying Tigers" who fought the Japanese for Nationalist China during World War Two has died at 103, friends and colleagues announced Thursday.
The Flying Tigers operated out of Burma in the early 1940s in support of Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek against the Japanese, conducting dangerous missions over occupied China and shooting down hundreds of enemy bombers.
They initially operated as mercenaries with the tacit support of the US government, given Washington's official neutrality towards Imperial Japan before the Pearl Harbor attacks in late 1941.
Serving under the legendary lieutenant general Claire Chennault between 1943 and 1944, Stephen Bonner flew "five confirmed and five probable aerial victories and additionally was credited with damaging two more fighters and bombers," Jeff Green, Chairman of the Sino-American Aviation Heritage Foundation, told AFP.
"With his remarkable longevity, Steve would become the last living 'Fighter Ace' to have flown in China during the Second World War," Green said, describing him as a "Gallant Soldier and a Christian Gentleman."
Later in life Bonner became an advocate for the commemoration of the Flying Tigers' legacy and China-US dialogue, founding the Sino-American Aviation Heritage Foundation and receiving the Congressional Gold Medal.
He also visited China with fellow veterans in 2005, where they were named honorary citizens of the city of Kunming. The Flying Tigers had played a critical role in putting a stop to a Japanese bombing campaign in the city during the war.
SINGAPORE - One of the last surviving members of a group of World War II pilots dubbed the Flying Tigers, Captain Ho Weng Toh, died in the morning of Jan 6. He was 103.
Known affectionately as Winkie, Captain Ho’s death was announced in a Facebook post by his nephew John Ho.
Mr Ho said on Facebook: “My dearest uncle Winkie passed away this morning. He was a grand 103 years old. He lived a life many of us would dream of... A precious generation who had a much tougher and unpredictable life, who sacrificed so much so that my generation could live a peaceful and much easier life.
“To him, and the rest of that generation, I say thank you. ”
Born in Ipoh in 1920, Captain Ho attended university in Hong Kong when the Japanese invaded China in 1941.
He then signed up as trainee pilot with the Chinese-American Composite Wing, dubbed the Flying Tigers, and joined other Chinese and American pilots in Arizona where he received his flying training.
As a B-25 Mitchell bomber pilot, Captain Ho flew missions over occupied China during World War II and returned a hero in Ipoh.
In 1949, he married Augusta Rodrigues, who died in 1977 of lung cancer.
He then joined the now-defunct Malayan Airlines in 1951, and was then a founding pilot of the Singapore Airlines.
He retired three decades later as chief pilot of SIA’s Boeing 737 fleet.
Captain Ho Weng Toh, known affectionately as Winkie, was a chief pilot at SIA when he retired in 1980. LIANHE ZAOBAO FILE PHOTO
Senior Minister and Coordinating Minister for National Security Teo Chee Hean paid tribute to Captain Ho in a Facebook post on Jan 6.
He said : “Our long-time Pasir Ris resident, Captain Ho Weng Toh, 103, one of the last surviving Flying Tigers who flew bombers in World War II, passed on peacefully this morning. He was also one of our first Singapore Airlines pilots.
“May he rest in peace.”
THE FLYING TIGERS WIKIPEDIA
Friday, August 11, 2023
China salutes WWII American general Joe Stilwell in personal push to improve US ties
Thu, August 10, 2023
China has rolled out the red carpet for the descendants of a second world war American general, commemorating the late officer as Beijing turns to informal personal contacts to improve ties between the two countries.
The group included Susan Cole and Nancy Millward, the great-granddaughters of the general who was based in the city during the war and worked closely with Chinese leaders against Japanese forces.
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"[We] hope to take this visit as an opportunity ... to better promote people-to-people exchanges between China and the United States and contribute to the development of China-US relations," Chongqing Daily quoted Yuan as saying.
Members of the family have visited China before but previous commemorations have not attracted such attention.
Yuan is one of the 24 members of the Politburo, the party's inner circle, and his presence this time for the 140th anniversary of Stilwell's birth highlights Beijing's focus on informal contact with the United States.
Despite some resumption of senior-level official communication, relations with Washington remain in the doldrums and Beijing has opted to host a series of prominent American public figures to try to promote ties.
Xi said he hoped that Kissinger and "other people of foresight" in the US could continue to play a constructive role in restoring relations between the two countries.
That theme continued on Wednesday when Yuan referred to Stilwell as "an old and good friend of the Chinese people".
"We will always remember his name," he said.
Stilwell's efforts were a key chapter in the history of US-China collaboration and he is the only high-ranking US military figure who has a museum dedicated to his memory in China.
As part of this week's events commemorating his 140th birthday, Cole and Millward planted a friendship tree at the museum in Chongqing on Tuesday together with Liu Ning and Liu Yinna, the great-grandson and great-granddaughter of Zhu De, the founder of the Chinese Red Army, which later became the People's Liberation Army.
When Stilwell died in 1946, Zhu said that not only had the US lost a great general but the Chinese people had lost a great friend.
The commemorative events also included a seminar on Tuesday, attended by more than 150 people, including representatives from the Chinese foreign ministry and the US embassy in Beijing.
China has previously saluted the legacy of the Chinese-American wartime friendship to foster relations.
In April last year, Qin Gang, then China's envoy to Washington, attended the 80th anniversary of the Flying Tigers, a group of American pilots who fought for China against Japanese forces during the second world war.
Qin addressed the event while wearing a Flying Tigers jacket sent by two US veterans.
During a trip to Chongqing in May, US ambassador to China Nicholas Burns visited the Stilwell museum and one dedicated to the Flying Tigers.
Copyright (c) 2023. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
Tuesday, September 19, 2023
HEAR, HEAR! Xi says China, US 'should and must' achieve peaceful co-existence
Reuters Mon, September 18, 2023 Xi Jinping attends BRICS Summit in Johannesburg
BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese President Xi Jinping told two US Flying Tigers veterans who fought for China during World War II that China and the US "should and must" achieve peaceful co-existence, offering further cues for both sides to lower persistent tensions.
In his reply to a letter from former pilot Harry Moyer and pilot gunner Mel McMullen, Xi said the people of China and the United States had shared the same enemy in their fight against Japan and had forged a "profound" friendship, according to Chinese state media on Tuesday.
"Looking to the future, China and the United States, as two major countries, bear more important responsibilities for world peace, stability and development," Xi said.
"They should and must achieve mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation."
His call for stable and peaceful ties followed a series of meetings and talks between US and Chinese officials in recent months aimed at reducing tensions and restoring channels of communication including contact between their militaries.
The American Volunteer Group, known as the Flying Tigers, was a fighter group, comprising former US pilots hired by the Republic of China led by Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang, to fight against Japan in 1941-42.
The airmen, whose planes were iconic for their shark faces, were widely known in China for their feats of bravery in the face of larger Japanese forces as they took to the skies from rural runways paved by Chinese people by hand.
"Currently, China-US relations face many difficulties and challenges," Chinese Vice President Han Zheng told U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly on Monday.
"The world needs stable and healthy China-US relations," Han said.
(Reporting by Ryan Woo; Editing by Michael Perry)
Wednesday, March 29, 2023
Book Review: Kevin Peraino’s ‘A Force So Swift’ Gives Peek Into Birth Of Modern China And Early US Policy Debates
While there were reconciliatory voices in the US administration in 1949 on China, they were based on the hope that the Communist rule will be subverted, notes Kevin Peraino in his book ‘A Force So Swift: Mao, Truman, and the Birth of Modern China, 1949’. However, once it became clear the Communists were there to stay, some in the administration sought Communist containment in Asia, making you wonder whether you are reading about 1949 or 2023.
In 1949, while there were reconciliatory voices for China in the US administration, there was no sympathy for Mao, notes Naseer Ganai in his review of book 'A Force So Swift'. Getty Images
Reading A Force So Swift: Mao, Truman, and the Birth of Modern China, 1949 by author Kevin Peraino gives an idea of America’s China policy at the height of power after World War II.
While US leaders now consider China’s rise as a “threat to the world,” there were some reconciliatory voices within the US administration in 1949. They had no sympathy for Mao though. They believed that the Chinese will change the system themselves in the mainland. Among them was US President Harry S Truman. He had firm faith that “Chinese people would eventually subvert communist rule”.
However, others like General Claire Chennault, the former commander of the Flying Tigers, thought the American “wait and see policy” would make Communist revolution spread throughout the wider region. To Frank Wisner, the head of the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), the covert action arm of the post-war American intelligence apparatus, Chennault proposed a course to freeze Mao’s advance by “arming provincial leaders who could create a belt of resistance” around the Communist-controlled territories. Chennault, Peraino writes, “was optimistic about the Muslim leaders in China’s northwest” to halt Mao’s march.
In this gripping narrative, author Peraino takes you to 1949 China month by month and tells you how Mao was consolidating his position in China by pushing nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek from Nanjing to Shanghai and finally to Taiwan. He also write how Madam Chiang was desperately seeking help for her Nationalist forces while sitting in the United States and was sending coded telegram after telegram to her husband informing him of the results of about her efforts of seeking aid and sympathy at the same time. Chiang asked her to be more discreet in her cables.
Peraino tells us that Americans received Madam Chiang like a celebrity. Newspapers filled hundreds of columns with coverage of her speaking tour stops but President Truman was hard to conquer. He would complain to his advisors that any American assistance programme would be pouring “sand in a rat hole.” Though the Nationalist diplomats in the United States like Wellington Koo informed Truman that Nationalist forces near Changsha were fighting, Truman had “nothing but disgust with Chiang and his allies as the Nationalist forces were collapsing before Mao’s PLA”.'
'A Force So Swift' by Kevin Peraino
On June 22, 1949, when Chinese diplomats were sounding optimistic to Truman that Muslim troops fighting in the country’s northwest seemed to be slowing Mao’s advance, Stalin had other advice for Mao: “Pay serious attention to Xinjiang, the home of China’s Muslim Uighur population, which the PLA had not yet subdued.”
Mao told Stalin that he thought any such operation would need to be postponed until the following year. But the author says the Soviet leader argued that Beijing should move more quickly as he believed that Xinjiang, rich in oil and cotton, could help revitalise the Chinese economy. Stalin would warn Mao that the delay would give chance to foreign powers like Britain to “activate the Muslims, including the Indian ones, to continue the civil war against the communists”.
The US Ambassador to China Leighton Stuart was for reconciliation. But Mao wrote in an essay: “All Chinese without an exception must lean either to the side of imperialism or to the side of socialism” and dashed Stuart’s hope. He wrote, “You have to choose between the alternatives of either killing the tiger or being eaten by it.”
There are other minute details in the book like Stalin describing Mao as a “margarine Marxist.” While in Moscow waiting for a commitment of aid from Stalin, when Mao saw nothing was maturing, he told his travelling companions that he had not come all this way simply to “eat, sleep and shit”.
Dean Acheson, the US Secretary of State, recalled his first hours in office: “Chiang was in the last stages of collapse and I arrived just in time to have him collapse on me.” Chiang Kai-Shek was to the director of Central Intelligence Hillenkoetter “the joker throughout is the Generalissimo”.
The Generalissimo while fleeing Chongqing —the last nationalist bastion— cursed the Truman administration for not doing more to come to his rescue. He wrote in his diary on November 30, 1949: “US China Policy is so unwise and so wrong that I worry about the security of the United States.” For the US ambassador to India, Lord Henderson, Nehru was a “vain, sensitive, emotional and complicated person.” For Nehru, the menu in the US was “long and exotic”.
Peraino writes that after the fall of Shanghai and Mao’s open declaration to align with the Soviets, George F Kennan, head of the Policy Planning Staff of the Truman administration, came up with a paper to extend the US “policy of Communist containment to Asia”. America’s security, the paper’s authors had written, depended on the strength of a “great crescent” of friendly nations that surrounded the Middle Kingdom including India, Australia, the Philippines, and Japan. At times, you feel you are not in 1949 but 2023.
In early August 1949, Dean Acheson released a white paper on China titled United States relations with China, with special reference to the period 1944-49, subjecting Chiang Kai-Shek to strong criticism and arguing that the Guomindang leaders had proved incapable of meeting the crisis confronting them. Its troops had lost the will to fight and its government had lost popular support, said the paper, adding that the reasons for the failure of the Chinese Nationalists do not stem from any inadequacy of American aid.
Acheson, the author says, had no tolerance for “cheap and cheerful universalism” and hence believed in “sort of a wait, look, see policy” toward China.
The release of the white paper created an uproar with American Republican Congressman Walter Judd saying after viewing the document that “Nationalist China’s record was not bad as I expected, while that of the American government is worse”. While Judd continue to see a remedy in Chennault’s plan to arm anti-Communist rebels in the mainland, Acheson remained unenthusiastic about the weapon shipment to the mainland, over or covert.
The Truman administration’s condemnation of Chiang did nothing to win Mao’s goodwill. In August, the Philippines President visited the United States and Mao in the summer of 1949 issued a rebuttal to the white paper. Picking from a line in the white paper that China’s history of “democratic individualism” would reassert itself soon on the mainland, Mao considered it as a veiled threat — a clear indication that U.S “troublemaking would continue on the mainland.”
The Americans, Mao believed, would seek to recruit Chinese business leaders and intellectuals as they quietly worked to overturn his revolution. These Chinese “middle-of-the-roaders” might not like Chiang and his Nationalists, Mao wrote, but neither they were firmly behind his own regime. He worried that they are vulnerable to the “honeyed words” of the Western Leaders.
Fearing that after China, the countries “like Burma, Thailand and Malaya” would turn to Communism, Truman and his advisors looked towards the regional leaders. One of the most important figures was Indian Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. “Proud and assertive”, Peraino writes, Nehru was conscious of India’s position and was less eager than his American counterparts to confront Mao directly. “Although some in the Truman administration hoped that he (Nehru) would organise a regional block to oppose the Communists, he seemed more interested in conciliating Mao,” says the author.
When Nehru visited Washington on October 11, 1949 for a three-week tour, he generated much excitement as would “a motion picture star”. During the visit, the author writes, Nehru made it quickly clear that he was leaning toward recognising Mao’s new regime. The author writes that even Walter Judd, a cosmopolitan figure whose wife had been born and raised in India, seemed wholly unable to comprehend Nehru and his worldview. Peraino writes, “While Nehru saw Mao’s victory as a manageable local headache, Judd viewed it as an imminent global threat.”
Walter Judd lived to witness the “first twinklings of the PRC’s vertiginous economic ascent” and felt betrayed by President Nixon’s opening to China. Even 1980s Judd was fulminating about the “threats posed by the Beijing government”. In 1982, after an appearance on the television show Firing Line, Judd received a letter from a viewer, the 85-year-old Madam Chiang, praising him for his continued efforts. By the time the 20th century turned into 21st, Madam Chiang had celebrated her 100th birthday. Among the combatants of 1949, she survived and died at the age of 106 in 2003.
As rapid changes are taking place in the world with President Joe Biden’s national security strategy flagging China as a top threat and calling India a key partner, Peraino's book about diplomatic and battle events of 1949 China is fascinating. Stalin told Mao in their meeting that there would be no harm in keeping the Western powers on edge: “One could create a rumour that you are preparing to cross the border and in this way frighten the Imperialists a bit.” These days you don’t need to create rumours to get others frightened. You just fly a balloon and the world will be on the brink.
(Kevin Peraino's book A Force So Swift: Mao, Truman, and the Birth of Modern China, 1949 was published by Crown in 2017.)
“Oppenheimer” is more than a movie, it’s also a meditation on moral questions that ring as loud in today’s world as they did during the race to build the atomic bomb in the face of the rise of fascism and World War II. Questions about nationality and nationalism, ethnic origin and political loyalty pervade the film. It also vividly raises questions about competing loyalties, loyalty to friends and relatives in conflict with military discipline and the law. What about the conflict between loyalty to one’s conscience and loyalty to the state?
J. Robert Oppenheimer was a man of many worlds, a native New Yorker who fell in love with the high desert of New Mexico, a member of a Jewish minority in a predominantly Christian country. He was a scientist, a linguist, a philosopher, an American military man and a freewheeling socialist in intimate contact with orthodox pro-Soviet communists. As director of the vast Manhattan Project, he was a core member of the U.S. military industrial complex even before the term was coined by President Eisenhower.
It’s hard to sum up such a complex life in a few words, and Christopher Nolan, despite his inspired direction, and some clever cinematic tricks, struggles to find the essence of so complex a man in this rambling, three-hour film.
But if a physicist as unique and hard-to-fathom as Oppenheimer can be usefully compared to another person, the equally unique and hard-to-fathom Qian Xuesen of China immediately comes to mind.
Both men were castigated as disloyal to the U.S. by security authorities dealing with real security breaches and the fevered imagination of paranoid minds. Both men were true cosmopolitans, fluent in different languages and cultures, and both were on their sleeves internationalist ideas that transcended the narrow nationalisms of the day.
Both men had huge bureaucracies put at their command, and both men hastened the coming of the day when mutual assured destruction was paradoxically a means of keeping the peace.
Both men paid a price for being laser-sharp in their technical insights and blurry in politics. Both men were hard to pin down, both for their equivocations and perceived moral ambiguities, and during the Red Scare in the U.S., both men were pilloried for their political leanings and political contacts.
It’s worth noting that both Oppenheimer and Qian Xuesen adamantly denied being communists during the time period in question, but questions linger. What is known, ironically enough, is that both men were associated closely with card-carrying communists such as Robert’s younger brother Frank. Guilt by association, guilt by unconventional ideas, guilt by dint of minority ethnic status, and guilt by strident internationalism in a society rippled with intolerance proved sufficient to take them down.
Then, as now, some of the most outstanding scientists of the day were Jewish Americans or Americans of Chinese descent. That’s one reason why many of the targeted were Jews and Chinese, but prejudice was a factor, too. As America emerged victorious from a long, bloody war, a groundswell of American triumphalism and ideological intolerance swept society.
The sheer brilliance of outstanding scientists working on dual-use technology such as nuclear fission and rocketry is itself a double-edged sword, their knowledge can be put to good or evil, and the scientists themselves can be painted good or evil. One brilliant stroke in the film uses a concept derived from the Schrodinger Cat thought experiment in quantum mechanics to illustrate the internal divisions of a man who is simultaneously winning big and losing big, simultaneously creating and destroying.
During the period in question, Jews and Chinese, for a variety of historical reasons, family ties and educational links to the “old country,” be it war-torn China or war-torn Central Europe, were often more conversant with communism than immigrants from other lands. In the 1930s in particular, many Americans of diverse backgrounds had reasons, not unreasonable in the day and age they lived, to view communism as a progressive force, at least in terms of combating fascism, racism and fighting for worker’s rights.
America’s domestic flirtation with the far left was by no means limited to ethnic minorities; the rise of Hitler and collapse of capitalism and explosion of poverty at the outset of the Great Depression provided fertile ground for new ideologies and paradigms to live by.
Be that as it may, the moment Josef Stalin showed his truly brutal opportunistic colors by aligning with Adolf Hitler under the terms of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact should have put paid to the idea of Soviet communism as a progressive force, if the Moscow show trials and other abuses did not provide sufficient evidence of murderous malfeasance already.
An important difference in the trajectory of the lives of these two politically vulnerable physicists is the way losing security clearance played out. For Oppenheimer, it was a fall from grace, if being in the good graces of a blood-stained military establishment can be considered a form of grace, and descent into infamy and obscurity with an uptick of recognition at the end.
For Qian Xuesen, who, unlike Oppenheimer, had a homeland to go back to, newly-liberated China provided an out that proved definitive. He left the U.S. forever and re-dedicated his efforts advancing rocketry in China.
During the height of war, both China, then under KMT representation, and Russia, under the same old Joe Stalin, were deemed worthy allies of the U.S. in the joint cause to rid the world of Hitler and Nazis who were inflicting incomparable horrors on humanity. China and the U.S. also shared a joint mission, in the indomitable spirit of the Flying Tigers, to rid the world of Tojo’s imperial invaders and free China from Japanese domination.
By the time Mao announced the establishment of a new China in 1949, the U.S.-China honeymoon was over and intractable problems related to the Taiwan-mainland split fed directly into the animosities of the Cold War pitting communism against capitalism.
Qian Xuesen had convincing credentials as a scientist, willing and able to contribute to the advance of American science before he fell victim to a McCarthyesque witch hunt in 1950, part of the same maelstrom of intolerance and paranoia that also netted Oppenheimer four years later.
Qian studied at MIT and taught at Caltech. In collaboration with the Hungarian physicist Theodore Von Karman, (who like Oppenheimer was multilingual, studied in Europe and was of Jewish descent) Qian helped found the Jet Propulsion Lab. During the war, Qian worked for the U.S. Defense Department and Department of War and achieved the U.S. military rank of colonel.
One of the many virtues of doing a film about physicists is that physics itself provides a template to handle, if not reconcile, seemingly contradictory forces. The Schrodinger effect, by which a particle is, and isn’t, at the same time was utilized in filmic terms to show Oppenheimer both as hero and villain, guru and monster, a shining light and a force for darkness. When the Trinity test of the world’s first atomic bomb results in a suitably demonic explosion, Oppenheimer is shown navigating both thunderous applause and the imagined bodies of victims reduced to ash.
Despite his contributions, Qian Xuesen’s 1955 move to China, a China no longer in the U.S. orbit, could not be construed a lateral move to an erstwhile ally but rather was seen as an act of defiance, a wholesale defection to the enemy camp. The duality inherent in the structure of Nolan’s cinematic vision of Oppenheimer suggests that it may be possible, though not easy, for both the U.S. and China to be grateful for Qian Xuesen’s contributions to science.
On the other hand, it is worth remembering that the inventions most closely associated with the stellar minds of these two indisputably brilliant men were weapons of destruction.
When it came time for Oppenheimer to reflect on his greatest “success” which was simultaneously a catastrophic “failure” in humanistic terms, he turned to Sanskrit scripture which he was conversant with in the original. Borrowing a line from lord Krishna addressing his loyal charioteer Arjuna, he says:
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds"
Despite the depressing topic, “Oppenheimer” has done great box office in the U.S. market, and has been cleared for showing in China, where the retention or deletion of nude scenes has generated more advance interest in potential viewers, and is likely to be more a problem for the censors, than the harrowing Cold War politics.
