Epilogue
Near post-war – Far East
The war was over, or at least the shooting had stopped allowing for the path to peace to be reached somewhat safely. The British Empire and the rest of the world were once more stepping onto the road to lasting peace. But it would not be a peaceful trip. Many pitfalls to world peace existed in the months and years immediately following the end of the war in the Far East, and at time it seemed as every difficulty resolved by the international community simply created another that needed to be addressed. As the largest player upon the stage of international diplomacy, the British Empire found itself involved in some way with every major crisis, a role that some within the Empire found troublesome but many felt appropriate and befitting the Empire’s stature. These international crises, rightly so, have been categorized into five distinct groups, European affairs, Eurasian affairs, African affairs, Far Eastern affairs and Western Hemisphere affairs.
While an armistice had been signed by the members of the Western Alliance and the Sino-Japanese Alliance on October 1, 1944 and a cease fire had gone into effect in the Far East, just as with the Great War Armistice, a peace treaty had not been agreed to by the combatants. And while the participants immediately began carrying out the provisions of the armistice a formal pace conference was not scheduled to begin until September 1945, which the diplomatic community world wide acknowledged was quite long enough for the situation to turn sour and the war to begin once more. To that fact the weeks immediately following the signing of the armistice witnessed a whirlwind of activity exploding throughout the Far East.
A good deal of that activity, the clear majority of it to be factual, was undertaken by the British Empire. While the Americans consolidated their hold upon the various island groups afforded to them by the Empire of Japan and began to demobilize their land forces and the French and Dutch began to slowly draw down their forces in Indochina and the East Indies, the Empire’s Imperial General Staff did halt any further deployment of field armies into the theatre but maintained the strength of Imperial forces in the region and continued the supply stockpiling that had begun in preparation for the invasion of Japan and northern China. However, what generated the most reaction in the months following the signing of the armistice was of diplomatic nature.
The British Foreign Office, not waiting for the dust to settle, so to speak, following the signing of the armistice, immediately began work in Korea that culminated with the January 1, 1945 coronation and investiture of His Imperial Highness the Prince Imperial Eui of Korea to Emperor of the Empire of Korea. Witnessed by Prince George and Foreign Secretary Sir Anthony Eden, the coronation was followed within twenty-four hours with the signing of a formal alliance between the British Empire and the Empire of Korea. This alliance, one that would have far reaching implications, was signed by Emperor Eui in his own hand and by Prince George as proxy for his Royal brother, King George VI of the British Empire.
Just as stunning in nature, and to some being of greater importance, was the work directed by Imperial Colonial Secretary Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Viscount Cranborne, to be undertaken by Lord Edward Cavendish, Duke of Devonshire, in his position of Undersecretary of State for the Colonies. The Duke’s study group, known as the Devonshire Commission, undertook survey work in the Far East beginning in the days following the Imperial invasion of Formosa. The armistice that was signed on October 1, 1945 was worded akin to the 1842 Sino-British Treaty of Nanking, with the Pearl River Delta, Formosa and Hainan being ceded to the British Crown in perpetuity. While it was understood by many within the international community that the provisions of the armistice would not begin to take place until the signing and ratification of the final peace treaty, the actual wording of the armistice stated otherwise and as such the Devonshire Commission on October 2 began the immediate implementation of the surveys conducted and began the expansion of the Crown Colony of Hong Kong into the Pearl River Delta and the formation of the new Crown Colonies of Formosa and Hainan.
The most readily problematic issue to be tackled by the Devonshire Commission was, of course, the make up of the enlarged colony of Hong Kong. Lord Cavendish himself announced on March 30, 1945 that Hong Kong’s New Territories would expand as far east as to encompass the Dapeng Peninsula and as far north as the hills north of Shenzhen Bay. The former Portuguese enclave of Macau would be incorporated into Hong Kong’s administration and Macau would be expanded to incorporate the town of Zhuhai and surrounding districts of Jinwan, Doumen, and Xiangzhou into Macau, including the islands of Nanwan, Dananwan, Damangdao and Sanjiao Shandao within Huangmao Sound which forms the western border of Jinwan district. In addition, the islands of Xiao Hengqin (Portuguese: D. João), Da Hengqin (Portuguese: Montanha) and Wanzai (Lapa) near Macau, the island of Neijing Dingdao in the middle of the Pearl River estuary, the Ladrones Islands (i.e., Thieves Islands, in Spanish or Portuguese) and the Lema Islands (especially Nei Lingding Island, a.k.a. Lintin Island) at the mouth of the estuary, and the Chuanshan Archipelago (Shangchuan Island (death place of St. Francis Xavier) and Xiachuan Island) located between Macau and Hainan would all be incorporated in to the administration of Hong Kong.
Many around the globe decried the actions of the Empire’s Devonshire Commission as a return to the days of unbridled imperialism witnessed during the later half the Nineteenth Century. The radical Anglophobes who constituted a portion of those condemning the Commission’s work, those who would find fault with the Empire even if the Empire attempted to dissolve itself, His Majesty’s Government simply ignored, for after all, London knew that a defense against their accusations was simply wasted effort. To the more reasonable parties who questioned the moves undertaken by the Devonshire Commission, however, the offices of Viscount Cranborne and Lord Cavendish, assisted by the Imperial General Staff, pointed out that the moves were undertaken solely to further strengthen the security of the Empire’s Far East territories.
However, the announcement that took the wind from the sails of the Empire’s critics and came as a complete surprise to the world, especially Tokyo and Nanking, came on May 1 1945 from the Foreign and Colonial Offices. Rather than absorb the entirety of the Kwangtung Province into the Empire, the remaining portion of the Province, which amounted to nearly ninety-five percent of the Kwangtung, was being turned over to the Republic of China. Not the Wang Jingwei regime led Republic operating from Nanking and with whom the Empire had negotiated the armistice, but rather the Republic of China led by the surviving leadership of Chiang Kai-Shek’s
Kuomintang. The chairman of the
Kuomintang Governing Council-in-Exile, and thus the President of the Republic, was General Chen Chi-Tang (also spelt at Jitang), who had fled to Hong Kong following the conclusion of the Sino-Japanese War, refusing to fight along side the Japanese or fight for Wang Jingwei’s regime. During the years leading up to the Far East War, Chen had worked diligently rebuilding the
Kuomintang and strove hard in the cause of re-establishing a Chinese nation that was not a puppet of Tokyo and during the war he had reached out to disaffected parties within Wang Jingwei’s regime to build a coalition government that was able to provide a strong counterbalance to not only the Tokyo allied Nanking government but also the monarchist Manchukuo.
In Canton and the surrounding towns and villages, the news of Chen’s possible return was greeted with great enthusiasm. The former warlord, known as the Celestial King of the South by the Cantonese, had governed Kwangtung from 1929 to 1936, a time known throughout China as the Golden Age of Kwangtung due to Chen’s achievements such as paving Canton’s city streets, commissioning the building of high-rise commercial centers, numerous factories, the first modern bridge across the Pearl River and the establishment of a public school system from modern elementary and secondary schools through China-wide prestigious universities (including the Sun Yat-Sen University). The enthusiasm in Nanking, Tokyo and Manchukuo’s capital in Hsin-ching was non-existent, however the negative response was countered by widespread acceptance from the well established Chinese communities located outside of China (i.e. the United States, Canada and various locations in Southwest Asia) which were predominately “Cantonese” in establishment and had not been very supportive of the Wang Jingwei regime.
Leading up to the Anglo-
Kuomintang announcement both Japan and China were in political turmoil following the October 1 armistice. Japan’s surviving officer corps, both the Imperial Japanese Army and Imperial Japanese Navy, and senior diplomatic corps was decimated in the months following the armistice as many officers conducted
seppuku at the perceived failure of the military to the Emperor, Prime Minister Hideki Tōjō and Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu among those undertaking the ritual suicide. In China, President Wang Jingwei and his inner cabinet struggled to prevent the collapse of China into an anarchic state similar to the Warlord era that followed the fall of the Qing Dynasty. The situation was made difficult by not only the withdrawal of Japanese forces but also the rise of widespread disillusionment with the Nanking Government following the outcome of the war against the British Empire and calls from several generals within China’s army for the replacement of Wang with one of their own. The situation in both countries changed drastically following the Kwangtung Announcement.
The chaos in Japan that had begun was averted by the actions of the
Gen'yōsha (Black Ocean Society), an influential ultranationalist group and secret society that had been established in 1881, the
Kokuryūkai (Black Dragon Society) a prominent paramilitary, ultranationalist right-wing group founded in 1901 as a splinter of
Gen'yōsha which used the Kwangtung Announcement as a catalyst to rally the Imperial Government and galvanize the Emperor, Hirohito, into participating in the political affairs of the Japanese Empire. Through the interaction of the leadership of the two societies and the envoys of the Imperial Family, Nakano Seigō was appointed as Prime Minister, former Prime Minister Baron Kōki Hirota was brought out of retirement to become Foreign Minister, and General Kuniaki Koiso and Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai were called out of retirement and appointed Army Minister and Navy Minister respectively.
Wang Jingwei and his supporters were also able to save themselves from the eruption of chaos across China by appointing several of the most outspoken critics, such as Sun Liangcheng as President of the Legislative Yuan and Qin Dechun as Minister of Military Affairs and Yang Hucheng as Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces. The greatest success, however, that Wang had was in gaining the support of former warlord Feng Yuxiang with his appointment as Vice-President of the Republic. The additional support came to Wang from two of the leaders of the China Democratic League, Huang Yanpei and Zhang Lan, who brought a good deal of legitimacy to the Nanking Government. Further support came to Wang from the leaders of the Chinese National Socialist Party (not connected with the Nazis in Germany), Chang Tung-sun and Chang Chun-mai. With the proclamation of the Kwangtung Announcement, the tentative support of the above individuals and their own supporters was galvanized behind the Nanking Government.
After hasty consultations between Tokyo and Nanking, a strongly worded letter from both the Imperial Japanese Government and the Nanking Government condemned the creation of a puppet state in Kwangtung, and rebuked the British of having a hand in the establishment of a rebel government, arguing that the
Kuomintang led Republic of China ceased to be a legitimate government upon the founding of the New Republic of China following Chiang Kai-Shek’s surrender on November 12, 1939. The letter also stated emphatically that any establishment of a government within Kwangtung would force Nanking to consider the province a renegade province in open rebellion and would be reunited with the true Republic of China, with force if necessary. Both Governments also refused to attend the Far East Peace Conference scheduled to begin in September until such time that the British Empire ceased its support of the rebelling province and allowed it to be brought back into the fold of the Republic of China.
Chen Chi-Tang’s government, having gained the support of former warlord General Chang Hsüeh-liang and the Young China Party (YCP) both of which were nationalistic and anti-Japanese, quickly responded through its newly appointed Foreign Minister, Tso Shun-sheng, by issuing a statement that declared the Kuomintang led Republic of China was not was not “replaced” or “succeeded” by the Wang Jingwei regime because it had continued to exist after Wang Jingwei’s usurpation of the Republic’s Presidency, forced to govern from exile due to Wang’s alliance with Imperial Japan. As such, Tso’s statement continued, the true Republic of China would be based in Canton until such time that it was able to return governance of all of China. The Kwangtung Government’s position was, as the proclamations from Nanking and Tokyo, addressed and delivered to the governments of the Western Alliance, the United States, Thailand and the non-aligned nations of Europe and South America.
London, as can be expected, which had diplomatically recognized Chen’s Government of Kwangtung in conjunction with the Kwangtung Announcement, announced on the same day as the Kwangtung Government’s response to Nanking and Tokyo that it would assist the Republic of China in defending its borders against any enemy. The United States, according to the Japanese and Nanking Governments only due to the pressure exerted by Cantonese lobbyist groups, while not recognizing Chen’s government did demand that Nanking refrain from launching any military action against Kwangtung and instead organize a plebiscite to address a reunification of the two Chinese republics. While most members of the Western Alliance followed the British Empire’s lead in recognizing the Kwangtung Republic, as it was quickly and informally being known as in the early days, some, such as Belgium and Finland, were joined by the handful of non-aligned European nations, to establish informal relations with both Chinese governments, the notable exception was France. Paris stepped away from the rest of the West and instead joined with Tokyo and Nanking in refusing to recognize Kwangtung as anything more than a rebellious province of the true Republic of China. The French, clearly attempting to do as much damage as possible to the perceived postwar prestige of the British Empire, additionally seized the few assets within France belonging to the
Kuomintang and turned them over to Nanking.
Suddenly, tensions around the globe were once more elevated and the very real threat of war in the Far East once more stalked the nations of the region. The tentative peace in the region that had been agreed to in October 1944 seemed close to falling apart over the course of the summer of 1945. Tensions between the two Chinas remained high as anti-Wang and pro-Chen supporters struggled to cross into Kwangtung and the Nanking Government attempted to prevent such migration. The threat level increased even more when Nanking and Tokyo re-established their mutual defense alliance, an action that had been banned by the armistice agreement of October. By the middle of August, both the British Empire and the Empire of Japan began to seriously gear back up for war, with the British deploying several wings from Bomber Command and Missile Command to Formosa and Korea and several naval battle groups back to the Far East, and Japan openly re-arming and reforming several divisions of troops and reconstituting several air wings of fighters and bombers.
On August 30 the Thai Foreign Minister, Pote Sarasin, and the United States Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, announced a regional conference to take place in Manila on October 1, 1945 that would address the tensions and begin the work toward a favorable solution. This conference, which not surprisingly was attended by all of the parties that had agreed to attend September’s Far East Peace Conference, was a very tense affair, made all the worse by the inclusion of representatives of the Kwangtung Republic, over the objections of the Nanking Government and Imperial Japan, and was chaired by the Americans and the Thais. For the first three weeks of the conference a deadlock existed over the mere opening of the conference as neither of the Chinese delegations would recognize the legitimacy of the other’s government, and Imperial Japan refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Kwangtung Republic. After the American Assistant Secretary of State for Chinese Affairs, William W. Butterworth, the head of the American delegation, accomplished a compromise in which the Nanking Government and Imperial Japan would negotiate via the United States and the British Empire and the Kwangtung Government would do likewise, the conference officially opened. Talks immediately stalled on the second day of the conference when both the Imperial Japanese delegation and the delegation from the Nanking Government disputed the conference tables being used for the negotiations. Instead of the normal rectangular table used for most meetings, the Chinese and Japanese delegations demanded that circular tables be used so that all parties would be considered ‘equal’ in importance, Nanking earlier refusal to recognize the legitimacy of Kwangtung conveniently forgotten.
The British delegation promptly withdrew from the meetings and let it be known that it was consulting with London on whether or not to continue attending the conference. The conference itself was saved from complete disintegration when Undersecretary Butterworth and the head of the Thai delegation, former Prime Minister General Phot Phahonyothin, threatened to close the conference and recommend to Washington and Bangkok the immediate breaking of all relations to both Nanking and Tokyo. Faced with such adverse ramifications, the Chinese and Japanese delegations relented on their dispute and after the British were convinced to return to the talks, the work of the conference began in earnest November 5, 1945.
For one full year negotiations continued between the various parties. The entire time the tension within the region at a near fever pitch and despite a handful of small scale clashes between armed troops of both the Nanking Government and the Kwangtung Republic, the situation never escalated into anything larger. Finally on November 5, 1946 a breakthrough of sorts was reached. As the principals remaining at he conference, the two Chinese factions, the Japanese, the Americans and the British Empire, could not reach an amicable resolution that was satisfactory to all parties, it was agreed to conclude the conference with a
modus vivendi for a period of five years. During that time it was agreed that all parties would respect the boundaries of the Kwangtung Republic, based upon the pre-war boundaries of the province that existed in the pre-war Republic of China, that the post war boundaries of the Nanking Government’s China would be acknowledged, that neither Japan nor Great Britain would take actions against either Chinese faction unless said faction took direct action against their respective Empires and that yearly talks would held by the two Chinese factions under the mediation of the United States until an amicable resolution could be reached.
To all interested parties, the solution was less than ideal. It was also expected by all involved parties that the agreement would be violated by the others within a matter of months. In what would become the first of many such occurrences, troops of the Nanking Government crossed the established border and attacked the town of Nanxiong on February 6, 1946, killing an estimated fifty civilians before Kwangtung troops were able to arrive and force the infiltrators back across the border. After a series of such attacks left hundreds of civilians dead and once more witnessed the deployment of Imperial forces to the region, the United States forced an agreement upon the two Chinese factions for the building of a demilitarized zone along the border. The zone would be three miles wide, devoid of an obstructions to vision and would be patrolled by troops of both factions, however neither side being allowed to cross more than one and a half miles into the zone, and would stretch along the entire border. After several clashes took place in July 1946 that left hundreds of troops dead on both sides, the Americans amended the agreement so that the DMZ would be patrolled by American troops to ensure that a neutral party maintained the peace. Despite the presence of U.S. Marines, the resurrection of the pre-war China Marines, cross border incursions occur on a semi- frequent basis throughout the rest of the decade and making the DMZ on of the deadliest military postings in the world.
The entire time that attention was focused upon Kwangtung, Manchukuo in the north was quietly transitioning from a Japanese puppet existing solely to satisfy the needs of Imperial Japan to a Chinese constitutional monarchy that had the industrial and social capability of becoming a dominant regional power. Emperor Puyi Aisin-Gioro first success came when General Fu Zuoyi, a former warlord and commander of over five hundred thousand troop that garrisoned the critically important Suiyuan-Peiping Corridor that separated Manchuria from China proper, defected to Manchukuo along with two thirds of his troops and their equipment during the initial turmoil following the Kwangtung Announcement. Bolstering Manchukuo’s army, Fu’s arrival and subsequent appointment as War Minister, allowed Puyi and his Prime Minister, former warlord Chang Ching-hui (or Zhāng Jǐnghuì) who was surprisingly effective once free of the fetters of Japanese management, to concentrate on re-organizing Manchukuo’s government from a Japanese run puppet protectorate to an efficient modern constitutional monarchy. Thanks in large part to the robust heavy industrial base created by the Japanese, Manchukuo’s pre-war steel industry actually out producing all of the other Far East nations combined, and the well designed and competently organized railway system crisscrossing across the nation, Hsi Hsia (or Xi Qia), Emperor Puyi’s Minister of Finance and Trade, had little difficulty in establishing lucrative trade agreements with Korea, the Philippine Islands, and the British Empire.
When the Manila Conference started in October 1945, much to the irritation of the Japanese and Nanking delegations, Puyi’s Foreign Minister Ohashi Chuichi announced that the Empire of Manchuria, formerly known as Manchukuo, recognized neither Chen Chi-Tang’s government nor Wang Jingwei’s as legitimate. Instead, Ohashi informed the delegates that Hsin-ching (the capital of Manchuria) was calling for a China wide constitutional assembly to ratify the Manchurian Constitution that had ruled the Empire since the end of the war and had redesigned the monarchy of Manchukuo into the constitutional monarchy of Manchuria. Ohashi’s announcement assisted in increasing the turmoil of the Conference, neither the Japanese nor Nanking delegations interacting with the Manchurian delegation for the rest of the Conference and publicly denouncing the Manchurians for attempting to destabilize the region for their benefit. In a move of diplomatic tit for tat, the Manchurians simply pointed out Japanese activity in the 1920s and 1930s during the Warlord Era and then in surprise move, broke of diplomatic relations with Japans and formalized a defensive alliance with the British Empire.
And so rather than having a resolution to the turmoil that had existed within the Far East since the 1920s, the end of the 1941-1944 Far East War found the region still mired in instability and mutual distrust. With the rise of Thailand, Manchuria and Korea as viable regional powers, the fracturing of China and the degradation of Japan’s power, the prospects of peaceful co-existence occurring in the Far East were dim. Factoring in the alliances forged between the British Empire and Korea, Manchuria and Kwangtung, and the participation of the Americans with the maintenance of the Chinese DMZ, the involvement of the West in any Asian war was virtually assured. The question asked by most high level officials was not if war would occur, but when war would begin again.
**
Up Next: Once the dust settles from the reaction of the above (of which there will be much
), we'll move to the Western Hemisphere, from which little has been heard... until now. :unsure:
