Never Forget

“China’s resistance against Japan is one of the great untold stories of World War II. Though China was the first Allied power to fight the Axis, it has received far less credit for its role in the Pacific arena than the United States, Britain or even the Soviet Union, which joined the war in Asia only in August 1945. The Chinese contribution was pushed aside soon after the conflict, as an inconvenient story in the neat ideological narrative of the Cold War,” said Oxford University professor Rana Mitter in his article “The World’s Wartime Debt to China” published in The New York Times on October 18, 2013. He expounds on this in his new book Forgotten Ally, explaining that WWII did not start on the European plain, but broke out from “accidental discharge” in China, namely, the Marco Polo Bridge Incident (also known as the Lugou Bridge Incident or the July 7 Incident). 

According to Mitter, increasingly more experts are starting to recognize China’s positive role in WWII.

Based on historical materials, during WWII, China’s battlefield contained some one million Japanese army main forces. On September 9, 1945, China accepted the surrender of 1.28 million Japanese soldiers. The Chinese people made a tremendous national sacrifice for this war, with more than 35 million total casualties of military and civilians, and direct and indirect economic losses over US $100 billion and $500 billion respectively.  

Learn from the Past

As a Chinese proverb goes, “Past experience, if not forgotten, is a guide for the future.” On July 7, 2014, Chinese President Xi Jinping underscored the intractability of history as the nation commemorated the start of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression 77 years ago. Xi said the gathering should serve to recall history, commemorate martyrs, cherish peace and sound a warning for the future. China will unswervingly pursue the road of peaceful development and adamantly maintain world peace.

Since the September 18 Incident in 1931, Japanese militarism had gradually encroached upon Northeast China. On the evening of July 7, 1937, a Japanese detachment carried out military maneuvers north of Lugou Bridge. On the premise that a soldier was missing, Japanese troops requested a search of the county town of Wanping. The Chinese garrison there refused this unreasonable demand. The next morning, the Japanese launched a fierce attack and soldiers of the Chinese army courageously resisted. Then conflicts quickly escalated and tensions between the two sides mounted. The July 7 Incident marked the beginning of Japan’s all-out war of aggression against China as well as the start of the China’s eight-year-long nationwide War of Resistance against Japan. The Japanese military committed heinous crimes: They massacred civilians and disarmed soldiers; they used prisoners of war as targets for bayonet drills and forced women into sexual slavery; they arrested civilians to engage in heavy forced labor in Japan and deployed biological and chemical weapons. In violating International Law, the Japanese inflicted unspeakable suffering on people from China, North Korea, and South Korea – but they also caused endless trauma to innocent Japanese people.

On September 2, 1945, a representative of Japan officially signed the Instrument of Surrender on the deck of the USS Missouri, marking the final victory of the world’s war against fascism.