The Tormented Alliance: American Servicemen and the Occupation of China, 1941–1949

by Zach Fredman

After Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, leaders in China and the United States had high hopes of a lasting partnership between the two countries. More than 120,000 U.S. servicemen deployed to China, where Chiang Kai-shek's government carried out massive programs to provide them with housing, food, and interpreters. But, as Zach Fredman uncovers in The Tormented Alliance, a military alliance with the United States means a military occupation by the United States. The first book to draw on archives from all of the areas in China where U.S. forces deployed during the 1940s, it examines the formation, evolution, and undoing of the alliance between the United States and the Republic of China during World War II and the Chinese Civil War.

Fredman reveals how each side brought to the alliance expectations that the other side was simply unable to meet, resulting in a tormented relationship across all levels of Sino-American engagement. Entangled in larger struggles over race, gender, and nation, the U.S. military in China transformed itself into a widely loathed occupation an aggressive, resentful, emasculating source of physical danger and compromised sovereignty. After Japan's surrender and the spring 1946 withdrawal of Soviet forces from Manchuria, the U.S. occupation became the chief obstacle to consigning foreign imperialism in China irrevocably to the past. Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek lost his country in 1949, and the U.S. military presence contributed to his defeat. The occupation of China also cast a long shadow, establishing patterns that have followed the U.S. military elsewhere in Asia up to the present.

Genres: World War II, China

333 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 6, 2022

Reviews

[Scott Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Audiobook) (3.5 stars) With so much emphasis on US/China relations in the 3rd decade of the 21st century, it can be instructive to see how other aspects of US/China relations went in the past. Hence we have this work which looks at how US and Chinese personnel interacted during World War II and immediately after. The long story short was…it wasn’t all that great. American inability to understand Chinese cultural and personal differences, as well as long-ingrained racially-based biases did a lot to make the relationship a difficult one…and that was as notional Allies. While the US did help the Chinese in the defeat of the Japanese, the Chinese nation had far greater issues, and the US could be as much as hindrance as help.

Freeman takes a sledgehammer to many of the accepted narratives of that time, that Fightin’ Joe Stilwell was a good commander for the Chinese theater, that Chiang Kai-shek was a severe detriment to the US efforts against Japan, as he was mainly interested in fighting the communists. While there was some kernels of truth in the narratives, the bigger story is that Chiang did want the Japanese out, but he would spend as much time fighting the US as he did any other nation. Also, the actions of American soldiers stationed in China did not cover the US Armed Forces in glory. A good deal of Sino-American resentment found its origins during this time.

A number of American readers will not like this work at all. This does not offer any sort of road-map for future China/US relations. However, it does show that Americans still don’t really do a great job “reading the room” when it comes to working with allies, especially if there is racial animus involved. This work would be best suited to those working allied missions and/or counter-insurgency type work.

[Daniel Jackson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have to commend Zach Fredman on his research, which is extensive and impressive, but unfortunately incomplete. His book is as if you told the story of your marriage by only relating your worst arguments and then characterizing your relationship as the sum of only those worst parts. Anyone listening to you would think you were crazy to ever be in such a relationship—as well they might—but you would be guilty of lies of omission, as it were.

Let me be clear, these ugly events did happen and their review and analysis is important for both historical inquiry and accountability. But to characterize the entire US-ROC alliance as a hostile occupation, to reduce every program to its worst racist event is inaccurate and incorrect. For example, the Chinese-American Composite Wing, which fielded two modern fighter groups and one bomber group, which mentored Chinese leaders to take charge of their own modern air force, and which served as the foundation of much of the ROCAF that still exists on Taiwan today—this whole enterprise is dismissed, characterized by an apparently racist incident where an American airman kicked a Chinese airman. After relating the occurrence of said kick, nothing more is said about the program.

It is hard not to feel like Fredman has an agenda—to strip away all the specific contingency about the war and transform it into a critique of American empire and a narrative of American racism and abuse of power. History is by definition its specific contingency, though. And much of the context that would help us both understand and constructively critique the US-ROC relationship during World War II is missing here.

Without question, the US-ROC relationship was tumultuous—largely due to the extreme circumstances of the war, but certainly not helped by the fraught relationship between Chiang and Stilwell. The United States was not always at its best nor were all the people it sent to China the best examples of its ideals. Fortunately, it was also not the sum of only its worst parts, as Mr. Fredman would have us believe.

[Jerome · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting book. Unfortunately, the author has a myopic focus on a unicausal analysis of what is in reality, a very complex series of events.

The author seems to have a particular lens he employs to explain the chain of events leading to the fall of the KMT, and focuses his narrative on US military misbehavior and abuse as the primary factor for why the Nationalist government fell.