Session 8: Chinese Guerrilla Operations and Japanese Anti-Guerrilla Operations, 1939-1945

The subject matter of the three papers presented at this session had the potential of contributing to a greater western understanding of the issue of the relative strategic significance of guerrilla operations in modern warfare, with China as a particularly relevant case. The paper by Professor YANG Kuisong (Department of History, Beijing University ) largely dealt with Communist strategy behind the lines as viewed through the perspectives of Mao Zedong's public statements, as well as those of the Chinese Communist Party's leadership. Yang organized his discussion by dividing the Sino-Japanese War, as viewed by the Chinese Communists, into three phases, each one of which was governed by a different strategic emphasis.

While also providing a detailed recitation of Communist strategic directives, Professor BABA Takeshi (Faculty of Modern Chinese Studies, Aichi University ) offered a somewhat narrower geographic focus for the same general subject, concentrating as he did on Chinese operations in Shandong Province .

Conference discussion that followed the presentation of these two papers dwelt on the need to have a better understanding of what guerrilla warfare actually entailed on the ground. American readers do not readily think of guerrilla operations in the context of World War II, and British audiences have grown up on a steady diet of daring commando raids and resistance heroics. Chinese guerrilla warfare was very different in nature, and a development in modern warfare whose wider importance would become clear to Western audiences during the national liberation struggles after the end of WW II. An elucidation of the actual conduct of Chinese Communist and Nationalist guerrilla operations would be hugely useful for a western audience. When and why were such operations successful? What were their limitations and weaknesses? What were some actual battlefield outcomes?

In this regard, the presentation by Professor YAMAMOTO Masahiro (Modern and Classical Languages Department, University of Wyoming ) provided much more detailed picture of military campaigns by illuminating the operations of smaller Japanese units to respond to Chinese guerrilla activities. Among the various topics under his scrutiny were the Japanese responses to the Hundred Regiments Offensive; the nature of Japanese defense fortifications against guerrilla insurgencies; the reasons behind the abandonment of Japanese programs of local economic support in the face of competing demands of combat in the Pacific; an analysis of the shrinking of defended areas under the pressures of the Pacific War.

Among the conclusions drawn by Yamamoto:

- The Japanese never had sufficient forces in China to pacify the territory it had conquered;

- The infamous "Three All" campaign (whose origins, interestingly, he did not ascribe to General OKAMURA Yasuji, though Okamura took responsibility for the policy) was designed to depopulate specific areas in order to prevent cooperation with the guerrillas; and

- The combat effectiveness of Japanese units in China decreased over time as draft replacements for killed, wounded, or repatriated units were of inferior quality.

Discussion of the papers presented during this session drew attention to regional variations in guerrilla activities during the war depending upon the relations between guerrilla leaders, the populations they controlled, puppet forces, and the strength of local Japanese occupying units. Further research on this variation would perhaps provide a more nuanced picture of the interaction between insurgents, occupiers, and collaborators in this vast combat theater.