Print Layout 1

Like Strangers in a Foreign Land: Chinese Officers Prepared at American Military Colleges, 1904–37* ✩

John Wands Sacca

Abstract The lives of Chinese “returned students” who had studied military science in the United States between 1904 and 1937 straddled the end of the Qing dynasty and the creation of the Chinese Republic— a turbulent era of foreign hegemony and almost constant civil war. National and provincial military establishments held unique positions in the fragmented republic, yet commissions and postings were limited by alumni association membership. Tainted by their foreign education and distrusted for their lack of membership in dominant alumni cliques, they were denied significant roles in the line and staff of the Nationalist Army. Forced by circumstances to rely on one another, most would eventually abandon its ranks.

A

MERICAN views of China evoke the metaphor of a pendulum swinging between admiration and sympathy, on one extreme, and fear and rejection at the other. Harold R. Isaacs has characterized the years 1905–37 as an “Era of Benevolence” when Americans became paternal-

* The author is obliged to the following archivists: Diane B. Jacob and Mary Laura Kludy, Preston Library, Virginia Military Institute; Jacqueline S. Painter, Henry Prescott Chaplin Memorial Library, and Krista Ainsworth, Mack Librarian for Special Collections, Kreitzberg Library, Norwich University; Judith A. Sibley and Alan C. Aimone, Special Collections and Archives, United States Military Academy Library; and Jane Yates, Director, The Citadel Archives and Museum. The perceptive critiques of three anonymous reviewers and the editors of the Journal of Military History informed the final revision of this article.

John Wands Sacca ([email protected]) earned a Ph.D. from the University at Albany and is currently an adjunct faculty member in the M.A.T. Program at Russell Sage College, Troy, New York. The Journal of Military History 70 (July 2006): 703–42

© Society for Military History

★

703

JOHN WANDS SACCA

istic toward China.1 During this period, a succession of Chinese governments were given encouragement to send students to the United States to pursue a college education at a time when China was stagnating in the shadow of a modernizing Japan. As a consequence, hundreds of men and women would be sent to study in America. On returning home, these socalled “returned students” helped to modernize academia and the professions during an era of revolution, brigandage, foreign invasion, and almost constant civil war. The returned students’ experiences would be remarkably similar. Neither fish nor fowl politically, many found themselves strangers in a country evolving from a conservative Confucian state into a Westernized, albeit chaotic, modern nation state. And in attempting to become agents of change through their American education, they became suspect in the eyes of their countrymen.2 The character of an officer corps is formed, to a large degree, by its educational preparation. Little has been written in English concerning Chinese nationals educated at American military colleges. Between 1904 and 1937, on the eve of China’s War of Resistance against Japan (1937–45), ninety-three Chinese cadets attended the four most prestigious military colleges in the United States: Virginia Military Institute (VMI), Lexington, Virginia; Norwich University, Northfield, Vermont; The Citadel, Charleston, South Carolina; and the United States Military Academy (USMA), West Point, New York (see Table I). With the exception of the federal academy at West Point, these colleges were state-sponsored institutions. About a third of these young men also studied or took degrees at American civilian colleges and universities (see Table II). But their American military education would prove more of a hindrance than a benefit to their chosen careers. The liberal education received at military colleges in the United States set them apart from both peers and superiors who were educated at military academies in China, Japan, and even Europe. Ever the odd men out in their own national and provincial military establishments due to their lack of membership in the prestigious military academy alumni associations that dominated the Chinese officer corps, they spent the 1920s and 1930s building personal and professional relationships with other American-educated officers. Of necessity, they associated themselves in traditional Confucian patterns based on school tie (tongban tongxue) and interpersonal ties (guanxi), exploiting opportunities for employment wherever they could be found. 1. Harold R. Isaacs, Scratches on Our Minds: American Images of China and India (New York: Harper and Row, 1958), 71. 2. Two recent studies of the overseas students are Weili Ye, Seeking Modernity in China’s Name: Chinese Students in the United States, 1900–1927 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001); and Stacey Bieler, “Patriots” or “Traitors”?: A History of American-Educated Chinese Students (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2004).

704

★

THE JOURNAL OF

Like Strangers in a Foreign Land

A number of the returned students would play significant roles after the United States entered the war against Japan, especially in the ChinaBurma-India Theater (CBI) under the command of General Joseph W. Stilwell. Yet, the careers of many of these men would end in despair. After the defeat of the Japanese Imperial Army in 1945, units trained and equipped by the Americans would be squandered in a disastrous civil war with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The general disaffection of these American-educated officers with, and their eventual abandonment of, the Nationalist regime shed light on the political disaster that followed and is one measure of the failure of both Nationalist and American policies. Their story might well provide a cautionary tale during a turbulent twenty-first century. ✬ ✬ ✬ ✬ ✬ China was unable to sinicize European “barbarians” as had been the case with successive waves of Asian invaders over the centuries. European military establishments of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were complex cultural institutions. Composed largely of literate citizens who had been educated in state-sponsored primary and secondary and technically trained in military service schools, each Western army was led by a professional officer corps under the unified command of a general staff. Indeed, the sine qua non of a modern military establishment lies in a professional officer corps. After a half century of foreign incursion and domestic rebellion, a reluctant Manchu court permitted provincial Chinese governors to establish Western-style military academies. Evoking the classical rubric of “self-strengthening” (ziqiang), Li Hongzhang (1823–1901), then governor of Jiangsu, established the first officer academy in 1885 at Tianjin on the recommendation of British General Charles George “Chinese” Gordon, only to see it destroyed during the Boxer Rising (1898–1901). In 1887, Zhang Zhidong (1837–1909), then governor-general of the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi, set up an academy at Canton that would become the Whampoa Military Academy thirty-seven years later. A military academy that would survive until 1923 was established at Baoding, southwest of Beijing, in 1902 by Yuan Shikai (1859–1916), then governor-general of Zhili.3 3. Ralph L. Powell, The Rise of Chinese Military Power, 1895–1912 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1955), 41, 235–36; David B. Ralston, Importing the European Army: The Introduction of European Military Techniques and Institutions into the Extra-European World, 1600–1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 122–25, 135–38; John A. Lynn, “Clio in Arms: The Role of the Military Variable in Shaping History,” Journal of Military History 55 (January 1991): 84, 93; Knight Biggerstaff, The Earliest Modern Government Schools in China (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1961), 61–62, 64–65. MILITARY HISTORY

★

705

JOHN WANDS SACCA

Table I Native Provinces of Chinese Students Attending U.S. Military Colleges, 1904–37, by Institution G = graduates; N = non-graduates; Nativity, in Chinese usage, refers less to actual place of birth than to ancestral home (guxiang).

Guangdong Hunan Jiangsu Hebei Henan Sichuan Anhui Hubei Liaonin Shanx Shandong Gansu Heilongjiang Jiangxi Jilin Yunnan Zhejiang Overseas Unknown Sub–totals Percent

NORWICH

VMI

PROVINCE

CITADEL

USMA

G 8 – – 3 2 – 1 1 1 1 – – – – – 1 – – 1

N 8 – 5 1 1 – – – 1 – – – 1 1 1 – 1 3 1

G 3 7 3 1 1 1 – 1 – – – – – – – – – – 2

N 2 4 1 2 – 2 1 1 1 – 1 – – – – – – – –

G 1 – – 1 1 1 – – – 1 1 1 – – – – – – 1

N 2 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 3

G 2 1 3 1 – – 1 – – – – – – – – – – – –

N – – – 1 – – – – – 1 – – – – – – – – –

Total 26 12 12 10 5 4 3 3 3 3 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 8

19 44.2

24 55.8

19 55.9

15 44.1

8 61.5

5 38.5

8 80

2 20

100

Total graduates + nongraduates by institution 43 34

13

10

Total Graduates = 54; Total Nongraduates = 46

This table is nonadditive since seven cadets attended more than one institution. Sources: Virginia Military Institute Archives, Lexington, Virginia; University Archives, Norwich University Library, Northfield, Vermont; The Citadel Archives and Museum, Charleston, South Carolina; and Special Collections and Archives, United States Military Academy Library, West Point, New York.

706

★

THE JOURNAL OF

Like Strangers in a Foreign Land

Table II U.S. Civilian Institutions Attended by Chinese Cadets, 1904-37 Number of Cadets Civilian college or university University of Wisconsin Columbia University Cornell University Massachusetts Institute of Technology Harvard University Johns Hopkins University Purdue University University of Southern California Clark University College of the City of Detroit Iowa State College of A & M Arts Oberlin College Ohio State University Princeton University Stanford University University of Chicago University of Michigan University of New Hampshire Virginia Polytechnic Institute Totals

Norwich USMA VMI Citadel Totals VA SC NY VT 5 3 2 2 1 1 1 2 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1

1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0

0 1 2 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0

0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

6 5 4 4 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

23

7

7

1

38

Note: This table is nonadditive since some students attended more than one institution. Sources: See Table I.

It would take the defeat of the nativist Boxers and the subsequent rout of the Imperial Chinese Army to break the stranglehold of tradition, however. Sworn to drive out “foreign devils,” the Boxers marched from Tianjin to Beijing in June of 1900, murdering foreigners and Chinese Christians on route. With the secret encouragement of the Manchu court, they besieged the foreign legations in the capital from June through August. When foreign troops of eight nations crushed the Boxers and sacked Beijing, traditional conservatism became discredited in the eyes of the scholar-elite. In the wake of the Boxer catastrophe and the object lesson it provided in Western military efficiency, a humiliated Imperial court issued decrees in 1901 that ended the old style military examination, ordered military schools established, and provided for sending selected students overseas for a foreign education under govMILITARY HISTORY

★

707

JOHN WANDS SACCA

ernment sponsorship. By 1906 there would be 691 officers and cadets in Japanese schools, 15 studying in Europe, and 3 in the United States.4 Within thirty years, slightly more than 1.4 percent of the total Chinese officer corps would be graduates of foreign military academies. Of that number, 90 percent had attended Japanese military schools, while the remaining 10 percent were educated in Europe and the United States.5 With the collapse of the Imperial government in 1911, a military career took on added interest with the sons of merchants and officials— the young, educated, urban elite. The traditional ambivalence of Chinese toward a military career began to yield to the pragmatic notion of the “scholar-soldier.” And a military career offered a unique role in the growing commitment to national salvation and nation building among the youth of China. An added impulse to the choice of military studies was the mobilization of students against an increasingly imperialist Japan. In 1919, a firestorm of student demonstrations was ignited in Beijing that became known as the May 4th Movement. As anti-Japanese protests and student strikes spread to the major cities of China, students began to take a critical look at their own government and culture. And on 21 May, students protested the training of Chinese officers in Japan.6 As the first Asian nation to adopt Western methods, Japan profoundly influenced China through its system of military education. Chinese officers prepared in Japan were prominent in militarist regimes throughout the regionalized republic. Educational hybrids, most of the cadets to study in the United States had been immersed in Confucian social attitudes at the traditional sishu (Confucian private schools) of their childhood. So strong was the influence of the Confucian curriculum that the ubiquitous and inexpensive sishu would persist despite the abolition of the Imperial examination system in 1905, the subsequent creation of a public school system modeled on that of Japan, and the end of the Qing dynasty itself. Between the ages of six and twelve, students’ recitations progressed from the basic 4. Wen Ying-hsing to General Scott Shipp, 1 September 1905, Virginia Military Institute Archives, Preston Library, Lexington, Virginia [hereafter VMIA]; William A. Ellis, Norwich University, 1819–1911: Her History, Her Graduates, Her Roll of Honor (Montpelier, Vt.: Capital City Press, 1911), 3:457; Official Register—The Citadel, The Citadel Archives and Museum, Charleston, South Carolina [hereafter CAM]. 5. Zhang Ruide, Kangzhan shiqi di guojun renshi [Anatomy of the Nationalist Army during the War of Resistance] (Taibei: Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, 1993), 22. 6. John King Fairbank, China: A New History (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992), 238; Li Jiannong, Zhongguo jin bai nian zhengzhi lishi [One hundred years of recent Chinese political history] (Taibei: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1975), 2:517; Jie Zhong, Xiaobing zhi fu: Sun Liren jiangjun ceji [The father of little soldiers: General Sun Liren remembered] (Taibei: Luosheng wenhuaban, 1991), 46.

708

★

THE JOURNAL OF

Like Strangers in a Foreign Land

Confucian primers through the most difficult texts of the Confucian canon.7 Thereafter, some attended primary and secondary schools, while others went on to Christian colleges or government-sponsored technical schools, where they would be introduced to the English language and a Western curriculum. While the sons of prosperous merchant families might study abroad as independent scholars, most overseas students attended American military colleges as government fellowship students (guanfei). To administer the full scholarships, a Chinese Educational Mission was established at Washington, D.C. The Mission provided for payment of tuition, school fees, and uniform expenses. Each student paid for board, rent, clothing, and books from a monthly allowance provided by the Mission.8 Most government-sponsored students to study military science in the United States were prepared at Qinghua College (see Table III), established outside Beijing in 1909, under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As a consequence of President Theodore Roosevelt’s reduction of the American share of the Boxer indemnity, and by act of Congress, twelve million dollars paid by China as reparations for damage done by the Boxers to American lives and property was put in trust for scholarships to send Chinese students to American colleges and universities. Organized as a preparatory school, Qinghua’s purpose was to give students the requisite course background for advanced study in the United States. So prestigious became the Qinghua entrance examination that many Chinese looked on it as they had the old Imperial examination—a path to sinecure and government service. Indeed, Qinghua classmates would develop lifelong relationships remarkably similar to those of successful candidates who passed the old Imperial examinations in the same year (tongnian). And to the same extent that the Imperial examinations had been characterized by impartiality and 7. Marianne Bastid, Educational Reform in Early Twentieth-Century China (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1988), 30–31; Wang Zhi, Wang Zhi huiyilu [The Memoirs of Wang Zhi] (Taibei: Xiongfeng chubanshe, 1993), 29–31; Sun Liren, “Wo de zhengzha” [My striving], Guoji ribao [International Daily], 17 December 1988. Information concerning the early lives and education of Sun Liren and Wang Zhi was provided through the kindness of their sons, Professors Chung Chieh and C. Y. Wang, respectively. 8. Y. C. Wang, Chinese Intellectuals and the West, 1872–1949 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966), 111, 112, 167; Yang Chang-ling, “Norwich Men in China,” p. 10, typescript of a speech delivered at Norwich University in November 1975, University Archives, Special Collections, Kreitzberg Library, Norwich University, Northfield, Vermont [hereafter NUA]; G. T. Zhao to Bursar, 1 September 1926, VMIA; John K. Fairbank, Chinese-American Interactions: A Historical Summary (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1975), 68; F. F. Liu, A Military History of Modern China, 1924–1949 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1956), 88. MILITARY HISTORY

★

709

JOHN WANDS SACCA

universality, the criteria for selection of candidates for admission to Qinghua included a consideration of geographical origin, making it a truly national institution. Subjects were divided between two departments, one Chinese and the other Western. While the Chinese Department presented a rigorous course of studies in Chinese literature and language, the Western Department prepared students for entrance to American higher education. During their two years in middle school and the first two years in high school, Qinghua scholars studied English, German, science, mathematics, and physical education. In addition to English and physical education, juniors and seniors completed courses in chemistry, physics, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, statistics, and surveying. Qinghua officially attested that its final year was “equivalent in standard to the Sophomore Year of the best American Colleges,” and beginning with the Class of 1922, Qinghua graduates would be admitted to American colleges as juniors.9 The enthusiasm of the overseas students would be somewhat tempered by the realities of life in the United States, however. Not all Americans were like the missionaries and professors they had known in China. There was strong prejudice against Asians in America, and a series of congressional exclusion acts limited the number of Chinese laborers admitted each year. Although the overseas students were members of a legally exempt class—merchants and scholars—they still experienced discrimination, and their self-image suffered under the specter of Chinese inferiority in American society. Chinese students could not reside in the United States without a legal guardian, for instance. Those not being sponsored by the Chinese Educational Mission most often looked to the Presbyterian or Methodist Churches for guarantors.10

The United States Military Academy at West Point Military education in the United States resembled nothing that the overseas students were familiar with. There was no national military academy in China comparable to the Military Academy at West Point. And admission to the USMA was very restrictive, an act of Congress being needed for appointment. Only ten Chinese cadets would attend the USMA, and eight would graduate (see Table I). The first two trans9. Su Yunfeng, Jindai gaodeng jiaoyu yanjiu: Cong Qinghua Xuetang dao Qinghua Daxue 1911–1929 [A study of higher education in the modern period: From Qinghua College to Qinghua University, 1911–1929] (Taibei: Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, 1996), 203–6; Tsing Hua College Scholarship Credential, Registrar’s Office, Li Jen-tao file, 28 June 1926, and Sun Li-jen file, 26 October 1926, VMIA. 10. Ye, Seeking Modernity, 88–94, and 154.

710

★

THE JOURNAL OF

Like Strangers in a Foreign Land

ferred from VMI in 1905, where they had enrolled pending congressional appointments. Wen Yingxing, son of a district governor under the Qing dynasty and graduate in systems engineering from Nanyang College, Shanghai, Class of 1901, joined VMI classmate George S. Patton, III, in transferring to West Point, where Wen “soon became one of the most congenial and popular members” of his class. In 1909 Wen became the first Chinese to graduate from West Point, standing 84th in his class of 104.11 Although West Point was a first-rate college of engineering Cadet Wen Yingxing, United States Military Academy, Class of 1909, as he and mathematics, electives in the appeared in the Howitzer. (Courtesy of liberal arts were not offered with Special Collections, U.S. Military Acad- the exception of a few courses in economics, government, history, emy Library.) and foreign languages. Unlike the state military academies that produced citizen-soldiers for service with the state militias, West Point produced professional soldiers; throughout the period of this study, on average, only 13 percent of USMA graduates would resign their commissions and return to civilian occupations. And because the faculty was composed of Regular Army officers, most having no advanced academic training in the humanities and social sciences, their ability to teach courses in general education was limited. The rigorous course of scientific studies at West Point was inculcated in cadets through a monastic pedagogical style of small classes and daily recitation. Both Chinese nongraduates shown in Table I resigned for academic reasons. The first was deficient in English, history, and mathematics, and resigned in 1916. The other was deficient in English and history, and

11. George L. Van Deusen, Assembly (Fall 1968): 89; George W. Cullum, Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York Since Its Establishment in 1802 (Chicago: R. R. Donnelley and Sons Co., 1930), 7:855; Wen Ying-hsing to Monroe F. Cockrell, 6 March 1946, VMIA; Zheng Xueyu, “Xidian junxiao de ba li Zhongguo biyesheng (1905–1937)” [“The eight Chinese graduates of West Point (1905–1937)”], Zhuanji wenxue [Biographical Literature] 76 (June 2000): 20–27. MILITARY HISTORY

★

711

JOHN WANDS SACCA

withdrew in 1933 in order to transfer to VMI, from which he graduated in 1935.12 Other Chinese cadets came to West Point, however, with strong backgrounds in the liberal arts and would maintain high academic standings in their respective classes. Four attended civilian universities prior to appointment (see Table II). Qinghua graduate Wang Geng ’11, son of a Shanghai businessman, studied engineering at both Michigan and Columbia universities before taking a B.Litt. in history, with honors, from Princeton in 1915. Changing his plans to pursue graduate studies at Harvard, Wang accepted an appointment to West Point and earned a second baccalaureate in 1918, standing 12th in his class of 227. Wang Chengzhi was a graduate of Nanyang College ’16, and attended Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) before being appointed to West Point. Wang stood 14th in the graduating Class of 1922. Qinghua graduate Zhang Daohong ’18 graduated from Clark University with a major in history and a minor in political and social science, before being appointed to West Point. Zhang graduated in 1924, 179th in his class of 298.13 Cao Linsheng, a native of Shanghai, graduated from the USMA in 1918 but on returning to China could not secure a commission due to the powerful cliques of Japanese and German military academy graduates. He took a position as dean of physical training at Qinghua College, where he would influence Wang Zhi, son of a Hunan schoolmaster and principal, to pursue a military education in America. After graduating from Qinghua in 1926, Wang studied government and history at the University of Wisconsin before graduating from Norwich in 1928 with a major in history. Wang Zhi was the only overseas student to take degrees from two American military colleges. When a Chinese candidate withdrew his nomination from West Point, the Chinese consulate prodded Wang to take his place for patriotic reasons. Named a foreign cadet by special act of Congress and nominated by President Herbert C. Hoover, Wang began his second military college experience in 1928. The tradition of hazing “plebes” (freshmen) was strong at West Point, and when the Chinese plebe was ordered by upperclassmen to sing the Chinese national anthem, Wang demanded that they stand as a sign of respect. When they refused, he rushed them, but got the worst of it. His temer12. Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait (New York: Free Press, 1971), 132, 136; Cadet files for Wang Tze-lan [Ting-fen] and Chang I, United States Military Academy Special Collections and Archives, West Point, New York [hereafter USMA Archives]; Chang I file, VMIA. 13. William L. Kost, Assembly, July 1943, 10; Cullum, Biographical Register, 9:256; Wang Keng files, University of Michigan Archives, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Princeton University Archives, Princeton, New Jersey; The Nassau Herald (1915), Princeton, New Jersey, 275–76; Chang Tao-hung file, Clark University Archives, Worcester, Massachusetts; Wong Zeng Tse file, USMA Archives.

712

★

THE JOURNAL OF

Like Strangers in a Foreign Land

ity, however, won the upperclassmen’s grudging respect and he was no longer hazed. Wang graduated from West Point in 1932, twelfth in his class of 266.14

Norwich University Military establishments reflect the values of the societies they serve. American military colleges produced liberally educated citizen-soldiers. The peculiarly American notion of combining military instruction with civilian education had its greatest exponent in Captain Alden Partridge (1785–1854). A graduate and former superintendent of the USMA, Partridge founded the first private military school in the United States in his hometown of Norwich, Vermont, in 1819. Removed to Northfield in 1829, the college’s dual mission would be to fit college men for civil vocations in peacetime, yet prepare them for service as volunteers in time of war. Partridge’s ideas and his academy would serve as a model for dozens of state-sponsored and private military academies, to include VMI and The Citadel, where both classical and scientific curricula would be taught in a military setting.15 Norwich University had been introduced to the Chinese scholar-gentry and treaty-port compradors through the exploits of the American adventurer and Norwich alumnus Frederick Townsend Ward, whose “Ever-Victorious Army” of European and Philippine volunteers saved the city of Shanghai from Taiping rebels in 1862.16 Nevertheless, Norwich University was not the first choice for most Chinese overseas students who tended to transfer there, almost as an afterthought, from the civilian institutions at which they had first matriculated: Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Iowa State, Michigan, MIT, New Hampshire, Purdue, Southern California, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, and Wisconsin (see Table II). One cadet from VMI would transfer to Norwich, while another cadet at The Citadel would attend Norwich for two semesters before returning to Charleston. And as the Chinese Educational Mission placed no restrictions on Qinghua scholars for postgraduate study, between 1926 and 1930 six other Qinghua graduates would enroll at Norwich as so-called

14. Bieler,“Patriots” or “Traitors”? 58, 61–62; Zheng, “Xidian junxiao de ba li Zhongguo biyesheng,” 25; Wang, Wang Zhi huiyilu, 35–36. 15. Martin van Creveld, The Training of Officers: From Military Professionalism to Irrelevance (London: Free Press, 1990), 3; Michael S. Neiberg, Making Citizen-Soldiers: ROTC and the Ideology of American Military Service (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), 5; Rod Andrew, Jr., Long Gray Lines: The Southern Military School Tradition, 1839–1915 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 10–11. 16. Yang, “Norwich Men in China,” pp. 1–5, NUA. MILITARY HISTORY

★

713

JOHN WANDS SACCA

“special students” for a one-year course of military studies, after earning undergraduate degrees from Columbia, MIT, Oberlin, Ohio State, Stanford, and Wisconsin (see Table II).17 Norwich also attracted all eleven Hunanese cadets to study in the United States, and all three ChineseAmericans in this study (see Table III). Not only did Norwich have a more relaxed environment and liberal admissions policy, it was near the colleges and universities in New England where many overseas Chinese students would matriculate. In 1927, Zeng Jingji and Chen Jialu entered The Citadel and Norwich University, respectively. Both cadets were Sichuan provincials and had been classmates at Qinghua College, Class of 1926. After one year in Charleston, however, Zeng applied to Norwich as a “senior special student,” studying only military science, and returned to graduate from The Citadel in 1930. “I go north, not because I like Norwich University more than I do [The] Citadel,” reasoned Zeng, “but because I can have a free choice.” Reunited with Chen at Norwich, Zeng soon discovered that 14 of their Qinghua classmates could be found in the Boston and Cambridge area alone. A moderate-sized institution with a student body of about 200 and fewer then twenty faculty, Norwich’s bucolic setting appealed to the Chinese cadets. And the little village of about a hundred houses, “closely surrounded by a chain of rolling hills,—quite a snug place for habitation—all shut in with an azure dome above and green earth below,” reminded Zeng of his home in Sichuan. And Norwich was a cavalry school, with eighty horses and a riding hall. Zeng and Chen, like so many of the 34 Chinese students to attend Norwich, became excellent horsemen. In the case of the diminutive Chen, however, the aid of a stepladder would be required to mount his horse.18 Virginia Military Institute Although VMI was the military college of choice for most Chinese planning to study military science in the United States, VMI would also experience the highest dropout rate. Only 44.2 percent of the first 43 Chinese cadets to attend VMI would graduate, the lowest percentage for any of the American military colleges (see Table I). The average length of enrollment for the 25 nongraduates was only seven and one-half 17. Wang, Chinese Intellectuals and the West, 112; These Norwich “special students” were Ma Zhuan ’25; Chen Chongwu ’27; He Haoruo ’27; Zhu Shiming ’27; Wang Jun ’28; Li Mojun ’30; and Wang Fuzhou Guang, “Chinese Officers Who Attended Norwich University, 1910–1934,” a scrapbook of archival material compiled by Chang Chun-chai, Class of 1991, NUA. On returning to Taiwan, Chang was commissioned in the army. 18. Tseng Ching-chi to Laura Bragg, 22 August 1928; Tseng to Bragg, 14 September 1928, folder 5, box 5, Laura Bragg Papers, CAM; The War Whoop, 1928, NUA.

714

★

THE JOURNAL OF

Like Strangers in a Foreign Land

months.19 Founded in 1839, the 700-strong cadet corps nurtured the conceit that VMI was “the West Point of the South.” And as was the case at West Point, the rigorous discipline and tradition of hazing provided the Chinese cadets with a stressful cultural immersion, which, no doubt, contributed to the large number of resignations. So put off were the first Chinese cadets to attend VMI in 1905 by the hazing they experienced as first-year “rats,” as the in-coming freshmen are known, that they wrote to the Imperial Chinese Legation in Washington, D.C., expressing their desire to withdraw. The First Secretary proffered “cordial” advice to the students and requested the intervention of the superintendent, Brigadier General Scott Shipp. “I at once convinced myself that there was nothing but the usual ‘haze’ or a little over-carried joke which they could not stand,”20 suggested the First Secretary in a diplomatic manner. Actually, the many complaints against hazing during General Shipp’s tenure would contribute to his decision in 1907 to retire. Yet Shipp defended the practice, considering hazing a virtue, for it “weeds out the weaklings.”21 Matriculating in the third year at VMI twenty years later, Sun Liren would not have to experience the traditional hazing of the “ratline,” but did fall victim to the stereotyping of Chinese in America. Two upperclassmen left dirty uniforms with him. On a piece of cardboard attached to the bundles was written “Laundryman Sun,” with directions that the uniforms be washed and pressed.22 Yet most hazing was more sophomoric than mean-spirited. Sun’s classmate at VMI, Zhou Yanjun (Chow Ngan Ben), was persuaded by upperclassmen to slide into the office of the Commandant of Cadets and address the humorless Colonel Polk as “Colonel Steel Ball.”23 Course offerings at state military academies were similar to those at civilian colleges. While departments of engineering were prominent, liberal arts departments offered arts majors and provided electives to the engineering students. When Sun Liren entered VMI, he had already earned a civil engineering degree from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. Although Purdue required mandatory participation by underclassmen in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program, Sun as a foreign student had been excused. Only after making the acquaintance of two VMI graduates while employed with the American Bridge Company, Wissahickon, Pennsylvania, did Sun decide on a military career. The Engineering Department chairman determined that Sun 19. “Chinese Cadets at VMI,” typescript roster of Chinese Cadets at VMI, 1906–88, in the VMIA. 20. Chou Tzu-ch’i to General Scott Shipp, 29 March 1905, VMIA. 21. Henry A. Wise, Drawing Out the Man: The VMI Story (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978), 87. 22. Jie, Xiaobing zhi fu, 57. 23. Chow Ngan Ben to Colonel William Couper, 18 March 1947, VMIA. MILITARY HISTORY

★

715

JOHN WANDS SACCA

would “benefit more by taking the Arts Course rather than review [civil engineering],” and he was accepted as a member of the Second Class (third year) of the Liberal Arts Department in 1926.24 When Sun finally arrived at Lexington, he made the acquaintance of Cadet Zhou Yanjun, a transfer student from the City College of Detroit, who had been assigned to the Third Class (second year) of the Liberal Arts Department the year before. Zhou desired a military education but had delayed applying to VMI due to “financial difficulty.” Zhou was not a Qinghua scholar, but had been sent to Los Angeles by his father, a merchant in the import and export business in Canton. He eventually moved to Detroit and, as was the case with a number of overseas Chinese, found guardianship through the Presbyterian Church. In addition to their courses in military science, the two Chinese classmates took many of the same liberal arts courses. As juniors, they completed courses in the English novel, history, American literature, political science, ethics, logic, and economics. In their senior year, they studied English literature, philosophy, sociology, history, economics, technical English, and business law. Both Chinese cadets earned arts baccalaureates from VMI in 1927.25 Civilian faculty members at the state-sponsored military colleges held commissions in their respective state militias, but were not under federal control in any manner. Often without military experience of any sort, faculty members were given state militia commissions equivalent to their faculty rank—an instructor began as lieutenant, and as he progressed through the professorial “ranks” to full professor, might end his teaching career as a full colonel. Zhang Zixuan (Chang De Senn), son of a prominent Guangdong merchant family, developed a close relationship with “Colonel” Hunter Pendleton, a popular chemistry professor at VMI from 1890 until 1935. Affectionately known to cadets as “Old Rat,” Pendleton was the first professor to have come from the ranks of the VMI cadet corps. On returning to China in 1920 after earning a B.S. in chemistry, Zhang wrote his former professor: I arrived in China April after absenting [myself] for eleven long years from home. Even my own people hardly recognize me . . . My eleven years in the United States passed away like a happy dream. I came home with a profound gratitude and appreciation for what you and your country have done for me.26 24. Sun Li-jen to Colonel William Couper, 7 October 1925; Annotation on telegram from Sun to Couper, 28 January 1926; James A. Anderson to Couper, 1 February 1926; Unknown author, “A Biographical Sketch of General Sun Lijen,” n.p., typescript in the VMIA. 25. N. B. Jue to Registrar, 1 October 1924; Sun Li-jen and Chow Ngan Ben transcripts, VMIA. 26. Wise, Drawing Out the Man, 71; Chang De Senn to Colonel Hunter Pendleton, 2 September 1921, published in The Cadet, 17 October 1921, VMIA.

716

★

THE JOURNAL OF

Like Strangers in a Foreign Land

Maj. Gen. Sun Liren, VMI Class of 1927, commanding the New 38th Division, Chinese Army, Col. George Chun Lee, Norwich University Class of 1931, New 38th Division liaison to the 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional), and Brig. Gen. Frank D. Merrill, commanding, discuss plans for an offensive. (Courtesy of the Merrill’s Marauders Association.)

The Citadel With more than 700 cadets, The Citadel was comparable in size to both VMI and West Point. Although military colleges such as The Citadel offered Chinese cadets the opportunity to gain a liberal education while learning the Western art of war, they were no less aware that America had been a source of much of the humiliation suffered by their homeland throughout their lifetimes. Conflicted feelings marked the cadets’ academic and social progress. And given the racial prejudice they experienced in the United States, a heightened consciousness developed among some that would lead a number, including Zeng Jingji, to major in eugenics. Zeng’s eclectic reading included Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West, books on Buddhism, and the philosMILITARY HISTORY

★

717

JOHN WANDS SACCA

ophy of Friedrich Nietzsche: “I love Buddha’s teachings and I like to work out Marx’s and Lenin’s ideals, but for China’s needs, I have to preach at first the gospel of Nietzsche—the rule of the strong.” In a paper on the “Slavery System” of the Old South, Zeng outlined the humiliation and degradation of enslaved Africans under their white masters. Perhaps the parallels with that experienced by Chinese during the era of Western hegemony since the end of the first Opium War in 1842, and exemplified by the unequal treaties and extraterritoriality, may have been obvious to him. And in a essay entitled the “Student Movement in China,” he concluded: “We are now humiliated and down trodden to the dust by the Western powers, simply because in the art of killing human beings we are not their equal and we don’t have efficient weapons to kill our brethren in greater speed and in greater number.”27 Such caustic comments aside, the overseas students would truly enjoy their stay in the United States for the relative freedom America offered them. The Chinese cadets used that freedom to travel and keep in close touch with old classmates. Li Rendao, son of a Yunnan merchant family, attended VMI after graduation from Qinghua in 1926. By attending the University of Chicago during summer sessions, the bookish Li was able to finish the requirements for a liberal arts degree in two years. On occasion, Cadet Li would travel to Charleston to visit The Citadel, where five fellow Qinghua alumni were enrolled. Li became the only non-Citadel member of the so-called Da Tong (“harmony”) Club of Miss Laura Bragg, the progressive New Englander and director of the Charleston Museum, who opened her home in Charleston and summer cottage at Snug Harbor on the Carolina coast, to the Chinese cadets of The Citadel. Li affectionately referred to Bragg as their “international mother.” In creating her Da Tong Club for Chinese cadets, however, Bragg willfully flouted Charleston’s racial barriers. Some members of Charleston society even refused to allow their daughters to socialize with the young men, considering them to be “colored.” Local blacks also saw the Chinese cadets as being people of color, and were puzzled by their attendance at The Citadel. Recent scholarship suggests that Chinese overseas students accepted the racial hierarchy they found in the West, and sought only to “improve China’s place in it.”28 27. Ye, Seeking Modernity, 108–13; The Sphinx, 1930; handwritten manuscript entitled “Slavery System,” n.p., and typescript entitled “Student Movement in China,” p. 12, folder 8, box 5, Laura Bragg Papers, CAM. 28. The Bomb, 1928; G. A. Derbyshire To Whom It May Concern, 14 April 1928, VMIA; Tseng Ching-chi to Laura Bragg, 11 June 1928; Tseng to Bragg, 1 September 1928, folder 5, box 5; Tseng to Bragg, 5 May 1929; Tseng to Bragg, 28 June 1929, folder 6, box 5, Laura Bragg Papers, CAM; Dennis Dewitt Nicholson, Jr., A History of The Citadel: The Years of Summerall and Clark (Charleston, S.C.: The Citadel, 1994), 233n43; Louise Anderson Allen, A Bluestocking in Charleston: The Life and

718

★

THE JOURNAL OF

Like Strangers in a Foreign Land

Cadets at all the American military colleges followed a similar routine—the discipline of the barracks, parade ground, and mess hall; daily inspections; and mandatory participation in athletics. Yet classroom instruction in military science at the state-sponsored military colleges amounted to no more than one course each semester. Since the establishment of the ROTC program by the federal government in 1916, military science courses were taught by commissioned and noncommissioned officers provided by the War Department. Only a small contingent of active-duty federal military personnel would be found on each campus, however. The six Regular Army officers assigned for ROTC instruction at The Citadel in 1931 composed one-sixth of the thirty-six-member faculty. Like most ROTC cadets, the Chinese students preferred classroom lectures to the monotony of close order drill. And due to the cold climate, Norwich students drilled little between Thanksgiving and Easter. All ROTC advanced students were required to attend annual ROTC summer encampments for weapons training and qualification. Cadets from The Citadel and VMI performed their summer training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and Camp McClellan, Alabama. Norwich cadets spent summers at Fort Ethan Allan, Vermont, and Plattsburg, New York. And pending approval of both the Chinese government and the U.S. War Department, Chinese students could apply for the coveted places allotted foreign students at the U.S. Army’s Infantry School, Fort Benning, Georgia, upon graduation. Li Rendao and two Citadel cadets completed training at the Infantry School in 1929. Although Zeng Jingji hoped to attend the Infantry School after graduation from The Citadel, he was also anxious to return home. “China is struggling hard for her existence,” Zeng confided to Laura Bragg. “I don’t have such a heart to stay away any longer.”29

Returned Students in Nationalist China After nine years of internal strife following the birth of the Republic, Sun Yat-sen broke with the Beijing regime in November of 1920 and returned to Canton, Guangdong province, to set up a revolutionary government. It was in Guangdong that the patriotic spirit that had fired the Revolution of 1911 had burned the brightest. Inspired by the growing sense of nationalism among overseas Chinese, the majority of whom were from Guangdong province, Chinese students hastened home Career of Laura Bragg (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001), 113, 219; Ye, Seeking Modernity, 83. 29. Nicholson, A History of The Citadel, 362–364; Tseng Ching-chi to Laura Bragg, 12 January 1929; Tseng to Bragg, 5 April 1929, folder 6, box 5, Laura Bragg Papers, CAM. MILITARY HISTORY

★

719

JOHN WANDS SACCA

throughout the decade of the 1920s to support Sun’s Guomindang (GMD), or Nationalist Party. A quarter of all Chinese cadets at American military colleges between 1904 and 1937 claimed ancestral ties to Guangdong. While they might have perceived the political climate of China as being “revolutionary,” in reality they were returning to a land gripped by civil war between shifting factions of militarists. Sun Yat-sen welcomed the returned students’ services and placed them in positions of trust. George Bao, a Chinese-American of Guangdong ancestry, traveled to China for the first time in 1920, six years after graduating from Norwich University with a degree in civil engineering. Appointed chief of Dr. Sun’s bodyguard company the next year, his gallantry in defending Sun and his family during the short-lived revolt of the ardent federalist General Chen Jiongming in June of 1922 earned the foreign-born Bao a gold medal, personally presented by Sun. The lesson learned from the coup attempt being the need of a disciplined party army, Sun named Bao as chairman of a “preparatory committee” to establish what would become the Whampoa Military Academy in Canton. Under the influence of Sun’s political and financial advisor Liao Zhongkai, however, the Japanese- and Baoding-educated Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) would rise to become commandant of the new military academy. Jiang would consolidate his own power and lay the foundations of a party army through the first four classes of loyal graduates. The elite cadets of the insular Whampoa officer school would miss a student movement in China (1924–28), however, that has been compared to those of Japan in the 1950s and the United States in the 1960s. And cadets would be indoctrinated in the precepts of Sun’s “Three People’s Principles” of nationalism, democracy, and socialism, much as they had learned Confucian tenets at the sishu of their childhood. Indeed, the military virtues espoused by Sun were more Confucian than professional: wisdom (zhi), benevolence (ren), and bravery (yong).30 Sun was able to garner a number of American-trained Chinese pilots. After graduating from VMI in 1920, Zhang Zixuan completed flight training at the Diggins Aviation School in Chicago, was commissioned in the Chinese Army, and was immediately ordered to return to China by Sun. With Sun’s death in 1925, however, the careers of returned students 30. Ellis, Norwich University, 3:727; Yang, “Norwich Men in China,” p. 6, NUA; Liu, A Military History of Modern China, 256; Donald S. Sutton, Provincial Militarism and the Chinese Republic: The Yunnan Army, 1905–25 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1980), 23–24; Yu Zhenxi, “Jiaoyu quan yundong zhong de xuesheng yu zhengtang” [Student factions in the educational rights movement], in Zhonghua minguo jianguo shi shilun ji, ed. Jin Xiaoyi [Symposium on the History of the Republic of China] (Taibei: China Cultural Service, 1981), 3:342; Ren Shixian, Zhongguo jiaoyu sixiang shi [Chinese educational thought] (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 1984), 2:334–35.

720

★

THE JOURNAL OF

Like Strangers in a Foreign Land

passed to the radical nationalist Jiang Jieshi, now firmly in control of the GMD. Over the next two decades, graduates of his alma mater at Baoding and both cadets and faculty members of the Whampoa Military Academy would be given the best postings in the Nationalist Army, especially those of the famous Whampoa “First Class” of 1924. After a series of commands in Yunnan and Guangdong provinces with the nascent Chinese air corps, Zhang was appointed chief commanding officer of the cadet corps of the new Central Aviation School at Hangzhou in 1934. To serve as commanding officer of the new school, Jiang appointed an infantry officer—fellow provincial Zhou Chirow. According to a disgruntled Zhang, the Baoding graduate and former faculty member at Whampoa was a “trusted man” whom Jiang had “plucked out of the Army and started to groom for [command of the Air Force] in 1933.” Eventually appointed as Air Force commander, Zhou would have an office situated next to that of Generalissimo Jiang.31 The returned students faced a difficult period of readjustment in China. Between the Revolution of 1911 and the establishment of the Nanjing government of the GMD in 1928, China had nine presidents, forty prime ministers, one failed attempt to restore the Qing dynasty, and no fewer than six civil wars.32 “China is undergoing epoch-making changes,” cautioned the secretary of the Qinghua Alumni Association in 1927. “While abroad we may all feel optimistic; on returning home, we may become sadly pessimistic. . . . The reality is somewhere in between the two.”33 And many Chinese were skeptical of the returned students’ expensively acquired knowledge. Their years abroad gave them independent views that were relatively liberal, and sometimes even radical. “It is towards communism that we must direct our future reconstruc31. The China Weekly Review, 22 January 1938, 223; Guangqui Xu, War Wings: The United States and Chinese Military Aviation, 1929–1949 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001), 14, 71; “Reorganization of the Chinese Air Force,” by Lincoln C. Brownell, First Lieutenant, Assistant Military Attaché, 24 February 1943, Report Number 130, Box Number 563, Record Group [hereafter RG] 165, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. [hereafter NARA]; Richard E. Gillespie, “Whampoa and the Nanking Decade (1924–1936)” (Ph.D. diss., American University, 1971), 336. The deaths of two Citadel graduates further limited the influence of returned students on the Chinese Air Force. Hu Jiamei ’34 survived a training accident at Kelly Air Field in San Antonio, Texas, in 1930, only to die in a plane accident at the new Central Aviation School at Hangzhou in 1934. Liu Shujun ’29 died in an automobile accident in 1939, while commander of the Kunming Air Base, Yunnan. Nicholson, A History of The Citadel, 232; Allen, A Bluestocking in Charleston, 114–15. 32. Arthur Waldron, “War and the Rise of Nationalism in Twentieth-Century China,” Journal of Military History 57 (October 1993): 90. 33. Y. J. Hsia to Tsing Hua Graduates, 19 March 1927, box Vw China T882, Tsing Hua Alumni Association Collection, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford, California. MILITARY HISTORY

★

721

JOHN WANDS SACCA

tion,” wrote Citadel graduate Zeng Jingji before returning to China.34 After graduating from VMI in 1927 with a standing of forty-nine in his class of ninety-eight, Zhou Yanjun returned to his ancestral home in Guangdong and was commissioned in the famous Cantonese “Ironsides” 4th Army. After nearly a decade in America, Zhou was dismayed by the conditions he found at home: China was in a chaotic condition at that time. The country was divided and ruled by warlords. And bandits plundered the rural districts. There was no central government. I was confronted with many problems. Like a stranger in [a] foreign land, I had to start in a hard way. I accepted any position offered me, regardless of rank.35

After 1928, the Nationalist Chinese Army under the GMD was not truly a national army, nor was it under the direction of a unified general staff. Rather, it was a force composed of disparate elements—a central core loyal to Generalissimo Jiang and the GMD, and provincial troops under regional militarists only nominally loyal to Jiang. A third of the Nationalist Army officer corps were assessed from provincial military academies or rose from the ranks, a third were Baoding graduates, and another third were Whampoa graduates. Of those few who had attended military academies abroad, most had studied in Japan. Alumni identity being one of the most reliable tests of political loyalty under the Nationalist regime, returned students would be frustrated in their military ambitions—especially the opportunity to command troops in the field. Graduates of provincial military schools, the Baoding and Whampoa military academies, the Staff College (Lujun daxuexiao), and the Nihon Rikugun shikan gakko (Japanese Army Officers’ Academy) maintained special relationships with classmates that extended into broad alumni cliques, imbued with political and social significance. Personal loyalty counted as the supreme military virtue. Commanders drew their staff and appointed subordinate commanders from former classmates in a traditional Confucian pattern of “human relations and social conventions” (renching shiqu). Lacking membership in such prestigious alumni associations, the returned students were denied the best postings and commands or, in some instances, even commissions. And as Chinese military academy graduates came predominately from peasant families in rural counties, their distrust of the urbane and sophisticated returned students was social as well as cultural.36 34. Wang, Chinese Intellectuals and the West, 114; Tseng Ching-chi to Laura Bragg, 11 December 1931, folder 7, box 5, Laura Bragg Papers, CAM. 35. Chow Ngan Ben transcript; Chow Ngan Ben, Biographical Sketch, p. 2, typescript; 50th Reunion Book of the Class of 1927 (n.p., 1977), VMIA; Jie, Xiaobing zhi fu, 59–60; Zhang, Kangzhan shiqi di guojun renshi, 1. 36. “State of the Chinese Army,” by Alfred T. Smith, Colonel, General Staff, Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, 7 March 1932, Military Attaché Report, File Number

722

★

THE JOURNAL OF

Like Strangers in a Foreign Land

Forced by circumstances to look to each other, the returned students would rely on traditional Confucian patterns of association to survive in the developing nation. Some found employment with municipal and railroad police forces, others in provincial militia units commanded by fellow provincials and former classmates. Qinghua graduate Zhu Shiming ’22, the fourth and youngest son of well-to-do Hunan landowners, had taken membership in the GMD while an undergraduate at MIT. Zhu attended Norwich University as a “special student” in 1927 for one year of ROTC classes. On returning home to Hunan, he was commissioned in the provincial militia and joined the GMD’s second Northern Expedition (1926–27), which would break warlord resistance in south China and bring the Nationalist capital to Nanjing. Appointed Pacification Commissioner for Zhejiang province, Zhu was put in command of seven regiments of Hunanese provincial troops. Zhu recruited fellow Hunanese Norwich alumni as battalion and company commanders, and took the unusual initiative of establishing a training regiment of three battalions, under the command of his Norwich classmate, Zhao Hengjin ’28. Zhu armed his militiamen with Czechoslovakian weapons superior to those of Central forces. But such extravagance soon put the provincial government in debt. And in 1930, Jiang placed the training regiment under Central government control, cashiered the officers, and turned it to the euphemistic “bandit suppression” campaign against Communists. Relieved of command and packed off to the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Zhu would never again be given command of troops.37 Other returned students would find employment in government bureaus headed by both civilians and military officers educated in America. When Harvard-educated Lieutenant General Yu Dawei, director of the army ordnance bureau, Ministry of War, sponsored the creation of a chemical warfare service in 1933, graduates of The Citadel, Norwich, and VMI, all of whom had been Qinghua classmates between 1924 and 1927, were appointed to senior positions. Yu chose Li Rendao (VMI ’28) to command the new special service corps, a position he would hold 2009–221, box 5847, RG 165, NARA; Hsi-sheng Ch’i, Nationalist China at War: Military Defeats and Political Collapse, 1937–45 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1982), 228; Te-kong Tong and Li Tsung-jen, The Memoirs of Li Tsung-jen (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1979), 133–34; Chang Jui-te, “Nationalist Army Officers during the Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1945,” Modern Asian Studies 30 (1996): 1036–37; Liu, A Military History of Modern China, 151; Gillespie, “Whampoa,” 41–42. 37. Samuel C. Chu to Michael Born, 27 July 1966; Yang, “Norwich Men in China,” p. 11, NUA; Annual Report of the Command and General Staff School, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 1933–34 (Ft. Leavenworth, Kans.: Command and General Staff School Press, 1934), 4. MILITARY HISTORY

★

723

JOHN WANDS SACCA

until his death in a plane crash over the “Hump” in 1944. Among Li’s subordinates in the chemical corps would be Norwich graduates Yang Zhangling ’28 and Yao Gai ’27, and Citadel graduates Du Wenruo ’29, Wang Fengli ’30, and An Lisui ’29. During their college days in Charleston, these same Citadel graduates had fortuitously welcomed Qinghua classmate Li Rendao as the only non-Citadel member of Laura Bragg’s Da Tong Club.38 Ironically, the largest number of returned students from American military colleges would find employment not with the Ministry of War, however, but with the Salt Administration of the Ministry of Finance.

The Revenue Guard Brigade and the Origins of the New First Army From the beginning of the successful Northern Expedition in 1926 until the disastrous end of the civil war against the Communists in 1949, the Nationalist government was almost constantly at war. The fiscal policy that would allow the GMD to finance a military establishment capable of fighting regional warlords, Communists, and the Japanese, sometimes concurrently, was the creation of two American-educated economists and financiers: the Harvard-educated Song Ziwen (T. V. Soong), and Kong Xiangxi (H. H. Kung), a graduate of Oberlin and Yale.39 Many returned students from American military colleges would find the command and staff positions denied them in the Nationalist Army when they were recruited for the newly organized revenue guard units of the Ministry of Finance that would become, a decade later, the nucleus of units trained and equipped by the Americans in the CBI. Throughout the 1930s, the largest share of tax revenue for the Nationalist government came from customs duties. As the Japanese encroached on the coastal cities, these revenues declined. Under then Minister of Finance, Song Ziwen, brother-in-law to Generalissimo Jiang, a more reliable source of revenue would be found in the ancient salt monopoly. Since 1913 a reorganized Salt Gabelle, under a “synarchy” of foreign and Chinese technocrats, standardized and centralized the collection of salt taxes. Incorporated into the Nationalist government under the Ministry of Finance in 1927, the Salt Gabelle had the potential to be a model of bureaucratic efficiency and independence. Yet salt revenue was also in decline, however, as dujun (military governors) demanded the salt revenue collected in areas under the control of their provincial armies. As a percentage of total revenue, the salt tax collected in 1928 amounted to only 6.9 percent. In order to protect and expedite salt tax 38. Nicholson, A History of the Citadel, 232–33; Tseng Ching-chi to Laura Bragg, 3 June 1948, folder 7, box 5, Laura Bragg Papers, CAM. 39. Wang, Chinese Intellectuals and the West, 422–23.

724

★

THE JOURNAL OF

Like Strangers in a Foreign Land

collection, a force of “preventive service” revenue guards under the administration of the Salt Gabelle was founded by order of Song. As a result of these reforms, salt revenues increased to 20.9 percent by 1930, and remained at about that level throughout the decade. Indeed, between 1931 and 1933, the salt tax would furnish almost 30 percent of the net total revenue.40 As senior commanders of the new tax force, Song chose two West Point graduates: Major General Wen Yingxing and Brigadier General Wang Geng. After graduating from West Point in 1909, Wen Yingxing returned to Guangdong to accept a commission in his provincial militia. He participated in the Revolution of 1911, and afterwards served briefly as Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s English secretary, in collaboration with fellow provincial Wu Tiecheng, Sun’s English-speaking aide. After appointment as chief of staff to the Shanghai Military Government in 1912, Wen found employment under a succession of militarist governments in Shanghai and Beijing. But after the warlord Feng Yuxiang drove the Manchurian dujun, Marshal Zhang Zuolin, from Beijing in April of 1928, Wen lost his position as chief of police. He briefly entered the civilian sector to become the sixth president of Qinghua College, but resigned after only four months in order to return to Shanghai to serve as secretary of the Chief Inspectorate of the Salt Gabelle, Ministry of Finance. On being appointed by Song as chief of the Salt Gabelle’s preventive force of revenue guards in January of 1930, Wen took command of poorly armed preventive service battalions, stationed in each important salt district. Not counted among the line of the Nationalist Army, the salt soldiers watched over the collection of the government’s monopoly on salt revenues. And when his revolutionary protégé, Wu Tiecheng, was named mayor of Shanghai in 1932, Wen benefited from the patronage of his fellow provincial. In the usual exercise of guanxi, Wu appointed Wen Commissioner of the Public Safety Bureau, concurrent with his Revenue Guard command.41 To command a newly raised Central Revenue Guard Brigade (Shui40. C. Martin Wilbur, “Military Separatism and the Process of Reunification under the Nationalist Regime, 1922–1937,” in China in Crisis: China’s Heritage and the Communist Political System, ed. Ping-ti Ho and Tang Tsou (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 1:211; Albert Feuerwerker, “The Chinese Economy, 1912–1949,” in Michigan Papers in Chinese Studies No. 1, ed. Chang Chun-shu, et al. (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1968), 53; Wang, Chinese Intellectuals and the West, 429, 433. 41. Wen Ying-hsing to Monroe F. Cockrell, 6 March 1946, Chicago, VMIA; Su, Jindai gaodeng jiaoyu yanjiu, 66–67; Who’s Who in China: Biographies of Chinese Leaders (Shanghai: China Weekly Review, 1936), 258; Boorman, Biographical Dictionary, 3:451; Christian Henriot, Shanghai, 1927–1937: Municipal Power, Locality, and Modernization, trans. Noel Castelino, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 127–28, 248; Frederic Wakeman, Jr., Policing Shanghai, 1927–1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 186. MILITARY HISTORY

★

725

JOHN WANDS SACCA

jing zongtuan), headquartered at Shanghai, Song appointed West Point graduate Wang Geng ’18. Song and Wang were acquaintances from student days in the United States, having both served as members of the Chinese Delegation to the International Federation of Students conference held on the Cornell University campus in Ithaca, New York, in August 1913. And both Wen and Wang had formerly served Marshal Zhang Zuolin in Beijing. Wang’s elite unit of four full-strength regiments, later increased to six, was designed as a mobile reserve to support the second-line Revenue Guard battalions stationed at each salt district, along four thousand miles of sea coast from the Gulf of Bo Hai in the north to Hainan Island in the south. All of the personnel and modern equipment of the brigade were financed by the Salt Gabelle.42 In January 1932, four months after the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, Japanese marines attacked Shanghai. Nanjing had not resisted the Japanese in Manchuria, and now showed little indication of sending reinforcements to support the crack Cantonese Nineteenth Route Army, then garrisoned at Shanghai. Students took to the streets to protest Nanjing’s inaction, and the Shanghai populace gave financial and moral support to the Cantonese militiamen. The Japanese attack on Shanghai presented the brothers-in-law with a dilemma. Song feared that Jiang’s German-trained Central forces might break up or “swallow” the tax unit and its modern equipment. Jiang, on the other hand, needed to keep the conflict localized and avoid a formal declaration of war. Stepping gingerly between the Cantonese and Nanjing factions of the GMD, Song quickly arranged for the Salt Brigade’s incorporation as “independent regiments” into the 88th Brigade of the newly organized 5th Army. The salt soldiers joined forces with the Nineteenth Route Army in resisting the Japanese for more than three months. And the Shanghai police of Wen’s Public Security Bureau acted as “rear-line auxiliaries” to the soldiers from his native province.43 Song and Wen experienced a great embarrassment, however, when Wang Geng was arrested by Japanese secret police in the International Settlement, where he had gone to call on an old classmate from the University of Michigan, Captain William Mayer, Assistant Military Attaché at the American consulate. Unaware that the consulate had moved, Wang mistakenly entered the Japanese consulate, next door. Having discovered his error, he raced away with Japanese gendarmes in pursuit. 42. Who’s Who in China, 250, 258; Jerome B. Grieder, Hu Shih and the Chinese Renaissance: Liberalism in the Chinese Revolution, 1917–1937 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), 53, 355–56; Yang, “Norwich Men in China,” p. 13. 43. Wakeman, Policing Shanghai, 211; Yang, “Norwich Men in China,” pp. 7, 14, NUA; Sterling Seagrave, The Soong Dynasty (New York: Harper and Row, 1985), 306–7; Donald A. Jordan, China’s Trial by Fire: The Shanghai War of 1932 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), 261n28.

726

★

THE JOURNAL OF

Like Strangers in a Foreign Land

Apprehended a half block away at the British-owned Astor House Hotel, he had confidential documents and military maps in his possession. After being released under Chinese protest that he had been illegally arrested in international territory, Wang was tried by general court-martial and sentenced to be shot. His friends stood by him, however, maintaining that he was being used as a scapegoat, and that “his only crime had been one of poor judgment.” In a Confucian gesture of responsibility for the disgrace his fellow alumnus had incurred, Wen resigned as Commissioner of Public Safety, even declining Mayor Wu’s request that he remain as councilor. After one year’s confinement in a military prison in Nanjing, Wang was released. Neither his career nor health would ever recover.44 Following a truce in May, the brigade was ordered to Haizhou in northern Jiangsu province, and placed under the direct command of Wen Yingxing. Under Wen’s leadership, the tax unit would become noted for superior equipment and marksmanship. Many returned students would be recruited over the next five years to fill command and staff positions. Zhu Shiming’s disbanded Hunan training regiment had already been reorganized as the 1st Regiment under its former commander, Colonel Zhao Hengjin (Norwich ’28). Colonel Sun Liren (VMI ’27) was given command of the 4th Regiment. Appointed as directors of Revenue Guard schools for officers and enlisted men were George Bao (Norwich ’14), Zhang Daohong (USMA ’18), and Zhou Yanjun (VMI ’27). Zeng Xigui (VMI ’25) and Ma Zhuan (Norwich ’25) served on Wen Yingxing’s staff, but after a falling out with Wen, Zeng would be relieved.45 In August 1937, the Japanese invaded Manchuria and opened a second front at Shanghai. Incorporated into the line of the Nationalist Army under General Huang Jie, the Whampoa “First Class” commander of the 8th Corps, the former salt soldiers fought tenaciously against an enemy supported by armor, artillery, naval gunfire, and almost total air superiority. So desperate was the situation that Zeng Xigui had nine officers shot for incompetence.46 Sun Liren nearly died from wounds received, saved only by a transfusion of blood given by an anonymous student. Three-fifths of Jiang’s best-trained and best-equipped Central government units would be lost in fierce resistance against the Japanese over the next year. Zhang Yi (VMI ’35) would fall in the defense of the Nation-

44. Detroit (Michigan) Free Press, 29 February 1932; Kost, Assembly (July 1943): 11; Henriot, Shanghai, 248. 45. Yang, “Norwich Men in China,” pp. 12–14, NUA; Zheng, “Xidian zhunxiao de ba li Zhongguo biyesheng,” 26; Chow Ngan Ben to Colonel William Couper, 18 March 1947, VMIA. 46. George Chun Lee to Michael Born, n.d., NUA; Barbara W. Tuchman, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–45 (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 465. MILITARY HISTORY

★

727

JOHN WANDS SACCA

alist capital. In 1938 the former tax unit was sent to Shenxi province as the 40th Division under command of another “First Class” graduate, Hu Zongnan, the first Whampoa graduate to become a general officer and an active alumni organizer. Effectively disbanded, the former tax unit’s weapons, equipment, and manpower were soon parceled out to Jiang’s Central government units.47 A restoration of the Revenue Guard Brigade was attempted the next year, under the sponsorship of Kong Lingkan (David L. K. Kung), head of the Central Trust, a wartime purchasing agency. Eldest son of then minister of finance Kong Xiangxi and nephew to Generalissimo Jiang and the Songs, Kong received his father’s approval to establish a renamed “Preventive Service Brigade” (Qisi zongdui) in Changsha, Hunan, again under the direct control of the Salt Gabelle. After a period of recuperation in Hong Kong from wounds received at Shanghai, Sun Liren was ordered to Hunan to organize and command the new tax unit. Sun recruited former American-educated officers of the 1st and 4th Regiments of the disbanded Central Revenue Guard Brigade. Colonel Zhao Hengjin was appointed as Sun’s deputy. Colonel Wang Zhi, fellow Hunanese and Norwich classmate of Zhao (Class of 1928) and graduate of the USMA (Class of 1932), took command of the 3rd Regiment. Colonel Qi Xueqi, a Norwich graduate (Class of 1926), was appointed chief of staff. Former Qinghua classmates Sun and Qi (Class of 1923) would serve together in a close school tie relationship until Qi’s capture by the Japanese and subsequent death in a prisoner-of-war camp in Rangoon in 1945.48 In 1941 Sun was peremptorily relieved of command in anticipation of the tax unit being placed in the line of the Nationalist Army. Zhao Hengjin was ordered to Hunan, to serve as mayor of his ancestral Hengyang and commander of provincial troops, and Wang Zhi was reassigned to Manila as Chinese liaison to General Douglas MacArthur’s headquarters in the Philippines. “Because of their splendid equipment and superior marksmanship [the Preventive Service Brigade] had long been the coveted prize of those who thought that General Sun did not belong to the right fraternity in the Chinese Wehrmacht,” recalled Sun’s 47. “A Biographical Sketch of General Sun Li-jen,” VMIA; Boorman, Biographical Dictionary, 2:175–76, 3:166; Zhang, Kangzhan shiqi di guozun renshi, 20; Huangpu junxiao shiliao, 1924–27 [Whampoa Military Academy historical date, 1924–27] (Guangdong: Renmin chubanshe, 1985), 526, 528; Hsu Long-hsuen and Chang Ming-kai, comp., History of the Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1945, trans. Wen Ha-hsiung (Taibei: Chung Wu Publishing Co., 1972), 201, 231, 237. The translator is Wen Yingxing’s son, Patrick, VMI Class of 1944. 48. Yang, “Norwich Men in China,” pp. 8, 16; Chao Heng-chin to Norwich University Record Editor, 18 October 1946; Wang Chih to Michael Born, 26 August 1966, NUA; Wang, Wang Zhi huiyilu, 45–46, 138.

728

★

THE JOURNAL OF

Like Strangers in a Foreign Land

Harvard-educated and sardonic subordinate, Brigadier General He Yongji. But history intervened—two divisions of British and Indian troops in Burma needed immediate relief. Through the influence of Kong Xiangxi, “one of those fifty-five compromises so common in Chinese politics” was made and the six regiments were divided—three transferred to another command, and the remaining three reorganized into the so-called New 38th Division under Sun’s command, with Qi Xueqi as his deputy. With all deliberate haste, Sun’s division, spearheaded by a Cadet Qi Xueqi, Norwich University, task force composed of the 113th Class of 1925, as he appeared in the Regiment and auxiliaries under War Whoop. (Courtesy of the Univer- Qi’s command, moved through sity Archives, Norwich University the Burmese jungle to the Library.) Yenangyaung oil field to rescue 7,500 British officers and men. And despite the odds against it—even the Communist Zhou Enlai lamented that Sun would probably not become a corps commander due to his not being a member of the Whampoa alumni clique—during the Second Burma Campaign (1943–44) Sun was given command of the New First Army, equipped and trained by the Americans. Sent to British-controlled Northeastern Assam, India, the unit was given the mission of protecting U.S. Army engineers constructing the Ledo Road.49 The American buildup in the China-Burma-India Theater under the command of General Stilwell became reliant on English-speaking Chinese officers. One American veteran of the 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional), more commonly known as “Merrill’s Marauders,” recalls the following anecdote:

49. He Yongji earned an A.M. in 1927 and a Ph.D. in government from Harvard in 1930. Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Yung-chi Ho, The Big Circle (New York: The Exploration Press, 1948), 3–16; Yang, “Norwich Men in China,” pp. 7, 16, NUA; Charles F. Romanus and Riley Sunderland, Stilwell’s Mission to China (Washington: GPO, 1984), 125–27; U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers, 1943, China (Washington: GPO, 1957), 27, 215. MILITARY HISTORY

★

729

JOHN WANDS SACCA

At one point, where the Chinese troops were moving into a position we were vacating, a Marauder stopped a Chinese officer to give him some information about the Japanese fortification and artillery. The Marauder went through an elaborate ordeal of paraphrasing in broken pigeon English and hand [gestures], while the Chinese officer attentively listened. When the GI was through, the Chinese officer responded in the most eloquent King’s English and managed a slight smile.50

Colonel George Chun Lee served with Brigadier General Frank D. Merrill’s “Marauders” as liaison officer from Sun Liren’s New 38th Division, and remained with the Marauders until after the capture of the strategic airfield at Myitkyina, near the juncture of the Ledo and Burma Roads. Lee’s family had migrated from Canton to San Francisco after his birth in 1906. Lee attended the University of New Hampshire, where he took two years of ROTC, switched majors from technology to liberal arts, and joined the Delta Sigma Chi fraternity. Transferring to Norwich, he graduated in 1931 with a B.S. in civil engineering. Returning to China for the first time in twenty-five years, Lee found a position as instructor of military science at the Yindong Military Academy, Canton. Already on the faculty was his fellow Norwich alumnus and San Franciscan, Edward Eng Ting.51 Born in San Francisco, where his father would die in the devastating earthquake of 1906, Edward Ting moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, at the age of seventeen to live with his restaurateur uncle. Upon graduating from Norwich in 1925, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Reserve. After earning a masters degree in political science from Columbia University in 1927, he made passage on a tramp steamer for Canton, where he joined the faculty of Lingnan University and married a Chinese national. Thereafter, he took a position teaching English, military science, and equitation at the Yindong Military Academy, where he met fellow Norwich alumnus George Chun Lee. After the Japanese invasion, he offered his services to the government as a civilian interpreter at first, in order to protect his U.S. citizenship.52 Other returned students were appointed to senior staff positions throughout CBI. Air Colonel Zhang Zixuan (VMI ’20) served as liaison officer between the Chinese and U.S. air forces. Major General Zhou Yanjun (VMI ’27) was appointed Inspector General, concurrently garrison commander of the Infantry Training Center, Kweilin, and liaison officer between the Chinese and American headquarters, commanded by a fel50. Robert E. Passanisi to author, 21 August 2001. A CBI veteran with the White Combat Team, 1st Battalion, 5307th Provisional Unit (Special), Mr. Passanisi has served as historian of the Merrill’s Marauders Association. 51. George Chun Lee to Michael Born, n.d., NUA; George Chun Lee file, University of New Hampshire Archives, Durham, New Hampshire. 52. Springfield (Massachusetts) Sunday Republican, 2 September 1962.

730

★

THE JOURNAL OF

Like Strangers in a Foreign Land

low VMI alumnus, Brigadier General Thomas Arms ’15. Brigadier General Li Jiazhen (Norwich ’25) served on the General Staff, Headquarters of the Chinese Army in India in 1945. Colonel Zeng Xigui (VMI ’25) acted as Stilwell’s chief interpreter and liaison officer from the start of the Burma campaign, with Ma Zhuan (Norwich ’25) as his assistant. Stilwell’s recommendation that Zeng, who was slated to become one of his deputy chiefs of staff, attend the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth was rejected by Jiang after Stilwell’s recall in 1944. Only after repeated requests by General Albert C. Wedemeyer, Stilwell’s successor as commander of U.S. forces and Jiang’s Chief of Staff, was Zeng allowed to attend Leavenworth. He was afterwards “dishonorably discharged” from the army, without explanation.53

Civil War and “Liberation” At war’s end, both Communist and Nationalist forces maneuvered to disarm and accept the surrender of Japanese units. All pretext of the wartime “United Front” between Nationalists and Communists dissolved with the defeat of the common enemy. Using American air and naval transport, Jiang ordered his American-trained and American-equipped units to Manchuria, where he would pursue a strategy of garrisoning major cities and appointing Nationalist military officers to local political office. This practice of installing Nationalist “carpetbaggers” in Manchuria would draw criticism from Chinese intellectuals and even General Wedemeyer. The Communists, on the other hand, engaged in mass mobilization of the peasantry in rural areas and, in turn, besieged the Nationalist-held urban garrisons. When the Soviet Army withdrew from the Manchurian capital city of Changchun in April of 1946, the area north of the city was turned over to Chinese Communist forces. Nationalist troops rushed to the city, and Major General Zhao Hengjin was recalled from Hunan and appointed mayor. Immediately, Communist forces launched a large-scale attack on Changchun and its Nationalist garrison, and the city fell after four days of fierce fighting. Taken into “protective custody,” Zhao was sent to Harbin, near the Siberian border. As a result of the efforts of Norwich classmate Lieutenant Colonel E. T. (Jim) Cowen, Assistant Military Attaché, U.S. Embassy in Changchun, he was released in July and flown back to resume his position as mayor, Communist forces having abandoned the city in May.54 53. Chow Ngan Ben to Colonel William Couper, 18 March 1947, VMIA; Ma Chuan file, Oberlin College Archives, Oberlin, Ohio; Yang, “Norwich Men in China,” pp. 14, 16–17, NUA; Tuchman, Stilwell, 464–65. 54. Fairbank, China, 329; Suzanne Pepper, Civil War in China: The Political Struggle 1945–1949 (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), 169–70; Letters in MILITARY HISTORY

★

731

JOHN WANDS SACCA

Using the attack on Changchun as a pretext, Jiang launched an allout attack in Manchuria, spearheaded by the New First Army. From his posting as deputy commander in chief of the Northeastern Peace Preservation Corps, Sun Liren watched the moral fiber of the Nationalist armies in Manchuria rot as a result of nepotism, bribery, and the padding of payrolls. According to his wife, Sun and his family “lived for months on the charity of Buddhist priests, sleeping on the floor of their temple, because [his] salary amounted to only twenty-seven dollars a month, and he was determined they should live on it.” As the New First Army began an all-out attack against entrenched Communist positions in April that would develop into the bloodiest battle since the Japanese surrender, Sun was relieved of command as a result of a quarrel with his arrogant Whampoa “First Class” commander, Du Yuming. After first being reassigned to higher echelons, he was sent to southern Formosa to inaugurate a Sino-American military training program. Appointed commanding general of the Taiwan Defense Command in 1949, Sun witnessed “the same old political situation” that would lead to defeat on the mainland, repeating itself on the island.55 The gloom of impending defeat was felt in Nanjing, as well. In 1948, after postings as military attaché in Washington, D.C., and Ottawa, Canada, Zeng Jingji was serving as deputy chief of staff of Combined Service Forces, National Defense Ministry. Zeng ended two decades of correspondence with Laura Bragg with thinly veiled despair: I just can’t explain how things keep me . . . from [writing to you] . . . Naturally a heavy heart prefers silence. . . . Whenever [your “Chinese boys”] meet at any place, we talk about you and exchange information about you. . . . I know you understand us, but probably not . . . about what is troubling our hearts now. We are a proud race and suffer humiliation too much and too long.56

With the victory of the People’s Liberation Army over the Nationalist Army in 1949, Zeng Jingji and his fellow Citadel classmates fell silent. Most of the returned students from American military colleges remained on the mainland, others escaped to Hong Kong, and some returned to North America. Few, however, would join the Nationalist exodus to Taiwan. the Norwich University Record, 18 October 1946: “Lt. Col. Jim Cowen, ’28, Sends Interesting Data on Classmate Chao, Mayor of Changchun”; C. M. Chao to Colonel Cowen; and C. M. Chao to Norwich University Record Editor, NUA. 55. Tang Tsou, America’s Failure in China, 1941–50 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 2:419; Freda Utley, The China Story (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1951), 61; Edmund O. Clubb, 20th Century China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), 268–69; Liu, A Military History of Modern China, 256; Jack Belden, China Shakes the World (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1949), 376. 56. Tseng Ching-chi to Laura Bragg, 3 June 1948, folder 7, box 5, Laura Bragg Papers, CAM.

732

★

THE JOURNAL OF

Like Strangers in a Foreign Land

For the Chinese-Americans, finding a way home would not be easy. As Nationalist defeat neared in 1949, George Bao wrote to the Norwich Alumni Office from Canton: The Norwich Motto [“I Will Try”] has always been well remembered and always serves to give me the incentive of moral courage to start tackling numerous difficulties encountered in this strange and unfortunate part of the world. In surmounting difficulties, I have been successful, but financially I am a failure for reasons not understandable in the good old USA. I must admit that I have not been a loyal alumnus due to circumstances and humbly beg for forgiveness. . . . I still cherish the hope to tread on the Norwich campus again.57

Cadet Zeng Jingji, The Citadel, Class of 1930, as he appeared in The native San Franciscan would the Sphinx. (Courtesy of The never return to Northfield, however; Citadel Archives and Museum.) he died in 1951 on the island of Timor in the Netherlands Indies. George Chun Lee fled to Hong Kong, where he briefly ran a travel service. Soon he would be working again for General Frank Merrill, then in Tokyo, supervising agents in Hong Kong who handled mail from the mainland. Through the assistance of Aid Refugee Chinese Intellectuals, Inc., where Zhang Zixuan served as a senior staff member, Lee was able to relocate his family to San Francisco. About seven years later, he had an unexpected reunion with Edward Ting in Chinatown, where Ting was living at the San Francisco YMCA. Liberation had brought tragedy to Ting and his family. After the defeat of the Japanese, Ting left the army to take employment as a civil engineer on the Canton and Hankou Railroad. After Liberation, however, his wife was accused of being a “capitalist” during the Communist land reform campaign, because she had inherited some land from her father. Ting’s wife was sent to hard labor and their children taken from them. After thirteen years under Communism, Ting was able to escape the mainland and return to America in 1963. Proving citizenship was the next hurdle—his

57. George Bow to Norwich University Record Editor, 14 October 1949, NUA. MILITARY HISTORY

★

733

JOHN WANDS SACCA

birth records had been destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.58 Communist victory found Wen Yingxing residing in Nanjing, where he served as a Senator in the Legislative Yuan of the Nationalist Government. Although his son, Major Wen Ha-hsiung (Patrick) (VMI ’44), would continue on active service with the Nationalist Army in Taiwan, Wen broke with Jiang and moved to Washington, D.C., in 1951, where a friend helped set him up in business as proprietor of a laundromat. The irony of his choice of livelihood was not lost on the local press. “Stranger Than Fiction” proclaimed one newspaper account of Wen’s descent from general officer to laundromat operator. Yet Wen made the best of his reduced circumstances, maintaining memberships in the Army-Navy Club and the West Point Alumni Association. When he and his wife died within nine days of each other in 1968, both were interred at the West Point Cemetery. A grandson, Wen Tzu-chien (Stanley), would become the third generation of Wen to attend VMI and, in 1977, the second Wen to graduate.59 Amid political recriminations as to how China had been “lost,” relations grew strained between the United States and the Nationalists on Taiwan. American agents reportedly approached Sun Liren with an offer of support in any attempt to overthrow Jiang “and replace him with a man acceptable to both the Chinese [Nationalist] Army and the U.S. government.” Sun indignantly declined the offer. Nationalist secret police agents claimed to have uncovered such a plot engineered by the Central Intelligence Agency in mid-1955, when several young officers attempted to present a petition of grievances to Jiang during a military review at which General Maxwell D. Taylor and the U.S. Ambassador were present. Sun was relieved as commander in chief of the Nationalist Army, one of the petitioners was accused of being a Communist spy, and two of Sun’s subordinates were sent to the infamous Lu Dao (Green Island) detention camp, a prison reserved for dissidents and political prisoners. Although a subsequent court-martial found Sun not guilty of association with Communists or participation in any conspiracy, he submitted his resignation as an “admission of negligence.” Placed under house arrest, he

58. George Chun Lee to Michael Born, n.d.; “Grad Escapes 13 Years of Communist Tyranny,” Norwich University Record, June 1963, NUA; Springfield (Massachusetts) Sunday Republican, 2 September 1962; Chung De Senn file, VMIA. 59. Brigadier General Robert H. Shoule to General Jacob L. Devers, 3 October 1947, Jacob L. Devers Papers, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas; Annapolis (Maryland) Evening Capital, 2 September 1954; Washington Post, 1 June 1968; Washington Evening Star, 1 June 1968; New York Times, 2 June 1968; George L. Van Deusen, Assembly, Fall 1968, 89; Wise, Drawing Out the Man, 85; Zheng, “Xidian zhunxiao de ba li Zhongguo biyesheng,” 23.

734

★

THE JOURNAL OF

Like Strangers in a Foreign Land

would be observed “tending roses” by the U.S. Ambassador. Coincident with the death in 1988 of Jiang Jingguo, his father’s son and successor, Sun was freed after the belated release of a 1955 report clearing him of involvement in the alleged coup plot. After Sun’s death two years later, the superintendent of VMI dispatched VMI alumnus Dr. Yeh Chan Hue ’60, from his home in California, to present the Corps of Cadets flag to Sun’s widow. At his state funeral, Sun’s coffin would be draped with three flags: those of Qinghua University, Virginia Military Institute, and the Republic of China.60 Only two Norwich alumni, Hunan provincials and Qinghua graduates He Haoruo and Wang Zhi, would follow Jiang to Taiwan. Head of the Nationalist War College, He Haoruo had graduated from Stanford University in 1923, and earned both masters and doctoral degrees from the University of Wisconsin prior to attending Norwich in 1927 as a special student, for the purpose of acquiring a “military veneer.” His Norwich roommate, Zhu Shiming, along with Wang Zhi, had been posted to Japan as Chinese representatives to General MacArthur, the Supreme Commander Allied Powers (SCAP). After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China on the mainland, however, the two Norwich graduates found themselves representing a government in exile. Each dealt differently with the dilemma. Unlike Wang Zhi, who would return to Taiwan to dutifully serve President Jiang as military counselor until his retirement from the army in 1963, Zhu remained in Japan after retirement, living alone in Tokyo. A Mason since his days at MIT, he served as Master of the Tokyo Lodge two years prior to his death in 1965. On their island bastion, He Haoruo and Wang Zhi occasionally took time to reflect on the Nationalist fall from power on the mainland, and, more pleasantly, reminisce about their student days in America, and “those cold days on that little hill in Northfield.”61 60. Peter R. Moody, Jr., Political Change on Taiwan: A Study of Ruling Party Adaptability (New York: Praeger, 1992), 45, 73; John N. Hart, The Making of an Army “Old China Hand”: A Memoir of Colonel David D. Barrett (Berkeley, Calif.: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1985), 91; Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, China Confidential: American Diplomats and Sino-American Relations, 1945–1996 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 120; Linda Chao and Ramon H. Myers, The First Chinese Democracy: Political Life in the Republic of China on Taiwan (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 107; George H. Kerr, Formosa Betrayed (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1965), 424–25; Zhuge Wenwu, Sun Liren shijian shimoji [Record of the beginning and end of the Sun Liren incident] (Taibei: Xinhuo, 1988), passim; New York Times, 21 November 1990; Major General John W. Knapp to Mrs. Sun Li-jen, 27 November 1990, VMIA; Professor C. Chieh to author, 6 March 1991. 61. Ye, Seeking Modernity, 47; George Chun Lee to Michael Born, n.d; The War Whoop, 1927 and 1928; Yang, “Norwich Men in China,” p. 11; Samuel C. Chu to Michael Born, 27 July 1966; Wang Chih to Michael Born, 26 August 1966, NUA; New York Times, 28 October 1965; “Gen. Wang, Lecturing at FDU, Has Had a Dynamic MILITARY HISTORY

★

735

JOHN WANDS SACCA

Most Norwich alumni remained on the mainland. At the height of the Cultural Revolution in 1967, Yang Zhangling admonished the Norwich Alumni Office that it would be “advisable not to mention [Norwich alumni] . . . for the time being, in order to avoid embarrassment, if not danger. They make no effort to communicate with the outside world, even between brothers.”62 Although Zhao Hengjin’s brother moved to Taiwan after Liberation, Zhao remained on the mainland. Best remembered by his Norwich classmates as the “pugnacious” captain of the wrestling team during an undefeated season and for having set a collegiate record for never being thrown, Zhao’s Norwich wrestling accomplishments might well have served as a metaphor for his career—despite the vicissitudes of military service, Zhao would always land on his feet. The former regimental commander with the Revenue Guard of the Salt Administration, minor Hunan warlord, and GMD carpetbagger in Manchuria was appointed a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPC) that proclaimed and validated the establishment of the Chinese People’s Republic in September of 1949. A vestige of the failed wartime United Front policy, the CPPC was composed of a broad spectrum of Chinese society. Zhao would serve in both the People’s Liberation Army and the civil service during four decades of political, social, and economic turmoil. He was elected to the Standing Committee of the CPPC in June of 1979, and concurrently served as Executive Director of the prestigious Western and American Returned Students Association, Beijing. “[A]ll scholars from foreign countries are . . . welcome [to join the association],” wrote Zhao to the Norwich Alumni Office in 1986, “especially those of the Norwich Alumni.”63

Conclusion The enthusiasm of Dr. Sun Yat-sen for the returned students’ services was in marked contrast to the partisan indifference of his successor. The American policy of support for Jiang Jieshi would undermine the “benevolent” American policies that produced hundreds of college-educated Chi-

Career,” Rutherford (New Jersey) South Bergen News, 12 October 1967; Wang, Wang Zhi huiyilu, 33. 62. After Shanghai fell to the Communists, Yang moved his family to Hong Kong to start a new life as a freelance writer, contract worker for the U.S. Information Service, and professor of sociology and department head at Hong Kong College. He retired to Vancouver, B.C., Canada. Yang Chang-ling to Michael Born, 1 February 1967, NUA. 63. The War Whoop, 1928; Chao Chun-mai to David J. Walley, 27 October 1986, NUA; Malcolm Lamb, Directory of Officials and Organizations in China, 1968–1983 (Canberra: Australian National University, 1983), 67, 75.

736

★

THE JOURNAL OF

Like Strangers in a Foreign Land

nese, ninety-three of whom were prepared as military officers. In tying the success and perpetuation of his regime to a venal and cliquish officer corps, and by withholding “his support from any officers who did not owe their career and their power directly to him,” Generalissimo Jiang sowed the seeds of his own destruction, to paraphrase Lloyd Eastman.64 Due to their early missionary education, thorough preparation at Qinghua College or at any of the modern colleges in China, and in some instances, long residence in the United States, American-educated Chinese officers were remarkably fluent in written and spoken English. Courses in science and liberal arts had been the substance of their education in the United States. With the exception of the USMA, where all instructors and professors were Regular Army officers, the professors at state institutions were civilians, most with advanced degrees in the arts and sciences. Cadets socialized freely with American and Chinese civilians and other overseas students. Influenced by the patriotic and nationalistic stirrings common to all Chinese overseas students in the early years of the Republic, their world view was wider and more Westernized than that of their peers in China. More importantly, their military education would inculcate professional, rather than political, values. The careers of Sun Liren and Wang Zhi, notably, exhibited the returned students’ desire to reconcile a professional sense of duty with traditional Confucian loyalty. While about a third would be promoted to the senior ranks of the national and provincial armies of the Chinese Republic—no fewer than twenty-eight would become general officers—all but Sun Fulin (Norwich ’26) and Sun Liren (VMI ’27) were denied command at the level of corps or army group. Senior staff postings as English-speaking aides-de-camp in the army, military attachés with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or liaison officers with the Americans were the best assignments that could be expected. While it can be small wonder that those returned students who had attended military colleges in the United States were alienated from fellow officers, neither should it be surprising that they were recruited by American-educated civilian and military members of the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of War. And as the American military presence grew under General Stilwell, English-speaking officers gravitated to CBI. Elements of the Revenue Guard of the Salt Gabelle became the nucleus of the New First Army, equipped and trained by the Americans. Indeed, Stilwell embodied the professional military values his Chinese officers had learned in America. As historian Alfred Vagts has so aptly noted, Stilwell “exemplified with tragic starkness,” this “sometimes nearly desperate resolve” of senior 64. Lucien Bianco, Origins of the Chinese Revolution, 1915–1949 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1974), 181; Lloyd Eastman, Seeds of Destruction: Nationalist China in War and Revolution, 1937–1949 (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1984), passim. MILITARY HISTORY

★

737

JOHN WANDS SACCA

American commanders to subordinate political to professional military values.65 This special relationship with foreign military officers, some of whom had been classmates at, or were fellow alumni of, American military colleges, only exacerbated their situation. The careers of Nationalist Army officers who were graduates of American civilian colleges and universities but never attended American military colleges, present an interesting parallel. Not aspiring to the command of line units, they would not be disappointed in such ambitions. After successful careers as civil servants and GMD party cadre on the mainland, they followed Jiang to Taiwan to hold major posts in the new government of the Republic of China. Technocrats, such as Lieutenant General Yu Dawei and Major Generals Zheng Yangfu and Wang Fuzhou, held key posts in the Ministry of War. Political officers such as Lieutenant Generals Jia Yuhui, Zhang Yiding, and Huang Renlin became trusted party cadre.66 Most surviving returned students from American military colleges, on the other hand, ended their military careers with little more than their personal dignity intact. Outsiders in their national military establishment, most ultimately abandoned its ranks. Some fled to the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong and a fortunate few to North America, but most faded into obscurity on the Communist mainland. While the stories of some of the former have been related here, those of the latter still remain to be told. ✬ ✬ ✬ ✬ ✬ The fiftieth reunion of VMI’s Class of 1927 found Sun Liren under house arrest on Taiwan. Sun’s classmate at VMI, Zhou Yanjun, resided with his family in Montebello, California. After completion of twenty years of military service in 1948, Zhou moved first to the New Territo65. Alfred Vagts, A History of Militarism (New York: Meridian Books, 1959), 479. Lt. Gen. Sun Fulin held command of provisional troops under the warlord Yan Xishan. During the War of Resistance, he commanded the 83rd Corps, and in 1946 was given command of the 15th Group Army with concurrent command of the strategic Taiyuan Garrison in Shanxi. Controversy still surrounds Yan’s employment of former Imperial Japanese forces in his anti-Communist campaigns, and Sun’s motive for committing suicide on the fall of Taiyuan to Communist forces in 1949 can only be surmised. Yang Chang-ling to Colonel Earle W. Kelly, 20 January 1975, NUA; Hsu, History of the Sino-Japanese War, 440; Pepper, Civil War in China, 11 n 8. 66. Boorman, Biographical Dictionary, 4:73–74; Liu, A Military History of Modern China, 101; D. S. Hsiung, ed., Zhonghua minguo dangdai mingren lu [Who’s Who in Republican China] (Taibei: Chung Hwa Book Co., 1978), 1: 69, 2: 842; China Handbook, 1956–57 (Taibei: China Publishing Company, 1958–59), 711, 732, 784; James C. Thomson, Jr., While China Faced West: American Reformers in Nationalist China, 1928–1937 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), 155; Huang Renlin, Huang Renlin huiyilu [The Memoirs of Huang Renlin] (Taibei: Zhuanji wenxue, 1984), passim.

738

★

THE JOURNAL OF

Like Strangers in a Foreign Land

ries, Hong Kong, B.C.C., and eventually settled his family in California. Only a few months before his own death, and unable to attend his fiftieth reunion in person, the seventy-four-year-old Chinese expatriate ended a letter to his class representative with measured introspection and singular humility: “I declare that I claim no merit and I have done nothing to disgrace my Alma Mater.”67

67. 50th Reunion Book of the Class of 1927, n.p., VMIA. MILITARY HISTORY

★

739

JOHN WANDS SACCA

Table III Biographical Reference Chart for Selected Chinese Alumni of American Military Colleges Pinyin/ Wade-Giles

Native Province/ Highest DoB/DoD Rank

Major Postings/ Employment

Educational Institutions Attended

An Lisui An Li-sui

Gansu ?–

Brig. Gen.

Chemical Corps

Qinghua College The Citadel

’26 B.S. ’29

*Bao, George California [Yao Kuan-shun] ? –1951

Maj. Gen.

Revenue Guard CBI

Grass Valley H.S. Univ. of California Norwich Univ.

’11 ’11–12 B.S. ’14

Cao Linsheng [Dzau Linson]

Jiangsu 1895–1976

None

Dean of Phy. Ed. Qinghua Coll.

Hardford H.S., Conn. Taft School, Conn. USMA

’11 ’13 B.S. ’18

Chen Jialu Ch’en Chia-lu

Sichuan ?

Maj. Gen.

Unknown

Qinghua College Norwich Univ.

’26 ’29

Chen Chongwu Hebei Ch’en Ch’ung-wu ?–1947

Brig. Gen.

Unknown

Qinghua College MIT S.B. Univ. of Wisconsin B.A. Norwich Univ.[specl student]

’21 ’24 ’25 ’27

Du Wenruo Tu Wen-jo

Shanxi 1907–

Maj. Gen.

4th Army Shanxi militia Chemical Corps Prof. Shanxi Univ.

Qinghua College The Citadel MIT

He Haoruo Ho Hao-jo

Hunan 1899–1971

Maj. Gen.

10th Div. Foreign Affairs Ministry

Qinghua College ’22 Stanford Univ. B.A. ’23 Univ. of Wisconsin M.A .’24 Univ. of Wisconsin Ph.D.’26 Norwich Univ.[specl student] ’27

Hu Jiamei Hu Chia-mei

Shandong 1906–1934

Air Lt. Col.

Air Force

Qinghua College The Citadel

*Lee, George Chun

Guangdong 1906–

Col.

Revenue Guard New 38th Div. New First Army

Pui Ching Baptist Acad., San Fran. ’25 Univ. of New Hampshire ’28–29 Norwich Univ. B.S. ’31

Li Mojun Li Mo-chun

Hunan ?–

Unknown

Unknown

Qinghua College ’? Ohio State Univ. B.S. ’29 Norwich Univ.[specl student] ’30

Li Jiazhen Li Chia-chen

Hunan 1902–?

Brig. Gen.

CBI

Qinghua College Cornell Univ. Virginia Tech Norwich Univ.

’21 ’21–22 ’22–23 B.S. ’25

Li Rendao Li Jen-tao

Yunnan 1906–1944

Maj. Gen.

Chemical Corps

Qinghua College Univ. of Chicago VMI

’26 ’27 A.B. ’28

Liu Shujun Liu Shu-chun

Henan 1906–1939

Air Lt. Col.

Air Force

Qinghua College The Citadel

’26 B.S. ’29

740

★

Degree(s)/ Year(s)

THE JOURNAL OF

’26 B.S. ’29 ’32

’? B.S. ’28

Like Strangers in a Foreign Land

Pinyin/ Wade-Giles

Native Province/ Highest DoB/DoD Rank

Major Postings/ Employment

Educational Institutions Attended

Ma Zhuan Ma Chu-an

Shandong ?–1946

Col.

Revenue Guard CBI

Qinghua College ’21 Oberlin Coll. A.B. ’23 Columbia Univ. A.M. ’24 Norwich Univ.[specl student] ’25

Qi Xueqi Hunan Ch’i Hsueh-ch’i 1901–1945

Maj. Gen.

Jiangsu militia Revenue Guard New 38th Div.

Qinghua College Norwich Univ.

’23 B.S. ’26

Sun Fulin Sun Fu-lin

Henan ?–1949

Lt. Gen.

83rd Corps 15th Group Army

Qinghua College Iowa State Coll. Norwich Univ.

? ’23–24 B.S. ’26

Sun Liren Sun Li-jen

Anhui 1900–1990

Full Gen.

Revenue Guard New 38th Div. New First Army C-in-C, Taiwan

Qinghua College Purdue Univ. VMI

’23 B.S. ’25 A.B. ’27

*Ting, Edward Eng

California 1900–1987

Brig. Gen.

CBI

Springfield Technical H.S. ’21 Norwich Univ. B.S. ’25 Columbia Univ. M.A. ’27

Wang Chengzhi Jiangsu [Wong Zeng Tse] 1897–1987

Brig. Gen.

Railroad Police

Nanyang College, Shanghai Harvard Univ. MIT USMA B.S.

Wang Geng Wang Keng

Jiangsu 1895–1942

Brig. Gen.

Revenue Guard Foreign Affairs Ministry

Qinghua College Univ. of Michigan Columbia Univ. Princeton Univ. USMA

Wang Fengli Wong Feng-li

Hebei 1908–

Maj. Gen.

Chemical Corps

Qinghua College The Citadel

Wang/ Jiangsu Fuzhou Guang ?– Wang/ Fu-chow Kuang

Unknown

None [Professor]

St. John’s Univ., Shanghai Columbia Univ. VMI Cornell Univ. Norwich Univ. B.S.

Wang Jun Wang Chun

Anhui 1896–1930

Unknown

Unknown

Qinghua College ’23 Univ. of Wisconsin B.A. ’26 Norwich Univ.[specl student] ’28

Wang Zhi Wang Chih

Hunan 1906–2001

Lt. Gen.

Revenue Guard Liaison Officer/ Gen. MacArthur Chi. Rep. SCAP Pres. mil. advisor

Qinghua College Univ. of Wisconsin Norwich Univ. USMA

Wen Yingxing Guangdong Wen Ying-hsing 1887–1968

Lt. Gen.

Railroad Police Shanghai Police Beijing Police Revenue Guard Senator, Leg. Yuan

Beiyang College, Tianjin ’97 Nanyang College, Shanghai ’01 VMI ’04–05 USMA B.S. ’09

MILITARY HISTORY

Degree(s)/ Year(s)

’16 ’17 ’18 ’22

’10 ’11 ’12 B.Litt.’15 B.S. ’18 ’? A.B. ’30

★

’22 ’23 ’24 ’25 ’25

’26 ’27 B.A. ’28 B.S. ’32

741

JOHN WANDS SACCA

Pinyin/ Wade-Giles

Native Province/ Highest DoB/DoD Rank

Major Postings/ Employment

Educational Institutions Attended

Degree(s)/ Year(s)

Yang Zhangling Jiangsu Yang Chang-ling 1909–

Maj. Gen.

Chemical Corps Chief of Protocol to the President

Qinghua College Harvard Univ. Norwich Univ. Johns Hopkins Univ.

Yao Gai Yao Kai

Brig. Gen.

Chemical Corps Foreign Affairs Ministry

Qinghua College ’24 Univ. of Southern California ’25 Purdue Univ. ’25–26 Norwich Univ. B.S. ’27

Zeng Jingji Sichuan Tseng Ching-chi 1908–

Maj. Gen.

Military Attaché National Defense Ministry

Qinghua College ’26 Norwich U.[sr. specl student] ’29 The Citadel A.B. ’30

Zeng Xigui Hubei Tseng Hsi-kwei ?–1966

Maj. Gen.

Revenue Guard CBI Salt Admin.

Qinghua College Norwich Univ. VMI Cornell Univ.

’21 ’22–23 B.S. ’25 M.A. ’26

Zhang Daohong Anhui Chang Tao-hung 1898–1976

Unknown

Revenue Guard Tianjin Police

Qinghua College Clark Univ. USMA

’18 B.A. ’20 B.S. ’24

Zhang Yi Chang I

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown USMA VMI

‘? ’32–33 B.S. ’35

Zhang Zixuan Guangdong [Chang De Senn] 1897–1970

Maj. Gen./ Air Col.

Air Force CBI

Oakland High School VMI

’16 B.S. ’20

Zhao Zhunmai Hunan Chao Chun-mai ?–1988 Zhao Hengji Chao Heng-chin

Maj. Gen.

Hunan militia Revenue Guard

Unknown Univ. of Wisconsin Norwich Univ.

’? ’24–26 B.S. ’28

Zhou Yanjun Guangdong [Jue Ngan Ben] 1903–1977 [Chow Ngan Ben]

Maj. Gen.

4th Army Revenue Guard CBI 202nd Div.

Los Angeles H.S. ’? Detroit Central H.S. ’22 Coll. of the City of Detroit ’23–24 VMI A.B. ’27

Zhu Shiming Hunan Chu Shih-ming 1902–1965

Lt. Gen.

Hunan militia Aide to Pres. Chi. Rep. SCAP

Qinghua College ’22 MIT B.S. ’25 Norwich Univ.[specl student] ’27

Hebei ?–

Shanxi 1913–1937

’25 ’26–27 B.S. ’28 ’29

All alumni listed are referenced in the manuscript. * = Chinese-American officers known by their “American” names. [ ] = Names using non-standard romanization. Nationalist Army officers serving with the Nationalist Air Corps might hold both army and air corps ranks.

742

★