Abstract
In November 1937, the Imperial Japanese Army reached the Chinese capital city Nanjing, sending the Nationalist government fleeing up the Yangzi River, first to Wuhan, then to Chongqing. Directing the nation from a temporary capital after having lost the majority of its tax base, the Nationalist state created the conditions for its population’s mere survival, but failed to produce the possibility of full thriving. This partial resilience resulted from policies that privileged the wealthy and punished the poor, who remained vulnerable to disease, hunger, floods, fires, and police brutality.
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- 1.
Chongqing’s official population count increased by nearly one million during the war. Many more residents likely evaded counting. Danke Li, Echoes of Chongqing: Women in Wartime China (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2010), 18; Peng Chengfu, ed., Chongqing renmin dui kangzhan de gongxian (Chongqing People’s Contributions to the War of Resistance) (Chongqing: Chongqing Publishing House, 1995), 125. Each source gives a different population count, mostly due to differences in determining city boundaries.
- 2.
Wan Fang, Chuanhun: Sichuan Kangzhan dang’an shiliao xuanbian (The Soul of Sichuan: An Edited Collection of Historical Materials on the War of Resistance from the Sichuan Archives) (Chengdu: Sichuan Provincial Archives, 2005), 2–3.
- 3.
Yang Yulin, “Bingli yu liangshi: Sichuan sheng disan xingzheng duchaqu renmin zai Kangzhan zhong de zhuyao gongxian” (Military Power and Grain: Principal War of Resistance Contributions from the People of Sichuan province’s Number Three Administrative Superintendency), in Sichuan Kangzhan dang’an yanjiu (Research on the War of Resistance in Sichuan Archives), ed. Li Shigen (Chengdu: Southwest Jiaotong University Publishing House, 2005), 119, 121. See also Peng, Chongqing renmin, 1–17.
- 4.
Tsung-Han Shen, “Food Production and Distribution for Civilian and Military Needs in Wartime China, 1937–1945,” in Paul K.T. Sih, ed., Nationalist China during the Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1945 (Hicksville, NY: Exposition Press, 1977), 181.
- 5.
Diana Lary, The Chinese People at War: Human Suffering and Social Transformation, 1937–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 173.
- 6.
Diana Lary and Stephen MacKinnon, eds., Scars of War: The Impact of Warfare on Modern China (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2001), plate 8; Edna Tow, “The Great Bombing of Chongqing and the Anti-Japanese War, 1937–1945,” in Mark Peattie, Edward Drea and Hans van de Ven, eds., The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 256–82.
- 7.
Arup International Development, City Resilience Framework (New York: The Rockefeller Foundation, 2014), 3.
- 8.
Lloyd E. Eastman, “Regional Politics and the Central Government: Yunnan and Chungking,” in Paul K.T. Sih, ed., Nationalist China During the Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1945 (Hicksville, New York: Exposition Press, 1977), 353.
- 9.
Lloyd E. Eastman, “Nationalist China during the Sino-Japanese War 1937–1945,” in John K. Fairbank and Albert Feuerwerker, eds., The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 13: Republican China 1912–1949, Part 2 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 572–73.
- 10.
Rana Mitter, Forgotten Ally, 173.
- 11.
Time magazine correspondents Theodore White and Annalee Jacoby provided the best example of this in their book Thunder Out of China (New York: Da Capo Press, 1946).
- 12.
Graham Peck, Through China ’s Wall (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1940), 164, 167. By 1941, Chongqing had over 1000 private air raid shelters assigned to 127 private citizens, as well as social organizations. See Chongqingshi tongji tiyao (A Summary of Chongqing Statistics) (Chongqing: Chongqing Municipal Government, 1942), Table 58.
- 13.
Jim Endicott to Jesse Arnup, September 20, 1939, 1983.047C, 8-167, United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto (hereafter UCC).
- 14.
Luo Zhuanxu, ed., Chongqing Kangzhan dashiji (Grand record of Chongqing’s War of Resistance) (Chongqing: Chongqing Publishing House, 1995), 21; Lee McIsaac, Limits of Chinese Nationalism: Workers in Wartime Chongqing, 1937–1945 (PhD diss., Yale University, 1994), 40.
- 15.
J.R. Sinton Papers, Chungking Diary, December 8, 1941–April 19, 1946, SOAS ASC, CIM Personal Papers, box 2, folder CIM/PP 20 Sinton Papers, 2.
- 16.
Cai Chusheng and Zheng Junli, A Spring River Flows East (Shanghai: Lianhua Film Company, 1947).
- 17.
Li, Echoes of Chongqing , 82–83.
- 18.
Chongqingshi tongji tiyao (A Summary of Chongqing Statistics) (Chongqing: Chongqing Municipal Government, 1942), Table 58.
- 19.
Huang Yanfu and Wang Xiaoning, eds., Mei Yiqi riji (Diary of Mei Yiqi), 1941–1946 (Beijing: Qinghua University Press, 2001), 35–36.
- 20.
Freddie Guest, Escape from the Bloodied Sun (London: Jarrolds Publishers, Ltd., 1956), 172; Xiao Liju, ed., The Chiang Kai-shek Collections: The Chronological Events (vol. 43): January–June 1940 (Taipei: Academia Historica, 2010), 556. On Chongqing’s air raid warning system, see Huang, Mei Yiqi Diary, 35–36. First, a warning flag hung high in the sky, signaling that enemy airplanes were on their way. Next, one ball was raised on the flagpole, signaling everyone to begin preparations to enter the air raid shelters; at the addition of a second ball, everyone headed directly to the shelters, and when enemy planes dispersed, the two balls were lowered to signal the all-clear.
- 21.
Chen Lansun and Kong Xiangyun, eds., Xiajiangren gushi (Stories of Downriver People) (Hong Kong: Tianma Book Publishing Company, 2005), 453.
- 22.
“Bombing of Chungking Fails to Break China’s Morale,” Have a Heart for China A-24 (September 1940), 1. Emphasis added.
- 23.
Israel Epstein, “The May Third Chungking Bombing,” in United China Relief Series, no. 1: Undaunted Chungking (Chungking: The China Publishing Company, 1941), 1.
- 24.
McIsaac, “The Limits of Chinese Nationalism,” 61; William C. Kirby, “Engineering China: The Origins of the Chinese Developmental State,” in Wenhsin Yeh, ed., Becoming Chinese: Passages to Modernity and Beyond (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 137–60; Zwia Lipkin, Useless to the State: “Social Problems” and Social Engineering in Nationalist Nanjing, 1927–1937 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center Press, 2006).
- 25.
Stories of Downriver People, 453.
- 26.
The first newspaper report of the August 13 incident, printed in Dagongbao on the following day, cited rumors that at least 400 people had perished (Dagongbao No. 13179 [August 14, 1940]). On August 15, the Chongqing Municipal Air Raid Relief Team released its official report, citing only 8 dead, 36 seriously wounded, and 5 “severely disoriented” people (“Letter from the Chongqing Air Raid Relief Corps,” August 15, 1940, Chongqing Asphyxiation Cases file, AH, Taipei). The newspaper responded, citing the Air Raid Relief Team’s numbers along with those from another report, which stated that 9 had died and over 100 had been wounded, while also citing eyewitness accounts claiming that “the number of dead and wounded certainly exceeded 100” (Dagongbao No. 13181 [August 16, 1940]). On the death toll of the June 5, 1941 asphyxiation case, see Ding, “A Brief History of Air Raid Defense,” 11; and Chen Lifu, “Suidao zhixi an shen weiyuan baogao fabiao” (“Tunnel Asphyxiation Case Investigative Committee Report”), 1941, AH, Taipei, 8b-10a.
- 27.
Dagongbao (L’Impartiale) No. 13181 (August 16, 1940).
- 28.
Ding, “A Brief History of Air Raid Defense,” 10–11.
- 29.
In June 1941, 151 severely wounded victims were taken to the Trauma Hospital for immediate treatment, and boatmen transported 920 unclaimed bodies to Black Pebbles (Hei shizi) for burial in mass graves. Claimed bodies constituted a minority and could not have totaled more than 72 of the reported 992 dead. See Chen, “Tunnel Asphyxiation Case,” 8b-10a. An official report from the Chongqing Air Raid Relief Corps filed for the August 1940 asphyxiation case cited only eight dead bodies, which they “sent away to be claimed by relatives.” “Letter from the Chongqing Air Raid Relief Corps.” Chongqing civilians also voluntarily participated in memorializing the air raid dead; they reportedly piled the remains of over 7000 compatriots into 12 “White Bone Pagodas” (Baigu ta). None are extant today.
- 30.
Li, Echoes of Chongqing , 102–06, 61–64, 121–23.
- 31.
Joshua Howard, Workers at War: Labor in China ’s Arsenals, 1937–1953 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 130–31. Arsenals used coal to fire their ovens, exposing workers to “high levels of sulfur and ash.”
- 32.
CBPH Work Report, 1938, CMA, Chongqing, 66-1-2, 182; CBPH Work Report, January–June 1940, CMA, 66-1-3, 171; CBPH Work Report, 1940, CMA, Chongqing, 66-1-3: “Table of Private and Public Hospitals in Chongqing Proper and in the Suburbs,” August 1940, CMA, 66-1-3, 182–83; and CBPH Work Report, September 1940–February 1941, CMA, 66-1-3, 198.
- 33.
“Table of Private and Public Hospitals.”
- 34.
Ibid.; “Survey of Physicians, Pharmacists, and Midwives in Chongqing City.”
- 35.
CBPH Work Report, 1943, CMA, 66-1-2, 203–04; and CBPH Work Report, 1944, CMA, 66-1-2, 17, 66.
- 36.
“Wartime Capital Chinese Medicine Hospital” files, 1944–1945, CMA, 163-2-19; 163-2-24.
- 37.
For example, in 1944, the Trauma Hospitals exceeded their collective budget by over 76,000 yuan. “Trauma Hospital Budget” documents, March–June 1945, CMA, 53-19-1920.
- 38.
Shili chuanranbing yiyuan xianzai qingxing ji jianglai banli gejie (Current Conditions and Future Plans of the Municipal Infectious Diseases Hospital) October 1942, CMA, 66-1-6, 115–116.
- 39.
Chongqingshi jiaowai gong sili yiyuan zhensuo yilanbiao (A Table of Public and Private Hospitals and Clinics in the Outskirts of Chongqing), August 1940, CMA, 66-1-3, 182–83.
- 40.
Mitter, Forgotten Ally, 197–209.
- 41.
Zhou Yong, Chongqing tongshi, vol. 3 (A Comprehensive History of Chongqing) (Chongqing: Chongqing Press, 2002), 1160.
- 42.
Li, Echoes of Chongqing , 86–87. Stories like Li Shuhua’s corroborate Gail Hershatter’s discovery that many rural women in the collective era—another period in Chinese history when women’s domestic and reproductive labors were unrewarded—experienced extreme exhaustion during their reproductive years, and therefore supported the One-Child Policy in the 1970s. Gail Hershatter, The Gender of Memory: Rural Women and China ’s Collective Past (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 182–209.
- 43.
Li, Echoes of Chongqing , 86, 90, 93.
- 44.
Janet Y. Chen, Guilty of Indigence: The Urban Poor in China , 1900–1953 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012).
- 45.
Ruth Rogaski, Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port Tianjin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 201.
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Barnes, N.E. (2019). Partial Resilience in Nationalist China’s Wartime Capital. In: Laakkonen, S., McNeill, J.R., Tucker, R.P., Vuorisalo, T. (eds) The Resilient City in World War II. Palgrave Studies in World Environmental History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17439-2_10
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