10 - Remembering World War II: Legacies of the War Fought in China

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The war fought in China against Japan during World War II has never been forgotten by the Chinese people. Voluminous writings, memorial shrines, museum exhibitions and annual commemorations on the war are the staple diet in this nation of historically-conscious people. However, memories of the Sino-Japanese War had for a substantive period of time faded in the international arena outside of China because of a number of closely related events. There was the founding of the Communist People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, the descend of the bamboo curtain after the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, as well as the reversing of American occupation policy in Japan soon after. The hegemonic rhetoric of the Cold War and the corresponding self-isolation of a Chinese Communist regime had resulted in an essentially Anglo-Saxon remembrance of World War II, with the Sino-Japanese War relegated to the fringe of mainstream commemorative events around the world. This relegation lessened only after China's re-entry into the international community in 1972 and even more so after the opening and reform of the Chinese economy from 1978.

Consequently, one significant fragment of neglect at the international level is that not many people are sufficiently conscious that World War II has a fractured timeline, and China was actually the earliest of all nations to be caught up in a full-scale war, beginning with the outbreak of fighting in 1937 near the Marco Polo Bridge located just outside of the city of Beijing. China was alone in its war with Japan for nearly two full years before the German invasion of Poland had the unintended effect of meshing the Sino-Japanese War together with the outbreak of fighting in continental Europe, making this a much more global war than the Eurocentric World War I of 1914–18.