The Tormented Alliance

Online Description

After Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, leaders in China and the United States had high hopes of a lasting partnership between the two countries. More than 120,000 U.S. servicemen deployed to China, where Chiang Kai-shek’s government carried out massive programs to provide them with housing, food, and interpreters. But, as Zach Fredman uncovers in The Tormented Alliance, a military alliance with the United States means a military occupation by the United States. The first book to draw on archives from all of the areas in China where U.S. forces deployed during the 1940s, it examines the formation, evolution, and undoing of the alliance between the United States and the Republic of China during World War II and the Chinese Civil War. Fredman reveals how each side brought to the alliance expectations that the other side was simply unable to meet, resulting in a tormented relationship across all levels of Sino-American engagement. Entangled in larger struggles over race, gender, and nation, the U.S. military in China transformed itself into a widely loathed occupation force: an aggressive, resentful, emasculating source of physical danger and compromised sovereignty. After Japan’s surrender and the spring 1946 withdrawal of Soviet forces from Manchuria, the U.S. occupation became the chief obstacle to consigning foreign imperialism in China irrevocably to the past. Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek lost his country in 1949, and the U.S. military presence contributed to his defeat. The occupation of China also cast a long shadow, establishing patterns that have followed the U.S. military elsewhere in Asia up to the present.

🔫 Author Background

• Historian of modern China and U.S.–China relations; faculty at Duke Kunshan University.

• PhD in History from Boston University; advised by Andrew J. Bacevich and Michael A. Corgan.

• Research focuses on war, empire, occupation, and everyday interactions between foreign militaries and local societies.

• Related publications include articles in Frontiers of History in China (on the interpreter program) and the Journal of Modern Chinese History (on “Jeep girls”), which were revised into chapters of this book.

• Archival research conducted in mainland China, Taiwan, the United States, and Myanmar; the project was supported by grants from academic institutions and associations.

🔍 Author’s Main Issue / Thesis

• Main argument: From 1941 to 1949, the U.S.–ROC wartime “alliance” functioned in practice as an occupation. Even without formal sovereignty over territory, the scale, prerogatives, and day‑to‑day conduct of American forces in China reproduced the effects of military occupation on Chinese society and sovereignty.

• Key problems addressed: Why grassroots interactions—housing, logistics, language mediation, military training, civilian contact, and sex—drove mounting resentment; how racial hierarchy, gendered power, and unequal institutional arrangements made cooperation “tormented”; and how post‑1945 Marine deployments and misconduct catalyzed urban protest and eroded the Nationalists’ legitimacy.

🧭 One-Paragraph Overview

Fredman reframes wartime and immediate postwar U.S.–China relations from the ground up. He shows how hosting tens of thousands of American servicemen transformed an alliance into an occupation, as Chinese agencies built vast hostel and interpreter systems to house and translate for U.S. forces while American commanders reshaped Chinese armies and daily life. Misaligned expectations—about supplies, deference, and reform—met hard limits of scarcity, inequality, and racialized power. Civilian contact, black markets, traffic deaths, and GI impunity made the U.S. presence feel coercive; by 1945, sexual relations and rumors about “Jeep girls” turned public anger violent. After V‑J Day, Marines in North China reproduced these dynamics amid a civil war, and the 1946 Anti‑Brutality Movement harnessed grievances into nationwide protest. The cumulative effect, Fredman argues, was to undermine the GMD’s standing while revealing how U.S. military “assistance” could operate as occupation in all but name.

🔑 Top Takeaways

• A U.S. alliance in wartime China operated like an occupation: massive footprint, extraterritorial privileges, and daily constraints on Chinese sovereignty.

• Chinese state capacity mattered: the WASC hostel system and interpreter corps were vast mobilizations that enabled the alliance—but also exposed Chinese civilians and students to GI behavior and disparities.

• Military‑to‑military reform hit structural limits: American technical fixes clashed with Chinese hierarchies, warlord polities, and resource scarcities, producing disillusion on both sides.

• Race and gender structured everyday contact: assimilationist rhetoric (“treat them as equals”) coexisted with stereotypes and slurs, fueling contempt and conflict.

• Civil–military friction accumulated through mundane harms—accidents, insults, theft perceptions, shortages—and became political capital for critics of the alliance.

• Sex was the flashpoint: competing narratives of “Jeep girls” (prostitute vs. rape victim) condensed broader anxieties about sovereignty and masculinity and sparked street violence in spring 1945.

• Postwar Marine deployments intensified grievances; high‑profile crimes and impunity catalyzed the 1946 Anti‑Brutality Movement, the largest protest wave of the Nationalist era.

• U.S. military conduct contributed to delegitimizing the GMD; the later “China White Paper” ignored this, sustaining comforting myths about a benevolent U.S. role.

📒 Sections

Chapter 0: Introduction

Summary:

• Fredman opens with the claim that a “military alliance with the United States means a military occupation by the United States,” a conclusion drawn from archives across China, Taiwan, the U.S., and Myanmar (p. 35). He argues that while the Hague definition ties “occupation” to hostile rule, the U.S. presence in China—its logistical prerogatives, immunities, and pervasive influence—functionally occupied allied territory.

• The alliance yielded mutual benefits: U.S. air power and the Hump air bridge helped defeat Japan; China mobilized to feed, house, and translate for Americans, and fielded U.S.-equipped elite divisions (pp. 36–37). Yet daily frictions over race, gender, and national status converted cooperation into resentment.

• The book follows interactions from hostels and interpreters to training fields, city streets, and sexual economies, then to the Marine occupation of North China. It contends that the GMD’s defeat cannot be understood without the corrosive effects of GI behavior and the politics of the U.S. presence (pp. 37–38).

Key Points:

• Thesis: alliance ≈ occupation (p. 35)

  • Functional control without formal sovereignty.

• Benefits with costs (pp. 36–37)

  • Hump airlift proved global reach; China’s mobilization enabled U.S. presence.

• Bottom‑up lens (pp. 37–38)

  • Focus on soldiers, students, workers, women—not just Chiang and Stilwell.

• Continuity across 1945 (pp. 37–38)

  • Wartime practices shaped postwar Marine presence and politics.

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Chapter 1: Making Our Friends at Home — China’s Hostel Program

Summary:

• Beginning in mid‑1941 under WASC leader Huang Renlin, Chinese authorities created a nationwide hostel system to house, feed, transport, and serve U.S. personnel. The program requisitioned buildings, mobilized labor, and built kitchens, laundries, and mess halls at breakneck speed (pp. 61–63, 74–76).

• Americans judged hostels through U.S. standards: they wanted abundant meat, coffee, ice, hot water, clean linens, and sanitary systems, in a country reeling from blockade and inflation. The wartime “Pocket Guide to China” insisted hostel workers were not servants and warned against racism, yet expectations and behavior often undercut the message (pp. 88–89).

• The hostel program revealed the alliance’s asymmetry: Chinese paid the bills (“reverse lend‑lease”), shouldered shortages, and absorbed the social fallout. To some Americans, hostels were a “perfectly legitimate racket,” while Chinese staff resented condescension and abuse (pp. 88–90).

Key Points:

• WASC hostel network launched July 1941; scaled rapidly across Southwest China.

  • Buildings seized or rented; huge logistical effort by Chinese agencies (pp. 61–76).

• U.S. consumption norms vs. Chinese scarcity.

  • Meat, sugar, coffee, ice—constant friction (p. 88).

• Guidance vs. practice:

  • “In your relations with Chinese treat them as equals” coexisted with stereotypes (pp. 88–89).

• Financial asymmetry and resentment:

  • Reverse lend‑lease burdens; Americans called hostels “a perfectly legitimate racket” (p. 89).

• Early seed of “occupation” feeling:

  • Chinese civilians displaced; labor hierarchies hardened.

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Chapter 2: Communicating without Understanding — China’s Interpreter Program

Summary:

• Chinese universities—foremost the Southwest Associated University (Lianda)—recruited and trained thousands of “interpreting officers” to break the language barrier for U.S. units. The curriculum combined English, military terminology, and field exercises; graduates were commissioned and attached to American commands (pp. 50–62).

• On the ground, structural mismatches prevailed. Americans often treated interpreters as clerks, runners, or “office boys,” sidelining professional skills (p. 110). Corruption, misassignment, and chaotic personnel systems worsened morale; interpreters navigated sexual harassment risks, class prejudice, and insecure housing near U.S. facilities (pp. 110–115).

• The program worked best in limited, technically bounded settings; it failed as a bridge for mutual understanding. The result was alienation on both sides and a pipeline of educated youth who later animated postwar protest.

Key Points:

• Large‑scale interpreter mobilization centered at Lianda and other universities (pp. 50–62).

  • Training focused on military English and operations.

• Role drift and status conflict:

  • “The Americans did not need interpreting; they needed office boys” (p. 110).

• Administrative and moral hazards:

  • Misassignment, poor supervision, exposure to harassment (pp. 110–115).

• Political afterlife:

  • Interpreter cohorts became nodes in 1946 student activism.

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Chapter 3: Unequal Partners — Military‑to‑Military Relations

Summary:

• U.S. officers sought to retool ROC forces with American equipment, doctrine, and training regimens (e.g., Ramgarh‑trained divisions), promising a technically superior army. Chinese commanders confronted embedded hierarchies, patronage, and resource constraints that made reforms costly and politically risky (pp. 150–153).

• Cultural misrecognition pervaded the training relationship. The U.S. Army’s Pocket Guide urged equality, yet its text and imagery trafficked in stereotypes; many GIs viewed Chinese soldiers as “backward” and suspected civilians of theft and begging (pp. 160–163).

• Reforms delivered uneven battlefield gains but deepened mistrust. Fredman concludes that the U.S. achieved limited strengthening of ROC fighting capacity, but the project—conceived as technical—“faltered on the ground” amid incompatible institutions and mutual contempt (pp. 161–164).

Key Points:

• American reform agenda vs. Chinese political‑bureaucratic realities (pp. 150–153).

  • Training, kit, and doctrine clashed with patronage and scarcity.

• Rhetoric vs. racism:

  • “In your relations with Chinese treat them as equals” undercut by stereotypes (p. 161).

• Street‑level contempt cycles:

  • “The more American servicemen and Chinese civilians interacted, the more they hated each other” (p. 164).

• Net effect:

  • Technical gains, strategic alienation.

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Chapter 4: Living with the U.S. Military

Summary:

• As U.S. installations spread across Yunnan and Sichuan, daily contact with civilians multiplied. Accidents, requisitions, and black markets tied villagers and townsfolk to GI consumption and waste streams; garbage, odors, and intrusive policing made American presence sensorially and materially inescapable (pp. 168–176, 183–187).

• Chinese press and police reports recorded “one after another” traffic deaths and vehicle incidents, feeding anger at impunity; American pay and PX goods pushed up prices and drew theft and resale into survival economies (pp. 179–185).

• Official U.S. guidance to socialize and “win hearts” collided with exclusionary practices and callous disregard for local life and ROC sovereignty; the chapter foreshadows sex as the most combustible arena of contact (pp. 196–197).

Key Points:

• Everyday frictions: traffic, requisition, waste, and smells (pp. 168–176).

  • Civilian proximity to bases reshaped urban rhythms.

• Accidents and impunity:

  • “In recent days accidents involving U.S. military vehicles have been happening one after another” (p. 184).

• Price shocks and black markets (pp. 183–187).

  • GI pay and PX goods reconfigured livelihoods.

• Assimilation talk vs. exclusionary behavior (pp. 196–197).

  • Respect rhetoric could not mask structural inequality.

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Chapter 5: GIs and Jeep Girls — Sexual Relations

Summary:

• In spring 1945, sex became the alliance’s core fault line. Two narratives spread: “Jeep girls” as prostitutes trading intimacy for foreign goods and status; and respectable women as victims of GI molestation and rape via Jeep snatchings. Both cast women’s bodies as national territory and inflamed male honor (pp. 198–200).

• Crowds gathered outside Chongqing cafés; rocks flew; insults and scuffles escalated, while rumors of molestation multiplied. “The general assumption,” reported Theodore White, “is that any girl with an American is a prostitute” (p. 198). Army investigators traced disturbances to fears of GI sexual violence; by May the unrest had spread to Guiyang, Chengdu, and Kunming (pp. 198–199).

• Structural drivers—alcohol, racialized entitlement, impunity, scarcity of recreation, inflation after Operation Ichigo, and surging troop strength—made China uniquely explosive. American policy barred interracial marriage, channeling relations toward sex work and casual liaison; prostitution flooded GI districts (pp. 205–212). U.S. and ROC authorities crafted counternarratives but could not defuse the politics of sex.

Key Points:

• Two “Jeep girl” narratives: prostitute vs. rape victim (pp. 198–200).

  • Both mapped sovereignty onto women’s bodies.

• Street violence and rumor cascades (pp. 198–199).

  • Protests spread across Southwest China.

• Drivers: alcohol, pay gaps, racial rules, Ichigo inflation, troop surge (pp. 205–212).

  • By June 1945, U.S. troop strength doubled; privates earned multiples of Chinese officers (pp. 205–206).

• Sex as politics:

  • “Sexual relations were not the alliance’s seedy underside but the core site of its tensions” (pp. 199–200).

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Chapter 6: Everything Comes Undone

Summary:

• After Japan’s surrender, ~53,000 U.S. Marines and sailors occupied North China’s cities as “liberators,” but wartime patterns persisted: shootings, assaults, rapes, black‑market scandals, and vehicle deaths. With the civil war intensifying and an arms embargo biting the GMD, public patience snapped (pp. 259–266).

• The December 1946 Shen Chong rape case in Beiping (Beijing) ignited the Anti‑Brutality Movement. CCP campus networks at Beida, Tsinghua, Nankai, and Yanjing mobilized strikes and marches; by end‑January 1946, an estimated 500,000 people in 25+ cities protested, demanding U.S. withdrawal and Chinese jurisdiction over American crimes (pp. 264–265).

• Courts‑martial produced mixed outcomes; widely publicized killings and acquittals sustained outrage. Fredman shows how GI misconduct—more than policy debates alone—deeply eroded the Nationalists’ legitimacy and provided the CCP a powerful “second front” in urban politics (pp. 266–271).

Key Points:

• Marine occupation replicates wartime harms; venereal disease and sex economies boom in Qingdao/Tianjin (pp. 259–260).

  • Prophylaxis stations in brothels; VD rates spike.

• Shen Chong case → nationwide Anti‑Brutality Movement (pp. 264–265).

  • Largest protest wave of the Nationalist era.

• Mixed justice, persistent violence (pp. 266–267).

  • High‑profile shootings and acquittals inflame protests.

• Strategic effect:

  • U.S. behavior accelerated disillusionment with the GMD (p. 271).

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Chapter 7: Epilogue — The Occupation of China’s Long Shadow

Summary:

• The 1949 “China White Paper” blamed the Nationalists alone for their defeat and omitted the record of GI misconduct; U.S. officials clung to myths of a special friendship and American benevolence (pp. 271–273).

• Fredman counters that U.S. forces “indeed contributed to the GMD’s defeat,” not as determinative cause but as a consequential factor shaping public sentiment and political opportunity (p. 273).

• The book urges historians and policy makers to reckon with how U.S. military “assistance” abroad routinely brings occupation‑like effects that reshape allied politics from the street level up.

Key Points:

• China White Paper’s selective memory (pp. 271–273).

  • Diplomatic narratives erased GI violence and impunity.

• Causal judgment:

  • U.S. forces “indeed contributed to the GMD’s defeat” (p. 273).

• Present‑day implication:

  • Assistance can function as occupation.

🥰 Who Would Like it?

• Scholars and students of World War II in Asia, modern Chinese history, U.S. foreign relations, and military occupation studies.

• Readers comfortable with archival arguments and social history; no specialist Chinese required, but some background on the Sino‑Japanese War and Chinese Civil War is helpful.

• Reading level: advanced undergraduate to graduate seminar; suitable for a master‑class discussion.

📚 Related Books

• Hans van de Ven, War and Nationalism in China, 1925–1945 — revisionist account challenging the “Stilwell myth.”

• Rana Mitter, China’s War with Japan, 1937–1945 — broad narrative framing of wartime China.

• Barbara W. Tuchman, Stilwell and the American Experience in China — classic (but contested) view centered on Stilwell.

• Mary Louise Roberts, What Soldiers Do — sexual politics of liberation (France), useful for comparison.

• Maria Höhn & Seungsook Moon, Over There — U.S. bases and gender in Cold War Asia.

• Robert Bickers, Out of China — Chinese responses to imperialism and foreign presence.

✍️ Key Terms

• WASC (War Area Service Corps): Chinese agency that created and ran hostel, transport, and service networks to support U.S. personnel; centerpiece of “making friends at home.”

• Hostel Program: Nationwide Chinese‑run housing and provisioning system for GIs; revealed asymmetry of expectations and costs.

• Interpreter Program (Lianda‑centered): Mobilization of university students as “interpreting officers”; often relegated to clerical labor, became politicized cohort.

• Hump Airlift: U.S. aerial supply route over the Himalayas connecting India to Southwest China; symbol of U.S. logistical reach.

• Operation Ichigo (1944): Massive Japanese offensive that worsened inflation and displacement in Southwest China, intensifying dependence on GI economies.

• “Jeep Girls”: Contested figure symbolizing either prostitution for goods or victimization by GI rape; focal point of 1945 unrest.

• Anti‑Brutality Movement (1946): Nationwide student‑led protests against U.S. military crimes and impunity during Marine occupation.

• Reverse Lend‑Lease: Chinese provisioning of U.S. forces (food, facilities, services) under alliance obligations; financial burden on China.

• Extraterritoriality (wartime practice): De facto legal immunities of U.S. personnel from Chinese courts, reinforcing occupation‑like status.

❓Open Questions

• Does “occupation” best capture allied military presence without formal sovereignty, or does it collapse important legal distinctions?

• How representative are urban, educated sources (press, students) of wider rural sentiment toward the U.S. presence?

• To what degree did GI misconduct, versus GMD structural weaknesses and CCP mobilization, drive the Nationalists’ delegitimation?

• What do comparative cases (Britain, Australia, France, Philippines, Korea, Vietnam) suggest about the repeatability of these dynamics?

• How might women’s voices—largely mediated by men in the record—alter interpretations of the “Jeep girl” narratives?

🗂 Notable Quotes & Thoughts

• “A military alliance with the United States means a military occupation by the United States. That is the truth this book uncovers.” (p. 35)

• “American forces not only required enormous amounts of food, clothing, and housing; they also wanted everything done in an American way.” (p. 88)

• Hostels as “a perfectly legitimate racket.” (p. 89)

• “Interpreting officers discovered that the Americans did not need interpreting; they needed office boys.” (p. 110)

• “In your relations with Chinese treat them as equals.” (p. 161)

• “The more American servicemen and Chinese civilians interacted, the more they hated each other.” (p. 164)

• “In recent days accidents involving U.S. military vehicles have been happening one after another.” (p. 184)

• “The general assumption … is that any girl with an American is a prostitute.” (p. 198)

• “Sexual relations were not the alliance’s seedy underside but the core site of its tensions.” (pp. 199–200)

• The Anti‑Brutality Movement quickly became “the largest protest movement of the Nationalist era.” (p. 264)

• “U.S. forces indeed contributed to the GMD’s defeat.” (p. 273)

🤷‍♂️ People

• Chiang Kai‑shek (Jiang Jieshi): GMD leader; wartime ally of the U.S.; oversaw mobilization for hostels/interpreters; post‑1945 relied on U.S. transport and Marines amid civil war.

• Joseph W. Stilwell: U.S. commander in China‑Burma‑India until Oct 1944; championed training/reform; contentious with Chiang.

• Albert C. Wedemeyer: Succeeded Stilwell; managed late‑war operations and post‑V‑J Day transitions; recognized public “rape hysteria” drivers in 1945.

• Huang Renlin: WASC leader; architect of hostel program to “make friends at home.”

• Long Yun: Yunnan provincial strongman; local backer of hostel and security regimes in Kunming.

• Sun Li‑ren: Ramgarh‑trained Chinese commander emblematic of U.S. training projects.

• J. Leighton Stuart: U.S. ambassador; target of student marches in Nanjing in January 1946.

• Mao Zedong / Zhou Enlai: CCP leaders; seized opportunity to turn anti‑GI grievances into a “second front” of urban protest.

• Shen Chong: Beiping university student; her rape case by U.S. servicemen (late 1946) catalyzed the Anti‑Brutality Movement.

• Theodore White: Time correspondent whose dispatch captured popular assumptions about “Jeep girls” (p. 198).

🕰 Timeline of Major Events

• 1941‑04 — Roosevelt approves China’s secret AVG plan — Marks the beginning of formalized U.S. military involvement that scales rapidly (p. 38).

• 1941‑07 — WASC launches hostel program — Chinese‑run infrastructure to house and feed U.S. personnel begins (pp. 61–63).

• 1941‑12‑07/08 — Pearl Harbor; U.S. enters war in Asia — Formalizes alliance and accelerates American deployments to China.

• 1942 — Hump air bridge begins — Demonstrates U.S. logistical reach while intensifying footprint in Southwest China (p. 36).

• 1944‑04 → 1944‑11‑11 — Operation Ichigo; fall of Guilin — Inflation and displacement surge, deepening dependence on GI economies (p. 205).

• 1945‑04‑14 — Sing Sing Café clash in Chongqing — Street violence over “Jeep girls” erupts; unrest spreads to Guiyang, Chengdu, Kunming (pp. 197–199).

• 1945‑08‑15 / 09‑02 — Japan surrenders / V‑J Day — Transition to postwar occupation tasks amid civil war.

• 1945‑09 → 1945‑11 — U.S. Marines deploy to North China — “Liberators” become an occupying force in coastal cities; sex industry and VD rates surge (pp. 259–260).

• 1946‑01 — Anti‑Brutality Movement spreads nationwide — Student‑led marches and strikes in 25+ cities demand U.S. withdrawal and jurisdiction (pp. 264–265).

• 1947‑01‑22 — Court‑martial conviction in Shen Chong case — Partial accountability but continuing outrage and incidents (p. 266).

• 1949‑08‑05 — China White Paper released — U.S. narrative absolves itself; omits GI conduct (pp. 271–273).

• 1949‑10‑01 — PRC proclaimed in Beijing — End of the GMD regime on the mainland; long shadow of occupation debates remains.

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