China Marines

Marines In China

1905--1941

The end of the Boxer Uprising and the humiliation of the Manchu dynasty intensified European and Japanese interest in the exploitation of China. The United States joined the rush as an ambivalent participant, acting as much to restrain the other imperialistic powers as to widen its own commercial and missionary interests. The tenor of American foreign policy in China for the next forty years was set by 1901. When the Powers forced the Manchu dynasty to sign the punitive Boxer Protocol, the United States did not ask for full indemnification for its public and private expenses. Yet the United States did agree that it and the other foreign powers should enjoy extraterritorial status in Peking and would share the responsibility for keeping communications open from the coast to the capital with military forces if necessary. The basic American position, in fact, was shaped by two State Department notes to the other major world nations before the end of the Boxer Uprising. Collectively, the "Open Door" notes of 1899 and 1900 announced that the United States supported the territorial integrity of China as a sovereign state and asked the other nations to accept the principle of equal trading and personal rights throughout China, even within their established spheres of interest. Although the Chinese government should honor all its earlier treaty concessions to foreign governments and businesses, it could assume some diplomatic assistance from the United States, whose policy would be to seek a solution which may bring about permanent safety and peace to China, preserve China's territorial and administrative entity, protect all rights granted to friendly powers by treaty and international law, and safeguard for the world the principle of equal and impartial trade with all parts of the Chinese Empire.'

A mixture of political and religious idealism and commercial self- seeking, the "Open Door" policy shaped American relations with China and eventually led to conflict with Japan. Its inherent problem was that it committed the United States to protecting the rights of its own nationals in China, preserving with joint military action if necessary the extraterritorial status of the Peking Legation Quarter as well as the foreign concessions in China's principal cities, and at the same time protecting China against further loss of control over its own soil to imperialistic exploiters. Had the Manchu dynasty recovered and reformed itself after the Boxer Uprising, the American commitment to a stable status quo might have survived the inherent contra dictions in the "Open Door" policy. The problem, however, was that Chinese reform nationalists and regional warlords would not accept either foreign exploitation or Manchu rule, and in 1911 China entered what became more than a generation of revolutionary upheaval.

The Chinese Revolution succeeded in displacing the last Manchu emperor but did not produce any lasting successor government. Instead, power passed to a limited national government in Peking under a politician-general, Yuan Shihkai, and to a host of regional warlords.  Jealous of their feifdoms, the warlords made China from the Yangtze to Manchuria a battleground for their rapacious armies. Although most of the Chinese armies avoided harming foreigners and their property for fear of retaliation, the general threat of war and its periodic outbreak menaced aliens not only in the countryside but within the urban foreign concessions as well. Constantly fearing that the revolution would become violently antiforeign, the Powers' diplomats insisted upon increased military protection.

For the United States government, which had no intention of using military forces against either the Chinese armies or the other Powers, the pleas for military protection offered a unique opportunity. By maintaining a military presence in China, the government met its responsibilities to protect American lives and property. At the same time, the American military commitment gave the United States some influence upon the behavior of the other foreign forces in China and, presumably, checked their military adventures under the guise of occupying China in the name of peace and stability. Eventually, Japan would make a mockery of this policy, but for almost thirty years one Army infantry regiment, the antique vessels of the Asiatic Fleet, and units of the U.S. Marine Corps gave the United States a modicum of influence over events in China.²

Largely dictated by the State Department and modified by the recommendations of the American Minister in Peking and the admiral commanding the Asiatic Fleet, the American military presence in China from 1905 to 1941 was established in three ways. In north China, in accordance with the Boxer Protocol, the United States maintained a legation guard at Peking. From 1900 until 1905 the legation guard was a company of the 9th Infantry, but in 1905 the soldiers were for obscure reasons replaced by one hundred Marines. Apparently Minister W. W. Rockhill thought the Marines would provide a more prestigious guard, insofar as they had defended the Legation Quarter in 1900, were noted for their smartness, and could be reinforced without command squabbles from the ships guards of the Asiatic Fleet or from the yard guards in the Philippines. If simplifying the chain of command was a goal in replacing the soldiers, it was violated in 1912, when a battalion of the 15th Infantry arrived in Tientsin with the dual mission of guarding the international settlement and keeping the rail road open to Peking. From 1923 until its departure in 1938 the entire 15th Infantry became the main American contribution to the Tientsin defense force.⁴

The second American military concentration was primarily naval. After the war with Spain, the U.S. Navy maintained a flotilla of shallow-draft gunboats along central China's Yangtze River and its tributaries. Based at the great port of Shanghai near the East China Sea, the Yangtze gunboats patrolled the river through the large cities of Nanking, Hankow, and Chungking. In times of trouble, they could be reinforced with overage destroyers and cruisers from the Asiatic Fleet. Marines from the Asiatic Fleet could and did sail with the Yangtze gunboats as well as their cruisers.⁵

The Yangtze River patrol did not exhaust the Navy's ability to intervene locally, for other vessels of the Asiatic Fleet prowled the ports of the China coast, as they had done for years. Essentially the U.S. Navy made the Boxer Protocol garrisons in north China and the Yangtze Patrol credible, because it could dispatch both additional warships and Marines from the Philippines and Guam to the Peking Tientsin garrisons and the Yangtze Patrol as well as steam into the harbor of any Chinese coastal city threatened with urban violence. Despite some problems with the Army over control of the north China forces, the Navy's representative in China, the admiral commanding the Asiatic Fleet, became an important voice in determining

what the military contribution to American policy would be. Much like the American Minister in Peking, the admirals who interpreted the confusions of the Chinese Revolution usually recommended an in creased military presence and preferred Marines to soldiers whenever they thought that presence should be ashore.⁶

The use of Marines in China grew from the same conditions that made the Corps so attractive to the State Department for Caribbean interventions. Fundamentally, the Marines were politically safe, having for years performed similar functions throughout the world at the cost of few casualties. Moreover, they could be sent by Navy warships from foreign stations without causing any particular flurry in the United States. With the exception of the Peking legation guard, Marines were not bound by the Boxer Protocol to cooperate with foreign troops. As a result of the "Open Door" policy and the Marine Corps's availability, American policy in China drew the Marine Corps into a long relationship with the Middle Kingdom.⁷

1

For the Marine Corps the China experience began and ended with the legation guard in Peking. Sporadically increased and decreased with the alarms caused by the Chinese Revolution and local civil wars, the legation guard grew from two officers and one hundred men to a small battalion of more than five hundred men by the early 1920s. Life in the Legation Quarter was busy and interesting by Marine Corps's standards. The legation guard specialized in hiking, marksmanship, and dress parades and remained one of the social adornments of the international community. For the officers and men of the legation guard, life was most comfortable. The Marine Corps's mess had at least three servants for each officer, and the enlisted men hired coolie labor to do laundry, clean the barracks, and cook for them. For the legation guard, military duty narrowed to the interesting essentials: field training, shooting, dress parades, and athletic contests against the other foreign detachments. The Marines' energies were largely absorbed in the Legation Quarter's social life. The daughter of the guard commander in 1911—1914 remembered that her parents employed fifteen servants and once went out thirty-six nights in succession.⁸ Money was no problem, for American currency and credit were honored; most Marines signed chits for expenses and paid them monthly. The Marines vied with the British detachment for military smartness and athletic prowess and provided their band for social functions. One American Minister was sure the Marines were the best soldiers in Peking: "It was a delight to see the fine-looking companies of American marines, who among all the troops at Peking are noted for their well- groomed, smart, and soldierly appearance. " Despite the relative primitiveness of the barracks, the legation guard lived and trained with a high sense of well-being. Only occasionally would a member of the guard reflect on the incongruity of the American presence in China:  "People always had an eye on you. It was just as if you were in a small boat on a big sea. You could be submerged and nobody would ever know what happened to you." 10 Despite feeling like Caucasian fish in a sea of Asians, the legation guard maintained itself as a critical component of the quarter defense force and an exemplary military unit.11

The upheavals of the early phase of the Chinese Revolution largely spared the Peking guard and placed the responsibility for military action on the ships guards of the Asiatic Fleet. On three occasions in 1911—1913 ships guards went ashore in or near Shanghai for a few days to guard American property and symbolize the State Department's dedication to international rights in China. In addition, Navy gun boats steamed up the Yangtze with Marine detachments embarked to cope with antiforeign riots in Wuchang, Hanyang, and Hankow, but the rival Chinese warlords generally restrained their troops from threatening foreigners or their property. Nevertheless, Marine battalions shuttled to and from the Philippines to provide extra muscle behind the -Asiatic Fleet admiral's pronouncements on the sanctity of foreign property. As the soldiers of Yuan Shih-kai defeated the armies of Sun Yat-sen's military'.- allies, the Yangtze Valley lapsed into an uneasy peace by the beginning of World War I.

The coming of the World War momentarily distracted the Navy from China and fundamentally changed the balance of power in the area by eliminating the Germans, by encouraging the Japanese to in crease their pressure on Manchuria as revolution weakened Russia, and by reducing the European Powers' will to use military force in China to preserve their privileges. Only the Japanese improved their position during the war. The Americans, on the other hand, concentrated on a series of loan and railroad schemes, none of which either profited the investors or altered the balance of power in China. What military presence the United States maintained on the littoral of Asia was siphoned off from China to Asiatic Russia in 1918, when American Marines and soldiers participated in the intervention at Vladivostok to restrain the Japanese and aid the anti-Bolshevik armies in Siberia.

In the meantime, the Chinese Revolution became more radical, primarily because of internal unrest and resistance to Japanese imperialism. In May 1919 Chinese intellectuals and university students set off a series of national urban strikes that emphasized mass resistance to all foreign influences. Coalescing in Sun Yat-sen's reorganized Kuomintang party, the revolutionary movement turned away from the Western powers to pursue a strategy of civil war and closer relations with revolutionary Russia. While the revolutionaries were trying to unify south China through military campaigns and urban revolts, the war lords of the north fought among themselves to succeed the recently deceased Yuan Shih-kai. The military challenge to the Powers in China steadily increased.

As the war for China intensified, the Americans in Peking and Shanghai watched with dismay. Fearing radical urban mobs and undisciplined soldiers, American diplomats called for reinforcements. During a 1922 war between General Wu Pei-fu, the warlord ruler of north China, and General Chang Tso-lin, the generalissimo of all Manchuria, the Peking legation requested and received additional Marines. One ships detachment went to Peking, and a small Asiatic Fleet battalion occupied Tientsin to support the 15th Infantry and prepare for an overland dash to Peking. At Tientsin the Marines guarded American business installations and missions without incident.¹² Two years later the Kuomintang, bolstered by Russian advisers and military aid, once again challenged the warlords, who were themselves still fighting one another. Initially, the International Settlement at Shanghai, the most important foreign enclave in the Yangtze Valley, seemed in most danger from antiforeign mobs. In October 1924 the ships guard of the Asheville joined the settlement defense, soon to be reinforced by a hundred-man expeditionary force from the Philippines. The latter force was later sent to Tientsin to support the legation guard, which had already been expanded by 225 more Marines. Although the legation guard and the Tientsin force were reduced in 1925, additional Marines rotated in and out of Shanghai during most of that year.'²

The pattern of Marine interposition to protect lives and property remained much the same through 1925, as the antiforeign agitation of the Kuomintang spread in the Yangtze Valley and the northern war lords conspired and fought for control of Peking. Early in the year the small expeditionary force at Tientsin withdrew, but another ships guard went ashore in Shanghai, where it was reinforced by an expeditionary force from the Philippines until February 9. In May, after the British-commanded police of the International Settlement had killed twelve student demonstrators, a company of Marines returned to Shanghai to guard American property during a mass boycott of foreign trade directed primarily at the British. Although the ships guards and expeditionary company reembarked by August, other detachments shuttled ashore at Shanghai and Tientsin until the end of the year. Vessels of the Asiatic Fleet hovered off the coast with additional Marine guards. The legation guard in Peking was equally busy. In both 1924 and 1925 the legation defense forces manned their positions to force warlord soldiers to abandon the Tartar Wall, to curb the flow of refugees, and to halt mobs of antiforeign student demonstrators who harried the Legation Quarter. Fearing another Boxer Rising, the Marines patrolled the quarter, organized caches of precious food and supplies, and kept in contact with outlying American missions and businesses. In performing their security duties, the Marines paraded with maximum spit and polish and self-restraint. At no time did the Marines jeopardize the American policy of avoiding combat with the Chinese and maintaining friendly (if distant) cooperation with other foreign armed forces.'⁴

As the Marines patrolled Shanghai, Tientsin, and Peking, the Chinese Revolution deepened in its radicalism and violence, although the foreign communities were not yet seriously touched by either. The Kuomintang, fragmented after Sun's death in 1925, first rejected even nominal control from Peking and established its own national government in Canton, but then fell to fighting within itself. After a series of purges, the more radical wing of the Kuomintang (an uneasy alliance of reformist generals led by Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists) took control of most of the southern provinces and extended its influence into the cities of the Yangtze Valley. Aware of Soviet influence upon the Kuomintang, the Western nations and Japan braced for a "Red" assault upon their extraterritorial privileges and commercial concessions. The first priority of the Kuomintang, however, was to end warlordism in south China, a task accomplished by 1926. Hardly had this task been assumed when Chiang Kai-shek started a purge against the Communists, which added to the disorder in south China and impaired Chiang's ability to wrest control of the Yangtze Valley from the northern coalition of warlords led by Chang Tso-lin.

Still too small to influence events in China with the possible exception of restraining the other Powers, the Marine units ashore or afloat stood ready throughout 1926 to stop urban violence and preserve the bases of the Yangtze Patrol. Although the special guards at Tientsin and Shanghai were back aboard ship by June 1926, Rear Admiral C. S. Williams, commanding the Asiatic Fleet, kept his warships near the coast. In July 1926 the armies of Chiang Kai-shek began to probe north into the Yangtze Valley. The Nationalist advance resurrected the threat of violence against foreigners and galvanized the Asiatic Fleet into action. Admiral Williams ordered Marine units from his ships and the barracks at Cavite and Guam to stand ready for China duty, and in November the Guam detachment actually went ashore at Chinwangtao.

American policy, however, had not shifted to military intervention, for the State Department's position was that military expeditions would neither stop the Nationalists nor bring any special stability to central China. The "Old China hands" in the department generally favored an end to the foreign concessions, but they also feared that an end of extraterritoriality would finish European influence in China and increase the dangers to American lives and property. On the other hand, they thought no Chinese government could protect foreigners or withstand the pressures of the Russians and Japanese without American assistance. Adhering to the Nine Power Treaty (1922), which pledged the powers to respect Chinese sovereignty, the State Department did not want a military confrontation with the Chinese, because it suspected such a confrontation would give the Japanese and Russians a pretext for intervention. At the same time, it recognized that the American military presence might not only save lives but allow the United States to curb the Russian and Japanese imperialists until such time as some stable regime could govern all of China and renegotiate the unequal treaties to China's satisfaction. The Marines were needed in China not only to protect foreign lives and property but to prevent foreign military intervention in the Chinese civil war—without actually fighting. It was a difficult assignment and certainly beyond the capacity of the small detachments with which the Marine Corps had thus far provided the Asiatic Fleet.¹⁵

2

By early 1927 the Nationalist movement had mustered sufficient military strength and popular support to begin Chiang Kai-shek's long-planned offensive against the northern warlord alliance led by Chang Tso-lin. Fanning the emotions of the peasantry and urban workers with antiforeign propaganda against the unequal treaties, revolutionary organizers and political cadres moved ahead of the Nationalist armies into the Yangtze Valley, while the forces of two warlord allies moved cautiously toward Peking from their northwestern strongholds. Although their policy was not to harm foreign lives and property, Nationalist officials and army officers could not curb all inflammatory calls to attack foreigners or control all their soldiers, let alone the urban workers, who were often led by the Communists. Besides, the administrative apparatus of the northern warlord coalition along the Yangtze was rapidly dissolving in the face of the Nationalist advance, and there were few police or disciplined troops to face the urban mobs, bandits, and rowdy soldiers floating between the two warring factions. Under these conditions, the safety of foreigners became increasingly problematic.'⁶

Faced with reports of increased violations of foreign property rights and threats to American citizens, the State Department once again reexamined its position on the Chinese Revolution. Although its pro tests failed to satisfy its own representatives in China and some American businessmen, the State Department refrained from suggesting that military intervention was likely and, in addition, placed limits on Navy cooperation with other foreign gunboats in order to reduce the exposure to incidents sparked by the more militant British and French. The American position was that the unequal treaties were negotiable, but not until one of the Chinese factions had established a stable national government. In the meantime, the State Department wanted to avoid incidents that might inflame American domestic demands for punitive military action against the Chinese. Military protection of a limited sort seemed to serve this purpose. Military forces would not be used to enforce treaty rights, which meant dissociation from the other Powers, even though other nations' military units might help protect American lives and property. The State Department's position, shaped by Secretary of State Frank Kellogg and endorsed by President Calvin Coolidge, was intricate and in an operational sense full of inherent contradictions. It was a diplomatic position designed to make the most sophisticated military commander more than a trifle bilious.'⁷

The United States met the first threats to its nationals in the Yangtze Valley by increasing its naval presence on the river. Two destroyers joined the gunboat flotilla of seven in the autumn of 1926, and armed guards were placed on American-flag vessels, some of which had received sniper fire. American diplomats attempted to move their nationals out of the interior to the valley's larger cities, where foreign settlements offered some protection. In early 1927 the situation worsened when one of these enclaves, the British concession in Hankow, was racked with rioting and then surrendered to the Nationalists. This blow to the legitimacy of the treaty system lead to further disorders in central China, followed by the flight of many Americans to Shanghai and the movement of much of the Asiatic Fleet to Chinese waters. Although Nationalist leaders emphasized that the Americans were not to be harmed, they could not curb the anarchy spreading along the Yangtze Valley.

The foreign position in central China ultimately rested on control of Shanghai, near the mouth of the Yangtze. Established at the end of the First Opium War in 1842, the International Settlement of Shanghai had grown into a state within a state. Nearly one-third of the city's 3 million inhabitants lived in the International Settlement, and its 5,500 acres covered half the city. In addition, the French maintained their own concession south of the International Settlement. The Settlement itself was a unique mix of an Asian and a European city, al though in appearance it was Western and modern. From a military standpoint, it had both advantages and drawbacks. Its chief advantage was that it was bordered on the south by the Whangpoo River, which served both as an avenue for supplies and reinforcements and as a barrier. The geographic disadvantages were more numerous. First, a large creek to the west, the Soochow, broke the Settlement into two subdivisions. Moreover, the Settlement was surrounded by thickly populated Chinese suburbs on three sides, and the city's main railroad system and much of its industrial area lay outside its boundaries. Politically, the Settlement had its own government and police force as well as a volunteer militia, but it could not have functioned without its Chinese inhabitants—even if they also were a potentially hostile mob.

As the center of foreign trade in china and cultural center of European China, Shanghai could not be abandoned without serious diplomatic repercussions. From December 1926 to January 1927, consular officials and military commanders in the Settlement discussed defense plans and concluded that they needed reinforcements, a conclusion endorsed by John V. A. MacMurray, the American Minister in Peking. Although Great Britain agreed to send a full division to Shanghai, Coolidge announced that the United States would not send troops, as it had no concessions to defend. The State Department and Admiral Williams, however, advised the President that the sanctity of the Settlement and the protection of American lives and property were indivisible. As a precautionary measure and a possible restraint against European excesses, Coolidge approved the assembly of the 4th Marine Regiment at San Diego on January 25, and three days later the regiment was ordered to sail for China. Although the State Department asked both Chinese factions to neutralize Shanghai and in sisted that the Americans were not intervening, the Chinese interpreted the act as hostile military intervention.'⁸

Fresh from guarding the mails west of the Missouri River from bandits, the headquarters and two battalions of the 4th Regiment sailed westward on the transport Chaumont on February 3. Arriving at an anchorage at the Standard Oil compound five miles from Shanghai on February 24, the regiment learned that President Coolidge had rejected Minister MacMurray's recommendation that the Marines join the Settlement defense force. Instead the Marines would remain aboard the Chaumont until there was a direct threat to American lives and property. MacMurray continued to insist that one mission could not be divorced from another, and the State Department compromised by transferring responsibility for landing the regiment to Admiral Williams. When the regiment's commander, Colonel Charles S. Hill, conferred with the British major general commanding the Settlement defense force and Admiral Williams, he learned that the Settlement regulars (primarily a British division of 13,000 men) and the Shanghai Volunteer Corps (SVC) wanted a perimeter defense, but that Williams would only allow the Marines (should they land) to perform internal security duty. Following his scant guidance from Washington, Williams judged that Marine patrols would help the Settlement yet would avoid fighting with Chinese troops.'⁹

Penned aboard their transport by the caution of Admiral Williams and the American consul in Shanghai, the Marines waited, watched, and stewed both physically and mentally in their hot, crowded compartments. The only contact with Shanghai came for those officers and sergeants who reconnoitered the Settlement and for small liberty parties. Finally, the whole regiment made a march through the Settlement on March 5 for exercise and psychological effect. In the meantime, the regimental staff planned in an emergency to send one battalion to the Settlement's northeastern section and the other to the western section. The Marines' area would cover two-thirds of the Settlement, but they would be prohibited from manning the sandbagged, barricaded perimeter defenses, which were manned by the British, Japanese, other European regulars, and the SVC. The Marines would share the internal security mission with the multinational Settlement police.

As the Nationalist armies slowly closed on Shanghai and tension in the city mounted during March, the 4th Regiment finally landed to stay in the afternoon of March 21. That same day the Shanghai municipal council declared a state of emergency and requested assistance from all foreign troops to preserve order in the Settlement. Persuaded that the emergency was real, Admiral Williams and the American consul ordered the regiment, which had just returned from another practice march, to land immediately. As the Marines ran to their posts during the next five hours, fighting broke out in the Chinese sections of the city between the Communist workers' militia and the warlord soldiery guarding the city's suburbs. The fighting raged for two days until the Nationalists arrived, and the British at one moment actually opened fire and killed warlord troops attempting to storm the Settlement in search of a refuge. The Marines did not join the perimeter defense (much to the disappointment of both the Marines and the British defense commander) and experienced little trouble with their internal patrol duties. The Shanghai situation, however, had not improved from the Western viewpoint. The Communists and radical Nationalist troops controlled the Chinese city, and the Settlement government feared attack.²⁰

The long-feared antiforeign incident occurred in Nanking, not Shanghai, and its effect was to bring more Marines to China. On March 24, 1927, uncontrolled Nationalist troops pillaged foreign property, including several consulates, in Nanking and killed and wounded some foreigners. British, American, and Japanese warships off Nanking put landing parties ashore, and two American destroyers shelled a Chinese mob closing upon American refugees on Standard Oil Hill. The sailors themselves took casualties, and the foreign businessmen, missionaries, and diplomatic officials fled to their warships. The local naval commanders planned to bombard the city but were restrained at the last minute by their superiors. The incident alarmed European commanders in China. In Shanghai Admiral Williams conferred with newly arrived Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler, who had been sent to command all Marine forces in China, and learned that more Marines were available for foreign duty. Butler was dismayed that the Peking legation wanted an Army brigade to replace the Marines and insisted that Williams request Marine reinforcements immediately. As Butler wrote his old comrade, Commandant John A. Lejeune: "You surely agree with me that it would have been suicide for our Corps, had the Army come to Shanghai and we be put on a ship and sent home." 21 With Butler's prodding, Williams on March 25 requested and received Marine reinforcements: two battalions of the 6th Regiment, an artillery battery, two aircraft squadrons, and a brigade head quarters and service company for China duty.

Although the Nationalists were more energetic in controlling their troops and soothing the Powers after the Nanking Incident, the flow of American troops to China mounted, buoyed up by temporary Congressional and public enthusiasm for intervention. There was, how ever, little taste for punitive action in Washington, and the State Department did not modify Admiral Williams's orders. In fact, in the next year, it made sure that Commander Asiatic Fleet understood that he was to protect American lives by evacuating Americans from the interior of China and was to guard property only when necessary as part of the lifesaving mission. In fact and practice, the American intervention was designed not only to protect American lives but to increase American influence among the foreign diplomatic community. That influence was used to curb European and Japanese plans for joint military action. To amplify its voice in diplomatic counsels, the United States increased its military strength in China by dispatching a brigade of Marines. By preparing to fight but not fighting, this brigade was supposed to win Chinese respect through good troop discipline and prevent other Powers from waging war by refusing to cooperate with them.²²

As the remainder of the 3d Brigade sailed for China in early April 1927, the 4th Regiment established a garrison in Shanghai that was to last nearly fifteen years. To save his worn troops, Butler changed the foot patrols to small but heavily armed motorized patrols and, as the threat of Chinese action waned in April, persuaded Williams to allow the Marines to hand over their patrol duties to the Settlement police and the SVC. By the time the rest of the 3d Brigade arrived, the Marines were settled into leased barracks and had assumed the role of emergency reserve force. Although the 3d Brigade had sailed without rations and ammunition, but afire with the mission "to keep the Communists out of Shanghai," the Marines soon learned that their daily problems were reduced to standing rigorous inspections, training, finding Chinese and White Russian girlfriends, and supervising the coolies who did all the routine garrison labor for a pittance. Duty in Shanghai rapidly assumed a quaint imperial character: athletic contests, shooting matches, much leisure time, spit and polish parades, friendly rivalry with the British troops in sports and band concerts, and a good deal of free time to explore the city's many sensory fascinations.²³

No sooner, however, had the situation at Shanghai stabilized than the American legation in Peking, watching the Nationalist armies advance toward north China, requested more troops for duty in Tientsin. Encouraged by Admiral Williams and Brigadier General Joseph Castner, the senior Army commander in China, MacMurray asked that an Army brigade be sent to Tientsin. The War Department turned down a request to activate War Plan YELLOW, the contingency plan for the relief of Peking and the defense of Shanghai. Rebuffed by the Army, the State Department asked the Navy Department for more Marines and a build-up of the number of warships in Chinese waters, which reached fifty in May 1927. Secretary of State Kellogg agreed to rein force the 15th Infantry at Tientsin, but only as an enclave to which the legation could retreat. There would not be another march on Peking unless the legation was directly attacked, which seemed unlikely.

A third Marine force sailed for China to join the 3d Brigade and allow Butler to divide his force between Shanghai and Tientsin in June 1927. The reinforcements included a full artillery battalion of the 10th Regiment (less the battery already in Shanghai), a tank platoon, an engineer company, aviation support troops, and the two missing battalions of the two infantry regiments already in China. Formed as a provisional regiment and held in the Philippines, the infantry did not join the brigade in Shanghai like the other troops, but its men were eventually sent to China and absorbed into the 4th and 6th Regiments or used to form (along with ships guards and other detachments) an additional unit, the 12th Regiment. Leaving the 4th Regiment in Shanghai, Butler concentrated the rest of the 3d Brigade in Tientsin. With the legation guard and the reinforced 15th Infantry, the American troops in northern China soon numbered more than 5,000 in a force of 16,000 foreign troops.

When Butler arrived in Tientsin he found that his brigade's mission had not been simplified by the redeployment or the reinforcements. His troops were to protect American lives only, but to do so by pre venting foreign intervention through noncooperation and by cultivating good relations with Chinese military commanders and the general populace. Under State Department interpretations, the 3d Brigade, unlike the 15th Infantry and the Peking legation guard, had no obligation to cooperate with other foreign forces under the terms of the Boxer Protocol. Butler, for example, told other commanders that his Marines might save the Americans in Peking, but they would not guard the Tientsin—Peking railroad or join any integrated defense command for the Tientsin concessions. Attempting to simplify his complex mission, Butler encouraged Minister MacMurray to move to the Tientsin enclave, but the stubborn diplomat would not leave Peking, thus leaving the Marines with the problem of planning to relieve the legation through unilateral action. At the same time, Butler did not say that he would categorically refuse cooperation or combat, and he sent staff representatives to foreign commanders' conferences.24

Throughout the rest of 1927 and all of 1928, Butler's 3d Brigade supported American foreign policy in China by its mere presence and through delicate negotiations with the Nationalists in the Yangtze Valley and with the warlord armies still holding north China. In Shanghai the 4th Regiment found that the worst enemies were boredom, drunkenness, and venereal disease, but the successive regimental commanders countered the lack of action with a rigorous schedule of military training, athletics, and social events. Heartened by the cheap ness of coolie labor and entertainment, the troops remained exemplary garrison Marines and enjoyed contact with the British battalions in martial competitions and formal parades. Whether in forest green or khaki uniforms, the regiment became a showpiece in appearance and won the affection of the International Settlement. The regimental staff collected intelligence, made defense plans, and sent out small detachments to ride shotgun for the Yangtze Patrol, but the 4th Regiment found Shanghai routine if exotic garrison duty.²²

In Tientsin the rest of the 3d Brigade found China service more demanding, if only because of Smedley Butler's presence and the requirement that the Marines stand ready to relieve Peking. Butler divided much of his time negotiating with the Japanese, who were taking an increasingly militant attitude toward the Chinese, and with the local Army commanders, who wanted the Marines firmly integrated into the Protocol defense system. The Chinese population and warlord forces were the least of Butler's problems, for good troop behavior and careful liaison removed most antagonistic issues. Butler kept his men busy with military training, athletics, and organized entertainment. He also held periodic exercises to test the brigade's readiness to move by truck to Peking. By preloading vehicles and building emergency benches and supply pallets that could be mounted on flatbed trucks, Butler organized a relief force of two thousand men and eighteen aircraft capable of getting on the road to Peking in two hours. His Marines were equally prepared to defend Tientsin if necessary. As one commander of the Asiatic Fleet remarked, Butler and his men showed unexpected restraint in performing duties "very unusual and quite different from anything the Marines usually are called upon to perform." 26 By the end of 1928 the Tientsin force reached a peak strength of 3,372 Marines even though the Navy Department wanted to begin reducing both the Shanghai and Tientsin forces. The State Department balked at withdrawal, believing that the brigade restrained the Japanese and encouraged the Chinese to respect foreign treaty rights. As with other interventions, it was often easier to commit troops than to withdraw them.²⁷

Butler fully appreciated the delicacy of the brigade's position, both in its relationships with other military units in China and in American domestic politics. Even after the Nationalists finally occupied north China in the summer of 1928, Butler thought the brigade's presence in Shanghai and Peking was crucial to maintaining American influence (however benign) on events in China—as long as there was no fighting. He also thought that the 15th Infantry should be withdrawn in order to break any ties to the Protocol forces. He was not, however, as enthusiastic as the State Department about keeping the Marines in Tientsin, primarily because he recognized that the ambiguities in American foreign policy might eventually force the Marines into un popular pacification operations, even to save American lives:

To ensure that there was no fighting with the Chinese, Butler's staff announced Marine Corps training flights, did not buy permanent bar racks, worked closely with local Chinese commanders, and checked Japanese plans to expand the areas controlled by foreign troops.

Even though Nationalist control of north China was tenuous, the commander of the Asiatic Fleet proposed that the 3d Brigade be with drawn from Tientsin since to support it would be difficult in case of war and because the 15th Infantry was adequate to maintain a refuge for American citizens. The State Department finally concurred, and throughout the last half of 1928 the Tientsin force returned to the United States or the Philippines. The 4th Regiment, however, was left in Shanghai to preserve the base of the Yangtze Patrol and reinforce the Settlement defense force. MacMurray wanted both Marine contingents withdrawn; Butler recommended that both remain on reduced status and be rotated to and from the Philippines. The Navy compromised and left the 4th Regiment in place, arguing that it could be hurriedly reinforced or evacuated by sea if necessary. Although the 3d Brigade disbanded in 1929 as the threat to foreigners waned, the Marine Corps added Shanghai to its list of permanent stations.²⁹

3

For the legation guard, three companies of some five hundred officers and men, the rhythm of garrison life was seldom troubled by China's turmoil. The Marines drilled with their weapons—which included machine guns, mortars, and light artillery—took practice marches, shot the rifle qualification course near the ocean each year, and spent half of each day in athletics. Coolies' did all the heavy, messy work. The guard's primary duty remained the defense of the Legation Quarter and scattered American missions and businesses in the city. To assist them the Marines in 1907 had created a small mounted detachment (the "Horse Marines") for use in crowd control and for warning the Americans living in the hinterlands. Mounted originally on cast-off Mongolian ponies from the Peking racetrack, the "Horse Marines" became an elite unit noted for their smart appearance, elan in mounted drill, and arrogance. The general attraction to service in the mounted detachment was quite practical. The detachment invariably played the "in field problems and was allowed to gallop back to the city at their conclusion, thus putting "Horse Marines" into the best bars and brothels long before their comrades afoot got liberty. Such privileges compensated for the chore of grooming the unfriendly ponies the Marines rode.⁸⁰

The legation guard had a series of scares when the city changed hands among the Chinese generals, and the Marines had to tolerate an increasingly unfriendly Japanese detachment, but life in Peking was still cheap, entertaining, and exotic. In addition to military training, the guard challenged the 15th Infantry and the foreign detachments to virtually every game anyone could play, maintained fancy clubs, and scheduled an unending round of dances, smokers, and dinners. Even Japanese occupation of the rest of Peking in 1937 did not halt the social life of the isolated legation community. For the Marines who served in Peking and others who went there only in their imaginations, the curious ambience of the city was captured in the short stories of Captain John W. Thomason, Jr., who served in Peking in the 1930s. An accomplished illustrator and author, Thomason wrote for the Saturday Evening Post, Harper's, and The New Yorker. His tales of simple Marines in the confusing Orient, collected in Salt Winds and Gobi Dust (1934), linked China and the Marine Corps together in the minds of Americans who had never heard of the 4th Regiment. Yet the legation guard became an anachronism even though it provided at least a symbolic presence. In 1938 the Army finally received State Department permission to withdraw the 15th Infantry; a detachment of two hundred Marines from Peking took up the watch in Tientsin and helped fight a massive flood there in 1939. Two years later both detachments, stranded by diplomatic indecision, surrendered in the early days of the war with Japan.²'

For the 4th Regiment in Shanghai, duty in China was as comfortable as it was for the legation guard. Quarters were roomy and cheap; servants were plentiful; the food and drink were delicious and cheap; the women friendly and cheap. All the enlisted men paid a "boy" to maintain their uniforms and equipment. Dodging the Settlement's Sikh police, the Marines roared off from their training and group athletics into Shanghai's night life, signing chits to be honored on paydays and arguing about baseball, beer, and their companies' prowess. Many a Marine boarded the Navy transport Henderson (so decrepit that it was nicknamed Henny Maru) for home with reluctance.22

The Japanese army interrupted the 4th Marines'  Asian idyll in 1931. Concerned over the Nationalists' growing military strength and Chiang Kai-shek's pledge to bring Manchuria under complete Chinese control, Japanese officers launched a campaign of conquest with Tokyo's permission. The United States responded by condemning the act and refused to recognize the Japanese successor state of Manchukuo. Unable to mount a successful military reaction to the Mukden Incident, the Nationalist regime advocated nonresistance, but it could not stop anti-Japanese riots in central China; one such mob in Shanghai killed five Japanese monks, and many Chinese boycotted Japanese businesses throughout China. In retaliation a Japanese mob in Shanghai destroyed Chinese shops and killed several Chinese. While the local Japanese commander, an admiral of the Special Naval Landing Force, negotiated for an apology and reparations, the Chinese general commanding the 19th Route Army moved his troops into the city's northern suburbs. Fearing a Chinese attack, the Settlement defense force rushed to the barricades. The 4th Marines, flanked by a British brigade and the SVC, held the middle sector of the Settlements, with its front lines on Soochow Creek. The Japanese held all of the Settlement east of the creek and north of the Whangpoo River, but instead of waiting on the defense, they attacked the Chinese on January 28, 1932.

For the next three months the 4th Marines tried to keep their portion of the Settlement neutral. The regiment had two problems: preventing the Japanese from using their sector for attacks on the Chinese and stopping mobs of Japanese civilians from massacring Chinese within the Settlement. Through firmness, restraint, and military preparedness, the Marines curbed the rioters and turned back Japanese units that had come into the sector to "protect" Japanese property from enviable firing positions along the Chinese flank on Soochow Creek. The American position was strengthened by reinforcements. Although the Hoover administration had no taste for direct military action against Japan (the Army—Navy Joint Board thought a war with Japan would last ten years), Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson wanted the Shanghai garrison increased in order to deter. the Japanese and passively to assist the 19th Route Army, which was fighting well. In early February the 4th Marines received four hundred additional men and the 31st U.S. Infantry to strengthen their lines. The additional troops settled into the sandbagged machine gun nests and infantry strongpoints. Although stray shells and bombs hit the Settlement, there were no further encroachments into the neutralized portion guarded by the Americans. The Japanese, however, flanked the 19th Route Army from the north and forced its withdrawal.  The fighting ended in early March with the withdrawal of the Chinese army. After international negotiations, the Japanese also returned to their Settlement positions, and the crisis passed. Without a casualty, the 4th Marines had again not only protected the Settlement but probably also contributed to the Japanese decision to halt the fighting.²²

The 4th Marines' success in defending the Settlement in 1932 and the constabulary naval actions of the Yangtze Patrol convinced the State Department that the continued military presence in China was a useful adjunct of American diplomacy with both the Chinese and the Japanese. At a minimum the Shanghai enclave served as a refuge for the ten thousand Americans left in China, but the Marines and Navy also supported "by peaceful means influences contributory to [the] preservation and encouragement of orderly processes" and demonstrated America's willingness to back commitments like the "Open Door." 84 Even though the 4th Marines' presence was largely symbolic, the regiment took seriously its new responsibilities for de fending the Soochow Creek line in the Settlement's southern portion. After the 1932 crisis the 4th Marines grew to three battalions of 1,600 men, a strength the commanding officer considered essential for his sector's defense. Two years later, however, the force fell again to a thousand men when the State Department (then engaged in disarmament talks) requested a reduction in American troops

Far from the Shanghai Racecourse, where the 4th Marines paraded in tailored uniforms to the music of their own fife and drum corps, the struggle for the mastery of China continued. Although by 1935 Chiang Kai-shek had managed to establish dictatorial control over the Kuomintang and the Nanking government, he would not free his armies from a bitter anti-guerrilla campaign against the Communists. Taking advantage of the Nationalists' internal squabbles, the Japanese through puppet warlords extended their hegemony south from Manchuria. Chiang's efforts to appease Japan met with little success, and the Japanese government itself slid under the control of Army factions committed to the conquest of China for economic and ideological reasons. In July 1937 Japanese and Chinese troops clashed in several incidents around Peking; on August 8 the ancient capital fell to a Japanese column, and the second Sino-Japanese war had begun.

The war came to Shanghai as quickly as it spread throughout northern China. During July Chinese troops moved into the northern suburb of Chapei across Soochow Creek from the International Settlement, a position that confronted the Japanese-defended portion of the Settlement. Thousands of civilians fled into the western portion of the Settlement and the French Concession to the south. As the British and American troops went on alert, the Japanese moved warships and Special Naval Landing Force units into Shanghai. After two Japanese were killed by Chinese militia on August 9, the Japanese attacked Chinese positions in Chapei and north of the city on August 13. Since the Nationalists were preparing their main defenses along the Yangtze Valley, which Shanghai anchored near the sea, the Japanese offensive was not a retaliatory raid but the beginning of a full-scale attack.

For the 4th Marines the paramount concern was preventing the Japanese from using their sector to flank Chapei and preserving order in the Settlement. The Marines had orders not to fight the Japanese, and the first mission rested on diplomacy and bluff. The Chinese army was fighting well around Shanghai, so the Japanese did not try to flank it from the south but instead landed reinforcements from the Yangtze north of the city. A Japanese tactical decision thus made the Marines' duties somewhat easier. Unlike the 1932 engagement, however, the second battle of Shanghai did not spare the International Settlement, for Chinese airplanes attacking Japanese positions and warships mistakenly bombed the European sectors, causing more than a thousand casualties, mostly Chinese. In the chaos the Marines evacuated Americans living northeast of Soochow Creek and fully manned their perimeter defenses. With fifty-eight fortified positions to man, the regiment was hard pressed for troops, and even support troops performed infantry duties. As the fighting north of the creek continued unabated, Admiral Harry E. Yarnell, commander of the Asiatic Fleet, asked for reinforcements. Even though the 4th Marines had managed to negotiate neutrality with the Japanese, the Settlement was far from secure.³⁶

Reluctant to confuse his command structure by asking the Army for an infantry regiment from the Philippines, Yarnell requested more Marines, and at San Diego the Marine Corps ordered a brigade head quarters (the 2nd) and the 6th Marines to prepare for expeditionary duty. The mobilization was not an entirely happy event for Head quarters, for it stripped the Pacific Fleet of its only Marine regiment. In addition, the 6th Marines lost nearly a third of its strength when men with less than a year to serve refused to extend their enlistments for foreign duty; unlike 1927 China duty was no longer novel and promised little action. Nevertheless, within six weeks of being alerted the 2d Brigade headquarters had arrived in Shanghai and the 6th Marines were replacing the exhausted 4th Marines along the perimeter defenses. The two regiments, which had been supplemented by two ships guards in August, gave the American sector a sturdy defense.³⁷

Until the Japanese tore open the Chinese lines north of the city in late October 1937, the 2nd Brigade manned its outposts and patrolled its sector. Only three Marines were slightly wounded by stray bullets. After the Chinese army withdrew, the Settlement defense force found itself more concerned about Japanese intentions than ever before. Although he was certain that the immediate threat to the Settlement had passed, Brigadier General John C. Beaumont, the brigade commander, thought that the Japanese would not allow the International Settlement to live peacefully. The Japanese now controlled the lower Yangtze with a fleet and 200,000 troops. The European position was perilous.³⁸

The collapse of the Nationalist position on the Yangtze in late 1937 eliminated what little influence the American military presence in China might have had upon the Japanese, but in Washington's eyes it did not yet justify the Marines' complete withdrawal. Basically sympathetic to the Chinese and hostile to Japan, the Roosevelt administration struggled to find some way to restrain the Japanese without actually fighting. This position assumed even more importance after Japanese aircraft bombed the gunboat Panay in December 1937, and the Japanese by word and deed demonstrated their hostility to the European gunboats on the Yangtze. Maintaining the International Settlement was one way to preserve a Western presence in China as well as save foreign lives; the city also still served as a principal base for the Yangtze Patrol. As the city slipped into the quiet of the moribund in early 1938, all of the Brigade but the 4th Marines left Shanghai, although the 6th Marines remained alerted for China duty.³³ The immediate American policy, however, was to avoid conflict with Japan and evacuate those citizens who wanted to leave China. A European island in the sea of the Japanese army, the International Settlement struggled along with fake gaiety and growing grimness as the Japanese officers and their puppet Chinese officials harried the remaining Europeans.⁴⁰

Frustrated by his inability to halt Japanese aggression and restrained by Congressional and public opinion, Franklin Roosevelt could not use the Marine Corps for military purposes, but he could and did use one Marine officer to educate himself and stir pro-Chinese public opinion. That officer was Captain Evans F., Carlson, whom the President had met and had come to admire in' 1937, when Carlson had commanded the Marine guard at White Sulphur Springs, Georgia. Carlson was equally impressed with the President's philanthropy toward fellow polio sufferers and admired the humanitarian programs of the New Deal. Carlson himself was an idealistic, romantic military adventurer. He had served nearly seven years in the Army as an enlisted man and officer before enlisting as a Marine private in 1922. Commissioned the next year, he served with distinction in Nicaragua and spent two long tours in China, where he learned the language and made many acquaintances. In late 1937 Roosevelt sent Carlson back to Shanghai, ostensibly to study Chinese, but in reality for informal political and military re porting on the Chinese capacity to wage war. For nearly a year Carlson wandered about the Chinese hinterland, visiting both Nationalist and Communist armies. Impressed by both forces, Carlson reported Chinese patriotism and valor in glowing terms. He especially admired the egalitarianism of the Communist armies and their programs of social reform, and he suggested to Roosevelt that the American armed forces needed more social democracy. Upon his return in 1938, however, Carlson chose to leave the Marine Corps and the cause of military reform in order to speak and write in favor of pro-Chinese intervention. The Marine Corps, however, had not seen the last of Carlson and his "Red" concepts of leadership.⁴¹

In Shanghai the 4th Marines watched the twilight of European imperialism in China. The Marine regiment and a small British brigade were all that remained to stiffen the Settlement's government and its municipal police, both of which were harassed by the Japanese. Colonel Charles F. B. Price and his subordinates found themselves in continuing negotiations with the Japanese commanders over jurisdictional disputes and foreign rights. At stake were the autonomous Settlement government, its police force, and the SYC, as well as foreign access to facilities outside the Settlement. In essence, the Japanese argued that the Settlement no longer needed any military forces or police, because the Japanese would now protect everyone from the Chinese. The British and Americans rejected this position, and the 4th Marines helped stop Japanese agitation within the Settlement. From 1938 through 1941 the Marines mounted internal security patrols to eject Japanese agitators, break up mobs, guard buildings against terrorist bombings, and man the perimeter defenses. After 1940 they performed these tasks alone, for the British brigade withdrew. For all its discipline and expertise, the 4th Marines' position was untenable. By the end of 1940 the Commander Asiatic Fleet was urging the regiment's withdrawal, and the Yangtze Patrol itself began to abandon the river. Marine dependents were sent home, and the, regiment prepared desperate break out plans. Finally, as diplomatic relations with Japan worsened in 1941, the State Department consented to the 4th Marines' departure. At the end of November 1941 the regiment's last echelon marched to its awaiting transport, the cheers of the Settlement inhabitants evoking sorrow and some sense of guilt for its eleventh-hour escape. The Shanghai adventure had ended, and with it a phase of Chinese history, American diplomacy, and Marine Corps service in the Orient.⁴²

The 4th Marines' destination: Corregidor.

Copied from Book titled

"Semper Fidelis The History Of The United States Marine Corps"

By Allan R. Millett