793.94/12301: Telegram
The Ambassador in China ( Johnson ) to the Secretary of State
[Received 6:50 p.m.]
76. Tokyo’s 63, February 1, 1 p.m. Seven months have elapsed since the incident at the Marco Polo bridge precipitated the present invasion of China by Japan. Japanese armies have succeeded during this time, at enormous cost in lives, material and treasure, in driving the Nationalist Government of China and its armies away from the coast, from Shanghai to Shanhaikwan, and have occupied the ruined and depopulated cities of Hangchow, Shanghai, Soochow, Wusih, Nanking, and Wuhu. They hold Tsingtao, Tsinan, Taiyuan, Tientsin and Peiping. They have systematically destroyed Chinese industry in these areas. They control the railways between Shanghai and Suiyuan, and a good part of the Peiping–Hankow Railway. Japanese bombing planes based within this area are able at will to bomb practically all of the other commercial centers of China. It is believed that Japanese military forces, if disposed to do so, and at further considerable expense of lives, material and treasure, can in time occupy the Lunghai Railway, Hankow and the rest of the railway between Peiping and Hankow. If this happens Japanese military forces will then have occupied practically the whole of the Yangtze and Yellow River valleys where the bulk of China’s population lives and from which it draws the bulk of its food supply. But the Japanese military will still be a long way from conquering or occupying the whole of China.
The intellectual life which has dominated the areas thus occupied and which has given character to modern Nationalist China will then have been driven into the western, more mountainous and less fertile areas. There is no apparent evidence that this intellectual leadership and what is left of its armed forces are prepared to capitulate and make peace. It is true that what is left of China’s armed forces will be without equipment necessary to enable it to wage effective offensive war on the plains, but it will still have access to sufficient quantities of small arms and ammunition to enable it to equip mobile units which will roam the country attacking trains, destroying crops and supplies, attacking Japanese and those working with them. The Japanese military will therefore have to garrison its holdings and police every mile of the lines of communications along which supplies for its forces must be carried. The future prospect for the plains occupied by the Japanese during the next 3 or 4 years promises little in the way of peaceful development. I believe that conditions throughout those areas will be chaotic in the extreme, with robberies, assassinations, and kidnappings.
[Page 65]The prospect for the immediate future is hopeless unless Japan is prepared to send far greater forces into China to enable her to garrison and police the occupied areas. Trade is and will continue to be completely disrupted. Chinese industry no longer exists. Travel in the interior is already well nigh impossible.
The situation as between China and Japan at the present time is therefore at a stalemate, with Japan’s armies carrying destruction into the very areas from whose population she apparently expected to receive cooperation and where she expected to market her goods.
A declaration of war will not in my opinion materially affect this situation. It will have its effect upon trade through Hong Kong and possibly Hanoi, but it will not lessen the necessity for Japan to continue the present heavy expense and future military operations. It will not close China’s back doors through India, Burma and Turkestan. Japanese hostilities have entered the stage of long time operations to pacify immense areas where the populations have been impoverished and terrorized. Japan must soon come to a realization that up to the present time all that her efforts have netted her has been hostility abroad and expense in China. Japan can hardly expect to recoup this expense from Chinese trade in another 20 or 30 years.
Repeated to Peiping and Shanghai. Shanghai please relay to Tokyo and show to Commander-in-Chief.