Office of the Historian

Marshall Mission Files, Lot 54–D270

Memorandum by General Chou En-lai to General Marshall

MM 014
Nanking, 6 June 1946.

With regard to trusum11 Nos. 135 and 13612 dealing with the repatriation I wish to make the following comments based on reports from Yenan Headquarters as a supplement thereof:-

1.
The government troops in Shansi do retain in their various units 7,000 Japanese soldiers who are distributed as follows:
a.
In Tatung (113°13’-40°8’) and vicinity—1,000, of which one special service battalion, comprising 300 odd men, under the command of General Chiao Ke-min, is stationed in the Tatung city and the Wangchuang village to the north.
b.
At Yangchuan, (113°34’-37°52’)—a special service detachment, [Page 992] numbering 1,200, which is commanded by a Japanese named Fujita Yushin.
c.
At Yutse, (112°44’–37°42’)—an engineering detachment, about one thousand in number, which is regrouped from the former 229th Battalion of the Japanese Independent 10th Infantry Brigade.
d.
At Taiyuan—Officers’ Training Camp, 200 Jap officers have been enrolled, while more are coming.
e.
At Tsingyuan, (112° 17’–37°37’)—about 200, being a part of the 227th Battalion of the Japanese 10th Infantry Brigade.
f.
At Yuanping, (112°44’–38°45’)—150. At Taiku, (112°31’–37°26’)—200 odd from Takasaki Detachment.
g.
At Sohsien, (112°24’–39°22’)—3,000 Japs are enrolled into Tuan Cheng-yu’s unit.
h.
Apart from the foregoing Japanese units can be found in each of those county towns such as Chiaocheng, Chihsien, Pingyao, Chieh-hsiu, and so forth (all to the south of Taiyuan); these have not been included in the reports of Yenan Headquarters on account of lacking exact figures.
2.
Except a few of the afore-mentioned Japanese have been installed as instructors the overwhelming part is deployed to garrison the various localities. Only for disguise had those Japanese been reported as technicians.

I therefore recommend that instruction be issued to Executive Headquarters to the effect that while teams be ordered to push for the disarmament of the Japanese, swift repatriation of the thus disarmed Japanese be undertaken, so that they would not be exploited by the government troops as an instrument to augment the civil war.

[Signature in Chinese]
(
Chou En-lai
)
  1. Truce summary by Executive Headquarters, Peiping.↩
  2. Neither printed.↩