Talk:Second Sino-Japanese War

Erroneous Casualty Statistics

The casualty figures are not supported by the citation. I have Clodfelter's book in front of me as I type this and there is no page 956. Where are these extreme figures coming from? Clodfelter estimates 3 million dead and states that the highest estimate is 6,325,000. (see page 394 -which does exits).

-Update: and now my edited figures, based on Clodfelter, 394, have been reverted by someone back to the 17-22 million based on non-existent page 956. So what is the point of the talk section exactly? Do we want facts or do we just want to make up stuff that sounds cool and cite non-existent sources?

We should have facts. Just keep reverting until the limit and then go to his talk page and work it out. Show him the proof Alexysun (talk) 16:01, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Has this matter been solved yet? It's been 9 months now. Heavenly Smile (talk) 12:29, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Lead suggestion

Hi, I gave the lead a quick onceover. I think it needs to mention somewhere that China had been fighting the Chinese Civil War prior and throughout much of its conflict with Japan. Can't figure out where to put that though; maybe first or third para? toobigtokale (talk) 21:40, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

What do you think of after this sentence: "From 1931 to 1937, China and Japan continued to skirmish in small, localized "incidents". But with the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, a dispute between Japanese and Chinese troops in Beijing, the conflict escalated into a full-scale invasion of the rest of China." And reference the Second United Front under which China confronted Japan, with a wikilink.

Don't think I would say "much" of the war with China. That's true if a person counts back to the bridge incident. Which is not necessarily a wrong place to count back to, but not everyone will. JArthur1984 (talk) 22:20, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Agreed, that seems like a good spot. I've been looking for a bit but can't decide how I'd word it; could you give it a shot?

I used the phrase "much of its conflict" a bit tactically; not the War specifically but just the overall conflict since the early 1930s 🙃 toobigtokale (talk) 06:19, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Sorry I missed that nuance! Sure, I’ll venture a sentence in this regard and we can revise further if needed. JArthur1984 (talk) 13:16, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

"Japan formally surrendered on 2 September 1945, following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

Hello, the text quoted above lies in the introduction. But: is the Soviet declaration of war on Japan and subsequent attack (which puts its military desesperate situation even further) to be added?

For want of an account, Adrijani 2A01:CB04:BC:3200:543C:D5AB:2AFE:5F41 (talk) 22:53, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Long; incomprehensible

Volunteer Marek, I agree with the tag, in addition to the existing 'too long' one. Would you consider tagging specific sections if they were particularly difficult, or is it throughout? I thought, though it is 13 years old, to try looking at the version of the article that was nominated for GA for clarity, and wow, that was either a bad nomination, or it's new information to how much lower standards were. Does anyone have any more specific anchor points for how they might tackle this mammoth? Remsense留 05:48, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

In my view, the weakest area is the discussion on the actual course of the war. Largely unsourced, often too prose-y. JArthur1984 (talk) 13:28, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Also a lot of "play-by-play" but with skipping context and important developments in between. Reading it you constantly are asking yourself, as a reader, "what is this referring to? what is this talking about? who's this that all of sudden is mentioned?" Volunteer Marek 17:19, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

@Remsense: I just stumbled by and found this completely unreadable. Starting with the lead. I think the first paragraph is good. I would throw away everything south of there until the line "China was recognized as one of the Big Four Allies during the war, regained all territories lost to Japan" and maybe "and became one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council" in the fourth paragraph.

I think "Entrances of the Western Allies" is huge. "Foreign aid/Western Allies/US" is oversized (US-centric?).

How much post-war stuff do you want? The Chinese Civil War has its own article. Taiwan is linked to "Legal status of Taiwan" but not "Taiwan" itself.

I don't do military history, this seems sort of obvious, I just thought that something posted might give you a hook to go on from. Sammy D III (talk) 21:40, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

The Chinese flag is the Taiwanese flag?

The Chinese flag has five yellow stars on a red background, and in this article, the Chinese flag comes out as the Taiwanese flag. Wouldn't it be possible to cause confusion if the flag of Taiwan was used as the flag of China when it was not even a war between Taiwan and Japan? Mamiamauwy (talk) 13:56, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

The flag is that of the Republic of China, which evacuated to the island of Taiwan after the Chinese Civil War. In common parlance, we now call that country "Taiwan" in English, but the continuity of the government is still there. Remsense诉 13:59, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Trimmed unsourced version of Operation Ichigo

I recently trimmed the unsourced description of Operation Ichigo and replaced it with a sourced version adapted from that page.

I want to retain or archive the unsourced version here. There's some decent material here that could be restored if someone wants to find a citation for it. It's not what we want on the page when sourced material is otherwise available, but it could be worked with in the future.

_______________________

The United States saw the Chinese theater as a means to tie up a large number of Japanese troops, as well as being a location for American airbases from which to strike the Japanese home islands. In 1944, with the Japanese position in the Pacific deteriorating rapidly, the IJA mobilized over 500,000 men and launched Operation Ichi-Go, their largest offensive of World War II, to attack the American airbases in China and link up the railway between Manchuria and Vietnam. This brought major cities in Hunan, Henan and Guangxi under Japanese occupation. The failure of Chinese forces to defend these areas encouraged Stilwell to attempt to gain overall command of the Chinese army, and his subsequent showdown with Chiang led to his replacement by Major General Albert Coady Wedemeyer.

In 1944, China became overconfident due to several victories against Japan in Burma. Nationalist China had also diverted soldiers and deployed them to Xinjiang in 1942. Former Soviet client Sheng Shicai,who was allied to the Soviets since the Soviet invasion of Xinjiang in 1934, turned to the Nationalists. The fighting then escalated in early 1944 with the Ili Rebellion with Soviet backed Uyghur Communist rebels, causing China to fight enemies on two fronts with 120,000 Chinese soldiers fighting against the Ili rebellion.

The aim of the Japanese Operation Ichigo was to destroy American airfields in southern China that threatened the Japanese home islands with bombing and to link railways in Beijing, Hankou and Canton cities from northern China in Beijing to southern China's coast on Canton. Japan was alarmed by American air raids against Japanese forces in Taiwan's Hsinchu airfield by American bombers based in southern China, correctly deducing that southern China could become the base of a major American bombing campaign against the Japanese home islands so Japan resolved to destroy and capture all airbases where American bombers operated from in Operation Ichigo.

Chiang Kai-shek and the Republic of China authorities deliberately ignored and dismissed a tip passed on to the Chinese government in Chongqing by the French military that the French picked up in colonial French Indochina on the impending Japanese offensive to link the three cities. The Chinese military believed it to be a fake tip planted by Japan to mislead them, since only 30,000 Japanese soldiers started the first maneuver of Operation Ichigo in northern China crossing the Yellow river, so the Chinese assumed it would be a local operation in northern China only. Another major factor was that the battlefront between China and Japan was static and stabilized since 1940 and continued for four years that way until Operation Ichigo in 1944, so Chiang assumed that Japan would continue the same posture and remain behind the lines in pre-1940 occupied territories of north China only, bolstering the puppet Chinese government of Wang Jingwei and exploiting resources there. The Japanese had indeed acted this way from 1940 to 1944, with the Japanese only making a few failed weak attempts to capture China's provisional capital in Chongqing on the Yangtze river, which they quickly abandoned before 1944. Japan also exhibited no intention before of linking the transcontinental Beijing Hankow Canton railways.

China also was made confident by its three victories in a row defending Changsha against Japan in 1939, 1941, and 1942. China had also defeated Japan in the India-Burma theater in Southeast Asia with X Force and Y Force and the Chinese could not believe Japan had carelessly let information slip into French hands, believing Japan deliberately fed misinformation to the French to divert Chinese troops from India and Burma. China believed the Burma theater to be far more important for Japan than southern China and that Japanese forces in southern China would continue to assume a defensive posture only. China believed the initial Japanese attack in Ichigo to be a localized feint and distraction in northern China so Chinese troops numbering 400,000 in North China deliberately withdrew without a fight when Japan attacked, assuming it was just another localized operation after which the Japanese would withdraw. This mistake led to the collapse of Chinese defensive lines as the Japanese soldiers, which eventually numbered in the hundreds of thousands, kept pressing the attack from northern China to central China to southern China's provinces as Chinese soldiers deliberately withdrew leading to confusion and collapse, except at the Defense of Hengyang where 17,000 outnumbered Chinese soldiers held out against over 110,000 Japanese soldiers for months in the longest siege of the war, inflicting 19,000–60,000 deaths on the Japanese. At Tushan in Guizhou province, the Nationalist government of China was forced to deploy five armies of the 8th war zone that they were using for the entire war up to Ichigo to contain the Communist Chinese to instead fight Japan. But at that point, dietary deficiencies of Japanese soldiers and increasing casualties suffered by Japan forced Japan to end Operation Ichigo in Guizhou, causing the operation to cease.

JArthur1984 (talk) 18:14, 14 April 2024 (UTC)