Why US Entered WWII
And Chinese Contribution to Victory

To CCTV-4 "Dialogue"
Ae56@mail.cctv.com.cn

I am writing as I watch your CCTV-4 Dialogue program. It comes as a great surprise to me to hear Yang Riu describe the main reason that the USA entered World War II as being to prevent another country from dominating the Pacific or Atlantic. Of course, in actuallity, the fundamental reason for the US entering WWII was that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and invaded the Phillipines, an American colony. Before that event, American public opinion was deeply divided, with a majority wanting to stay out of the war. There was no secret, though, that President Roosevelt's sympathies lay with Britain and France and against the Axis. Preceding the Japanese attack in December, 1941, US-Japanese relations had been strained because of Japanese expansionist policies, which America opposed. In particular, for many years before 1941, America opposed Japanese expansion in Chinese territory and supported the Chinese government in its resistance to that expansion.

On a previous program, (hosted by Yang Rui's female colleague) one of the participants mentioned that the Red Army defeated the Japanese army in China. I have discussed this with many acquainances in China and this seems to be a near universal belief. But after only a little discussion, the obvious incorrectness of this belief has always become apparent to them. The facts are that in China the Japanese army throughout World War II, and particularly at the end, expanded the areas it had captured, at the expense of both the Nationalists and Communists. The war in China ended only because of the Japanese surrender to the United States following U.S. nuclear bombings in Japan. At the time of the surrender, the USA dictated to the Japanese that they should surrender to the Nationalists and not to the Communists. If, contrary to fact, the Red Army had defeated the Japanese, there would be a record of battles fought and won, there would have been no post August, 1945 sudden surrender by the Japanese, and the Communists would have emerged from World War II as the victorious party in China rather than later defeating an initially stronger Nationalist army after a civil war.

Gerald D. Chandler
Shenzhen China

January 23, 2001