more at http://news.quickfound.net/intl/china_news.html Good color footage of China in 1945 depicts the "home front" situation for Chinese people during World War II. Although referring to the war, the narration does not mention who the enemy is, perhaps so that the film could be applied to the war against the communists as well. Narrated by Jim Ameche, brother of Don Ameche. Public domain film from the Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied. The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War The Second Sino-Japanese War (July 7, 1937 -- September 9, 1945), called so after the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894--95, was a military conflict fought primarily between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan from 1937 to 1941... After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the war merged into the greater conflict of World War II as a major front of what is broadly known as the Pacific War. The Second Sino-Japanese War was the largest Asian war in the 20th century. It also made up more than 50% of the casualties in the Pacific War... The war was the result of a decades-long Japanese imperialist policy aiming to dominate China politically and militarily and to secure its vast raw material reserves and other economic resources, particularly food and labour. Before 1937, China and Japan fought in small, localized engagements, so-called "incidents". In 1931, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria by Japan's Kwantung Army followed the Mukden Incident. The last of these incidents was the Marco Polo Bridge Incident of 1937, marking the beginning of total war between the two countries. Initially the Japanese scored major victories in Shanghai after heavy fighting, and by the end of 1937 captured the Chinese capital of Nanking. After failing to stop the Japanese in Wuhan, the Chinese central government was relocated to Chongqing in the Chinese interior. By 1939 the war had reached stalemate after Chinese victories in Changsha and Guangxi. The Japanese were also unable to defeat the Chinese communist forces in Shaanxi, which performed harassment and sabotage operations against the Japanese using guerrilla warfare tactics. On the 7th of December 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and the following day (8th December) the United States declared war on Japan. The United States began to aid China via airlift materiel over the Himalayas after the Allied defeat in Burma that closed the Burma Road. In 1944 Japan launched a massive invasion and conquered Henan and Changsha, but eventually surrendered on September 2, 1945... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_China_(1912-49) The Republic of China (traditional Chinese: 中華民國; simplified Chinese: 中华民国; pinyin: Zhōnghuá Mínguó...) was founded in 1912 and it governed mainland China until 1949, when it lost the mainland during the Chinese Civil War and withdrew to Taiwan... Its first president, Sun Yat-sen only served briefly. His Kuomintang (KMT, or "Nationalist Party"), then led by Song Jiaoren, won a parliamentary election held in December 1912. However, army leaders of the Beiyang clique, led by President Yuan Shikai, retained control of the central government. After Yuan's death in 1916, local military leaders, or warlords, asserted autonomy. In 1925, the KMT established a rival government, referred to as Nationalist China, in the southern city of Canton (Guangzhou). The economy of the North, overtaxed to support warlord adventurism, collapsed in 1927--1928. In 1928, Chiang Kai-shek, who became KMT leader after Sun's death, defeated the warlord armies in the Northern Expedition. Chiang's National Revolutionary Army was armed by the Soviet Union and was advised by Mikhail Borodin. The Beiyang army was backed by Japan. Once Chiang established a unified central government in Nanjing, he cut his ties with the communists and expelled them from the KMT. There was industrialization and modernization, but also conflict between the Nationalist government in Nanjing, the Communist Party of China, remnant warlords, and Japan. Nation-building took a backseat to war with Japan in 1937 -- 1945... After Japan surrendered, the Cold War between the U.S. and Soviet Union led to renewed fighting between the KMT and the communists. In 1947, the Constitution of the Republic of China replaced the Organic Law of 1928 as the country's fundamental law. In 1949, the Communists established the People's Republic of China on the mainland, while the Nationalists retreated to Taiwan...

• published: 04 Oct 2013
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