NOVEMBER 2009

Marines in China

World War II

by Maj William H. Sager, USMCR (Ret)

>Maj Sager served with U.S. Naval Group, China, and U.S. Naval Unit Ten.

At the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, 7 December 1941, there was one remaining Marine detachment in mainland China—the Peking Embassy guards, including a small detachment of Marines at Tientsin. The 4th Marines had left Shanghai a month before and eventually landed in the Philippines where they fought at Bataan. To avoid a bloodbath, if not complete annihilation, the Embassy guards surrendered and thus became the longest recorded American prisoners of war of World War II (WWII). American Marine presence in mainland China had come to an end, not to be resumed until after the Japanese surrender in August 1945, when the 1st and 6th Marine Divisions were assigned to north China in October 1945 to assist the Nationalist Chinese Armies with the task of returning Japanese soldiers to their homeland and to guard various Chinese facilities and infrastructure.

Did the U.S. Marine presence on mainland China actually come to an end with the surrender of the Embassy guards? Many military historians will agree that it did. However, a small group of Marines (perhaps as many as 250, most of whom are no longer living) would take vigorous exception and conclusively show that there were Marines in China during 1942 through 1945. The mission of those Marines was to conduct guerrilla operations against Japanese forces in Japanese occupied China.

What kind of military unit did these WWII China Marines belong to? Who was their commander? How did they (and their supplies) reach mainland China? How were their guerrilla operations conducted? What support did the Marines have from their Chinese Allies? This article will show that there were combat Marines in China during WWII and will also answer the questions raised.

Shortly after Pearl Harbor, ADM Ernest J. King (the Navy’s Chief of Naval Operations and the highest ranking naval officer in the U.S. Naval Services) ordered CDR Milton E. (“Mary”) Miles, an Annapolis graduate of 1922 and a naval officer with some 8 years of China experience, to China with a vague set of oral orders to do whatever necessary to harass the Japanese. More precisely, CDR Miles had orders (mainly oral) to survey the China coast for a proposed American and Allied invasion of mainland China. Subsequently, GEN Douglas MacArthur successfully persuaded the Joint Chiefs that the Japanese homeland should be invaded, and the China beachhead strategy was abandoned over King’s vigorous objections.

It was early May 1942 before Miles arrived in Chungking, China’s wartime capital. He was assigned to the U.S. Embassy as a naval observer. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek appointed Gen Tai Li (sometime Dai Li) the head of China’s secret service, known as the Bureau of Investigation and Statistics, to work with Miles. Actually, Tai Li was informed of Miles’ assignment in China by a colonel attached to the Chinese Embassy in Washington, so Miles was not a total stranger upon his meeting with Tai Li.

Miles and Tai Li developed a cooperative working relationship of mutual trust and respect. Meanwhile, in October 1942, Miles, recognizing that Tai Li’s organization could protect Americans operating in Japanese occupied China, was appointed director of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in China. Miles held this position until November 1943 when a political dispute developed between “higher ups” and Miles then gave up command of the OSS.

On 15 April 1943 (while Miles was still barely in charge of the OSS in China), an agreement with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek was negotiated. Approved by GEN Joseph “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, Supreme American Commander, China; the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and the President of the United States, the Sino-American Technical Cooperative Agreement provided for the conduct and support of “special measures in the war effort against Japan.” Miles, by then a Navy captain, was ordered to cooperate with the designated Chinese authorities “in every way practicable for the prosecution of war measures against the Japanese.” CAPT Miles was placed in direct charge of the American participation as set forth in the agreement. Thus the Sino-American Cooperative Agreement was signed, and SACO (pronounced socko, “with the significance of powerful or sudden attack”) was born.

Gen Tai Li was named the Chinese Commander, SACO. CAPT Miles was named the Deputy Commander. Pursuant to the SACO Agreement, American personnel who were members of SACO were under the command of a Chinese general. This was one of those rare instances during WWII when American military personnel actively operated under the command of an Allied commander rather than American command. To the Americans in SACO, the distinction was of no importance. Meanwhile in the Department of the Navy, the Americans operating with the SACO Chinese became a classified organization known as U.S. Naval Group, China. CAPT Miles, who had retained the title of Naval Observer in China, assumed a new title in 1944, namely, Commander, Naval Group, China.

Who were the SACO Americans, and how did they reach China? SACO Americans were a mixture of any Service personnel who Miles thought would promote the war effort against the Japanese in China. Approximately 85 percent of the personnel were Navy volunteers. The remainder were Marines. There was a negligible number of Coast Guard men who were originally recruited for their abilities to train attack dogs. That project was soon abandoned, and the Coast Guard personnel became instructors for the SACO guerrilla units. There were also several Army officers who had specific assignments within the training program.

SACO American personnel from all Services probably did not exceed 2,500 serving in China during the existence of SACO, although precise figures are difficult to come by. There has never been an accurate headcount of the number of Marines in SACO, but a “ballpark” estimate would put the number at under 100 for the entire period of SACO’s operations. (The names of these Marines may be accessed at mca-marines.org/gazette.) Each Marine who served in SACO was a volunteer, and it is estimated that 90 percent of the Marines who served after 1943 were combat veterans of Marine Corps operations in the Pacific. Marine enlisted ranks consisted of platoon sergeants, first sergeants, and gunnery sergeants. There were no “buck” sergeants, corporals, or privates first class. Officer ranks were combat seasoned senior captains and junior majors.

Early in the SACO organization there were a few lieutenants. The late Gen Robert H. Barrow, who became the 27th Commandant of the Marine Corps, served in SACO in early 1944 as a first lieutenant. He was awarded a Bronze Star medal for a guerrilla raid he conducted. (For an account of Gen Barrow’s operations with SACO, see Leatherneck Legends, by Col Richard Camp, USMC(Ret), Zenith Press, 2006, Chapter 18, page 153.)

The Japanese isolated China prior to the commencement of WWII and occupied all principal harbors. The occupation of Burma closed the Burma Road, a primary and sole land supply route to beleaguered China. Since Russia and Japan were not at war with one another until August 1945, the question of war supplies reaching China through Mongolia was mute. The single slender thread of communications from China with the outside world was by its national airline, the Chinese National Air Corporation, which flew the Himalayan Mountains across the tip of Japanese occupied Burma from Calcutta to Kunming and Chungking.

The Air Transport Command (established by the U.S. Army Air Force) provided the U.S. Army in China with the transportation of personnel and equipment. The flight from Assam (India) to the 14th Air Force Terminal in Kunming became known as “flying the hump.” Naval Group, China, was assigned a certain tonnage on a monthly basis. The allowance was never sufficient, but Naval Group, China, had to make it do. Every bit of equipment used by SACO was flown over the hump. Every bullet, carbine, handgrenade, bazooka, and pound of C2 composition explosive was flown to China from the Navy’s supply depot in Calcutta. All Marine, Navy, and Coast Guard personnel who served in SACO arrived in China via flying the hump. It was not until June 1945 that the Ledo Road was completed from India through the tip of Burma to China, and truck convoys began using that land route.

What was the mission of the SACO Americans in China, other than the guerrilla operations? To support the Navy, the major mission was the establishment of weather stations to aid fleet operations in the Pacific. Since the weather in that part of the world moves from the land masses of Siberia and the Gobi Desert area of extremely northern China eastward to the Japanese home islands and then over the Pacific, it was essential for the Navy to have reliable weather information. Such information replaced the weather in-

formation no longer available because of the Japanese occupation of the Philippines and other Allied territories in the Pacific. It also replaced that information formerly collected by passenger and freight ships traversing the Pacific.

In every area where SACO operated in free China or in Japanese occupied China, Chinese SACO weathermen established temporary or portable weather stations and relayed weather information by radio to SACO headquarters, called (by the Navy) Happy Valley, located about 20 kilometers from Chungking. There the weather information from all of the SACO reporting stations was collected, collated, tabulated, and radioed to Pacific Fleet Headquarters at Pearl Harbor. Approximately 1,000 young SACO Chinese were trained as weather observers by the Navy, and more than 300 weather stations were established and manned by Navy-trained young Chinese weathermen.

Another significant function of SACO was radio intelligence. A group of Navy communicators monitored and intercepted Japanese radio communications and broke Japanese codes, principally Japanese air force codes. The success of Gen Claire Chennault’s 14th Air Force in China was due in large measure to SACO Americans intercepting and breaking Japanese radio communications involving Japanese air force operations.

SACO Americans, adept at Chinese disguises and guided by SACO Chinese, established coast watcher stations along the Japanese occupied China coast. The sighting of Japanese shipping was radioed to headquarters at Happy Valley where the information was further relayed to the Submarine Base, Pearl Harbor. Coast watchers also communicated with 14th Air Force planes directing them to Japanese shipping. Most coast watchers were Navy people, but Marines manned several posts. One of the American Navy SACO coast watchers was captured by Japanese patrols despite the protection of SACO guerrillas. The Navy listed 62 coast watcher stations along the coast of China, but not all were manned at the same time, and some were not manned at all.

The SACO Agreement of 1943 called for the Navy to arm and train in excess of 50,000 Chinese guerrillas, known as the Loyal Patriotic Army, and to establish and maintain 15 training camps. Except for the several Marines who were coast watchers, all other Marines were involved in guerrilla training at the 15 established training camps located from the edges of the Gobi Desert to the Japanese occupied coast, almost within sight of Shanghai, the lights of which could be seen from the SACO guerrilla training camp on a clear night. Marines operated with small guerrilla units as American advisors, living with the Chinese troops in the field, eating the same chow as the Chinese guerrillas, and walking miles and miles through Japanese occupied territory.

The guerrilla training camps were located in areas where the SACO guerrillas and sabotage units could effectively attack Japanese lines of communications, garrisons, or other installations. Usual guerrilla actions were ambushes of enemy patrols and raids on enemy outposts and small garrisons. Demolition operations were conducted against road objectives (bridges, etc.), railroads, and river traffic (sampans and other small river vessels). Sabotage operations employing explosives, limpets, and pressure devices were carried out against barracks, factories, storage dumps, warehouses, defense installations, small airfields, and targets of opportunity.

One of the Navy training units had as its mission the training of SACO guerrillas in amphibious and river raiding tactics to operate in the Tung Ting lakes area and the neighboring Hsiang River where an increase in Japanese river traffic had been noted. A Marine captain, a veteran of Guadalcanal and Cape Gloucester, commanded that Navy unit.

It was reliably reported that for the period of operations from 1 June 1944 to 1 July 1945, Marine- and Navy-led Chinese guerrillas killed 23,500 Japanese, wounded 9,100, captured 290, and destroyed 200 bridges, 84 locomotives, and 141 ships and large river craft in addition to depots, warehouses, and installations too numerous to count.

CAPT Miles (subsequently promoted to commodore and then to vice admiral) once stated that so far as the Navy was concerned, the guerrilla warfare operation was a sideshow in SACO, “but the work was interesting and the record impressive.”1 Marines who volunteered for SACO—and every Marine who served in SACO was a volunteer—can endorse the admiral’s statement that the assignment was indeed interesting but would not agree that guerrilla operations were a sideshow.

I (a veteran of 3d Battalion, 1st Marines at Guadalcanal) was a captain in U.S. Naval Group, China, in 1944 and 1945, and Commander, U.S. Naval Unit Ten, located in Kweichow Province. Unit Ten placed three battalions of trained and equipped Chinese guerrillas in the field, each battalion consisting of approximately 400 guerrillas. Locally these units were known as Column Ten. Their mission was to operate against Japanese lines of communications along the Liuchow-Kweilin highway corridor, along which the Japanese in the late spring of 1945 began their retreat from southern China to consolidate their positions in east central China.

Note
1. Miles, VADM Milton E., as prepared by Hawthorne Daniel from the original Miles manuscript, A Different Kind of War, Doubleday and Co., New York, 1967.

>Author’s Note: Special thanks and appreciation to Paul Casamayor, formerly a LTJG, USNR who served with SACO. He is membership chairman for SACO. Without Paul’s and his son Alan’s assistance an accurate count of Marines in SACO would still remain unknown.