Lest We Forget: 80 Years on, Stories of China’s Heroic WWII Effort Endure

China’s resistance, from the Battle of Shanghai to the Asian Blitz in Chongqing, was pivotal in defeating fascism.

One of Yang Jianhong’s enduring childhood memories of his father, Yang Yangzheng, is of him listening with rapt attention to crackling news broadcasts, savouring plum candies from Shanghai.

It was only as an adult that he came to appreciate the significance of the sweets, which his mother insisted on providing for her adored husband, no matter how scarce they became. To his father, they recalled his time in the Battle of Shanghai, where he was one of a handful of Chinese soldiers who held the Sihang Warehouse against an entire division of Japanese attackers.

Their stand, later immortalised on film in The Eight Hundred (2020), became a defining symbol of what is known locally as the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.

China was fighting the Japanese invaders long before the conflict escalated to include other powers in the Second World War. Japan invaded northeast China in 1931, and the latter country’s full-scale resistance began in 1937, four years before Pearl Harbor.

Yang was one of these soldiers, losing an eye in the four gruelling days of fighting before Shanghai fell. Wounded, he retreated west to China’s wartime capital, Chongqing. This southwestern city became a fortress of defiance, hidden among mountains and shielded by two mighty rivers, welcoming hundreds of thousands of troops and refugees.

The plum candy remained Yang’s solace, a fleeting taste of a past few shared. He married his sweetheart in 1945, shortly before the end of the war, and died in 2010, the last surviving member of the famous Eight Hundred.

“He was more than a Second World War hero,” says Yang Jianhong. “He was the man my mother worshipped all her life.”

Forgotten Ally

Chongqing was the Far East command centre during the Second World War. Former US President Franklin D Roosevelt praised the city’s “fortitude and endurance”, commenting that “the citizens of Chongqing have won a place in the heart of every American”.

However, the name of the heroic Chinese city seldom evokes the same recognition as London or Stalingrad. In June this year, the documentary Kukan was screened in the US in a newly restored print – this celebration of China’s fortitude received an honorary Oscar in 1942, but was lost for years, only now getting to tell its story.

“For decades, our understanding of that global conflict has failed to give a proper account of the role of China,” writes British historian Rana Mitter in China’s War with Japan 1937-1945: The Struggle for Survival.

“If we wish to understand the role of China in today’s global society,” he adds, “we would do well to remind ourselves of the tragic, titanic struggle that country waged in the 1930s and 1940s.”

During the war against Japanese aggression, the Chinese pinned down more than half of Japan’s overseas forces, making a tremendous contribution to the Allied victory in a global war.

For years, Chongqing endured waves of air raids. This little-known Asian Blitz left more than 32,000 dead or wounded. Across the city, over 1,600 air-raid shelters formed one of the largest civilian defence networks in the world at the time.

On June 5, 1941, eight-year-old Su Yuankui huddled in a crowded air-raid tunnel as bombs rained down. When he awoke the next morning, he was surrounded by dead bodies. Su’s two sisters were among more than 1,000 victims who died of suffocation and a stampede in what was later described as one of the Second World War’s deadliest air-raid tragedies.

“Not a single structure stood unscathed across the ravaged horizon,” recalled Su. “It was devastating.”

Not Taking Peace for Granted

On the site of a bomb crater, Chongqing residents once erected a wooden tower bearing the bold characters “Fortress of Spirit”. Today that site is marked by the Liberation Monument, a major city landmark. The elderly Su now works nearby in an office beneath a banner that reads: “Defend Dignity, Uphold Justice.”

He is dedicated to seeking justice for the victims of Japanese bombings, although when he and 187 other plaintiffs brought their case to Tokyo in 2015, a district court heard their pleas for a shockingly brief 48 seconds before the case was thrown out.

“Step on someone’s foot and you owe them an apology,” Su says. “Yet they won’t acknowledge, let alone say sorry for, killing so many people.”

Su stresses that the pursuit of justice is not about vengeance. “It’s to remind the world that peace must never be taken for granted,” he says.

With each passing day, however, living witnesses are disappearing. Many of Su’s fellow victims are now bedridden, and their firsthand accounts will die with them.

China was a key Allied nation during the Second World War, a role that led it to become one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council. Eighty years after the war, China continues to honour the memory of its struggle against the Axis powers.

At Chongqing’s Stilwell Museum, for example, visitors can explore the legacy of General Joseph Stilwell, who fought alongside Chinese troops during the Second World War. Exhibits range from his Mandarin textbooks to the “blood chits” sewn on US pilot uniforms, reading: “This foreigner has come to aid China. Please rescue him.” The museum is sending a photo exhibition to California as just one of many continuing efforts to preserve memories of the war.

Yet for Chinese historian Zhou Yong, vice-president of the Chinese Academy of History of Chinese Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the war’s true conclusion remains elusive.

“Defeating fascism was a shared human victory,” he says. “Yet key promises of justice, recognition and remembrance remain unfulfilled. Remembering isn’t just about the past. For the country, it’s about drawing strength to face the future.”