Before I left Chungking in October 1944 and flew north into Bed China, my Chinese friends in the Nationalist wartime capital asked me to write them in great detail about people and their living conditions in the Communist-liberated border regions. A large part of the liberated and guerrilla regions was located among the mountainous boundary areas between provinces, deep within Japanese-occupied territory, and this explains the term "border region."
In Chungking I had found that there was an amazing ignorance among people in Nationalist territory about conditions in the Red guerrilla areas, for Chiang Kai-shek had slapped a blockade on to cut off communication between - the Nationalist and Communist-led areas.
Chiang tried hard to keep information about Red China from reaching the outside World, but a group of dauntless correspondents forced him, in the late spring of 1944, to let them visit the anti-Japanese border regions. By the time I flew into Yenan, these correspondents who represented conservative American and British newspapers, were coming out of Red China with stories that shocked and encouraged millions of people fighting the fascist and militarist powers. The political climate was such, with the allies becoming disgusted with Chiang, that the American press published these first-hand accounts of Red China.
And in the light of stories told by the correspondents, the graft-ridden and corrupt Nationalist government seemed all the more decadent, challenged from the north by a new political force that allied itself not with the landlords, but with the peasants, and cooperated broadly with all classes of people in fighting the Japanese invaders.
Similar Situation Prevails Today
This attempt by Chiang to seal off Red China is somewhat similar to the situation prevailing today, when the Truman administration has slapped an economic embargo on China and is threatening to blockade China from the sea.
American foreign correspondents now write about China from the British colony of Hong Kong, getting information second and third hand. If the news is bad the papers back home whoop it up. If it is favorable to the People's Government of China, it is generally suppressed.
Serving such a press, many honest journalists are compelled to prostitute themselves for a living. They are like reporters on the dailies who cannot write stories that are favorable to unions and workers, particularly in time of labor-management disputes.
History-Making Accomplishments Not Reported
Thus, we do not read about the impressive accomplishments of labor in the dally press. In like manner, we do not read that famine, the yearly scourge in China for centuries, is now practically a forgotten word. And this is the situation merely two years after the establishment of the new People's Republic. Flood, another calamity that visited the populous and fertile agricultural regions year after year and affecting millions of people, is being controlled by vast projects.
These are epoch-making events but Americans are kept ignorant about them. To speak or to write of these achievements of the Chinese people is regarded by big employer propagandists and the graft-ridden administration as "subversive."
I Had To See for Myself What Conditions Actually Were
Back in October 1944, when the transport on which I rode flew northward, I said that I had to see for myself what the Chinese in the border regions were like. In Chungking, the Gls were eager to go north, and the talk in headquarters was that the northern Chinese were "a different brand of people."
We flew over paddies and terraces of Szechwan Province which looked beautiful from the sky. The toiling peasants paid 50-60 per cent of their yearly crop to landlords in payment for the use of the land. In Szechwan some landlords were collecting rents many years in advance. Some tenants revolted and Chiang Kai-shek used his American-trained air force to crush the protest.
The farmlands gave way to rugged mountains and gorges. To the west was Tibet, with high mountains and natural barriers that made it almost inaccessible to the West. Then we were over Sian, the last Nationalist bastion and frontier U. S. air base. Sian was also a stopcock that prevented people on the Chungking side from crossing into Communist areas. Hundreds of students who had tried to run the blockade into Red China, had been arrested and locked up in Sian prisons.
Description of Tortures In Chiang's Political Prisons
A Chinese youth I had met through Wataru Kaji, the anti-militarist Japanese writer and political refugee, described various tortures employed by the Nationalists. He himself had spent a few years in a Kweichow prison. He said prisoners' feet! were boiled in pots equipped with ankle locks. He said faces were shoved into lime. Pig's bristles were shoved into young women's nipples or other delicate parts.
"The students do not repent. The prisons manufacture Communists because students turn more strongly against the Kuomintang," he said.
I did not believe him entirely. Certainly there must be weaklings, I suggested, who were crushed when deprived of all human dignity by this barbarism, and who become secret agents for the Nationalists. He agreed, but he said the number was comparatively small.
The Blockade Consumed 500,000 Troops Who Were Needed On the Anti-Japanese Fronts
Prom Sian we flew northward and over the "divide" of Chungking's China and Yenan's China. Below us were Chiang's block houses and garrisons for roughly, 500,000 first-line troops, far away from the Japanese forces they should be fighting. They were sealing off the Shensi-Kansu-Ningsia border region.
At last we were over Yenan, accessible from the outside only to American personnel of the U. S. Army Observer Section. Below us were endless stretches of barren, tawny loess hills and valleys. Loess is cocoa-like dust, blown into North China from the Gobi Desert region for centuries and in some areas it is more than 200 feet deep.
Someone pointed out a long valley, running north to south, a few miles long. It forked as it came to a hill on which stood an old pagoda. A state Department official told me that the caves which pockmarked pagoda hill were headquarters of the Japanese Workers' and Peasants' School and the Japanese People's Emancipation League. I would spend my time there, surveying Red China's POW treatment and prisoner re-education.
From the Air, Everything Looked Ancient, Peaceful and Desolate
Through the middle of the narrow valley flowed a silvery stream. The land looked old and tired, bare after the autumn harvest. It was terribly wrinkled by the ageless force of erosion. Everything looked ancient, peaceful and desolate. A few buildings were in sight. A fairly large. Western-style church nestled close against a hillside. It was the most impressive edifice. But more striking than anything were the caves, hundreds and hundreds of them pockmarking hillsides and cliffs, tier upon tier, up from the valley floor.
We headed down a valley toward the landing strip. Ox-carts driven by jwhite-turbaned natives toiled their lumbering way northward and southward along a dusty road along the airstrip. Camels led by nomads clad in furs also moved on the road.
Women Dressed Like Men; Also No Lipstick, No Rouge
It seemed that everyone in Yenan had come to greet us. Most of them were clad in blue or black cotton-padded uniforms while others still wore thin cotton uniforms. Women were dressed like men. Deep caps hid their hair altogether. They wore no rouge or lipstick. One saw chapped cheeks and lips painted over with honey to prevent further aggravation.
I was introduced to Colonel David Barrett, who in turn introduced me to Chinese officials. Among the many, one name sounded familiar, the name of General Chu Teh.
I saw a kindly face, broad and seamed, half-smiling at me. A warm, firm hand gripped mine. The man before me was like a peasant, extremely simple in appearance, clad in a faded, brown woollen-tweed uniform. He was stocky and heavy. This was the legendary Chu Teh, commander-in-chief of the Communist-led forces.
No Beggars, No Prostitution, No Money Changers
Two Nisei Gls, who like me, were G-2 personnel, were at the air field. They told me that the Communist-led forces had a tremendous amount of intelligence on the Japanese forces.
Sergeant Sho Nomura as well as some American officers, briefed me about conditions in Yenan as soon as we arrived at the Observer Section. There were no beggars, prostitutes or money changers, they said. A GI who had come in on the flight said he had to see it before he would believe it. After India and Nationalist China, where money changers, prostitutes and beggars singled out GIs, he said he could not believe that in Asia such a "Shangri-la" existed. And this blockaded territory was economiically the poorest area.
"So you won't believe us?" asked an officer. "We didn't either," he said.
Story of a GI Who Made Passes At a Woman
He told us of an incident which was a very popular story in Yenan. When the first contingent of American military personnel flew into Yenan, the transport damaged its propeller when one of the wheels dropped into an old grave. The transport's crew stayed over, waiting for parts from Chungking. That night the Chinese 18th Group Army, which was the designation of Communist-led forces, gave a dance to honor the Americans. A tech sergeant of the plane's crew made passes at a young lady, thinking what he did in Chungking was permissible in Yenan.
The next day, General Yeh Chien-ying, the chief of staff of the 18th Group Army, visited Colonel Barrett and indignantly protested the GI's conduct: He said that the Chinese would provide the Americans with clean entertainment and that the GIs should forget propaganda they might have heard about Communist "free love" and that sort of thing. He said Yenan was not Chungking. General Yeh explained that the women were equal with men in Yenan; that prostitution did not exist and any incident of such was corrected as soon as it was discovered. The GI Prophylactic Went To the Hospitals
Colonel Barrett called his group together. He scolded that the Americans were embarrassed and threatened that anyone violating the social customs and values of Yenan would be sent back to Chungking as punishment. This was indeed punishment, for no American wanted to be sent back to depressing Chungking. The colonel suggested that the officers and men get rid of their supply of prophylactics immediately. One captain had an extremely large supply. When the Chinese heard about the large aggregate supply, they asked the Americans not to throw away the prophylactics. They wanted to use them in the hospitals for medical purposes.
"Save your old razor blades and cigarette cellophane covers for the Chinese. They are blockaded here and can use these items also," an officer told us.