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A Japanese Peace Maneuver in 19441
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2011
Extract
A SITUATION which cannot be described as other than bizarre reached its climax on October 14, 1944. On that day, Baron Miyagawa Tada-maro, younger brother of Prince Konoye Fumimaro, alighted at Shanghai from a Japanese army transport plane, ostensibly on business for the South Manchuria Railway. Actually, this mild-mannered little man had come to China as the representative of the Itsuyūkai 
, a secret organization whose aim was the achievement of peace in the “year of the bird” – 1945.
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References
* Dr. Fishel, in Instructorn Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles, specializes in Far Eastern international relations and is preparing for publication a study on “The end of extraterritoriality in China.”
2 Shin Suk Woo is a brother-in-law of General Lee Bum Suk, Prime Minister of the new government of South Korea.
3 Prince Ichijō Sanetaka, a member of the House of Peers, married the second daughter of Prince Ichijō Saneteru and was adopted into the family, which, like the Konoye family, is part of the Fujiwara clan. Born in 1880, Ichijo Sanetaka was a graduate of the naval academy, and served as a naval officer with active duty at sea and on shore, retiring in 1924 as a captain.
4 In 1942, Lt. General Wang Peng-sheng, director of the Institute of International Problems, wrote a letter to Dr. Ho Shih-chen on behalf of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, forgiving him for his past activities within the Kuomintang as a leading assistant to Hu Han-min and his resultant opposition to Chiang. Accompanying the letter was a motto in the Generalissimo's hand, which constituted Dr. Ho's authority to work for him behind the Japanese lines. It read Simply “tsai ming ming te” from the initial paragraphs of The great learning: “What the Great Learning teaches is-to illustrate illustrious virtue; renovate the people; and to rest in the highest excellence” (Legge's translation; italics mine).
5 See United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Japan's struggle to end the war (Washington: Chairman's Office, 1946), 2-3; also, Gayn, Mark, Japan diary (New York: William Sloane Associates, 1948), 32–36, 274-80.Google Scholar
6 Japan's struggle to end the war, 2-3.
7 T. V. Soong, at that time Chinese Foreign Minister, reported that the Japanese made several peace overtures to China in 1943. In August, for example, Japan offered to return to the status quo as of July 7, 1937, when the Marco Polo Bridge incident occurred near Peiping, and to withdraw their troops from all of China save Manchuria. They demanded, however, the retention of economic rights in China and wanted China to join Japan in an “Asia for the Asiatics” policy. Soong declared that there was no conscious political group in China which would respond to Japan's feelers, which came from her military leaders in China, apparently via the medium of the Chinese secret police organization led by the late General Tai Li (New York times, September 15, 1943). On March 15, 1945, Miao Ping, an old-time Kuomintang leader who had become vice-president of the Legislative Council of the Nanking puppet regime of Wang Ching-wei, and who was reportedly still friendly with General Ho Ying-chin, Chief-of-staff to Chiang Kai-shek, flew to Tokyo at the invitation of Prime Minister General Koiso Kuniaki. At Koiso's request, he was granted an audience with the emperor, to whom he is said to have proposed as a basis for peace the elimination of the Nanking regime, the withdrawal of Japanese troops from China, and proclamation of a truce between Japan and the Chungking government. His qualifications to act as an intermediary were never made clear, but there are indications that Miao Ping was attempting to play a dual role, acting as a puppet official for the Japanese and as an agent for Tai Li at the same time, in which latter capacity he performed as peace envoy. After the war, he tried to tell his story and publish his account of the negotiations in which he had participated. He was arrested by the nationalist government, however, and sentenced to death for treason by the Kiangsu High Court on April 9, 1946 (New York times, April 10, 1946; see also Masuo, Katō, The lost war [New York: Knopf, 1916], 113).Google Scholar
8 In 1860, Tadaoki, eighth son of Konoye Tadahiro, became a Buddhist priest and established the new house of Miyagawa (Taishū jinjiroku. 12th ed., 1937; also Who's who in Japan, 1938, 487).
9 This contact had been broken several months before when another agent, who had been operating a clandestine radio transmitter in Shanghai for the Institute of International Problems, was arrested by the Japanese and his equipment destroyed.
10 It is interesting to note that upon Hsu's arrival in Shanghai on December 31, 1943, he was informed by Ho that other Chinese agents had learned that the Japanese were withdraw ing the best troops in the Kwantung Army from Manchuria to bolster their defense of the Philippines and Okinawa and to support their projected “railway offensive” of spring 1944. This was aimed at giving the Japanese full control of the Peiping-Hankow and Hankow-Canton railways, with the ultimate objective of making it possible for Japanese troops in Indochina to retreat into China and join with Japanese forces already there in an all-out offensive designed to force the Chungking regime to its knees.
11 General Cheng was a graduate of the Whampoa Military Academy in 1925 and of the famed Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow in 1928. More recently he has been vice-minister of national defense in the Nationalist government.
12 Text in New York times, December 2, 1943.
13 The time lag between the receipt of Miyagawa's letter of January in Shanghai and Hsu's receipt of General Cheng's telegram in August and the ensuing delay before Hsu delivered the latter message in Shanghai are explained at least in part by the fact that travel between Shanghai and Yüan-shan was mainly accomplished on foot and necessitated passing through Japanese-held territory and through the Japanese forces themselves. In addition, the writer is informed that an extremely long period elapsed between the dispatch of the text of Miyagawa's letter from Yiian-shan to Chungking and the receipt of the reply therefrom.
14 Italics mine.
15 Actually, the Protocol of the proceedings of the Yalta Conference, February 4-11, 1945, which provided for entry of the Soviet Union into the war against Japan within two or three months after the termination of the war in Europe, was not made public until March 24, 1947.
16 Photostat of letter in possession of author.
17 Japan's struggle to end the war, 4-5.
18 Ibid., 5.
19 See paragraph one of letter from Miyagawa quoted above.