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Book Review on ‘China 1945’

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楼主
发表于 1-5-2015 18:01:37 | 只看该作者 回帖奖励 |倒序浏览 |阅读模式
Jeffrey Wasserstrom, The Generalissimo & the Chairman. Wall Street Journal, Jan 3, 2015
www.wsj.com/articles/book-review ... ernstein-1420237669
(book review on Richard Bernstein, China 1945; Mao's revolution and America's fateful choice. Knopf, 2014)

Excerpt in the windows of print:

“Some Americans experts on China saw Mao chiefly as a reformer, with only a superficial commitment to Marxism. They were wrong.

“The harshness of the war and its aftermath made both Nationalists and Communists more extreme.


Quote: "Mr Bernstein’s answer to that question [who lost China] is simple: China was not America’s to lose. What did in the Generalissimo was an unholy alliance between a scheming Stalin and a perfidious Mao.

Note:
(1) poster legend: "Going forward together A World War II-era poster soliciting contributions to the United China Relief fund 中国救济事业联合会. Bridgeman Art Library"
(a) 美荣, 为中国抗战呐喊的美国女作家. 人民政协网, Aug 29, 2013n(republished in 党史频道 of 人民网)
dangshi.people.com.cn/n/2013/0829/c85037-22737875-3.html
("内战时期,赛珍珠 [Pearl S Buck] 在《爱国者》[The Patriot (1939)] 中,揭露蒋介石的倒行逆施 * * * [in 1940] 担任该会主席")
(b) 2. 美国中国救济事业联合会. 镇江市赛珍珠研究会, Feb 18, 2009.
www.pearlsbcn.org/Celebrity/document/193.htm

(2) "People like Col David D Barrett, the leader of a major diplomatic mission to Communist-held areas, saw potential in Washington cooperating with Mao, and they had good reason to be disgusted with the Nationalists"

David D Barrett
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_D._Barrett
(1892-1977; was commander of the US Army Observation Group, also known as the Dixie Mission [1944-1947, but Barrett's role in the mission started and ended in 1944], to Yan'an, China, in 1944)

(3) "As one might expect from a veteran journalist (and the former Beijing bureau chief for Time magazine), Mr Bernstein is a talented storyteller. His lively set pieces, dealing sometimes with the eponymous year and sometimes with events that set the stage for or flowed from its developments, dramatize [past events]"
(a) Richard Bernstein, About Me. undated
richardbernstein.net/About-Me.html
(PhD Harvard, in History and East Asian Languages; went to Taiwan in 1971 to study Chinese; in 1980 the first ever Time correspondent in Beijing (for 3 years); then worked for New York Times)
(b) Richard Bernstein
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Bernstein
(1944- )

There is no need to read the rest of the brief Wiki page, which is similar to the preceding page, but much shorter.
(b) Most Americans will say a set piece is "舞臺立體布景(如:樹,門,岩石等)."
tw.dictionary.search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A2oKmLAZpKlUTi4Ayl9r1gt.;_ylu=X3oDMTBsdDhrYmtiBHNlYwNzYwRjb2xvA3NnMwR2dGlkAw--?p=set%20piece&.sep=

But Wikipedia has several definitions, in literature, film etc. Click the film definition, and read the External link.
(c) I guess “eponymous year”--a term not found in the Web--is something like 鸡年, which year 1945 was.
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沙发
 楼主| 发表于 1-5-2015 18:02:40 | 只看该作者
本帖最后由 choi 于 1-6-2015 06:53 编辑

(4) "His [Bernstein's] account of 1944’s brutal Ichigo campaign, 'the single largest Japanese offensive of the war, involving half a million men in seventeen divisions,' offers a compelling account of the ferocious fighting, which involved Japanese and Chinese forces in equal numbers, though the latter were ‘as always, malnourished and underequipped.’ They [KMT] suffered 'astronomical' casualty totals and left roads 'choked' with refugees."
(a) Operation Ichi-Go
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ichi-Go
(names in Japan: 一号作戦 Ichi-gō Sakusen, lit. "Operation Number One," also called 大陸打通作戦; names in China: 豫湘桂会战; fought from April to December 1944; Table: Result  Japanese tactical victory; section 2 Aftermath)

Quote: “These battles were the Japanese Operation Kogō or Battle of Central Henan [in Chinese: 豫中会战], Operation Togō 1 or the Battle of Changheng [长衡会战], and Operation Togō 2 and Togō 3, or the Battle of Guilin-Liuzhou [桂柳会战], respectively. The two primary goals of Ichi-gō were to open a land route to French Indochina, and capture air bases in southeast China from which American bombers were attacking the Japanese homeland and shipping.”

(i) names in Japan: Operation Kogo コ号作戦, and Operation Togo ト号作戦 (where コ and ト are katakana for “ko” and “to,” respectively.)
大陸打通作戦
ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A4%A7%E9%99%B8%E6%89%93%E9%80%9A%E4%BD%9C%E6%88%A6
(ii) Why Japanese called them コ号作戦 and  ト号作戦?  I have no idea. However, a complete list of Japanese military operations
陸海軍作戦名紹介. undated.
homepage1.nifty.com/kitabatake/rikukaigun25.html
shows various operation names, such as ア号作戦 (where ア号 is pronounced “a-gō”). My guess is operation names (mostly a syllable, occasionally two syllables) was for convenience (not like America’s multi-syllable “Operation Desert Storm”).
(iii) The Japanese Wikipedia lists four goals of Operation Ichi-gō, including:
* アメリカ陸空軍の長距離爆撃機B-29基地に使用されると予想される航空基地を占領し、本土空襲を予防すること。1943年11月に台湾の新竹空襲が起き、北九州空襲への危機感があった。
* 蒋介石の率いる中国国民革命軍の撃破とその継戦意思を破砕すること。日本の無条件降伏を通告したカイロ会談参加の三国の中で最も弱体の中国国民党勢力を叩いて、カイロ宣言の裏にある米英の対日戦略を崩壊させる狙い。

translation:
* In anticipation of long-range B-29 bombers of US army and air force, air bases in China were to be taken, to thwart air raid of Japanese homeland. US bombing of 台湾の新竹 in November 1943 might presage northern Kyushu.
* Smash KMT army and its desire to continue fighting. Among the three nations participating in Cairo Conference which resulted in declaration of unconditional surrender of Japan as the aim, China was weakest. Once China collapsed, the anti-Japan strategy of UK and US--
the backing of Cairo Conference--would debacle.

(b) Japanese English dictionary
* ichigo [take notice of the SHORT vowel "o"] 苺 【いちご(P); イチゴ】 (n): "strawberry"
* The "ichi" is Chinese pronunciation of "one."
* gō 号
* saku-sen 作戦【さくせん】 (n): "military or naval operations"
(c) total (n): "a product of addition 加: SUM"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/total
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板凳
 楼主| 发表于 1-5-2015 18:04:58 | 只看该作者
(5) "Mr Bernstein quotes at length from the wartime diary of the famous novelist Ba Jin, who witnessed the leveling of the beautiful city of Guilin: 'I saw how the bombs exploded into flame, and I saw how the wind added to the fire, twisting two or three plumes of smoke together. . . . The black smoke was streaked with red flashes and huge red tongues of flame.' Yet Ba Jin wrote that watching this devastation with a 'heart of hatred' did not leave him completely dispirited; there were moments of liveliness, even 'glee and laughter,' that convinced him that 'China’s cities cannot be bombed into fear.'”
(a) 巴金, 桂林的受難. In 旅途通訊.
("我帶著一顆憎恨的心目擊了桂林的每一次受難。我看見炸彈怎樣毀坏房屋,我看見燒夷彈怎樣發火,我看見風怎樣助長火勢使兩三股濃煙合在一起。 * * * 在那些地方我過的并不是悲觀絕望的日子。甚至在它們的受難中我還看見中國城市的歡笑。中國的城市是炸不怕的。 * * * 1939年1月中旬在桂林")
(b) 周立民, 五四之子的世紀之旅: 巴金評傳. 臺北市: 秀威資訊科技股份有限公司, 2011, at page 162
books.google.com/books?id=unEQUR8ylZIC&pg=PA162&lpg=PA162&dq=巴金,+旅途通訊&source=bl&ots=LcGF-fTdT9&sig=ZPGxZ3KmQPx4thgDlZ-CSAhL6XM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=sSerVIyODoj3yQS5pIDgCg&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=%E5%B7%B4%E9%87%91%2C%20%E6%97%85%E9%80%94%E9%80%9A%E8%A8%8A&f=false
("註2: 《旅途通訊》 • 初版為上下冊, 分別於1939年三月, 四月文化生活出版社初版")

(6) "Throughout the book, Mr Bernstein draws upon Chinese-language journalism and memoirs, as in a wonderful chapter evoking the jubilant mood in China just after Japan’s surrender in September 1945, where he translates a section of a memoir by Shi Zhe, Mao’s Russian translator: 'There were red flags all over, in the center [of Yenan] and the surrounding mountains, drums beating, fireworks exploding, and people throwing hats in the air. The farmers gave away apples and pears, and people who didn’t know each other hugged and danced. That night the mountains and fields were seas of fire and floods of joy.'"

李捷 于俊道 (主编), 《实录毛泽东》(第三卷). 长征出版社, 2013
fuwu.12371.cn/2014/01/22/ARTI1390373395358112_3.shtml
("师哲回忆说:* * * 日本投降的消息传到延安,延安全城沸腾了!以延安城为中心的几条辐射形山沟中,满山遍野红旗招展、锣鼓喧天、爆竹齐鸣。人们欢呼雀跃,把衣服帽子抛向天空。卖水果的老乡把筐里的苹果、梨送给近旁不相识的人。不管认不认识,大家互相拥抱,拉起手来扭秧歌。当天夜晚,满山遍野是火的海洋、欢乐的洪流!狂欢持续了三天")
(7) “Mr Bernstein’s ties [as a student] to [John King] Fairbank 費正清 matter in another way: He draws disproportionately on studies by those who, like him, studied with that field-shaping figure [Fairbank] roughly a half-century ago”

(8) "The book * * * overlooks many works by scholars trained after his own graduate school days [under Fairbank]. Notable volumes missing from the bibliography include Anthony Saich’s 1996 book on Mao, 'The Rise to Power of the Chinese Communist Party'; the 1999 updated edition of Suzanne Pepper’s 'Civil War in China: The Political Struggle, 1945-1949'; and, more significantly still, various publications by Rana Mitter, including 'Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937-1945,' arguably the most important synthesis of the topic published in decades."
(a) Anthony Saich, The Rise to Power of the Chinese Communist Party. ME Sharpe, 1996.

Anthony Saich, Daewoo Professor of International Affairs. John F Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, undated
www.hks.harvard.edu/about/faculty-staff-directory/anthony-saich
(b)
(i) Suzanne Pepper, Civil War in China: The Political Struggle, 1945-1949. Berkeley: University of California Press, I978.
(ii)  Suzanne Pepper, Civil War in China: The Political Struggle, 1945-1949. 2nd ed. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1999.
(c) A professor with Oriental Institute, St Cross College, University of Oxford, Rana Mitter, the British-born son of Bengali parents, concentrates on Republican China.
www.orinst.ox.ac.uk/staff/ea/chinese/rmitter.html

That book of his, Forgotten Ally, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2013.

(9) "Scholars now often ask different questions about the era than those that absorb Mr Bernstein * * * And could it be that, as Mr. Mitter argues persuasively, the harshness of the wartime experience itself transformed the Nationalist and Communist camps alike, accentuating the most vicious tendencies within each, so that people with softening or liberalizing impulses had less and less room to maneuver?"

This quotation is contrary to an excerpt in the window of the print, which re-stated the question as a fact.
(10) "Mr Wasserstrom is a professor of history at UC Irvine and author of 'China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know.'”

That book was published by Oxford University Press, in 2013.
www.oupcanada.com/catalog/9780199974962.html
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