It lasted eight years. Some fifteen to twenty million Chinese died as a direct or indirect result. The devastation of property was incalculable. And after it was over the Nationalist government and army were exhausted and demoralized. Thus it inflicted a terrible toll on the Chinese people and contributed directly to the Communist victory in 1949. The war with Japan was surely the most momentous event in the history of the Republican era in China.

INITIAL CAMPAIGNS AND STRATEGY 1937–1939

The fighting began in darkness, not long before midnight on 7 July 1937. Since 1901, in accordance with the Boxer Protocol, the Japanese had stationed troops in North China between Tientsin and Peiping. And on that balmy summer night, a company of Japanese troops was conducting field manoeuvres near the Lu-kou-ch'iao (Marco Polo Bridge), fifteen kilometres from Peiping and site of a strategic rail junction that governed all traffic with South China. Suddenly, the Japanese claimed, they were fired upon by Chinese soldiers. A quick check revealed that one of their number was missing, where upon they demanded entry to the nearby Chinese garrison town of Wan-p'ing to search for him. After the Chinese refused, they attempted unsuccessfully to storm the town. This was the initial clash of the war.

That the Japanese must ultimately bear the onus for the war is not in question; their record of aggression against China at least since the Twenty-one Demands in 1915, and especially since they seized Manchuria in 1931, was blatant. Yet precisely what happened at Lu-kou-ch'iao and why is still debated. The Chinese have generally contended that the Japanese purposely provoked the fighting.