Interview by Samuel Hui, March 2013

Background

        I was born in a family of rich peasant from Mianyang of Hubei province in 1924. My ancestors had served as gentries during the Ming Dynasty. Since I was from a family of local elites, we were always told how terrible the Communist was when we were little.

        With the help of my uncle who had studied in Japan, I was able to attend elementary school in the city of Wuhan. The Second Sino-Japanese started before I graduated from the elementary school. After Wuhan was captured by the Imperial Japanese Army on October, 1938, we escaped to Hunan province with our teacher to continue our middle school education there.

        On our way to Changsha, we were not only bombed by the Japanese, the Communist tried to convince us to go to Yenan as well. Since most of us were members of the Three People’s Principles Youth League operated by the Kuomintang, we rejected the invitation of the Communist.

        With the help of General Chen Cheng, the commander of the 9^th War Area, we were able to return to Enshi located at unoccupied Hubei to study in the Victory High School run by the provincial government. We were still bombed by the Japanese bombers at that time.

        In 1941, I went to Guizhou province to take the exam of the air force academy with three of my friends. Eventually, I passed the exam with one of my friend whose last name is Yang. The other two failed to become an air force cadet. However, one of those two poor guys was sick at the time, so I decided to stay behind to help him while Yang continued his journey to become a pilot.

        Without any place to go, we went to take the exam to enter the Whampoa Military Academy at Hengyang. All three of us passed the exam and were asked to join Kuomintang immediately. We were then assigned to the Fifth Branch of Whampoa Military Academy located at Kunming.

        We spent about three months to walk to Kunming from Hengyang. A lot of cadets were starved to death on route. From Kunming, we were transferred to Dali by trucks to begin our basic training. Since our trucks we powered by alcohol, the engines broke down very often before we arrived at Dali. For this reason, we were not able to begin our basic training before February of 1943.

Battle

        Originally, I would not graduate from the Whampoa Military Academy before February of 1945. Because the need of officers to participate in the Salween Campaign, I was assigned to the 88^th Division of the 71^st Army as a Platoon Commander on April of 1944. After crossing the Salween River and Gaoligong Mountain, we first engaged the Imperial Japanese Army in Longling. At that time, we were fighting under the command of the 11^th Army Group.

        The 18^th Division was the toughest enemy we encountered there. Once we heard that the 20^th Army Group suffered more casualties at Tenchong, a special regiment was formed to support the 198^th Division of 54^th Army. At that time, I was a 19-year old Second Lieutenant and a Platoon, and my mission was to attack Tenchong from the right wing.

        We faced the bullets and shells fired by the Japanese Army from the wall of Tenchong. A lot of our soldiers were killed. I was also hit by the shells of Japanese mortars on my head and back. While 30 people in my platoon lost their lives, the rest seven of us were all injured. After that, I was sent to Baoshan for medical care. I know that about 80 comfort women were rescued by the Chinese soldiers. Most of them were middle or high school students from Taiwan.

Liu Cheng-hua

What unit were you with?

Answer:  I served with the 88^th Division of the 71^st Army under General Chen Min-jen. During the Salween River Campaign, Back then, I was a platoon commander of the 3^rd Battalion of 2^nd Regiment. We were under the command of the 11^th Army Group.

Did you or any of your family live through the Japanese occupation of Yunnan?

Answer:  No, my home town was located at Mianyang of Hubei province.

How did civilian populations respond when the Chinese Army liberated areas? What sort of devastation did you see?

Answer:  My regiment lost 700 soldiers to retake Tenchong from the Imperial Japanese Army on September of 1944. We encountered some Taiwanese sex slaves (Comfort Women) in the town. Those Taiwanese women were transferred back to China later and were taken care by the Taiwanese exiles working for the Kuomintang in Chungking.

Were you conscripted? How did you come to be on the Burma/Western Yunnan Front?

Answer:  No, I was a cadet from the Kunming Branch of the Whampoa Military Academy before deployed to the Battlefield of Western Yunnan. Most of the soldiers in my units were natives of Guizhou province. Many of them were conscripted. I was sent to the frontline even before I graduated from the academy because we needed people so badly out there.

What sort of equipment/weapons/uniforms did you use?

Answer: The weapon I used was Chiang Kai-shek rifle, the Chinese version of German Karabiner 98k. It was similar to the Caliber .30 M1 rifle equipped by the US Army. However, Chiang Kai-shek rifle can only fire one bullet at once, which is different from the M1 semi-automatic rifle. The United States did not provide us good weapons and equipments like those used by the New 1^st Army and New 6^th Army in India. For this reason, we still used leg wrappings while in Western Yunnan. At that time, China was a very poor country. We were issued winter uniform in the summer and summer uniform in the winter. This is why many Chinese soldiers were freeze to died when we went through the Gaoligong Mountain to capture Longling. 1,000 of our 4,000 soldiers died because of various reasons. While some of them died because of hunger, other were killed by the leeches.

Did you have any interaction with American liaison teams? What was your impression of them?

Answer: No, I did not have any interaction with the American while I was in Yunnan. However, I made friends with Americans from the OSS after I was selected as a member of the Chinese Commando. There were eight American officers and enlisted men in our team. Because most of the soldiers in the Chinese Commando at least received some education from the high school, we got along with them well.

What was your impression of the American airplanes? Did you benefit from their support? Any specific examples?

Answer: We had good relationship with Chennault’s 14^th Air Force. As you know, Chennault is not only the founder of the Flying Tigers, but also the Chinese Commando as well. During the Battle of Tenchong, the American provided air support to us. Those bomb raids against the Japanese inside the city helped us, but some time our soldiers were shot by the P-51 as well. There were too many of us at the field, and it was hard for the American pilot to distinguish Chinese and Japanese soldiers. A lot of us were shot to death by the bullets fired from the Mustangs. Well, this is war, and shit happened in the war. For this reason, we don’t blame the American. Whenever we saw American planes flew over, we were still very happy about it. Many of us died when we were trying to cross the city moat as well because the doors we used were not very useful to float.

What was your impression of your leadership, both directly over you, and over the Chinese military at large.

Answer: I was a member of the Youth League of Three People’s Principles before I attended the 5^th Branch of the Chinese Army Academy located in Kunming. For this reason, I believed what I was told to die for my country and leader. To all young officers from the Whampoa Military Academy, Chiang Kai-shek was the successor of Dr. Sun Yet-sen and a great man who was capable to complete the Chinese Revolution. This is the reason why we were so loyal to him during both the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War. We never questioned even once about our leader’s greatness. We were proud to be a member of the Central Army. You may think that we were too radical at that time from today’s point of view. However, I believe that it is the true reason why we were willing to give away our lives to sacrifice for our nation against the Japanese. This is the reason why we had the spiritual power to defeat the Japanese who had better weapons and equipments than us. During the Battle of Tenchong, my platoon last 30 men. Although only seven of us were still alive after the town was captured, we all believed that it is worth.

What do you think is the legacy of World War II in China? What do you think is the legacy of the campaign in North Burma/Western Yunnan?

Answer: I think the Chinese military under the command of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek had contributed so much to both China and world. When I was in Burma, I always saw British and American soldiers called “Ding Hao” to us. We had visited several major battle fields in Europe after the war including Normandy. When people there knew we are veterans of the Chinese Nationalist Army, they all treated us as heroes. As soon as the Japanese invaded Manchuria, we all learn how important China as a nation to us by watching the atrocities committed by the aggressor. For most of us Chinese soldiers, we all know that it is our job to follow the national flag to wherever it is. We swore our loyalty to both Dr. Sun Yet-sen and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. Not only were the soldiers like that, the civilians as well. We all hated the Japanese very much.

For many years, the Communist Party of China erased the contribution of the Nationalist Army from the memories of the people in mainland China, and I am very angry about it. When I returned to Tenchong after my retirement, I saw the Communist regime erased sensitive terms such as the “Republic of China” and “National Revolutionary Army” from the memorial there. It really made me mad. I heard that things are getting better in mainland China today. The younger generation no longer believes the myth of the Communist Party. I was interviewed by some media from mainland China as well for my experience in Tenchong as well. It was wonderful.

However, I still hate those Commies as much as the Japanese. They not only avoided fighting with the Japanese during the war, but also attacked our soldiers working behind enemy line. When we were ordered to accept the Japanese surrender in Nanking as members of the Chinese Commando, we were also harassed and shot by the Communist New 4^th Army as soon as we landed on the runway. I will never forgive them. 

One more thing! Liu was not hit in his head, but his back as well during the battle over Tenchong