Diplomats in Blue: U.S. Naval Officers in China, 1922–1933

15 Crumbling Foreign Collaboration

15 Crumbling Foreign Collaboration When Admiral Montgomery Meigs Taylor raised his four-star flag as Commander in Chief Asiatic Fleet in USS Houston at Shanghai on 1 September 1931, he probably had little or no premonition of the outbreak that would occur in Manchuria less than three weeks later. The ramifications of Japan’s actions would end the friendly parallel operations , even cooperation, between Japan and the other foreign powers in protecting their respective nationals south of the Great Wall. Taylor had last served in the Far East under Admiral Dewey on board Olympia during the Spanish-American War in 1898, and he had not been prepared for dealing with naval diplomacy as had Mark Bristol during nearly eight years as high commissioner in Turkey or as had Charles McVay as Commander Yangtze River Patrol Force. He came to the Far East from serving as chief of the War Plans Division in the Office of Naval Operations , planning for campaigns against Orange (Japan) and Red (Britain) and dealing with naval arms limitation. His most recent command afloat had been as commander of the Scouting Fleet in the Atlantic. His letters from the Far East to the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral William V. Pratt, suggest that he was learning on the job. At the outset of his command , Taylor moved Houston northward for a week at Tsingtao and then to Chinwangtao, from which port he entrained for the usual courtesy call on Minister Nelson Johnson at Peking.1 On the eve of Taylor’s arrival in Peking, Johnson had been alerted by the distinguished art historian and old China hand, Dr. J. C. Ferguson, that he, Johnson, probably should avoid going south to Nanking to continue negotiations with the Chinese for the restoration of American extraterritorial rights, as the Japanese were likely to occupy Manchuria within the next three months. Johnson thought such action by the Japanese “highly improbable,” even “fantastic,” as they were already exploiting the area without shouldering the expense for its administration .2 On his first day in Peking, 16 September , Taylor in company with Johnson called on the “Young Marshal” Chang Hsueh-liang to discuss the case of Captain Nakamura Shuntaro, a Japanese army officer who, it seemed, had been murdered while investigating in an area of Manchuria close to the Mongolian border.3 Two days later Taylor departed from Peking for a tour of the Yangtze Valley that would take him upriver as far as Hankow, then downriver for a call at Nanking , winding up at Shanghai on 6 October, where he would remain for the usual autumn visit of about six weeks.4 At 3:00 a.m. on 19 September, just hours after Taylor’s departure from Peking, Johnson was alerted by Chang Hsueh-liang’s Australian adviser, W. H. Donald, that Japanese soldiers had opened fire on the Chinese near Mukden the previous evening. The Japanese military in the area was apparently completely out of control, yet Chang Hsueh-liang had ordered his soldiers to retire to their barracks and refrain from retaliatory measures.5 In reporting to Taylor, Johnson observed: “All this is very serious.” Nonetheless, he did not know if anything could be done about it.6 Resident Americans 228 / Part III. The U.S. Navy and the Confrontation between China and Japan in southern Manchuria, a Japanese sphere of influence since the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, were outside the protective range of the Asiatic Fleet. So there seemed to be no reason to alter the schedule of the fleet, which, like its commander in chief, would be moving southward on its slow progress toward its winter station in the Philippines. A collision between the rival claims of Japanese imperialism and Chinese nationalism in Manchuria was inevitable. After acquiring from Russia in 1905 the naval base at Port Arthur (Ryojun, Lushun), the port of Dairen (Talien) in the Kwantung leased territory, and the South Manchurian Railway running northwest from Dairen to Chang­ chun, Japan had built a position in southern Manchuria that many Japanese regarded as vital to the security and economy of the Japanese Empire. The Japanese Kwantung Army of about eleven thousand men had already demonstrated its independence when some of its officers in 1928 blew up “Old Marshal” Chang Tso-lin as his railway carriage passed under the tracks of the South Manchurian Railway. The Chinese had subsequently indicated their desire to return Manchuria to full Chinese control in 1929, by attempting unsuccessfully to seize...