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The Ship That Disguised Itself as an Island and Other Lesser-Known WWII Facts

Khalid Elhassan July 6, 2020 35 min

Guadalcanal - Guadalcanal campaign — Marines arriving in Guadalcanal. Encyclopedia Britannica

21. Falling In With the Communists, Then With the Japanese

Wang Jingwei receiving Nazi diplomats as head of a puppet state in 1941. Pinterest

Wang Jingwei formed a government in northern China in collaboration with the communists. However, he eventually fell out with the communists and purged them, at which point his government collapsed and his supporters flocked to Chiang Kai-shek. Bitter, Jingwei became an extreme right-winger. When the Japanese invaded China in 1937, he flew to meet their representatives in Hanoi, and issued a declaration calling for peaceful negotiation with the invaders.

Wang Jingwei with Japanese Prime Minister Tojo in 1942. Wikimedia

In 1939, he flew to Japan for negotiations, and while there, betrayed China and negotiated a deal on his own behalf. In 1940, he defected and was appointed by the Japanese to head a puppet regime, based in Japanese-occupied Nanking, that nominally “governed” the Japanese-conquered territories in China. During WWII, he remained Japan’s Chinese puppet ruler until his death in 1944.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.