The Tormented Alliance: American Servicemen and the Occupation of China, 1941-1949

Zach Fredman

Mar 2023 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by P.J. Ochlan

About this audiobook

After Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, leaders in China and the United States had high hopes of a lasting partnership between the two countries. More than 120,000 U.S. servicemen deployed to China, where Chiang Kai-shek's government carried out massive programs to provide them with housing, food, and interpreters. But, as Zach Fredman uncovers in The Tormented Alliance, a military alliance with the United States means a military occupation by the United States. The first book to draw on archives from all of the areas in China where U.S. forces deployed during the 1940s, it examines the formation, evolution, and undoing of the alliance between the United States and the Republic of China during World War II and the Chinese Civil War. Fredman reveals how each side brought to the alliance expectations that the other side was simply unable to meet, resulting in a tormented relationship across all levels of Sino-American engagement. After Japan's surrender and the spring 1946 withdrawal of Soviet forces from Manchuria, the U.S. occupation became the chief obstacle to consigning foreign imperialism in China irrevocably to the past. The occupation of China also cast a long shadow, establishing patterns that have followed the U.S. military elsewhere in Asia up to the present.

About the author

Zach Fredman is assistant professor of history at Duke Kunshan University.

P. J. Ochlan, an Audie Award-winning and multiple AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator, has recorded hundreds of audiobooks. His acting career spans more than thirty years and has also included Broadway, the New York Shakespeare Festival, critically acclaimed feature films, and regular roles in television series.