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Abstract
This paper addressed Sha Fei’s unpublished photographs from China during World War II in three dimensions: image, symbol, and index. The intrinsic meanings of these images depend upon the historical context and historical relations between the images and historical scenes they represented. Here lies significance of the index function of Sha Fei’s photographs, which is to direct historians’ attention, inspire intensive research for other archival sources or textual evidence and drive researchers to discuss broader questions about Communist war mobilization and political growth.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Wang Yan, The Commemorative Album of Sha Fei (Taiyuan: Shanxi People’s Press, 1996), 35.
2 “The Red Army in north China Launched Its ‘Spiritual Mobilization Movement’1938” (Sha Fei Papers, Box 1, Hoover Institution Archives).
3 The Sha Fei Collection at Hoover Institute Archive, Stanford University is built up by Ms. Wan Yan’s donation of Sha Fei’s (her father) personal papers and photographs.
4 Zhongyang Daily, July 19, 1937.
5 Mao Zedong, “Policies, Measures and Perspectives for Resisting the Japanese Invasion (July 23, 1937)” Selected Works of Mao Zedong (Beijing: People’s Press, 1991), 346-54.
6 See Wan Yan, My Father Sha Fei (Beijing: Shehui Kexue Chubanshe, 2015), 107.
7 On March 11, 1939, the GMD government formally created the concept and launched the spirit mobilization campaign.
8 Yan Xishan (1883–1960) was military leader in province of Shanxi. During the War against the Japanese Aggression, he was appointed the Chief Commander of the GMD’s Second War Zone, the immediate superior of the Communist Eighth Army.
9 Nie Rongzhen, Memoire of Nie Rongzhen, vol. II (Beijing: Zhanshi cubanshe, 1982), 388.
10 Peng Zhen, “On the Government in the Jin-Cha-Ji anti-Japanese War Base”, cited from Xie Zhonghong and Xiao Yinchen, eds., History of the Jin-Cha-Ji Anti-Japan Base (Beijing: Gaige chubanshe, 1992), 56.
11 See “The Declaration of the Establishment of the Government of the Jin-Cha-Ji Border District” Ibid.
12 See Zhonghong and Yinchen, History of the Jin-Cha-Ji Anti-Japan Base.
13 The song “On the Mountain of Taihong” was created in 1938 and devoted to the guerrilla fighters on the mountain Taihang, Province of Shangxi. Lyric by Gui Taosheng, composed by Xian Xinghai.
14 Yi Jiayun, “Yizhou Ge” (Dǎ qǐ huáng yīng ér, Mò jiào zhī shàng tí. Tí shí jīng qiè mèng, Bù dé dào liáo xī).
15 Cited from Joseph R. Conlin, The American Past: A Survey of American History, Volume II: Since 1865, Vol. 2 (Independence: Cengage Learning, 2013), 715.
16 Interview of Shang Shisuang by Wang Wenhua and Zhufeng, Interview of Shang Shisuang, the director of the Office of party History Studies, Fuping County. Shang was the member of the Er Tong Tuan in the Jin-Cha-Ji Border District during the War Against the Japanese Aggression and the director of the Office of party History Studies, Fuping County. http://lt.cjdby.net/thread-1847223-1-1.html, accessed on February 20, 2017.
17 This slogan is similar to the American war mobilization slogan: “victory garden/food garden.” See American documentary television series The 1940s House, Wartime Farm.
18 Wei Hongyuan, Social Survey of the Taihang Mountain Areas in the 1930s–40s (Beijing: People’s Press, 2003), Cited from “Military Mobilization and Rural Tradition,” 37.
19 Li Junqun, “Military Mobilization and Rural Tradition.” History Teaching, no. 2 (2011): 32. See also Han Yonglu, Introduction to Mao Zedong’s Thoughts on War Mobilization (Beijing: Military Science Press, 1995), 19.
20 Both Song and Deng are leading army commanders in the PRA and later awarded the rank of full generals.
21 Junqun, “Military Mobilization and Rural Tradition,” 37.
22 Jin-Cha-Ji Pictorial, Vol. 1, no. 1 (1942): 71.
23 They are household names in China. Huang Shiren is a character in the famous opera “White Haired Woman”, and nan batian in the movie “Red Detachment of Women.”
24 This was also the case in the Shanghai Communist bases, See James Z. Gao, The Communist Takeover of Hangzhou: The Transformation of City and Cadre, 1949–1952 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004), Chapter 1.
25 Liu Shaoqi to the CCP Central committee, (August 4, 1947), cited from Zhi Yaomin, Liu Shaoqi and the Land Reform in Ji-Sui (Taipei: Xiuwei chubanshe, 2008), 116.
26 Another household name, a character in movie Huaishuzhuang (Village of Banyan Tree), who joined the Eight Route Army during the Anti-Japanese War but betrayed the revolution when the land reform confiscated his family (landlord) land.
27 I borrow W. J. T. Mitchell’s term of “post-linguistic rediscovery” to address reading historical truth different from the existing linguistic narrative, but my focus is not the same to that Mitchell discusses in the book, The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era (Cambridge: MIT Press), 16.
28 The Second National Archives in Nanjing, SNA 761. The Department of Army of the National Government, “The Methods of the Recruitment of Additional Soldiers in 1941.”
29 See Zhang Yanping, “Review of the Military Mobilization of the GMD Government During the War Against the Japanese Aggression.” Journal of the Studies of the Anti-Japanese War, no. 4 (2008): 129–47, and See also Lin Zhen-rong, Introduction to the Conscription (Chongqingi: Zhongzheng Shuju, 1940).
30 Li Zhaoliang, “My Observation of Knowledge of the GMD’s Conscription.” In Selected Historical Materials (Military Institution) (Beijing: Zhongguo Wen shi Chubanshe, 2002), Vol. 2, 1–7. Huang Zhanchun, “Witnessing Various Actions Victimizing the People in the Military Conscription” op. cit., 36–41.
31 Michael Lindsay, The Unknown War: North China, 1937–1945 (London: Bergstrom and Boyle, 1975), 7–8. For more information, see the Taiwanese Historian Liu Ximing, Weijun: Qiangquan Jingzheng Xia De Zuzi [Puppet Army: Powers under the Power Competition, 1937–1949] (Taipei: Daoxiang chubanshe, 2002), 9–132.
32 Tree-Third System was an innovated government in the Communist-controlled area, whose government officials compromised one-third Communists, one-third non-Communists and one-third representatives of enlightened gentry.
33 Lindsay, The Unknown War, 1.
34 Mao Zedong, “In Memory of Bethune” Selected works of Mao Zedong, Vol. ii.
35 For example, see Sha Fei, 50–53. Gao Chu and Jin Yongquan, eds., Forefront: The Communist Party of China During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (Beijing: Jincheng cubangshe, 2015), 488–95.
36 There are similar arguments about “humanity is a victim of its own success” or “Disney is a victim of its own success.”
37 Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Mind’s Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers (New York: Aperture, 2005).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
James Z. Gao
James Z. Gao (1948–2021) was a professor of modern Chinese history at the University of Maryland, College Park. He received his MA from Peking University in 1983 and PhD from Yale University in 1994. Dr. Gao taught at Christopher Newport University from 1992–1998 before he joined the History Department at the University of Maryland in 1999. His publications include The Communist Takeover of Hangzhou: The Transformation of City and Cadre, 1949–1954 (University of Hawaii Press, 2004), Meeting Technology’s Advance: Social Change in China and Zimbabwe in the Railway Age (Greenwood Press, 1997), Historical Dictionary of Modern China: 1800–1949 (Scarecrow Press, 2009), and The A to Z of Modern China: 1800–1949 (Scarecrow Press, 2010). James Gao was a founding member of the Chinese Historians in the United States (CHUS) and served as the association’s first president in 1987–1988.