The U.S. Naval Reserve lieutenant had gone to bed that frigid December evening with his mind whirling with events of recent weeks. Accompanied by an officer in the Chinese Communist Army, Lieutenant S. Herbert Hitch had reconnoitered hundreds of miles through northwestern China in the fall of 1944 to assess the communists in their war against Japan. He had seen plenty.
A hand in the darkness shook his shoulder, and he wakened. "Hitch, come!" a voice whispered. Hitch silently followed the figure outside and recognized George Hatem, Mao Tse-tung's physician and a maverick from North Carolina who was calling himself Ma Haide. "The Chairman wants to see you." Hitch followed the doctor the few hundred yards to Mao's quarters, where he had visited countless times since arriving in Yenan, a barren city in remote northern China. Mao greeted him familiarly when he entered, as did the two other men in the room, Chou En-lai and Chu Teh, the commanding general of the communist army. Hitch was fluent in Chinese, so an interpreter was unnecessary.
"Hitch," said Mao, "I want you to take a letter to your Admiral King and tell him that we want to work with him." Shivering in the cold of the unheated room, Hitch was astounded. Mao was offering to help the United States in the war against Japan, and he wanted the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, to know it.
Hitch appreciated the explosive political implications of Mao's midnight proposal. The U.S. policy toward China was confused, ambiguous, and wrenched by strife and intrigue among the White House, Congress, the State Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), and powerful special interests. Some backed Chiang Kai-shek exclusively; others realized his corruption and advocated aiding his enemy, Mao, to bring greater military force against the Japanese. Hitch knew from his observations that Mao had disciplined manpower in huge numbers but few weapons. If the United States gave him guns and ammunition, would he use them against the Japanese or Chiang?
"Will you go?" asked Mao. The three communist leaders looked intently at Hitch.
Raised in Korea in a missionary family, Hitch understood the Asian mind. "I am not the ranking officer," said Hitch. "I have many bosses."
"Who?" asked Mao.
Army Major General Albert C. Wedemeyer, replied Hitch, along with Captain H. T. Jarrell, the naval attaché in Chungking, the provisional capital of Nationalist China, and of course, Army Colonel David D. Barrett, the commanding officer of the Dixie Mission, the nickname given the military mission to Hunan. "Even you have a boss," said Hitch. Mao raised his eyebrows. "The people of China."
The establishment of the Dixie Mission was the idea of John S. Service and John P Davies, both foreign service officers acting as political advisers to Army Lieutenant General Joseph Stilwell. They felt it essential to gather more information on conditions in the communist-controlled areas of China and to assess their future war potential, especially if they were armed and equipped by the United States. Chiang predictably opposed any contact with the communists, but President Franklin D. Roosevelt eventually authorized the mission. Comprised of some 15 Army personnel, two foreign service officers (Service and Raymond P Ludden), and Hitch, who was then the assistant naval attaché to China, they were welcomed by the communists in the summer of 1944. The communists ingratiated themselves with the mission, presumably as a way to get U.S. political and military support. As a consequence, those hostile to the communists felt the members of the mission were too sympathetic with Mao and his party.
Mao persisted that night with Hitch. Given sufficient arms, he would promise to support a U.S. amphibious landing anywhere on the Shantung Peninsula by seizing a 25-mile perimeter on the coast and holding it for at least 24 hours.
Hitch, of course, had no idea whether the United States even intended to land in China. Naval planners had long hypothesized a beachhead in their strategic planning, but the Shantung Peninsula was out of the question for obvious military reasons. Admiral King himself was committed to keeping China in the war to engage Japanese forces that otherwise would oppose the U.S. advance across the Pacific, but no evidence indicates that he ever considered supplying the communists. Political concerns aside, it was hard enough getting supplies to Chiang, let alone to the isolated communists.
But Hitch could not possibly have known anything of Admiral King's thinking, and he felt at the moment that Mao had a legitimate request. Mao wanted an answer. Hitch agreed to take Mao's letter to King. He foresaw that he would be far more than a courier; not only would he have to explain Mao's thinking behind the letter, as an intelligence officer fresh out of China he would have to brief the curious in Washington. It would be a mission not without peril.
Given the heated political complexities, Mao's proposal had to be concealed, even from Colonel Barrett, and especially from Tai-li, the notorious head of the Nationalist Secret Service and infamous as Chiang's "Number One Hatchet Man." If Tai-li got word to Commodore Milton Miles, commanding SACO (Sino-American Cooperative Association, the official naval mission to China), Miles would interfere immediately, for he distrusted the communists and by association the Dixie Mission. Hitch's roommate, a Signal Corps officer, surreptitiously helped Hitch wire Captain Jarrell, asking for a plane to take him to Chungking, where he met with the naval attaché to discuss developments. Jarrell felt that Hitch should go to Washington, Service agreed, and Wedemeyer signed priority travel orders. Patrick J. Hurley, President Roosevelt's envoy extraordinary to Chiang, was so hated by the embassy and Army staff that he deliberately was not informed.
Hitch returned to Hunan, and he talked to Mao for the last time. Mao was expansive and expressed his conviction that communism would one day dominate the world. "I love Americans," said Mao, "but the Wall Street barons must go." Despite Mao's ominous bombast, Hitch did not change his mind about the letter. He found it had been translated into English by Hatem and signed by General Chu, as one military man to another.
With the return of Lieutenant H. Hitch USN, of the U.S. Army Observers Section, Yenan, to Washington, I would like to take this opportunity to express my deepest respects and well wishes.
The successive serious blows dealt by the United States Navy under your able command to the Japanese in the Pacific have immeasurably brought nearer final Allied victory. The 600,000 fighters of the Chinese Eighth Route Army and New Fourth Army, together with the 90,000,000 people of the liberated areas join me in expressing our sincere appreciation and congratulations.
In the past five months Lieutenant H. Hitch has had the opportunity of making personal observations and a study of the situation here and at the front and I believe that by his fine spirit of cooperation, friendliness, sincerity and energy has endeared himself to those who have come in contact with him. Captain H. T. Jarrell, U.S. Naval Attaché, who paid us a short visit, has directed Lieutenant H. Hitch in his work, being responsible for sending him on this mission. Captain H. T. Jarrell also discussed with us in a mutually cordial manner, problems relating to potentialities of our cooperation in war operations against Japan. I would like to congratulate you on having such fine officers under your command. It is this spirit which makes for friendly and intimate cooperation.
At a time when the war in Europe is coming to a successful conclusion and the final victory in the war in the Pacific and Far East has drawn a step nearer I wish to assure you that the Chinese Eighth Route Army and New Fourth Army together with the people of the liberated areas are willing to carry out to the greatest extent possible cooperation and coordination with any military operations of American Forces that may take place in China. This will aid, I believe, in bringing about a speedy defeat of the common enemy, the Japanese invaders, and help reestablish peace in the Far East. The potential possibilities of coordinated operations together with the general principles for action on our side have been made known to Lieutenant H. Hitch in detail.
When Hitch returned to Chungking for the first phase of the long trip to Washington, Davies gave him a letter of introduction to Brigadier General Frank Robert, a China hand who was then a senior policy officer on Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall's staff. "[Hitch] has discussed possible future plans with the Communist generals," wrote Davies, "in possibly greater detail than any other member of our Yenan Observer Section. And he has been forward east of the Yellow River observing Communist field soldiers and partisans. Of course, his particular interest lies in the coastal possibilities. On that subject . . . you will find him probably as good an authority as can be produced from out here."
When he finally arrived in Washington, Hitch found himself a "hot item," enjoying credibility as a politically neutral naval intelligence officer who had just returned from the Chinese front. As such he was a source of scarce firsthand information, and requests to hear him came from many quarters—with one major exception. Inexplicably, the gate keepers at King's office did not allow Hitch to see the admiral, so Hitch had no choice but to leave the letter and depart. He did see others, however, including John Carter Vincent, a China hand in the State Department. The gist of Hitch's observations (reported by Vincent) were that, given arms and equipment, the quiescent communist army could be effective against the Japanese. Politically, Hitch was convinced that the peasants enthusiastically supported the communists, that Mao and the leadership were more friendly to the United States than Russia, and that the communists' popularity and progressiveness were impressive.
Hitch's reports confirmed what Vincent, Service, and Davies predicted: the communists inevitably would overthrow the Nationalist government. When their predictions materialized, they were duly purged during Senator Joseph McCarthy's witch hunts. Hitch, by then a civilian, destroyed what records he could to avoid being implicated.
His reports to others had mixed reactions. Joseph Grew, former ambassador to Japan, listened carefully, but JCS staffers seemed bored with his briefing. The chiefs themselves were not present.
On Christmas Day, Hitch received word that Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal wanted to see him. Weary from walking and missed meals, Hitch, in rumpled uniform, waited in Forrestal's anteroom. When summoned inside, Hitch asked if Forrestal wanted the long or the short version. The secretary said to start with the short version. The interview extended through the remainder of the day. Hitch was amazed that Forrestal wanted to talk not solely of China, but of himself as well. The journalists, Forrestal lamented, accused him of being anti-Semitic. "We need a source of oil," said Forrestal. "We cannot settle a Jewish state." As Forrestal rambled, Hitch listened respectfully, and talk of China ended.
When the requests to hear him speak eventually diminished, Hitch asked to return to China. "You're staying here," said his detailer. It was well that he did. Hitch's December discussion with Mao had coincided with Hurley's attempts to negotiate a coalition between Mao and Chiang. Hurley was humiliated when Chiang rejected his proposals. Meanwhile, Barrett, the Army, and the OSS (Office of Strategic Services)—without telling Hurley—proposed dropping a division of U.S. airborne troops into the Shantung Peninsula, a ludicrous concept reflecting the bizarre unreality of the times.
The tempestuous Hurley became enraged at what he regarded to be the deception and disloyalty of both the embassy staff and the Army. He blocked the promotion of Barrett to brigadier general, and a purge of the embassy emptied it of all those with any understanding of China. Civil war between Mao and Chiang was foreordained.
By then, Hitch was marooned at a desk in Washington. His role in events was no more than a leaf in a typhoon. He would not know that one day in March 1945, writer Edgar Snow visited President Roosevelt. The talk turned to Snow's expertise: China. Roosevelt was baffled yet fascinated by the complexity of developments in China, and he complained that no one had explained it satisfactorily. The communists were growing in strength, said Roosevelt, but were they really communists in the true sense of the word? Were they taking orders from the Russians? And what, concretely, could the Eighth Route Army do in north China with U.S. aid?
Roosevelt answered his own question. "We are going to land supplies and liaison officers on the North China coast as we draw closer to Japan."
Snow was puzzled. "As long as we recognize Chiang Kai-shek as the sole government, all supplies have to go through him. We can't support two governments in China, can we?"
"Well, I've been working with two governments there," said Roosevelt. He threw back his head decisively. "I intend to go on doing so until I can get them together."'
Perhaps someone had read Hitch's letter after all.
Commander Buell is a Writer-in-Residence at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. His books include biographies of Admirals King and Raymond Spruance and most recently The Warrior Generals: Combat Leadership in the Civil War (New York: Crown Publishers, 1997). This article is based upon the author’s interview with Mr. Hitch in August 1999, together with materials from Mr. Hitch’s files.