Thread by @DavidCranmerUn1

Joseph Alsop - Wikipedia

In 1941, after it had become clear that the United States would soon enter World War II, Alsop and Kintner suspended their column and volunteered for the armed forces. Alsop entered the US Navy and used his political connections en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Al…

to be assigned as Staff Historian to Claire Lee Chennault's American Volunteer Group, later famous as the Flying Tigers,[5] while the group was training at Toungoo, Burma. While on a supply mission for Chennault late in the fall of 1941,

he found himself in Hong Kong on December 7. Unable to secure passage out of the city, Alsop was eventually taken into custody as an enemy alien and interned at Hong Kong by the Japanese. After six months he was repatriated through a prisoner exchange as a journalist, but he

had really been a combatant, a fact he managed to conceal by changing into civilian clothes and with the help of friends. He traveled back to the United States on the neutral liner Gripsholm. He returned to China as a civilian Lend-lease administrator in the fall of 1942,

assigned to the wartime capital, Chungking. He eventually rejoined Chennault in Kunming, China and served with him for the remaining months of the war.

During and after the Second Sino-Japanese War, from Nov 1937 to May 1946, it was Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's provisional capital. Indeed, after the General and remaining army had lived there for a time following their retreat in 1938 from the previous capital of Wuhan, it

was formally declared the second capital city (pei du) on 6 September 1940. After Britain, the United States, and other Allies entered the war in Asia in December 1941, one of the Allies' deputy commanders of operations in South East Asia (South East Asia Command SEAC),

Joseph Stilwell, was based in the city. This made it a city of world importance in the fight against Axis powers, together with London, Moscow and Washington, D.C.[34] The city was also visited by Lord Louis Mountbatten, the Supreme Commander of SEAC which was itself

headquartered in Ceylon, modern day Sri Lanka. Chiang Kai Shek as Supreme Commander in China worked closely with Stilwell.[35] From 1938 to 1943, the city suffered from continuously massive terror bombing campaigns of the Imperial Japanese Navy and Army Air Forces; battles of

which were fought entirely by the Chinese Air Force squadrons and anti-aircraft artillery units.