US Army Topo maps of China circa WWII

sjchan · Post by **sjchan** » 10 May 2007 10:07

Also, one caveat in using this book. Just as Hsu and Chang tended to downplay contribution from the Communists, Guo Rugui seems to cast those who were sympathetic to the Communist cause in a more positive light (this included those KMT generals who like himself subsequently defected to the Communists)

asiaticus · Post by **asiaticus** » 10 May 2007 11:44

I meant that was what the title in English Translation on the sites I looked at.

pitman · Post by **pitman** » 12 May 2007 18:58

Hmm the link to the online version doesn't seem to work.

sjchan · Post by **sjchan** » 13 May 2007 14:22

Link seems to be okay most of the time ...

Incidentally, I looked at the description on the Battle of Pingxingguan in the book

http://www.wehoo.net/book/wlwh/a30012/04644.htm
http://www.wehoo.net/book/wlwh/a30012/04645.htm

It's still the old, official (to me outdated) version. I have posted a more recent version of this much publicized battle here:

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=118599

sjchan · Post by **sjchan** » 23 Jun 2007 04:00

For those who can read Japanese, there is a useful on-line resource called the Japan Center for Asian Historical Records (JACAR). It does have an English interface.

http://www.jacar.go.jp/english/index.html

You do need to download the free DjVu browser plug-in.

It is not that easy to use. As an example you can try layered search and select The National Institute for Defence Studies -> Army -> Dainikki, Ministry of War -> Rikushikimitsu Dainikki for documents related to the Sino Japanese War, primarily the logistical aspects. Mostly mundane stuff but hidden among the mountain of documents are after action reports with maps, list of casualties etc. Perhaps someone who knows Japanese can provide additional info.

asiaticus · Post by **asiaticus** » 06 Jul 2007 09:23

Thanks looks pretty interestng.

sjchan · Post by **sjchan** » 25 Jul 2007 06:52

Well, there is a counterpart to the excellent US maps, this time in Chinese and done by the Chinese army and surveryors.

I came across this at a well-known Chinese military history forum

http://www.fightersalon.net/bbs/showthr ... post124090

The link of the map database, hosted in Taiwan, which contains over 30,000 maps is

http://webgis.sinica.edu.tw/map_moi/default.asp

The interface is bit hard to use. A typical approach (there are others) is to enter the map collection name (a good try is to use the name of the province, as noted in the original post) using the first line and then the map name (typically name of the village or geographical feature of note) using the second. It is particulary useful if one wants to just look up the topology of small hamlets or big cities without knowing their exact location, however you do have to know the Chinese names.

Each map has a unique id. For instance

http://gissrv1.sinica.edu.tw/map/bin/sh ... =11904.sid

gives you a map of Hengyang city (map id 11904), which you can zoom in. It's all Chinese though, folks.

Seems like you have to use their viewer and the image cannot be downloaded, but I really haven't try it out too much yet.