General Maps showing War Areas and/or Armies?

[hselassi]

I have been looking for maps of China during the 2nd Sino-Japanese War showing the lines held by War Areas and hopefully their constituent armies, but have had no luck using English, German, or French. Do any of our Asian members know of pages where such maps can be found (if they exist at all, I am losing hope). I can fight my way through Chinese or Japanese numbers, so sorting out who is who should be no problem, but I can't go beyond numbers in either language, so I can't independently search for them.

Thanks in advance.
/s Harry

[Robert24]

I have seen maps similar to what you need in History of the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) by Hsu Long-hsuen and Chang Ming-kai .
Good luck.

[OpanaPointer]

Have you checked the Perry-Castenada Collection at Utexas?

[hselassi]

I have seen maps similar to what you need in History of the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) by Hsu Long-hsuen and Chang Ming-kai .

Is that book in English? I did a quick Amazon search and it did not pop up.

Have you checked the Perry-Castenada Collection at Utexas?

Yes, but unless they hide it very well, the only 2nd Sino-Japanese War maps they have are the USMI ones, which are great physical maps, but have very little military detail (other than front lines). Their European Theater maps are far superior.

Since this topic appears to be as difficult as I thought, can somebody post the Chinese characters that would be used for a Google search, e.g. War Area Maps, Sino-Japanese War (or whatever it is called in China) Army Maps, etc.

Thanks,

[Stephen_Rynerson]

I have seen maps similar to what you need in History of the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) by Hsu Long-hsuen and Chang Ming-kai .

Is that book in English? I did a quick Amazon search and it did not pop up.

There's an English edition. It's not currently in print, but you can find used copies for relatively reasonable prices (it's also pretty widely available in libraries too): http://www.amazon.com/History-Sino-Japa ... B00005W210

[Eugen Pinak]

Note, that "History of the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945)" by Hsu Long-hsuen and Chang Ming-kai does not show borders of War Areas or Armies.
The only maps I've found in the internet, that mention War Areas, are from Soviet 12-volume "History of WW II".
BP = War Area
1939-1941 - http://www.hrono.ru/maps/1939chin.jpg
1944 - http://www.hrono.ru/maps/1944chin.jpg
1945 - http://www.hrono.ru/maps/1945chin.jpg

[hselassi]

Eugen, thank you very much, these types of maps are exactly what I was looking for (with the added bonus that I can fight my way through Cyrillic far better than through Chinese characters (I even have problems recognizing numbers above 3)).

Thanks again.

[Eugen Pinak]

Glad to be of help. Unfortunately, official military subdivision of China is still a mystery to me. From Russian books I know about general division of forces, but how it corresponded to War Areas division???

[hselassi]

From Russian books I know about general division of forces, but how it corresponded to War Areas division???

The War Areas (or War Zones in some translations) are equivalent to German Army Groups or Soviet Fronts with the additional aspect that many of the War Area commanders were also the local warlords or provincial leaders. They operated with different levels of central control and would normally command all forces in their area (land, air, partisan), although "command" in the 1937-45 Chinese context was a rather fluid term.

[Stephen_Rynerson]

No maps, unfortunately, but Charles D. Pettibone's The Organization and Order of Battle of Militaries in World War II: Vol. VIII - China (2013) has a list of war areas with their geographic descriptions at pages 152 to 176.

[hselassi]

No maps, unfortunately, but Charles D. Pettibone's The Organization and Order of Battle of Militaries in World War II: Vol. VIII - China (2013) has a list of war areas with their geographic descriptions at pages 152 to 176.

I had not thought about that (I own the ebooks of his Vols 7 & 8) since he is more of a "name collector" while I am more into ToEs and OOBs (I exported Vol 8 to Excel and am slowwwwwly using it to create a quarterly OOB of Chinese forces).

I was specifically looking for maps for the graphic aspect of the front lines and War Area boundaries. I already have written descriptions from wiki.cn via Google/MSIE translator.