The 1894–95 war between China and Japan, known in the West as the First Sino-Japanese War, lasted only nine months, but its impact resonates today.The Chinese Beiyang (Northern) Fleet was led by her flagship, Dingyuan, and her sister ship*, Zhenyuan*, which were the biggest in Asia; German-built armoured turret ships, they were armed with four 12in guns and two 6in guns, plus six smaller guns and three torpedo tubes. For their part the Japanese fleet, incl...

The invasion and conquest of Hong Kong formed part of the staggering series of Japanese conquests across the Far East in late 1941 and early 1942.On 8th December 1941, as part of the simultaneous combined attack against Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) invaded the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia and the British colony of Hong Kong. After only 18 days of battle the defenders, a weak, undermanned brigade, were overwhelmed by a superior force of two b...

This book describes and illustrates the ground forces of the Republic of Korea and its United Nations allies during the Korean War, as well as the UN medical contingents in the conflict.The North Korean invasion of the Republic of Korea (ROK) in June 1950 prompted an enormous international response, as first the United States and then a host of allied countries contributed combat troops or medical personnel to the United Nations effort to support the South Koreans....

A detailed account of the bloody capture of Shanghai and Nanjing by Japan in the early days of World War II in the East.From 1931, China and Japan had been embroiled in a number of small-scale conflicts that had seen vast swathes of territory being occupied by the Japanese. On 7 July 1937, the Japanese engineered the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, which led to the fall of Beijing and Tianjin and the start of a de facto state of war between the two countries. This forc...

In July 1937, the Marco Polo Bridge Incident sparked a bloody conflict between Chinese and Japanese forces that would rage across China and beyond for more than eight years.The two sides' forces brought very different strengths and limitations to the conflict. In 1937 China was divided into factions, each controlled by warlords with independent forces, and there was no unified Chinese army. In order to fight the Japanese Chiang Kai-shek, the nominal leader of Natio...

This study tells the epic story of how a routed group of Chinese Communists marched tens of thousands of miles with Mao on a journey that would lead to their eventual triumph and rule of the whole of China.Every nation has its founding myth, and for modern China it is the Long March. In the autumn of 1934, the Chinese Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek routed the Chinese Communists and some 80,000 men, women and children left their homes to walk with Mao Zedong int...

In March 1969 the two giants of the Communist world – the People’s Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics – came to blows over the control of a remote and uninhabited island on their mutual border in a conflict that risked barely controlled escalation, and in which the USSR gave consideration to the use of nuclear weapons.In 2021, Helion & Company published two books by Harold Orenstein and Dmitry Ryabushkin: The Sino-Soviet Border War of 1969 Volume 1: T...

From the author of Children of the Camps, a look at the disturbing activities of the Kempeitai, Japan's feared military and secret police.The book opens by explaining the origins, organization, and roles of the Kempeitai apparatus, which exercised virtually unlimited power throughout the Japanese Empire. Author Mark Felton reveals their criminal and collaborationist networks that extorted huge sums of money from hapless citizens and businesses. They ran the...

On May 14-15, 1905, in the Tsushima Straits near Japan, an entire Russian fleet was annihilated, its ships sunk, scattered, or captured by the Japanese. In the deciding battle of the Russo-Japanese War, the Japanese lost only three destroyers but the Russians lost twenty-two ships and thousands of sailors. It was the first modern naval battle, employing all the new technology of destruction. The old imperial navy was woefully unprepared. The defeat at Tsushima was the last and greatest of ...

The Lost Voices of our 'Forgotten Army' in the war with Japan 1941-45.Nearly a million strong by 1944, the British 14th Army fought and ultimately conquered the Japanese forces that invaded Burma and strove to break through into India. But the victory was hard won, with great suffering along the way. With priority given to defeating Germany, these troops were last in line for additional men and equipment, and they joked about being "The Forgotten Army." Here is the...

Following the death of the Yugoslavian President Tito in 1980, the semi-autonomous republics and provinces that he had welded into a multi-cultural nation in 1945 slid gradually towards separation.For ten years following 1991, the world watched in horror as a series of bloody wars ripped a modern European state apart, and the intolerable spectacle eventually forced international intervention.Illustrated with rare photos and colour uniform plates, this secon...

Book describes technical aspects of the Russo-Japanese Naval War. Contains descriptions of all involved ships, Russian and Japanese ones. Maps, photos.