Tracy writes:

> Dear Wirt,
>
>  IIRC "Gung Ho" is Chinese and learned by U.S. Marine Corps
>  personnel working alongside the Chinese in the 1930s.

>
>  But in either case, "Gung Ho" is a Chinese term.

I know. I was just kidding when I said that it was a different dialect of
Latin. I should have said that it was a far eastern dialect of Latin.


>  I don't recall what the USMC was doing in China in the
>  1930s however.
>
>  I could be slightly off, and the source could be from U.S.
>  Army sponsored "Flying Tigers" air squadron working with the
>  Chinese in WWII.

You can get a pretty good sense of the history of the region from two films:
"55 Days at Peking", starrring Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner and "The Sand
Pebbles", starring Steve McQueen and Richard Attenborough.

The first movie takes place in 1900 and concerns the Boxer Rebellion, the
second occurs in 1926 and concerns itself with the rise of the Nationalist
army in China. Both movies deal with the rise of nationalism in China, the
unification of China, and the nationalists efforts to expel the "foreign
devils" from that territory that the Chinese believed to be rightfully theirs
and part of a whole China.

During the last half of the 1800's all of the European powers moved into East
Asia, creating what they called "spheres of influence," essentially divvying
up all of that part of the world that extends from Mongolia to New Zealand.
The United States only half-heartedly participated in this land grab, but we
did participate.

A very brief history of this era occurs at:

    http://www.smplanet.com/imperialism/fists.html

To say that the Marines worked "alongside" the Chinese is a bit of a
distortion of history. While there were many Chinese who willingly worked for
the US, there were equally many who greatly opposed our presence there. The
story of the San Pablo, the gunboat on the Yangtze that is told in "The Sand
Pebbles", occurred pretty much at the time of our last involvement in China,
during the late 1920's.

In the hundred years prior, China endured a great many brutal wars and
rebellions, including the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. Sun Yat-sen became the
first leader of the Republic of China in 1911, ending 2,000 years of
monarchy. He vowed to create a Chinese society that would uphold his Three
Principles of nationalism, democracy. However Mao Zedong established the
Communist Party of China in 1921, and although small at the time, ultimately
became the dominant political force in China with his "Long March" across
China during the last few years of WWII (1943-1945).

Prior to Zedong's accession to power, China was extremely unstable
politically. Warlords controlled a great deal of the countryside. After Sun's
death in 1925, Sun's protege Chaing Kai-shek pursued the nationalist cause,
primarily via military force, which is the backstory of "The Sand Pebbles."

In the midst of all of this, the Western powers, in China not overwhelmingly
for any political designs but for opportunities for commerce and influence in
the form of trading companies, Christian missionaries, and naval gunboats.
The US Marines were in China to protect those interests, although by the late
1920's a great many of the missionaries were either expelled or slaughtered,
the trading companies failed and the very small presence of the US Marines
was essentially pushed out of the country.

In the end, the Nationalists lost China to the Communists and retreated to
Taiwan in the late 1940's. The US re-engaged itself in the region, assuming
the role of the French imperialists in 1954 in Vietnam, after their stunning
defeat at Dien Bien Phu. While the French had profound economic interests in
Vietnam, we were there only to stop the Communist advance in the region.
However, of great note, a very young Ho Ching Min pleaded with the US prior
to its 1954 decision to help the Vietnamese nationalists expel the French
from Vietnam and become allies in protecting the nations of the region. We
rejected that plea.

Again, more than any sane human would want to know.

Wirt Atmar

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