Jack Belden
Encyclopedia
Jack Belden was an American war correspondent who covered the Japanese invasion of China
, the Second World War
and the Chinese Revolution
.
, who also spoke Chinese, and with colleagues Agnes Smedley
and Edgar Snow
.
After graduating with honors from Colgate University
at the beginning of the Depression
, Belden found work as a merchant seaman. In 1933, he jumped ship in Shanghai. He learned Chinese and eventually got a job covering local courts for Shanghai's English-language newspapers. After Japan invaded China in 1937, Belden was hired by United Press
. Life
magazine soon picked him up and he spent most of the Second World War as a correspondent for Time
and Life in China, North Africa and Europe.
Belden was noted in China for getting closer to the action than most of the international press corps who, hampered by their inability to speak the language, usually stayed close to official sources of information. The New York Times’ correspondent Tillman Durdin
recalled, “Occasionally we were able to get into the field with the Chinese troops and see what was going on. Generally, we relied on Jack Belden and Joseph Stilwell, who collaborated in keeping track of where the Chinese armies were and what they were doing. Jack and Stilwell would plunge off into the hinterland and come back with information about the situation at the front, all of which was made available to us.“
In 1942, Belden earned some fame for being the only reporter who remained with Stilwell in Burma
when the American General and his headquarters staff were cut off by the invading Japanese. Belden's book Retreat With Stilwell (1943) chronicled the journey that "Vinegar Joe", his staff and others made, mostly on foot, to India.
Belden went on to cover the war for Life in North Africa and Europe. In North Africa, he covered the British 8th Army
’s grueling march from Egypt to Tunisia. Again, Belden distinguished himself by getting as close to the combat and the people fighting it as possible. Correspondent Don Whitehead, who would go on to win two Pulitzer Prize
s declared that Belden had inspired him. In his book, Beachhead Don, Whitehead recalls noticing the Belden would disappear from time to time from the company of the other reporters. When Whitehead asked where he had been, Belden replied that he had been at the front with the troops. Chastened, Whitehead says, “I decided I would use the Belden approach to reporting and get as close as I possibly could to the fighting.“
After the Africa campaign, Belden landed with the invading troops in Sicily
and Salerno
.
In 1943, Belden's leg was shattered by machine-gun fire during the Salerno invasion. After recovering in the U.S., he returned to Europe and covered the invasion of France and the end of the War in Europe. Eric Sevareid
, in his autobiography Not So Wild a Dream, recounts crossing paths with Belden in the final weeks before the Nazi surrender.
A collection of short essays, Still Time to Die, (1944) includes his reportage from battlefields in Asia, North Africa and Europe.
's Red Star Over China
, Graham Peck's Two Kinds of Time, and Theodore White
and Annalee Jacoby's Thunder Out of China as classics which shaped Western understanding of the Chinese Revolution.
When Belden returned to the United States in 1947, a magazine editor shouted that he wasn’t going to print “any of this goddam lefty stuff.” But Belden returned to China to report on the Civil War between the Kuomintang
and the Chinese Communist Party.
Belden avoided Mao's Yan'an
: “that cave village had become a tourist center with every foreign correspondent in China hopping over to have a quick look .... I had no desire to get mixed up in that circus, fearing that it might be very hard for me to get in close contact with the people, the war or their revolution.” Belden felt Mao Zedong
represented the party apparatchik or the intellectual, and saw in the villages that the Communists were not trying to establish a “utopian democracy.”
The first part of the book is based on eye-witness, participant reporting which leads the reader to the conclusion that the Communist dominated Border Region Government had the allegiance of local leaders. Belden devoted sections to village personalities: Gold Flower, the story of an abused woman; Field Mouse, a guerilla commander; The Beggar Writer; and the Guerilla Girl.
Belden goes on to make a strong second point: while the local village revolution had the potential for democratic progress, Mao’s national revolution had the potential for despotism. “The Communists”, he reasoned, “took power by making love to the people of China,” and “won the people to their cause” by meeting their needs better. But in order to do so, Mao and the Party built a “wholly new power apparatus.” They may have sincerely intended to represent the interests of the common people but their new power apparatus would also “elude their intentions and tend to exist for its own sake.” He warned that “there may arise a new elite, a set of managers standing above the Chinese masses”, bringing a danger that “rulers not subject to democratic checks” may “confusing themselves with God”, “expand their private viewpoints into an arbitrary vision of what society should be..., force their dreams on others, blunder into grave political mistakes and finally plunge into outright tyranny.”
Belden published China Shakes the World in 1949, when the American public had lost interest in reports from China. The book’s reputation came only in the 1960s, when the Monthly Review Press reprinted it in paperback with a sympathetic introduction by Owen Lattimore
.
and worked at a series of jobs including school bus driver. He eventually returned to Paris, where he died in 1989.
2. Yerkey, Gary G., "Still Time to Live: A Biography of Jack Belden," 2011, ISBN 978-0-615-45888-5
Second Sino-Japanese War
The Second Sino-Japanese War was a military conflict fought primarily between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. From 1937 to 1941, China fought Japan with some economic help from Germany , the Soviet Union and the United States...
, the Second World War
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and the Chinese Revolution
Chinese Civil War
The Chinese Civil War was a civil war fought between the Kuomintang , the governing party of the Republic of China, and the Communist Party of China , for the control of China which eventually led to China's division into two Chinas, Republic of China and People's Republic of...
.
Life
As one of the noted foreign correspondents in China in the 1930s and 1940s, Belden spoke Chinese well and often traveled to the front lines to cover events from the point of view of soldiers and villagers. He traveled often in the company of General Joseph StilwellJoseph Stilwell
General Joseph Warren Stilwell was a United States Army four-star General known for service in the China Burma India Theater. His caustic personality was reflected in the nickname "Vinegar Joe"...
, who also spoke Chinese, and with colleagues Agnes Smedley
Agnes Smedley
Agnes Smedley was an American journalist and writer best known for her semi-autobiographical novelDaughter of Earth. She was also known for her sympathetic chronicling of the Chinese revolution...
and Edgar Snow
Edgar Snow
Edgar P. Snow was an American journalist known for his books and articles on Communism in China and the Chinese Communist revolution...
.
After graduating with honors from Colgate University
Colgate University
Colgate University is a private liberal arts college in Hamilton, New York, USA. The school was founded in 1819 as a Baptist seminary and later became non-denominational. It is named for the Colgate family who greatly contributed to the university's endowment in the 19th century.Colgate has 52...
at the beginning of the Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, Belden found work as a merchant seaman. In 1933, he jumped ship in Shanghai. He learned Chinese and eventually got a job covering local courts for Shanghai's English-language newspapers. After Japan invaded China in 1937, Belden was hired by United Press
United Press International
United Press International is a once-major international news agency, whose newswires, photo, news film and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines and radio and television stations for most of the twentieth century...
. Life
Life (magazine)
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
magazine soon picked him up and he spent most of the Second World War as a correspondent for Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
and Life in China, North Africa and Europe.
Belden was noted in China for getting closer to the action than most of the international press corps who, hampered by their inability to speak the language, usually stayed close to official sources of information. The New York Times’ correspondent Tillman Durdin
F.Tillman Durdin
F. Tillman Durdin was a longtime foreign correspondent for the New York Times. During his career, Durdin reported on the Sino-Japanese War , the collapse of European colonial rule in Indo-China and the emergence of the People's Republic of China...
recalled, “Occasionally we were able to get into the field with the Chinese troops and see what was going on. Generally, we relied on Jack Belden and Joseph Stilwell, who collaborated in keeping track of where the Chinese armies were and what they were doing. Jack and Stilwell would plunge off into the hinterland and come back with information about the situation at the front, all of which was made available to us.“
In 1942, Belden earned some fame for being the only reporter who remained with Stilwell in Burma
Burma Campaign
The Burma Campaign in the South-East Asian Theatre of World War II was fought primarily between British Commonwealth, Chinese and United States forces against the forces of the Empire of Japan, Thailand, and the Indian National Army. British Commonwealth land forces were drawn primarily from...
when the American General and his headquarters staff were cut off by the invading Japanese. Belden's book Retreat With Stilwell (1943) chronicled the journey that "Vinegar Joe", his staff and others made, mostly on foot, to India.
Belden went on to cover the war for Life in North Africa and Europe. In North Africa, he covered the British 8th Army
Eighth Army (United Kingdom)
The Eighth Army was one of the best-known formations of the British Army during World War II, fighting in the North African and Italian campaigns....
’s grueling march from Egypt to Tunisia. Again, Belden distinguished himself by getting as close to the combat and the people fighting it as possible. Correspondent Don Whitehead, who would go on to win two Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
s declared that Belden had inspired him. In his book, Beachhead Don, Whitehead recalls noticing the Belden would disappear from time to time from the company of the other reporters. When Whitehead asked where he had been, Belden replied that he had been at the front with the troops. Chastened, Whitehead says, “I decided I would use the Belden approach to reporting and get as close as I possibly could to the fighting.“
After the Africa campaign, Belden landed with the invading troops in Sicily
Allied invasion of Sicily
The Allied invasion of Sicily, codenamed Operation Husky, was a major World War II campaign, in which the Allies took Sicily from the Axis . It was a large scale amphibious and airborne operation, followed by six weeks of land combat. It launched the Italian Campaign.Husky began on the night of...
and Salerno
Allied invasion of Italy
The Allied invasion of Italy was the Allied landing on mainland Italy on September 3, 1943, by General Harold Alexander's 15th Army Group during the Second World War. The operation followed the successful invasion of Sicily during the Italian Campaign...
.
In 1943, Belden's leg was shattered by machine-gun fire during the Salerno invasion. After recovering in the U.S., he returned to Europe and covered the invasion of France and the end of the War in Europe. Eric Sevareid
Eric Sevareid
Arnold Eric Sevareid was a CBS news journalist from 1939 to 1977. He was one of a group of elite war correspondents—dubbed "Murrow's Boys"—because they were hired by pioneering CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow....
, in his autobiography Not So Wild a Dream, recounts crossing paths with Belden in the final weeks before the Nazi surrender.
A collection of short essays, Still Time to Die, (1944) includes his reportage from battlefields in Asia, North Africa and Europe.
The book China Shakes The World
Belden's best remembered work was his last, which joins Edgar SnowEdgar Snow
Edgar P. Snow was an American journalist known for his books and articles on Communism in China and the Chinese Communist revolution...
's Red Star Over China
Red Star Over China
Red Star Over China, a book by Edgar Snow, is an account of the Communist Party of China written when they were a guerrilla army still obscure to Westerners. Along with Pearl Buck's The Good Earth, it was the most influential book on Western understanding and sympathy for China in the 1930s...
, Graham Peck's Two Kinds of Time, and Theodore White
Theodore H. White
Theodore Harold White was an American political journalist, historian, and novelist, known for his wartime reporting from China and accounts of the 1960, 1964, 1968, 1972 and 1980 presidential elections.-Life and career:...
and Annalee Jacoby's Thunder Out of China as classics which shaped Western understanding of the Chinese Revolution.
When Belden returned to the United States in 1947, a magazine editor shouted that he wasn’t going to print “any of this goddam lefty stuff.” But Belden returned to China to report on the Civil War between the Kuomintang
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...
and the Chinese Communist Party.
Belden avoided Mao's Yan'an
Yan'an
Yan'an , is a prefecture-level city in the Shanbei region of Shaanxi province in China, administering several counties, including Zhidan County , which served as the Chinese communist capital before the city of Yan'an proper took that role....
: “that cave village had become a tourist center with every foreign correspondent in China hopping over to have a quick look .... I had no desire to get mixed up in that circus, fearing that it might be very hard for me to get in close contact with the people, the war or their revolution.” Belden felt Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
represented the party apparatchik or the intellectual, and saw in the villages that the Communists were not trying to establish a “utopian democracy.”
The first part of the book is based on eye-witness, participant reporting which leads the reader to the conclusion that the Communist dominated Border Region Government had the allegiance of local leaders. Belden devoted sections to village personalities: Gold Flower, the story of an abused woman; Field Mouse, a guerilla commander; The Beggar Writer; and the Guerilla Girl.
Belden goes on to make a strong second point: while the local village revolution had the potential for democratic progress, Mao’s national revolution had the potential for despotism. “The Communists”, he reasoned, “took power by making love to the people of China,” and “won the people to their cause” by meeting their needs better. But in order to do so, Mao and the Party built a “wholly new power apparatus.” They may have sincerely intended to represent the interests of the common people but their new power apparatus would also “elude their intentions and tend to exist for its own sake.” He warned that “there may arise a new elite, a set of managers standing above the Chinese masses”, bringing a danger that “rulers not subject to democratic checks” may “confusing themselves with God”, “expand their private viewpoints into an arbitrary vision of what society should be..., force their dreams on others, blunder into grave political mistakes and finally plunge into outright tyranny.”
Belden published China Shakes the World in 1949, when the American public had lost interest in reports from China. The book’s reputation came only in the 1960s, when the Monthly Review Press reprinted it in paperback with a sympathetic introduction by Owen Lattimore
Owen Lattimore
Owen Lattimore was an American author, educator, and influential scholar of Central Asia, especially Mongolia. In the 1930s he was editor of Pacific Affairs, a journal published by the Institute of Pacific Relations, and then taught at Johns Hopkins University from 1938 to 1963...
.
Later life
After writing China Shakes the World, Belden married twice leaving two sons, David from his first marriage and Jack from his second. Having left journalism and his families, he returned to his hometown of Summit, New JerseySummit, New Jersey
Summit is a city in Union County, New Jersey, United States. At the 2010 United States Census, the city's population was 21,457. Summit had the 16th-highest per capita income in the state as of the 2000 Census....
and worked at a series of jobs including school bus driver. He eventually returned to Paris, where he died in 1989.
Works
- Retreat with Stilwell (New York: Knopf, 1943).
- Still Time to Die (New York: Harper, 1944). 322p.
- China Shakes the World (New York: Harpers, 1949). 524p. Reprinted: (New York; London: with an introduction by Owen Lattimore, Monthly Review, 1970; Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1989).
- Gold Flower's Story (Boston, Ma.: New England Free Press, 1970). Reprint of Chapter 42 of China Shakes the World
See also
1. Sevareid, Eric, Not So Wild a Dream (autobiography), 1946, reissued 1976 ISBN 0-8262-1014-72. Yerkey, Gary G., "Still Time to Live: A Biography of Jack Belden," 2011, ISBN 978-0-615-45888-5