 The National Broadcasting Company and its affiliated stations present the Pacific story. This is the story of the Pacific, the drama of the millions of people who live around this greatest sea where the United States is now committed to a long-term policy of keeping the peace. This is the background story of the events in the Pacific and their meaning to us and to the generations to come. Rihou, Keystone of North China. Probably no place has ever seen such splendor nor such intrigue as this mountain fortress of Rihou. That island out there in the Palace Lake is where the Manchew Emperor Kwong Su was kept prisoner by the Dowager Empress before he was found strangled to death. I had nothing to do with the strangling of Kwong Su. Oh, you are the Dowager Empress. I am. But I thought you died the day after the Emperor, the day after Emperor Kwong Su died. Oh, that. The important thing is, Rihou has always been a place of evil omen. Well, ever since I came here after Japan collapsed, I wondered about this land of evil omen. Today, the Japanese are being moved out and the provinces are torn between the Chinese nationalists and the Chinese communists. In the light of what has happened before, I can't help but wonder what's going to happen now. The Manchew emperors established the city of Rihou and the province of Rihou as their summer capital. It was I who built up the glory of Rihou. You? I am Qianlong. Oh, yes, yes. Emperor Qianlong. 1736 to 1796. Isn't that right? Yes. Mine was the last glorious period of the Empire of China. Were you the one who founded the summer capital here at Rihou? The summer palace was begun here before my time. But it was I who enlarged and beautified it and made it the envy of all the world. Oh, of course. It was I who made the Lama Temple of Putala shine with splendor and paved the monks to tend it with meticulous care. It was I who brought the most priceless collections of objects of art to the palace and the rare old books and the priceless manuscripts and illustrations and maps. And you see those artificial lakes? Yes, I've been looking at them. I made them and even made those artificial islands. I've heard a great deal about those islands, especially that one out there. What happened after I died is no concern of mine. But remember, it was I who made Rihou the... Dynamic character, that Qianlong. He was the boss of the Empire of China for 60 years. And nearly every summer he'd leave Peking and move up to the summer capital at Rihou. 130 miles northeast of Peking. And he didn't move up to Rihou just for the change in climate either. I will tell you why Qianlong came up here to Rihou every summer. Who are you? I was courtier in the court at Rihou. Oh, yes. Not only Qianlong, but all the other Manchu emperors before and after him came up here ostensibly to hunt the tiger and the antelope and the deer and to present brilliant military maneuvers. But what he really came up here for was to impress the Mongol princes, to receive them in dazzling audience, to give them fabulous gifts in order to keep them under his eye. He didn't trust them, eh? He understood them. Well, thanks. It was in 1793 that the British sent a mission to Rihou to fix up a trade treaty. Qianlong sent junks to bring Lord McCartney and his party up to pay hope. You see that golden roof, Captain? Yes, sir. Look at it shine. That's the temple of Putala. Oh, yes. That's where the emperor worships. Right. He's made Rihou here the pearl of China. I've always wanted to see this place. Uh, look at the Chinese lined up on the dock to meet us, Lord McCartney. Where? The emperor sent a reception committee. Gracious of him. Well, it's probably curiosity to see us white men as much as anything. He's probably flattered that you're bringing greetings from King of England, boy. Quite. Oh, they're cheering. Yes. Wave your hat to them, Captain. Really, sir. Well, a week later, Lord McCartney and his captain still had not had an audience with the emperor. One morning they were walking in the palace park. Look, sir. Uh, yes. Could that be the emperor and his monkeys coming toward us? It could be. Uh, wait. It is the emperor. I'll wager. It is the emperor. Uh, you have the greetings from the King, Captain? Yes, sir. Right here. Oh, this is most fortunate. Uh, let me have them. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Thank you. Your gracious majesty. Ken, what does this person wish with me? You are foreigners? Yes, I am Lord McCartney, and this is my aide, Captain Spandrock. Would you give your emperor these greetings from his majesty, the King of England, and thank him for his graciousness in sending a junk down the river to bring us up? One moment. Your imperial majesty, the two foreigners represent the country of England, and they bring greetings from their King. Tell them, as they do not adore the same gods as I, that I would not desire to talk with them. Well, Chunlong died three years later, but he did not die at the re-hole summer palace. His successes ruled as he'd done, spent most of the year at P. King, and came to re-hole for the summer. That bolt of lightning killed me at re-hole in 1820. Well, let's see, who are you? I was emperor at Jiajing, and not one member of the imperial family came close to the palace here at re-hole for 40 years after I was killed. Re-hole Palace, with its golden pavilion, its magnificent temple of Putala, with its precious collection of objects of art, rare old books and precious manuscripts, was abandoned for 40 years. Then the Taiping rebellion broke out, and when the British and French troops took P. King, the emperor Tsing-Feng and his wife fled to re-hole. No one had lived in the palace for 40 years when we came. There was a curse on the palace, but we did not believe it. In less than a year, the emperor, my husband, died. Then we knew this place, this curse. And so you went back to P. King? I did. And the next time P. King was invested by foreigners in 1900, we went to Xianfu. We would never go back to re-hole. But the Emperor Kuang Tzu was a prisoner on that island out there in the Palace Lake, wasn't he? The first I heard of it was the morning of November 14, 1908. Your Imperial Majesty, your Imperial Majesty. Stop that yammering. Open the door, please. Your Imperial Majesty. Yes, yes. The Emperor Kuang Tzu has addressed me. Oh, yes, Your Majesty. Motherly, hospicious, orthodox, heaven-sent... Prosperous. Prosperous or nourishing, brightly manifest... Ram. Come, sedate, perfect, long-lived, respectful... Reverent. Reverent, um... Worshipful, worshipful, illustrious, exalted Empress Dowager. Now, what is it? His Majesty the Emperor Kuang Tzu is dead. Yes. He was found strangled. How unfortunate. What shall we do? What is there to do? The same night that Kuang Tzu was strangled to death, the Empress Dowager had Henry Puyi, who was only two years old, brought through a sandstorm to the Palace of Peking and enthroned him as the Emperor. It wasn't the interests of the Empire. Dowager Empress, I've always wanted to ask you this. It's been said all these years that in order to keep your power when something unfortunate happened to the rulers, the Chinese on the throne and then dominated them. Is this true? I established the succession, the best interests of the Empire. Henry Puyi was the third Emperor you enthroned this way, wasn't he? He was. Does this have anything to do with the fact that the next day, from someone explained cause, you suddenly died? Who can father the ways of the dark? Well, after that, the Manchu rulers of China would not come near Rihou. Three years later, in 1911 and 1912, when the Republican Revolution broke out, and again Peking was in danger, they would not think of coming to Rihou. The days of the Manchus were done, but a whole new and equally spectacular period started. Rihou was a prize, and not only did Chinese warlords fight, one against the other for control of it, but the Japanese also had their eyes on it. Rihou is sometimes considered part of Manchuria, sometimes considered part of in Mongolia, because it's the key or the root between them. Well, when the Japanese moved in and took Manchuria, a fat, self-satisfied Chinese warlord was the boss here in Rihou. He was living luxuriously here in the Imperial Palace that the Manchus had forsaken. He smoked opium and gorged himself on luscious Chinese food until his stomach was a porch, and his jaw was sad. His name was Dong Yulim, which means Jade Unicorn. The Japanese proclaimed Manchuria, including the province of Rihou, as Manjukuo. It is a matter of no consequence. Except that the Japanese are demanding that you, General Dowell, adhere to their new regime of Manjukuo. I am not opposing them. Besides, I take no orders from the Chinese government in Nanking, and I send no revenues to Nanking. But the Japanese require that you do take orders and send revenues to the Manjukuo regime. That is not practical. The question is, General Dang, if what you are doing is practical. I must retain relations with Chiang Huei Yang at Peking. He controls our supply and our ammunition. Yes, but... And I cannot retain cordial relations with Chiang if I permit the Japanese, actually, to move in and occupy Rihou. Let them think they control Rihou from Mukden, yes. But actual occupation, that is another thing. Chiang knows as well as the Japanese that Rihou is the key to North China. And if the Japanese control Rihou, they will hold a sword over North China. Of the Japanese also know that Rihou is the key to Manchuria. And all that is necessary is to turn the guns in the other direction through our mountain passes. If the Japanese try to move into Rihou, I will resist. Well, meantime, over in Sinking and Manchuria, the Japanese commander called a bunch of us newspaper men together and made an important statement. One of our officers, Captain Gonchiro Ishimoto, has been kidnapped by General Dang Yulin. Captain Ishimoto is now being held in prison in Rihou. It will therefore be necessary for us to send a military expedition into Rihou. General Muto, where was this captain of yours kidnapped? Or precisely where is not known. But he was on a mission to Bebao. Mission? Why should he be on a mission inside Rihou? For matters of security that cannot be answered. A detachment of our troops tried to rescue Captain Ishimoto, but were repulsed by the superior numbers of Dang's troops. It was therefore necessary for us to occupy a town on the border of Rihou. Dang denied the kidnapping of the Japanese captain. There is no such person as Captain Ishimoto. He is only a fiction. The whole thing is a hoax and a provocation. This makes the whole north a powder magazine, General Dang. All it needs is a spark to set it off. And the invasion of Rihou by the Japanese will be that spark. Tell the Japanese I will resist them to the last man. The Japanese dropped the story about the kidnapping, but meantime some shooting was going on in the pacified state of Manjukuo. Several Chinese generals suddenly attacked Japanese outposts, grabbed sections of railway and seized a good many Japanese hostages. General Dang mobilized them. These are the troops of the North Eastern Army, sent by Chang. How many are there? About 40,000, General Dang. With my 50,000 and the 30,000 of the Guominchon People's Army, that's about 120,000 men. Yes, sir. And with the volunteers we have between 150,000 and 170,000. Good. I will post these men in the mountain defiles and then let General Muto try to take Rihou. Now the Japanese concentrated their troops outside the Great Wall at Shanghai Guan, China's first gate of the realm, where the Great Wall ends at the sea. Muto then sent an ultimatum to Dang. We therefore demand that all Chinese troops be evacuated from the province of Rihou. The Chinese countered with the defiles. General Dang Yu Lin, chairman of Rihou province, is the High Provincial Military Authority of the Chinese government. It is his duty to defend Rihou. The allegations made by the Japanese government concerning General Dang must be regarded as the deliberate of plot. The Chinese government hereby lodges its protest. General Muto has lodged two drives into Rihou, General Dang. Two drives? Yes, sir. Look at this map. One is moving directly southward from Gailu up here. Yes. And the other is heading directly westward from Qinchao. Both of the drives will converge here on Rihou city. This is Muto's objective. Wait until his forces get into the mountain passes. I have mined them with dynamite and manned the walls of the defiles with my best troops. Besides that, the passes are filled with snow. Dang sat himself down to a succulent 20-course Chinese dinner, licked the dripping savory sauces from his fat mouth and beamed with satisfaction. When he was finished, he called for his opium pipe and sat inhaling the sweet smoke when the word came. General Dong, General Dong. The Japanese have blown up our ammunition dump. Go away. Go away. Don't bother me. Do you not understand? Japanese spies marked our ammunition dump so they could be seen from the sky and Japanese planes have come and blown them up. Blow up what? Our ammunition dump. All our ammunition. The Japanese have blown them up. They have? Well, stop them. Stop them. Now go away. What can we do without ammunition? From north and from the east, both at the same time, the Japanese forces came. The Japanese bombers blasted the snow-covered mountain passes, blew up the dynamite mines and slaughtered the thousands of troops, the mules, the ponies and the camels trapped in the defiles. General Dong. They have taken Bay Bowl, Chaoyang and Ning Yuan and now they are heading directly here for real old cities. Stop them. Stop them. They are coming in tanks and armored cars. Order the commanders to hold. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. On the approaches to this city, the poorly led and poorly equipped Chinese troops place themselves squarely in the path of the onrushing tanks. They have cannon as well as machine guns. Stay down. Stay down until they are close. Then maybe our bullets will go through them. They're going to run us down. Wait. Do not move. Now. Fire. Fire. They're still coming. They're still coming. Most of the Chinese who died beneath the Japanese tanks had never before seen an armored unit. Nor had they seen airplanes. Suddenly everywhere, airplanes came out of the sky from nowhere and dived and strayed. Ten days after the ultimatum, the Japanese rolled in army trucks into the heart of the city of Rihou. Not a shot was fired to stop their entry into the city. But Dong, the fat opium-smoking Jade Unicorn, had long since left. Shall we continue directly westward, General Dong? What other way can we go? Whip this animal up. Yes. Come. Come. Get up there. Where did you get this flea-bitten-ass? It was the only animal left in town. Well, whip it up. The beast should be forgiven if... If what? If it at least is doing its duty. In ten days, the Japanese had gained the key to North China and the Corridor II in a Mongolian. They had gained an area of 60 to 70,000 square miles, a springboard for further aggression and a base for economic conquest. Oh, that is an inaccurate term. Economic conquest. Well, General Muto, what would you Japanese call it? Actually, it was more a cooperative arrangement with the people of Rihou. The Japanese took over the province of Rihou lock, stock, and vow. They became the bankers, the industrialists, the merchants, and the Imperial Palace, which Jin Lung had made one of the most fabulous places on earth, and where the Emperor Dowager had spun so many webs of intrigue, the Imperial Palace had become a Japanese headquarters. Yes, they were efficient, those Japanese. That they were so tired, sir. Oh, the Dowager Empress. You came back? I used to sit there in the palace and watch them and listen to them. They regulated everything. The land policy, the labor policy. All policies must favor the Japanese. We must encourage Japanese to immigrate from Japan. Who is that ruffian? I've often wondered if the curse of the Manchus was also on the Japanese in the palace at Rihou. Our policy in Rihou was very sound. Rihou, as we read it, not only provided us with rich resources, which we needed, but it was itself a buffer state against Russia. And ironically, it was the Russians who sprung the trap on the Japanese in Rihou. For all the time the Japanese were in Rihou, the Russians were watching them as the Japanese, before they moved in, had watched dark. The Russians bombed a machine gun, Calgon, a hundred miles and more to the west. The Japanese fled out of Calgon and the Chinese communists, who had been lodging their hills around the city for eight years, moved in. The Russians took Rihou, disarmed the Japanese and then left. From Calgon, the Chinese communists moved into Rihou and swept down and occupied the Imperial Palace. This I did not think I should ever see. Communists in the Imperial Palace of the Manchu Emperor. Rihou was once more to become a scene of conflict. The Chinese communists were in Rihou. The Chinese nationalist force wanted themselves to be there. We communists liberated Rihou. We will therefore stay here until there is an overall settlement. General Chao. Yes. Intelligence has just reached us that the United States transports are moving the 13th and the 52nd nationalist armist from South China up here to Manchuria. American transports moving nationalist troops against us? Yes. And the nationalist troops have American equipment. That is the report. The Russians will not permit them to land at Dairon. They will land at Andung, Yinkau and Hulu Dao. Then they will march along the Manchuria coast and into Rihou. Yes, General Chao. We will stop them. The plains and the hills and the mountain passes of the province of Rihou was alive with Chinese communist troops deployed to stop the approaching nationalists. The streets of the city of Rihou sealed with the business and the austerity of a war capital. Peace had come between the Japanese and the Chinese but not between the Chinese nationalists and the Chinese communists. Rihou was again the center of conflict. How little wisdom men have. What was that? Look at them, Chinese against Chinese and Rihou the battleground. How much better off all China would be if we still ruled. The people toppled you, Manchu, from the throne because you ruled for yourself, not for them. They were better off under us. Look! The implications of the battle for Manchuria were broad but Rihou became a testing ground. General George C. Marshall got representatives from both sides together and arranged a ceasefire order until the deeper issues could be considered. But for days it was a hair-trigger truce. The nationalist troops are still attacking us in Rihou. But the nationalists countered this with another claim. You communists, instead of ceasing your military operations are enlarging them and are even burning down villages. We're here to pilot. Yeah, go ahead. There's the palace of Rihou there below us. So that's the place where all this stuff's been going on for the last couple of centuries, huh? That's it. We'll take a bearing from here. We should be over the target in a couple of minutes. Right. Sergeant? Yes, sir. Are those pamphlets ready? Yes, sir. Now what's the matter with those guys down there, Captain? We have to deliver a personal invitation to each one to quit fighting? A lot of the Chinese down there don't know what truce has been signed. The thing I'm worrying about is can they read those pamphlets? Well, enough of them, Captain. We're coming over the target. Right. Sergeant? Yes, sir. Stand by with those pamphlets. Already, sir. Give us a word, navigator. Yes, sir. Ready? Okay, Sergeant. Jump out. Yes, sir. Read. Look at them flutter down. Is that all of them? That ain't half of them. We're dropping enough to cover that country down there like there was a snowfall. The fighting stopped, but Rihou was still a power magazine. The sparks were still flying between the Nationalists and the Communists. We must occupy Rihou. We will not permit Rihou to be occupied by you Nationalists until an overall settlement has been made. Rihou is the key to the overland communications between Manchuria and North China. And we must occupy it. At the present stage of negotiations, we will not agree to this. Good day to you gentlemen. The Nationalists were playing for keeps. So were the Communists. General Marshall conferred long and intently with Generalissimo Chiangai-shek. The next day their decision was announced. But Nationalist government feel that they are strong enough to yield on the issue of Rihou. Where the Manchu emperors had ruled in the splendor of their glittering courts, now they were rough and ready Chinese Communists. Where Qianlong had for 60 years strolled his leisure in the fabulous gardens and where he had not dained to walk with the agent of the British King, now Communist troops walk with grim faces and rifles loaded for action. And where the puppet Emperor Quang Tzu had been kept prisoner on the artificial island in the palace lake by the Empress Dowager. Now the waters of the artificial lake lap on the island as if it is no different from any other insignificant island on earth. It is only fair that your radio audience know that I had nothing to do with the strangling of Quang Tzu. Yeah, of course. Rihou is cursed. An evil woman has hung over it from the date that Xing was killed by the bolt of lightning. It was the same curse that killed my husband. And Quang Tzu? Yes. One follows another here, but the same ill fortune comes to all. Would you excuse me please? I must go and see what is going to happen now. Rihou is such a fascinating slave. Listening to the Pacific story presented by the national broadcasting company and affiliated independent stations to clarify events in the Pacific and to make understandable the cross currents of life in the Pacific basin. For a reprint of this Pacific story program send 10 cents in stamps or coin to University of California Press, Berkeley, California. May I repeat? For a reprint of this Pacific story program send 10 cents in stamps or coin to University of California Press, Berkeley, California. The story is written and directed by Arnold Marquess, the original musical score was composed and conducted by Thomas Paluso. The principal voice is that of Eddie Marr. This program came to you from Hollywood. This is NBC, the national broadcasting company.