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From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: "John Birch: A Patriotic Exemplar" (fwd)
<snip>
>
>-> SearchNet's SNETNEWS Mailing List
>
>[With all the posting regarding Communist Red China these days, I thought
>it'd be worthwhile to post this piece on John Birch so that folks can get a
>little historical perspective that leads up to our present relationship to
>the Communist Red Chinese nation. Now just as then, the highest positions
>in our land including the presidency, and the ruling insiders behind the
>scenes, are busily committing supreme acts of treachery. Course today they
>are even more brazen and out in the open regarding their unabashed aid and
>abetting of the Communist tyrant regimes in the world.]
>
>http://www.jbs.org/abtjbrch.htm
>
>The following article originally appeared in the December 13, 1993 issue of
>The New American:
>
>John Birch: A Patriotic Exemplar <picture> http://www.jbs.org/jbrchpic.htm
>
>Like many of the noble souls associated with America's founding, John
>Morrison Birch was a man rooted in principles that transcend politics. In a
>"prose poem" written at age 26, John Birch gave voice to his
>Jefferson-esque longing to "live slowly, to relax with my family before a
>glowing fireplace ... to enjoy a good book ... to reach the sunset of my
>life sound in body and mind, flanked by strong sons and grandsons...."
>Regrettably, John Birch's tireless service to God and liberty denied him
>such irenic pleasures.
>
>At the age of seven, Birch expressed a desire to become a Christian
>missionary. Upon learning of the violence inflicted upon missionaries by
>Chinese communists, the youngster selected China as his mission field. When
>cautioned by his pastor that "more will be killed" in China, Birch replied:
>"I know the big enemy is communism, but the Lord has called me. My life is
>in his hands, and I am not turning back."
>
>Birch's labors in China began in 1940, a time when the country was being
>ravaged by the Japanese military. After Pearl Harbor he dyed his hair
>black, adopted the garb of the local population, and continued his
>underground work behind enemy lines.
>
>While near the border of Japanese-occupied territory on the evening of
>April 19, 1942, Birch came upon Colonel James H. Doolittle and members of
>the raiding party that had just completed a dramatic bombing raid on Tokyo.
>With his encyclopedic knowledge of the language, customs, and geography of
>China, Birch was able to convey Doolittle and the crews of 12 American
>bombers to safety in free China.
>
>Shortly thereafter, Birch became an intelligence analyst as a second
>lieutenant with the China Air Task Force -- General Claire Chennault's
>legendary "Flying Tigers." Performing high-risk intelligence-gathering
>missions on the ground, Birch acted as "the eyes of the 14th Air Force,"
>devising an early warning system that enabled U.S. air units to come to the
>aid of Chinese units under enemy attack. He also organized a rescue system
>for pilots who were shot down by the Japanese. Chennault credited Birch
>with the fact that 90 percent of his downed flyers were rescued.
>
>On August 25, 1945 -- ten days after the end of WWII -- Birch (by then a
>captain) was part of an official military mission to Suchow that was
>detained by Chinese communists. Captain Birch and another man were.
>separated from their group and shot. An autopsy later demonstrated that
>after Birch had been immobilized by a gunshot to the leg, his hands were
>tied behind his back and he was shot execution-style in the back of his
>head. The communists had also desecrated Birch's dead body.
>
>In its desire to depict the Red Chinese as innocuous "agrarian reformers,"
>the U.S. government suppressed the news of the unprovoked murder of Captain
>Birch. It fell upon Robert Welch to rescue the memory of this selfless
>Christian patriot from the shameful oblivion to which it had been assigned.
>In December 1958, Welch named the new organization he created the John
>Birch Society to preserve the memory of this patriotic exemplar. Wrote Mr.
>Welch, "If we rediscover some of our sounder spiritual values in the
>example of his life ... and learn essential truths about our enemy from the
>lesson of his murder, then his death at twenty-six ceases to be a tragedy."
>
>
>-- William Norman Grigg
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>THE NEW AMERICAN - Copyright 1996, American Opinion Publishing,
>Incorporated
>
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>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>The following article originally appeared in the September 4, 1995 issue of
>The New American:
>
>For God and Country
>
>The Secret File on John Birch, by James and Marti Hefley, Hannibal, MO:
>Hannibal Books, 1995, 203 pages, paperback, $12.95. Available from American
>Opinion Book Services, P.O. Box 8040, Appleton, WI 54913. Add $2.00 for
>postage and handling.
>
>It is difficult to write about the life and death of Captain John Birch,
>Baptist missionary to China and U.S. Army Air Force intelligence officer in
>World War II. His story is at once so beautiful and inspiring, yet set
>against acts so base and pernicious, that our emotions are torn between
>compassion for his early death and outrage at those who made it possible.
>Here in the fate of one man the treacherous policies of the Roosevelt and
>Truman Administrations in the China theater during the 1940s are glaringly
>illuminated. For John Birch would have lived to do much good had it not
>been for the Insider plan to destroy the Nationalist government of Chiang
>Kai-shek and turn China over to the Chinese Communists.
>
>It is against this background that James and Marti Hefley assembled their
>splendid biography, The Secret File on John Birch, first published in 1980
>and now appearing in a revised and updated edition. With meticulous
>attention to detail, the Hefleys pursued every possible lead for authentic
>information both written and oral, personally interviewing just about
>everyone who had ever known John Birch, from family members to General
>Albert Wedemeyer, Birch's commanding officer in China. Although written in
>the form of a novel, which means that the authors assumed knowledge of
>conversations and thoughts they were not actually privy to, the intimate
>knowledge the Hefleys gained of John Birch's character and beliefs allows
>fact and imagination to meld into a realistic and seamless whole.
>
>Early Calling
>
>The reader first meets John Birch as a two-year-old arriving in the U.S.
>from India (where he was born) in 1920 with his missionary parents, who
>settled "back home" in Macon, Georgia, where Birches had lived for
>generations. The eldest of seven children, John showed signs at an early
>age of intellectual brilliance and a strong attraction to fundamental
>Christianity. At the age of 11 he announced to the family that the Lord was
>calling him to the mission field. Throughout his education at Mercer
>University, from which he graduated magna cum laude (and was named for a
>Rhodes scholarship!), John never deviated from this decision. His dream was
>realized in 1939, when at the age of 21 he left home for China, even though
>much of China was occupied by the invading Japanese in a devastating war
>that had already been raging for three years.
>
>What John found in China were thousands dying every day from famine,
>disease, and Japanese bombs, with their cities leveled and their villages
>burned to ashes. Missionaries were attempting to feed the starving, nurse
>the wounded, and preach in between. But before John could be of any help he
>had to learn to speak the difficult Chinese language, which he did in less
>than a year with the highest grades ever achieved.
>
>The Japanese were not the only enemy Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist army was
>battling. For an even longer time China had been struggling against a
>destructive Communist insurrection led by the Moscow-trained Chou En-lai
>and Mao Tse-tung. Although the Communists had no desire for Japan to take
>over the country they had marked for their own, they played a waiting game,
>a hindrance to Chiang Kai-shek.
>
>After graduation from language school, John Birch began to travel and
>preach throughout China, covering thousands of miles on foot, on bicycle,
>and in sampans. Time and again he risked his life by going behind the
>Japanese lines, bringing comfort and hope to despairing people. In vividly
>descriptive passages, the Hefleys give an eye-opening account of what it
>meant to be a missionary in the China of the 1940s. Always penniless,
>eating and sleeping wherever and whenever he could, frequently laid low by
>malaria, John's superb physical endurance made it possible for him to reach
>areas, even in Free China, that had been isolated for years.
>
>As Japan's offenses became more furious, the State Department ordered all
>missionaries out. John Birch refused to go. He had become known and loved
>by thousands of Chinese, while he himself had decided in his heart to
>devote his life to the Chinese people. But the entry of the U.S. into the
>war after Pearl Harbor brought a profound problem to John. As a clergyman
>he was exempt from the draft. Should he volunteer? Would this mean he would
>have to give up preaching? In spite of his deeply held religious beliefs,
>John was no pacifist. He reasoned that the Japanese had to be defeated in
>order to get on with the real battle -- the battle to bring the Word of God
>to the Chinese people.
>
>An Offer of Service
>
>One of the ways the authors help the reader feel close to John Birch is by
>reproducing many of his letters, both intensely personal and official ones.
>The letter he wrote to the American military mission in Chungking offering
>his services as an Army chaplain is a particularly precious find. One
>wonders how this letter ever survived the war, particularly since the
>American mission was a temporary set-up. Even though admired worldwide as
>the famous Flying Tigers under General Claire Chennault, who had been hired
>by Chiang Kai-shek as his air adviser, these daring pilots were volunteer
>mercenaries and not a part of the U.S. military.
>
>Meanwhile, John accidentally became the rescuer of General James Doolittle
>following the legendary U.S. Air Force raid on Tokyo. Eighty heroic flyers
>had been instructed to continue west until they ran out of fuel over China,
>then abandon their planes. A number of these men were located and led to
>safety by John Birch.
>
>General Claire Chennault, who was idolized by the Chinese for his
>incredible successes against the Japanese, immediately appointed John as
>his "intelligence department," with permission to preach whenever possible.
>Commissioned a second lieutenant, John for the first time came face to face
>with the ugly fact that there were Americans in high positions who were
>manipulating events in China for the benefit of the Chinese Communists and
>the defeat of Chiang Kai-shek.
>
>The shameful story of the betrayal of China by Roosevelt, Truman, Dean
>Acheson, General George Marshall, and many others has been told numerous
>times, yet it bears repeating so that Americans will never forget. Although
>it is not the intention of the Hefleys to retell the entire story, they do
>an admirable job of getting across the essentials, except for their
>puzzling whitewashing of Roosevelt, the architect of the betrayal at Yalta.
>We learn how General "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell, surrounding himself with
>pro-Communists and consumed with hatred for Chiang, did everything in his
>power to humiliate and hamstring Chennault and prevent him from aiding
>Chiang. His accomplice in this treachery was General Clayton Bissell, who
>controlled the allocation of scarce fuel and was therefore able to ground
>as many Flying Tigers as he dared. These two obstructionists were finally
>able to force Chennault's outfit into the regular Army Air Force with
>Chennault taking orders from Stilwell, who transferred the force to the far
>west near the Himalayas, which was logistically ridiculous.
>
>Hero's Death
>
>During the last months of the war, while Japan was attempting to surrender
>and Truman was prolonging hostilities to give the Soviets time to enter,
>share in the spoils, and arm the Chinese Communists, John Birch was
>performing valuable service through a network of spies to spot Japanese
>shipping and planes. Japan's unconditional surrender was finally accepted
>on August 14, 1945. By this time Chennault had retired for reasons of ill
>health and an outcry in the U.S. had caused the recall of Stilwell. His
>replacement, General Albert Wedemeyer, was well aware of the Communist
>menace and was quickly moving to have Japanese commanders surrender to
>Americans before Communists took over their bases and airfields, which they
>immediately started doing as if they had won the war. To this end he
>dispatched Captain John Birch to a large Japanese facility in Suchow,
>several hundred miles away.
>
>John set out in a party of 11; their route lay through territory thick with
>armed Communists. Several times they were forced to stop by surly
>Communists who threatened to kill them and demanded their equipment.
>Finally they were halted by a group of Communists with rifles aimed at
>them. For over an hour John and his Chinese aide, separated from the
>others, were given a hostile runaround while attempting to see the
>commanding officer and obtain permission to pass. John, who was wearing his
>full uniform with its Flying Tiger emblem, became increasingly vexed at the
>disrespect and arrogance of the Communists, reminding them that the war was
>over and there were no more enemies.
>
>When an officer suddenly gave the command to disarm John, his aide tried to
>intervene and was shot in the thigh. Then a command was given to shoot
>John, who was also hit in the thigh. His ankles were then bound and he was
>forced to kneel for execution. He was shot in the back of the head and his
>face smashed with bayonets, as was that of his aide, who was left for dead.
>This man survived to tell the tale. So it was that John Birch died, without
>ever knowing that the China for which he had given his all to help save had
>been betrayed into Communist hands by his own nation's leaders.
>
>When Wedemeyer heard of the murder, he went directly to Ambassador Patrick
>Hurley's office; coincidentally, both Mao and Chou En-lai were there. The
>scene that followed is one of the most sickening in the book, with
>Wedemeyer helpless to do anything but demand an investigation and Mao
>promising that the criminals would be punished, while at that very moment
>Hurley was under orders from Truman to force Chiang to accept the
>Communists into a coalition government -- the beginning of the end.
>
>Exposing the Truth
>
>When Wedemeyer sent the file on John Birch to the War Department it was
>stamped Top Secret and placed under lock and key. The official report
>received by John's parents read: "There was a clash between Chinese Central
>Government forces and irregular Chinese troops and your son was struck by a
>stray bullet ... his death was instantaneous and without pain."
>
>The only politician known to have acted honorably was Senator William
>Knowland (R-CA), who exposed the purpose of the cover-up. Clearly, it was
>to prevent Americans from discovering that we had destroyed our friends in
>China and raised up our enemies, who remain in power to this day, still
>slaughtering their own people.
>
>In 1950 candy manufacturer Robert Welch read Knowland's stirring speech and
>was deeply affected by both the tragedy and the perfidy. When he founded
>his own anti-Communist freedom organization in 1958, he named it the John
>Birch Society in honor of Captain John Birch, a truly great American hero.
>
>- Jane Ingraham
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Copyright 1997 - The John Birch Society, Inc.
>
>
>-> Send "subscribe snetnews " to majordomo@world.std.com
>-> Posted by: "Roger Voss" <rogerv@sttl.uswest.net>
>
>
>
===========================================================================
Paul Andrew Mitchell, Sui Juris : Counselor at Law, federal witness 01
B.A.: Political Science, UCLA; M.S.: Public Administration, U.C.Irvine 02
tel: (520) 320-1514: machine; fax: (520) 320-1256: 24-hour/day-night 03
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_____________________________________: Law is authority in written words 09
As agents of the Most High, we came here to establish justice. We shall 10
not leave, until our mission is accomplished and justice reigns eternal. 11
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