China / Yangtze Service

Shallow draft gunboats of the U.S. Navy sailed China's largest river for over 50 years before being officially organized as the Yangtze Patrol Force in August, 1921. These ships protected U.S. citizens against the bandits and warlord forces in a turbulent China. In the mid-1920's, the internal struggle for power was accompanied by many acts of violence against foreigners. Units of the Yangtze Patrol, reinforced by destroyers and light cruisers from the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, steamed upriver to protect Americans and national interests. Numerous confrontations occurred. When the situation stabilized an uneasy peace returned to the Yangtze valley, and the gunboats resumed anti-bandit activities.

In the early 1930s severe floods along the entire river valley brought the gunboats and additional ships of the Asiatic Fleet into action again, this time in the humanitarian cause of aiding the millions of Chinese left homeless by the catastrophe.

Japanese aggression against China, evidenced by the move into Manchuria in 1931 and subsequent incidents in Shanghai, surfaced anew in 1937 when a minor clash near Peking erupted into a full-scale invasion. The area of hostilities spread quickly, and units of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, under Admiral Harry E. Yarnell, evacuated American citizens and protected national interests, standing firm again Japan's increasingly belligerent actions toward neutrals. At Shanghai, United States ships were endangered by Japanese aerial bombings and artillery fire. On 12 December 1937, Japanese naval aircraft attacked and sank the river gunboat USS Panay.

At the end of World War II, the US Navy returned to China to repatriate Japanese soldiers and to assist the Chinese Central Government in enforcing the surrender terms. Seventh Fleet Amphibious Forces provided transport for Chinese Nationalist troops and carried food supplies from Shanghai up the Yangtze to fight near-famine conditions in the interior.