Boston, May 23, 2016, — Boston Bilingual Media & Publishing (BBMP) Inc. will hold a book release party for English-Chinese bilingual book Initial Campaign: An Earlier Version of Blitzkrieg at Nankou in North China at noon time on June 5 at Empire Garden in Boston Chinatown. Please send email to [email protected] to RSVP the book release party.
Author Eric St. (Wu) is a young scholar focusing on China’s WWII history. He got his Bachelor’s degree in Art Conservation at Peking University in 2012 and his Master’s degree of Science in Historic Preservation at Roger Williams University in 2015, spending his spare time on collecting the sources and doing independent research on the history of China’s WWII. His work also includes the preservation and interpretation of the WWII battlefields in China. This booklet is the first work he has accomplished for introducing the obscured Nankou (Nankow) Campaign to the world in both Chinese and English languages.
The Nankou Campaign broke out on August 8, 1937 at the border between Hebei and Chahar, where the battlefi eldcovered an extensive area of about 700 km2. The history of this campaign had been obscured for decades until being recalled recently. Unfortunately, it is sometimes misinterpreted by the social media, such as fi lms and reports.
This booklet is created as an interpretation of the Nankou Campaign to provide the public with basic knowledge of the history. The narrative, including the background of China’s WWII, an introduction of the important sites in the battlefi eld, and a chronology of the major battles in this Campaign, is based on a careful study of the historical records and a thorough investigation of the battlefield. Issues in some sources have been addressed and analyzed so as to avoid potential misunderstandings, in case some readers may get access to those sources in the future. The last part of this booklet briefl y summarizes the significance of the Nankou Campaign, according to which the Theatre of China is suggested as the earliest theatre in WWII.