The Arsenal

The Arisaka Type 38 was the standard rifle of the Imperial Japanese Army throughout the Sino-Japanese War — a bolt-action rifle chambered in 6.5mm that was accurate, reliable, and well-suited to the small-statured Japanese soldier. It was produced in enormous numbers and became so ubiquitous in the war that captured Type 38s became the primary weapon of Chinese Communist guerrillas, who relied heavily on weapons seized from Japanese forces. The rifle's bayonet — 15.75 inches of polished steel — was a particularly important weapon in the close-quarters combat that characterized much of the fighting.

The Hanyang 88 was China's domestically produced standard infantry rifle — a Chinese copy of the German Gewehr 88, produced at the Hanyang Arsenal in Hubei province beginning in 1895. By 1937 it was already obsolete, but it was the weapon most Chinese soldiers carried into battle. Simple, rugged, and relatively cheap to produce at Chinese arsenals, it soldiered on throughout the war because China lacked the industrial capacity to replace it with more modern arms. The rifle's distinctive long barrel and external magazine made it recognizable to any foreign observer of the war.

The German Mauser C96 semi-automatic pistol — known in China as the 'Box Cannon' (匣子炮, xiāzi pào) for its distinctive wooden holster that doubled as a shoulder stock — became one of the most iconic weapons of Chinese warfare in the first half of the 20th century. China imported enormous quantities from Germany between the wars, and the C96 became the weapon of choice for Chinese officers, warlord bodyguards, and Communist party cadres. Its distinctive shape appears in almost every photograph and painting of Chinese military figures from the 1920s through the 1940s.

The Mitsubishi A6M Zero was Japan's primary carrier-based and land-based fighter aircraft, and it first entered combat in China in 1940 — more than a year before Pearl Harbor. In Chinese skies the Zero was virtually without effective opposition, destroying Chinese aircraft in engagements where the exchange ratios were utterly lopsided. The Zero's extraordinary range, maneuverability, and speed made it the finest carrier fighter in the world at the time of its introduction. Its design sacrificed armor and self-sealing fuel tanks for performance — a trade-off that worked magnificently against opponents who could not match it in the air and disastrously once the Americans developed tactics to exploit its weaknesses.

The Curtiss P-40 Warhawk became the most famous aircraft in the Chinese war when Claire Chennault's American Volunteer Group — the 'Flying Tigers' — began operations in December 1941, just days after Pearl Harbor. Chennault had spent years studying Japanese aerial tactics and devised specific counter-strategies for the P-40: avoid turning fights with the Zero (which was far more maneuverable), use diving attacks from altitude, break off and dive away rather than dogfight. His tactics allowed the P-40, an aircraft generally considered inferior to the Zero, to achieve remarkable results against Japanese pilots who had never faced opposition that refused to engage on Japanese terms.

The Type 97 Chi-Ha was Japan's primary medium tank of the Sino-Japanese War and World War II — a 15-ton tank armed with a 57mm low-velocity gun and two machine guns. It was outclassed by German, Soviet, and American tanks in armor and firepower, but in China it faced almost no effective anti-tank opposition. Chinese forces had very few anti-tank weapons in the early war, and Japanese armored columns were able to advance rapidly through defensive positions that infantry could not easily break. The Chi-Ha's main weaknesses — thin armor and a gun unsuited for tank-versus-tank combat — were largely irrelevant against an opponent who lacked tanks.

Japan used chemical weapons — primarily mustard gas (dichlorodiethyl sulfide) and lewisite — extensively throughout the Sino-Japanese War in violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol, to which Japan was a signatory. The Japanese Army used chemical weapons in over 2,000 documented incidents across the war, attacking Chinese troops with gas-filled artillery shells and aerial bombs. Mustard gas caused blistering of the skin, eyes, and lungs, incapacitating or killing victims slowly and painfully. Chinese forces, lacking gas masks and adequate protective equipment, suffered catastrophic casualties in affected engagements. The chemical weapons program was authorized at the highest levels of the Japanese military.

The Soviet Union supplied China with substantial military aid in the early years of the war — a pragmatic calculation by Stalin that a China fighting Japan tied down Japanese forces that might otherwise threaten the Soviet Far East. Soviet aid included the T-26 light tank, which equipped several Chinese armored units. China deployed approximately 80 T-26 tanks at the Battle of Shanghai in 1937, making it one of the few engagements of the early war where Chinese forces had any armor support at all. The T-26 was outclassed by Japanese armor in many respects, but its presence at Shanghai surprised Japanese commanders who had not expected Chinese tank support.

The Type 92 Heavy Machine Gun — nicknamed the 'Woodpecker' by American soldiers in the Pacific for its distinctive sound — was Japan's standard heavy machine gun throughout the war. Gas-operated and air-cooled, it fired 450 rounds per minute from 30-round strips and was effective to over 800 meters. The Type 92 was a primary defensive weapon in Japanese strongpoints and a devastating offensive suppression weapon used to pin down Chinese troops during advances. Its distinctive tripod mount was adapted for pack transport in mountainous terrain.

Unit 731 was a covert biological and chemical warfare research unit of the Imperial Japanese Army headquartered in Pingfang, Manchuria, that conducted lethal human experimentation on Chinese, Soviet, and other prisoners from 1937 to 1945. Under the command of General Shirō Ishii, Unit 731 developed biological weapons using anthrax, cholera, typhoid, plague, and other pathogens — testing them on live human subjects, most of them Chinese civilians and prisoners of war, who were infected with diseases and vivisected without anesthesia to study the progression of infection in living tissue. Estimates of prisoners killed in Unit 731's experiments range from 3,000 to 12,000. Japan also deployed biological weapons in the field, dropping plague-infected fleas over Chinese cities including Ningbo and Changde.