John Birch (missionary)

John Morrison Birch (May 28, 1918 – August 25, 1945) was an American Baptist minister and missionary, and United States Army Air Forces captain who was a U.S. military intelligence officer in China during World War II. Birch was killed in a confrontation with Chinese Communist soldiers a few days after the war ended. He was posthumously awarded the Army Distinguished Service Medal.

John Birch
Captain John Birch, U.S. Army
Birth nameJohn Morrison Birch
Born(1918-05-28)May 28, 1918
Landour, British India (now in Uttarakhand, India)
DiedAugust 25, 1945(1945-08-25) (aged 27)
Killed by Chinese Communist soldiers in Xuzhou, Jiangsu, China
Allegiance United States
Service/branch United States Army
Years of service1942–1945
RankCaptain
Battles/warsWorld War II
AwardsArmy Distinguished Service Medal
Legion of Merit (2)

The John Birch Society, an American anti-communist organization, was named in his honor by Robert H. W. Welch Jr. in 1958. Welch considered Birch to be a martyr and the first casualty of the Cold War. Birch's parents joined the Society as honorary Life Members.

Early life

Birch was born to Presbyterian missionaries in Landour, a hill station in the Himalayas now in the northern India state of Uttarakhand, at the time in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. His parents, Ethel (Ellis) and George S. Birch, were on a three-year period missionary service in the country, working under Sam Higginbottom.[1][2] In 1920, when he was two, the family returned to the United States. Birch was raised in Vineland, New Jersey, Floyd County, Georgia,[3] and Macon, Georgia, in the Fundamental Baptist[3] tradition. He graduated from Gore High School in Chattooga County, followed by Georgia Baptist–affiliated Mercer University in 1939 magna cum laude.[3] In his senior year at Mercer, he joined a student group to identify cases of heresy by professors, seeking to uphold the scriptural definition of conversion and other doctrines.[4]

Missionary work

Birch decided to become a missionary when he was twelve years old. After college, he enrolled in J. Frank Norris' Fundamental Baptist Bible Institute[3] in Fort Worth, Texas. Completing the curriculum in one year, he was sent to China by the World Fundamental Baptist Missionary Fellowship.[3] Arriving in Shanghai, which was in Japanese occupied territory in July 1940,[5] he began an intensive study of Mandarin Chinese. After a few months, he was assigned to Hangzhou, an area occupied by the Japanese during the Second Sino-Japanese War. In October 1941, he left Hangzhou for Shangrao in "Free China". Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, he volunteered to serve as a U.S. Army officer in China.

U.S. Army

World War II

In April 1942, Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle and his crew bailed out in China after the Tokyo raid. They had flown from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-8), bombed Tokyo, then flown to the Chinese mainland. After bailing out, they were rescued by Chinese civilians and smuggled by river beyond Japanese lines in Zhejiang province. Birch met them by accident and assisted them.

When Doolittle arrived in Chongqing, he told Colonel Claire Chennault, leader of the Flying Tigers, about Birch's help. Chennault said he could use a Chinese-speaking American who knew the country well and he commissioned Birch as a first lieutenant on July 4, 1942,[5] to work as a field intelligence officer, though Birch had expected to work as a chaplain.[6]

Birch served with the China Air Task Force, which became the Fourteenth Air Force on 5 March 1943, and was later seconded to the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS). He criticized the OSS, wanting only to work for Chennault. He built formidable intelligence networks of sympathetic Chinese informants, supplying Chennault with information on Japanese troop movements and shipping, often performing dangerous field assignments, during which he would brazenly hold Sunday church services for Chinese Christians. In his diary, Major Gustav Krause, commanding officer of the base, noted: "Birch is a good officer, but I'm afraid is too brash and may run into trouble."[7] Urged to take a leave of absence, Birch refused, telling Chennault he would not quit China "until the last Japanese did."

He was promoted to captain and received the Legion of Merit on July 17, 1944,[4][5] and was approved for an oak leaf cluster (second Legion of Merit) in January 1946. In November 1945, he was posthumously awarded the Order of the Cloud and Banner by the Republic of China. Colonel Wilfred Smith recommended Birch for a posthumous Silver Star but neither the Silver Star nor the Purple Heart was approved based on eligibility for the award.

Death

V-J Day, August 14, 1945, signaled the end of formal hostilities, but under terms of the Japanese surrender, the Japanese Army was ordered to continue occupying the areas it controlled until they could be surrendered to the Nationalist government, even in places where the Chinese Communist-led government had been the de facto state for a decade. This led to continued fighting as the People's Liberation Army (PLA) sought to expel all Japanese imperial forces, which it perceived to include U.S. personnel, who were then openly collaborating with the remaining Japanese forces.

On August 25, when Captain Birch was leading a party of eleven Americans, Chinese Nationalists, and Koreans on a mission to gather intelligence in Xuzhou, they were stopped by a PLA force in a small town where the Communists had been fighting Japanese troops. Birch refused to surrender his revolver and harsh words and insults were exchanged. Birch was shot and killed, and a Chinese Nationalist aide was shot and wounded, but survived. The rest of the party was taken prisoner, but were released two months later.

Memorials

Birch is known today mainly by the society that bears his name, although then-Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle, who met Birch after Doolittle's raid on Tokyo, said in his autobiography

[Birch] had no way of knowing that the John Birch Society, a highly vocal postwar anticommunist organization, would be named after him because its founders believed him to be the "first casualty of World War III." I feel sure he would not have approved.[8]

Birch's name is on the bronze plaque of a World War II monument at the top of Coleman Hill Park overlooking downtown Macon, along with the names of other Macon men who lost their lives while serving in the military. He has a plaque on the sanctuary of the First Southern Methodist Church of Macon, which was built on land given by his family, purchased with the money he sent home monthly. A building at the First Baptist Church of Fort Worth, Texas, was named "The John Birch Hall" by Pastor J. Frank Norris.[9] A small street in Townsend, Massachusetts, "John Birch Memorial Drive", is also named for him.[10]

Birch is buried in Rose Hill Cemetery in Macon, Georgia.

Military awards

U.S. Senator William F. Knowland attempted unsuccessfully to obtain posthumous awards for Birch which included the Distinguished Service Cross, but these were not approved on the grounds that the United States was not at war with the Communist Chinese in 1945. Birch received the following military awards:[5]

See also

Notes
  1. Thomas Mallon (11 January 2016). "A View from the Fringe". The New Yorker.
  2. "Birch, John".
  3. The Secret File on John Birch, James & Marti Hefley, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1980, ISBN 0-8423-5862-5
  4. "Who Was John Birch?". Time. April 14, 1961.
  5. "World War 2 Awards.com - BIRCH, John Morrison".
  6. Doolittle, James. I Could Never Be So Lucky Again". Bantam Books. pp. 277–279. ISBN 0-553-07807-0. Chennault commissioned him as a first lieutenant on July 4, 1942, the official birthday of Chennault's 14th Air Force
  7. Manchester, William (2013). The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932–1972. RosettaBooks. ISBN 9780795335570., Ch. 13
  8. Doolittle, James Harold; Glines, Carroll V. (1991). I could never be so lucky again : an autobiography. Internet Archive. New York, N.Y. : Bantam Books.
  9. Stokes, David R. (2011). The Shooting Salvationist: J. Frank Norris and the Murder Trial that Captivated America. Hanover, NH: Steerforth Press. p. 325. ISBN 978-1-58642-186-1
  10. "Maps". Bing Maps. Microsoft Bing. Retrieved July 1, 2011.
  11. "World War 2 Awards.com - China War Memorial Medal".

References
  • I Could Never Be So Lucky Again, autobiography by James "Jimmy" Doolittle, ISBN 0-553-58464-2
  • Mission to Yenan: American Liaison with the Chinese Communists 1944–1947, Carolle J. Carter, ISBN 0-8131-2015-2
  • The Secret File on John Birch, James Hefley, Hannibal Books, 1995 (updated version), ISBN 0-929292-80-4
  • The Life of John Birch, Robert Welch, Western Islands, ISBN 0-88279-116-8
  • John Birch: A Life, Terry Lautz, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-026289-1
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