China-Burma-India WWII

Dai Li was the head of all intelligence and counterespionage services for Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist government. He organized a guerrilla force to operate against the Japanese during the Sino- Japanese War (1937-1945), using his connections to the Shanghai underworld. He was also the director of the Sino-American Cooperative Organization (SACO), in which he cooperated with the U.S. Strategic Services (Office of the Strategic Services or OSS) representative to China, Captain (later Rear Admiral) Milton E. Miles. SACO gathered intelligence, destroyed Japanese supply lines, and conducted guerrilla operations against the Japanese.

Dai Li was born in Jianggshan, Zhejiang Province, in 1895. His exact date of birth is not known. His father failed in business (although the father's family contained several successful businessmen and traders) and died in 1900. Dai Li was raised by his mother, but he left school in 1909 to become a military cadet in the "model regiment" of the Zhejiang Army. Almost nothing is known of his activities between 1909 and 1926. Dai Li became a member of the Guomindang Party in 1926 and entered the fourth class at the Whampoa Military Academy. After graduation from Whampoa in the same year, he became a cavalry officer.

As a cavalry officer during the Northern Expedition, he was sent ahead of the main body of troops to gather information on public attitudes toward the warlords, on the military situation, and on avenues of attack. It is not clear whether his acumen at intelligence gathering brought him to the attention of Chiang Kai-shek, or whether they had a previous association in Shanghai related to the Green Gang, but Dai Li was sent to Shanghai by Chiang in 1927 to work with the underworld gangs and secret societies (principally, the Green Gang [Qing Bang]), in preparation for Chiang's own move to Shanghai in April 1927.

Dai Li served on Chiang Kai-shek's staff and in 1931 was appointed as chief of the Second Department, Bureau of Investigations and Statistics, Military Affairs Commission. In this capacity he was responsible for the conduct of espionage operations against Japan and Japanese forces in China. He also had responsibility for counterespionage operations against Japanese agents in China. He put together a staff of officers drawn from other graduates of the Whampoa Military Academy. In addition to his intelligence work against the Japanese, between 1931 and 1936, Dai Li also carried out clandestine operations against the Communists and their forces.

After the Marco Polo Bridge Incident on July 7, 1937, and the formal start of the war against Japan, Dai Li was sent to Shanghai. He used his earlier connections to the Green Gang and the Shanghai underworld to organize a guerrilla force to fight Japan that was known as the "Loyal and Righteous Army of National Salvation" (Zhongyi Qiuguojun). In late 1937, in Nanjing, still the capital of Nationalist China, Dai Li was made deputy director of the successor organization to the Second Department, Bureau of Investigations and Statistics of the Military Affairs Commission. He became the director in 1938. With a powerful network of agents and guerrillas under his control, he penetrated both the Communist New Fourth Army and the puppet regime established by the Japanese in Nanjing in 1939, headed by Wang Jingwei. Within a few years, Dai Li also took over the Anti-Smuggling Bureau, the Commodity Transport Control Bureau, and the Transportation (Jiaotong) Control Bureau. This effectively put him in charge of all commodity distribution for the Nationalist government, an extremely powerful position in a very corrupt regime. Meanwhile, in his capacity as the director of espionage and counterespionage, Dai Li managed to penetrate and control the security and police forces in Nanjing.

When the United States assigned Captain Milton E. Miles, an officer of the Strategic Services, to China in May 1942, in cover as the chief on the U.S. Naval Observer Group, Dai Li accompanied Miles on several covert trips into Japanese-held areas. Miles and Dai Li were the directors (Dai Li was director, and Miles his deputy) of the Sino-American Cooperative Organization, established under a bilateral agreement signed by the U.S. Navy secretary Frank Knox and T. V. Soong on April 15, 1943. Under the direction of Dai Li and Miles, SACO established 14 weathers stations, guerrilla training bases, and intelligence collection sites throughout China.

After World War II, Dai Li undertook the duties of tracking down and arresting those Chinese who had cooperated with the Japanese and the Wang Jingwei puppet government. He is credited with having brought over 3,000 people to trial. Dai Li was elected to the Executive Committee of the Guomindang Sixth National Congress in 1945. As part of an effort to suppress the increasing strength of the Communists as Civil War broke out, Dai Li flew to Qingdao on March 16, 1946. After conferring with the commander of U.S. Navy forces in Qingdao, he returned to Shanghai on March 17 on a plane belonging to the China Civil Aeronautics Commission. The plane vanished but was found crashed in the mountains near Nanjing several weeks later. Chiang Kai-shek ordered a period of mourning for Dai Li's death.

REFERENCES Howard L. Boorman, ed., Biographical Dictionary of Republican China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970); Milton E. Miles, A Different Kind of War (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967).