"Coming, Going, or Staying: One Officer's Plans for the United States Marines in North China, 1946"

With this article, I am attempting something rather unorthodox and different. First, this paper is based on only one primary source. Second, I have looked at the sources intensively in terms of coverage, especially the first one since it is the longest. I have long thought that a more intensive investigation of a limited number of sources in a narrative manner can produce worthwhile studies just as a more thematic one of a larger number of sources can. Here, I am looking at the strategic rationale for the U.S.' deployment of Marine Corps units to North China right after the end of the Asia-Pacific War. More exactly, however, I am looking at how the United States Navy planned to withdraw the Marines at the beginning of a war with the Soviet Union just as the Joint Chiefs of Staff planned to do when it came to American military forces at quite a few other locations in Eurasia. By looking intensively at these plans, it is possible to add detail to the picture that we already have as to how the United States planned to fight a war against the Soviet Union in the late 1940s, especially as those war plans often mimicked the major patterns of U.S. and Allied involvement in World War Two