Evans Carlson’s China Years and the Birth of Marine Raiders
A review of Stephen Platt’s The Raider, chronicling Evans Carlson’s journey from Mao’s army to the Pacific front and shaping tactics still influencing the military today
The Military Reading Room is thrilled to welcome Sara Bush Castro and Nicholas Reynolds as our first Guest Book Reviewers. Sara is a historian of U.S.-China relations and an instructor at the National Security Space Institute; Nick (nicholasreynoldsauthor.com) is a historian who served in the USMC and the CIA. This piece started as a review Sara wrote for The Journal of America’s Military Past (campjamp.org), where Nick is the book review editor.
Chinese-American relations seem to be in the news almost every day. The focus is usually on some form of the tension between the two countries’ militaries that stretches back at least to the 1940s, certainly to the Korean War, when they faced each other on the battlefield. It is easy to assume it was always that way, but that hasn’t always been the case.
A recent book, The Raider: The Untold Story of a Renegade Marine and the Birth of U.S. Special Forces in World War II by Stephen Platt (Knopf, 2025), invites us to take a second look, considering a time when it seemed possible for the two countries’ militaries to work together against common enemies like the Japanese. It is about a legendary Marine, Evans Carlson, who embedded with Mao’s 8th Route Army before World War II, and went on to be a plank holder in Marine special operations. Following several years in the Army, Carlson was a veteran of the 1916 Punitive Expedition in Mexico under General Pershing and served as an artilleryman in World War I, leaving the service in 1921. Soon after Carlson enlisted in the Marine Corps, seeing combat service in Nicaragua before shipping off to the 4th Marine Regiment in Shanghai, beginning the first of several years in China. In 1937, he returned to China as a military observer and to study the language when he took the opportunity to embed with Chinese Communist troops in their fight against the Japanese.
Carlson’s China Years and Marine Lessons
Traveling with Mao’s Communist guerrillas in 1937 and 1938, Carlson endured the same hardships as they did. He found much to like in their unit cohesion and decentralized execution. which he inculcated in the Second Marine Raider battalion when he took command in 1942.
Carlson led from the front against the Japanese at Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Makin Island, and Saipan, where he was severely wounded. During the war, he earned two Navy Crosses (second only to the Medal of Honor).
Carlson was not a traditional Marine Corps leader, having been greatly influenced by his experience with Mao’s army. Drawing from this experience, Carlson promoted an egalitarian ethic in relations between officer and enlisted, insisting that burdens be shared equally. The Corps incorporated some of the lessons Carlson learned in China, but wasn’t entirely sure that this iconoclast was always or even mostly right. As Marine General Shoup, then a Colonel at the battle of Tarawa, impressed by Carlson’s bravery, is said to have commented, “He may be red but he is not yellow.”
Carlson was promoted to the rank of brigadier general when he retired. He died of complications from his wounds at the age of 51 in 1947.
Carlson is an intriguing figure whose legacy and influence endures today, but is not widely recognized or remembered.
Enter, Stephen Platt’s The Raider.
It is a vivid and deeply researched biography of Evans Carlson, the iconoclastic U.S. Marine officer who founded the famed Raider battalion in the Pacific Theater during World War II. Admired by the enlisted men who served under him and a darling of the American press during the war, Carlson would later see his reputation tarnished by his close wartime association with Chinese Communist guerrillas.
Carlson was a restless non-conformist, full of contradictions: a man with little formal education who nevertheless was profoundly influenced by books and went on to publish several of his own; a slow starter as a soldier who became a daring, unconventional warrior; and a pioneer for teamwork within the Marine Corps even though he preferred to work in the shadows and appreciated guerrilla tactics. One of Carlson’s lasting contributions came from his time with the Chinese Communist 8th Route Army, where he observed and admired their emphasis on unity and shared purpose. He translated this concept into the now-legendary Marine motto “gung ho,” derived from the Chinese term gonghe (工合). Carlson’s adaptation of this ordinary Chinese adjective embedded an ethos into the identity of the Raider Battalion, which eventually spread into the American lexicon.
The fantastic tales of Carlson’s dramatic life—from being embedded with Mao Zedong’s troops to becoming a secret personal pen pal of President Franklin Roosevelt, who wanted information about the Chinese Communists, to his later indictment by Senator Joseph McCarthy—make for a riveting read. But the book is not only a good read: Carlson’s personal experiences are particularly revealing … today because they closely follow both the major contours of the US relationship with China in the 1930s and 1940s and significant transformations that occurred in the U.S. military before, during, and immediately after World War II…
Although many readers may not recognize Carlson’s name today, he was a national figure in his own time and remains well known to scholars of U.S.-China relations. In bringing Carlson’s story to life for a wide readership, Platt has rendered a great service to the field. The Raider holds many timely lessons for today’s general readers and scholars alike about the origins of current U.S. military tactics and force culture, military and civilian leadership, ideological ambiguity, and navigating alliances in a shifting global landscape. Carlson operated in the liminal spaces between two countries whose paths converged and diverged dramatically over the course of his military career. Platt’s account of how Carlson negotiated these changes humanizes the sweeping military and political changes of the era.
Who Should Read This Book
Insight to Mao’s Army from a Military Observer’s perspective: Anyone interested in digging into the background of Chinese-American relations in—for the suggestion that there might be more than one perspective.
Marines & special operations: Marines, especially those interested in special operations. Carlson was in some ways a typical Marine, in other ways a game changer. He is now considered one of the role models for MARSOC (Marine Special Operations Command)
World War II Pacific War readers: This is a great story about a leader who is sometimes overlooked, as well as the Chinese Communist Army’s actions in the war against the Japanese.
Tags: Book Review, World War II, Operations
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Great review, Nick & Sara! Incredibly interesting. I’m sold… it’s on my list.
Thanks, David! I read the book but Sara did the heavy lifting here.