Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign
The Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign or the Chekiang–Kiangsi campaign, also known as Operation Sei-go, was a campaign by the China Expeditionary Army of the Imperial Japanese Army under Shunroku Hata and Chinese 3rd War Area forces under Gu Zhutong in Chinese provinces of Zhejiang and Jiangxi from mid May to early September 1942.
Hata's forces launched the campaign in retaliation for the Doolittle Raid, conducted by American pilots who had then landed in China's Zhejiang and Jiangxi provinces. Besides seizing local airfields, Japanese troops launched massive reprisal campaigns against the local population by "slaughtering every man and child." As many as 250,000 Chinese died in the Japanese reprisals, the majority civilians.
Background
On April 18, 1942, the United States launched the Doolittle Raid, an attack by 16 B-25 Mitchell bombers from the aircraft carrier on Tokyo, Nagoya, and Yokohama. The original plan was for the aircraft to bomb Japan and land at airfields in unoccupied portion of China. Because the raid had to be launched earlier than planned, all but one of the aircraft ran out of fuel and crashed in the Chinese provinces of Zhejiang and Jiangxi or their offshore islands.Sixty-four American airmen parachuted into the area around Zhejiang. Most were given shelter by Chinese civilians but eight Americans were captured by Japanese troops; three were shot after a show trial for crimes against humanity.
The campaign
Imperial General Headquarters was aware of possible air attacks from Chinese territory on Japan. Two days before the Doolittle Raid, Headquarters set up an operational plan with the goal of defeating Chinese forces and destroying air bases. The operation started on May 15, 1942, with 40 infantry battalions and 15–16 artillery battalions of the Imperial Japanese Army.On May 15, the main force of the Japanese 13th Army invaded westward along the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Railway and both sides from Fenghua, Shangyu, Shaoxing, Xiaoshan and other towns in Zhejiang. Commander Korechika Anami of the 11th Army commanded two divisions and four detachments to advance from east to west from Hangzhou and Nanchang to attack in the direction of Shangrao, Jiangxi. On August 15, the Japanese army was ordered to retreat, and the Chinese army followed and pursued them. By the end of September, except for Jinhua, Wuyi and the northeastern region, all along the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Railway had been recovered.
Japanese troops conducted a massive search for American airmen and in the process whole towns and villages that were suspected of harboring the Americans were burned to the ground and many civilians executed. The Japanese also wanted to occupy the area to prevent American air force from ever using airfields in China that could put the Japanese mainland within reach.
Aftermath
When Japanese troops moved out of the Zhejiang and Jiangxi areas in mid-August, they left behind a trail of devastation. In Yihuang County, Japanese troops killed all orphans and the elderly sheltered at a missionary station. In that case, Japanese soldiers had bayonetted the victims, or tied them to stakes and burned them like "human candles". In other cases, Japanese soldiers threw children into wells and drowned them.During the four-month campaign, Japanese soldiers slaughtered up to 250,000 civilians and thousands of farm animals, including at least 10,000 civilians killed for sheltering or assisting Doolittle's men.
The Imperial Japanese Army had also spread cholera, typhoid, plague-infected fleas and dysentery pathogens. The Japanese biological warfare Unit 731 brought almost 300 pounds of paratyphoid and anthrax to be left in contaminated food and contaminated wells with the withdrawal of the army from areas around Yushan, Kinhwa and Futsin. This attack took place at Jinhua in Zhejiang and the Japanese soldiers inadvertently advanced in the area they spread with biological weapons and got themselves infected, leading to over 1,700 dying and 10,000 getting sick.
This information about the Japanese killing their own soldiers in the campaign came from a Japanese POW captured by Americans in 1944, who admitted that the actual Japanese death toll was far higher than the 1,700 he saw on the documents at the biological warfare headquarters, and that Japanese regularly downplayed their own casualties: ''When Japanese troops overran an area in which a attack had been made during the Chekiang campaign in 1942, casualties upward from 10,000 resulted within a very brief period of time. Diseases were particularly cholera, but also dysentery and pest . Victims were usually rushed to hospitals in rear. … Statistics which POW saw at Water Supply and Purification Dept Hq at Nanking showed more than 1,700 dead, chiefly from cholera; POW believes that actual deaths were considerably higher, ‘it being a common practice to pare down unpleasant figures.’”''