August 18th - September 28th, 1937
August 18th – September 28th, 12th year of Showa
Further operations in China
On August 18th, two divisions commanded by Field Marshal Sugiyama, attempted to press towards the Xi-Jiang River, north of their current positions. Intelligence had reported a tank division in the jagged area. Minor skirmishes broke out at several occasions, but the Chinese division slowly retreated towards the river. Sugiyama’s troops followed them cautiously. When on August 27th five divisions withdrawing from a lost battle around Kanton arrived, the Chinese withdrew even further across the river. Another Chinese army with fresh troops tried to cross the river and retake control of the area only two days later, but they failed due to lacking equipment. The Chinese general Yu Hsüeh-chung did not admit defeat until he had lost more than 20000 men in the futile attempt to storm the Japanese positions.
Japanese troops assault Chinese positions
Further north the remaining parts of the Guangdong province were captured by the tenth ‘Himeji’ Hoheishidan of general Kozuki. Reinforcements arrived from direction Shantou with the 18th gundan with its two divisions marched inlands. Two minor battles took place until the Japanese forces controlled the whole area. On September 1st, a small skirmish in the northern parts of the Guangdong province was decided in Japanese favour, when the Chinese forces withdrew towards the southern Jiangxi province. A week later three divisions of the Kuomintang started a local counteroffensive, but failed miserably and lost about 25 percent of their men, without making a dent in the Japanese fronts.
Instead the Japanese conquered even more land when they attacked in the northern Guangxi province and took Guilin after days of fierce fighting which cost many lives on both sides.
The Japanese tried to cross the mighty Jangtse Kiang River near Yichang but were repelled by Kuomintang forces after losing a few hundred men. The Japanese high command realized that it needed better river-crossing equipment for coming wars.
They had more success on September 10th a few miles downstream, where two divisions were able to conquer a bridgehead Yueyang and advanced Changsha, Mao Zedong’s home in earlier years, only hours later. The city fell without fights and the Japanese occupied the rich farmlands around the city in the next hours. It took nearly two weeks until the Chinese tried to start a counteroffensive in the area. This assault was aborted after a few hours however and the Chinese showed first signs of resignation.
Henyang fell after heavy fighting between the 20th and 23rd September, in which the Japanese divisions lost three thousand men, while the Chinese lost about nine thousand. The important railway between Kanton and Wuhan was now under control of the Japanese.
Chinese soldiers on their way to the front
In the tropic south of China the Japanese troops slowly approached the more mountainous areas, taking Nanning after a day of fighting against Kuomintang troops, which again lost more than 25 percent of its troops in the area. Most of the Guangxi province was now in hands of the foreign invaders.
In the Red Basin, Field Marshal Count Terauchi Hisaichi led three infantry divisions in their onslaught onto Chinese defences in this last important Chinese industrial region. Chongqing, Chinese since three millennia, was conquered in three days of bloody battles, which cost thousand Japanese and at least a tenfold amount of Chinese soldiers their lives. But the real battle for the Red Basin should start three days later in the environs of Chengdu, the second metropolis in this fertile and rich valley.
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek had, much to the surprise of Count Terauchi, assembled twelve divisions, among them some of the finest remaining formations of the Kuomintang army. The battles between the thirty thousand Japanese and more than hundred thousand Chinese started on September 19th. The Japanese forces were caught by surprise when they encountered that they were outnumbered three-to-one. They lost more than three thousand men in the first hours, but were nevertheless able to conquer the town Neijiang. Chiang’s forces now counterattacked more ferocious and retook the city after heavy fighting, which cost thousands of lives on both sides. Two days after the battle started five thousand Japanese and twice the number of Chinese had fallen. Three more light divisions of the Japanese reinforced the offensive from the northern flank, but the Chinese defence was steadfast. While the Japanese lost only minor numbers, the Chinese casualty figures exploded. The next three days saw the loss of more than 13000 Kuomintang soldiers. But still the Chinese fought for every meter. When they finally abandoned the Red Basin on September 28th, they had lost another 40000 men, accumulating their losses in the battle for the valley to more than 75000 men, compared to less than 8000 on the Japanese side.
Japanese soldiers crossing a destroyed railway bridge
However the Japanese suffered their first real defeat in their campaign to conquer China in the meantime. On September 17th, five divisions, exhausted from long marches through central China, attempted to cross the Gan Jiang River south of Nanchang, to conquer the remaining southern parts of the Jiangxi province. Field Marshal Higashikuni requested that a bridgehead should be established. The River was however defended by a lone Chinese division under General Tai Li. For five days the Japanese tried to cross the river, but their assaults were futile. The Chinese defenders fought off every attempt. They lost a lot of men, but the Japanese troops, exhausted and with low morale, didn’t achieve a breakthrough. After five days and losses of more than ten thousand men, compared with half as many Chinese dead, Field Marshal Higashikuni admitted defeat and stopped the attempts to cross the river.
Situation in China, September 30th
and assumed he might do the same
