On
this date, December 3, 1941, the approval of the Three Alls Policy was given by
the Imperial General Headquarters. I will post information about this scorched
earth policy from Wikipedia.
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General Yasuji Okamura (岡村 寧次 Okamura Yasuji)
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The
Three Alls Policy (Japanese: 三光作戦,
Sankō Sakusen; Chinese: 三光政策;
pinyin: Sānguāng Zhèngcè) was a Japanese scorched
earth policy adopted in China during World War II, the three
"alls" being "kill all, burn all, loot all" (Japanese: すべてを殺す、すべてを燃やす、すべてを略奪; Chinese: 殺光、燒光、搶光).
This policy was designed as retaliation against the Chinese for the
Communist-led Hundred Regiments Offensive in December 1940. Contemporary
Japanese documents referred to the policy as "The Burn to Ash
Strategy" (燼滅作戦 Jinmetsu Sakusen?).
The
expression "Sankō Sakusen" was first popularized in Japan in
1957 when former Japanese soldiers
released from the Fushun war crime internment center wrote a book called The
Three Alls: Japanese Confessions of War Crimes in China (Japanese: 三光、日本人の中国における戦争犯罪の告白, Sankō, Nihonjin no Chūgoku ni
okeru sensō hanzai no kokuhaku) (new edition: Kanki Haruo, 1979), in which
Japanese veterans confessed to war crimes committed under the leadership of
General Yasuji Okamura. The publishers were forced to stop the publication of
the book after receiving death threats from Japanese militarists and
ultranationalists.
Description
Initiated
in 1940 by Major General Ryūkichi Tanaka, the Sankō Sakusen was
implemented in full scale in 1942 in north China by General Yasuji Okamura who divided the territory of five
provinces (Hebei, Shandong, Shensi, Shanhsi, Chahaer) into
"pacified", "semi-pacified" and "unpacified"
areas. The approval of the policy was given by Imperial General Headquarters Order
Number 575 on 3 December 1941. Okamura's strategy involved burning down
villages, confiscating grain and mobilizing peasants to construct collective
hamlets. It also centered on the digging of vast trench lines and the building
of thousands of miles of containment walls and moats, watchtowers and roads.
These operations targeted for destruction "enemies pretending to be local
people" and "all males between the ages of fifteen and sixty whom we
suspect to be enemies."
In
a study published in 1996, historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta claims that the Three
Alls Policy, sanctioned by Emperor
Hirohito
himself, was both directly and indirectly responsible for the deaths of
"more than 2.7 million" Chinese civilians. His
works and those of Akira Fujiwara about the details of the operation were
commented by Herbert P. Bix in his Pulitzer
Prize–winning book, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, who
claims that the Sankō Sakusen far surpassed the
Rape of Nanking not only in terms of numbers, but in brutality as well. The
effects of the Japanese strategy were further exacerbated by Chinese military
tactics, which included the masking of military forces as civilians, or the use
of civilians as deterrents against Japanese attacks. In some places, the
Japanese use of chemical warfare against civilian populations in
contravention of international agreements was also alleged.
Controversy
and dispute
As
with many aspects of Japan's World War II history, the nature and extent of
Three Alls Policy is still a controversial issue. Because the now well-known
name for this strategy is Chinese, some nationalist groups in Japan have even
denied its veracity. The issue is partly confused by the use of scorched-earth
tactics by the Kuomintang government forces in numerous areas of central and
northern China, against both the invading Japanese, and against Chinese
civilian populations in rural areas of strong support for the Chinese Communist
Party. Known in Japan as "The Clean Field Strategy" (清野作戦 Seiya Sakusen?), Chinese soldiers would destroy the
homes and fields of their own civilians in order to wipe out any possible
supplies or shelter that could be utilised by the over-extended Japanese
troops. Almost all historians agree that Imperial Japanese troops widely and
indiscriminately committed war crimes against the Chinese people, citing a vast
literature of evidence and documentation.
Movie
The
movie The Children of Huang Shi, which covers the Japanese invasion from
1938 to 1945, is set in part along the sankō sakusen.
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