World War II Database

The coastal region of Zhejiang and the neighboring province of Jiangxi in China were just beyond Japanese control in early 1942, and the American Doolittle Raiders took advantage of this, crash landing their bombers and sought civilian help after attacking the Japanese home islands. The Japanese Army's China Expeditionary Force dispatched a force of 180,000 men on a punitive campaign into the region as a response in mid-May 1942, clashing against the 300,000-strong but poorly-equipped Chinese 3rd War Area. As the Japanese pushed back Chinese defenders and took control of towns and villages, anyone suspected of aiding US airmen were summarily executed, and some of the villages were burned to the ground as a form of collective punishment. During the campaign, the Chinese suffered 70,000 casualties and the Japanese suffered 36,000 casualties. The Chinese estimated that 250,000 civilians were killed by the Japanese during this punitive campaign; the Japanese were also suspected of spreading cholera, typhoid, plague, and dysentery pathogens around this time in the Zhejiang-Jiangxi region for experimentation purposes. Shunroku Hata, the commanding officer of the Japanese Army China Expeditionary Force, was later sentenced to a life imprisonment term by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East for his failure to prevent his troops from committing atrocities in China.

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