Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign
Part of the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific Theater of World War II
A Japanese soldier with 50 mm heavy grenade discharger during the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign, 30 May 1942
Date (1942-05-15) (1942-09-04)May 15 – September 4, 1942 (3 months, 2 weeks and 6 days) Location Vicinity of Zhejiang province and Jiangxi province in the Republic of China Result Japanese victory
Belligerents
China United States	Japan
Commanders and leaders
Gu Zhutong Shangguan Yunxiang Tang Shih-Tsun Wang Jingjiu Li Jue Xue Yue Ou Zhen Shi Zhongcheng Wang Yaowu Xia Chuzhong Sun Du Feng Sheng-Fa Ding Zhipan Wang Tieh-Han Chang Wen-Ching Tao Kuang Liu Yu-Ching Fan Tse-Ying Mo Yu-Shuo	Shunroku Hata Shigeru Sawada Korechika Anami Sanji Ōkido Tetsuzo Ide Takayuki Uchida Toshijiro Takeuchi Johkichi Nanbu Haruo Yamamura Hachiro Tagami Tagaji Takahashi Shigeru Ōga Saburo Takehara Takejiro Imai Tokutaro Ide Giichi Hirano Naotsugu Sakai †
Units involved
Republic of China Army	Imperial Japanese Army Unit 731
Strength
22,099 officers and 290,209 soldiers[1][a]	180,000
Casualties and losses
Chinese records:[1][a] 724 officers and 23,637 soldiers killed 914 officers and 24,366 soldiers wounded 600 officers and 18,040 soldiers missing Western estimate: 30,000 killed or wounded[2] Japanese claim:[3]: 260-264 : 294-295  13th Army's claim: 24,430 killed 8,564 POWs 11th Army's claim: 15,758 killed 2,283 POWs	Chinese claim: 36,869 killed or wounded[1] Japanese records:[3]: 260-264 : 294-295  13th Army: 1,284 killed 2,767 wounded 11,812 fallen ill 11th Army: 336 killed 949 wounded
As many as 250,000 Chinese civilians killed[4][5]
^ a b The strength and casualties from the following units are not reported and thus not included: Headquarters and units directly under the 88th Army, Qiantang River Northern Army, and 21st Army 52nd Division, 148th Division, and three battalions of the 192nd Division All engineer, artillery, and communications units excluding the engineer and artillery units temporarily attached to the 86th Army in Quzhou

The Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign or the Chekiang–Kiangsi campaign (Japanese: 浙贛作戦, simplified Chinese: 浙赣战役; traditional Chinese: 浙赣戰役; pinyin: Zhè-Gàn Zhànyì), also known as Operation Sei-go (Japanese: せ号作戦), 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.

On April 18, 1942, the United States launched the Doolittle Raid, an attack by 16 B-25 Mitchell bombers from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet 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 (which against orders diverted to the Soviet Union) 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.^[6]

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.^[7]

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.^[8]

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.^[9] 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.

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".^[10] In other cases, Japanese soldiers threw children into wells and drowned them.^[11]

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.^[6][9]

The Imperial Japanese Army had also spread cholera, typhoid, plague-infected fleas and dysentery pathogens.^[12] 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.^[13] 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,^{[14][15][16][17][18]} leading to over 1,700 dying and 10,000 getting sick.^[19][20][21] 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 [biological weapons] attack had been made during the Chekiang [Zhejiang] 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 [bubonic plague]. 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.’” ^[22]

• Order of Battle for Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign (1942)
• Flying Tigers
• Unit 731
• Bombing of Tokyo

• Chevrier, Marie Isabelle; Chomiczewski, Krzysztof; Garrigue, Henri, eds. (2004). The Implementation of Legally Binding Measures to Strengthen the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention: Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute, Held in Budapest, Hungary, 2001. Vol. 150 of NATO science series: Mathematics, physics, and chemistry (illustrated ed.). Springer. ISBN 140202097X. Retrieved 10 March 2014.
• Croddy, Eric A.; Wirtz, James J., eds. (2005). Weapons of Mass Destruction. Jeffrey A. Larsen, Managing Editor. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 1851094903. Retrieved 10 March 2014.
• James M. Scott. The Untold Story of the Vengeful Japanese Attack After the Doolittle Raid