Battle of Wuhan

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of Wuhan was the single largest, longest, and bloodiest engagement of the entire Second Sino-Japanese War. It stretched across five provinces over four and a half months, swallowing more than one million National Revolutionary Army troops, and left China with as many as one million casualties, military and civilian. At its center stood a city the Japanese government expected to fall within a month or two. It did not fall for months. And when it finally fell, the war did not end. It simply changed shape.

  Wuhan in late 1938 held a population of 1.5 million. It sat halfway upstream on the Yangtze River, divided into three districts by the Yangtze and the Hanshui: Wuchang the political center, Hankou the commercial hub, Hanyang the industrial zone. After the completion of the Yuehan Railway, Wuhan had become a critical transportation node deep inside China's interior. When Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Nanjing fell in quick succession and the Nationalist government fled toward Chongqing, Wuhan absorbed the overflow, becoming the de facto wartime capital of the Republic of China.

  What unfolded there would involve poison gas authorized from the imperial throne, a river fortress lost because a general left his post for a ceremony, a Chinese encirclement that destroyed four Japanese divisions, and a flood deliberately unleashed on China's own land to buy a few extra weeks. The story of how Japan captured Wuhan, and what that victory cost both sides, is the story of how a war that should have ended in months stretched toward Pearl Harbor.

• 2. Why Wuhan Mattered

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  After the fall of Nanjing, the bulk of the Nationalist government agencies and military command headquarters relocated to Wuhan, even though the official capital had shifted to Chongqing. Transport inadequacies prevented the full transfer of government facilities and war supplies, so the city absorbed what Chongqing could not. The Yuehan Railway connected Wuhan to the southern ports, making it the main conduit for foreign aid moving inland. Soviet assistance, including the Soviet Volunteer Group of volunteer pilots from the Soviet Air Forces, passed through this corridor.

  On the Japanese side, Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe reassembled his Cabinet in 1938 and introduced the National Mobilization Law on the 5th of May. That law moved Japan into a wartime economic state and authorized civilian conscription under the National Service Draft Ordinance. The IJA forces were already drained by the scale of operations since the invasion began on the 7th of July 1937, following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. Reinforcements dispatched to maintain momentum placed a visible strain on the peacetime economy. Capturing Wuhan and ending Chinese resistance was meant to resolve that strain. The Japanese headquarters of the China Expeditionary Army believed the city, and the resistance with it, would fall within a month or two of the campaign's start.

• 3. The Armies Take Shape

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  In December 1937, the Military Affairs Commission convened to design the defense of Wuhan. Following the loss of Xuzhou, approximately 1.1 million men across 120 divisions of the National Revolutionary Army were redeployed for the defense. Generals Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi of the Fifth War Zone were assigned to hold the north of the Yangtze; Chen Cheng of the Ninth War Zone was tasked with the south; the First War Zone covered the Zhengzhou-Xinyang section of the Pinghan Railway against forces advancing from the North China Plain.

  On the 4th of May, IJA commander Shunroku Hata organized approximately 350,000 men of the Second and Eleventh Armies. Yasuji Okamura commanded five-and-a-half divisions of the Eleventh Army along both banks of the Yangtze for the main assault, while Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni commanded four-and-a-half divisions of the Second Army along the northern foot of the Dabie Mountains to press from a different angle. Supporting them were 120 ships of the Third Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy under Koshiro Oikawa and more than 500 planes of the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service.

  Before the ground campaign opened, an air campaign had already run for months. On the 29th of April, the Japanese air force launched major strikes on Wuhan to celebrate Emperor Showa's birthday. Chinese forces had prior intelligence and were prepared. That engagement became known as the "4.29 Air Battle" and stands as one of the most intense aerial clashes of the entire war. On the 9th of June, seeking to delay the Japanese advance and buy more time for defensive preparation, Chinese engineers opened the dikes of the Yellow River at Huayuankou, near Zhengzhou. The resulting flood, now known as the 1938 Yellow River flood, forced the Japanese to abandon their planned attack along the Huai River. It also killed between 500,000 and 900,000 Chinese civilians.

• 4. Fortress by Fortress

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  On the 15th of June, a Japanese naval landing seized Anqing, opening the Battle of Wuhan in earnest and giving Japanese aircraft a forward base from which to strike Jiujiang, a major riverine port and railroad junction roughly one hundred miles upstream. The Chinese had prepared for exactly this approach. At Madang they built artillery emplacements, naval mines, and bamboo river booms to deny passage.

  On the 24th of June, the Japanese made a surprise landing at Madang while the Eleventh Army attacked along the southern shore. The Chinese garrison repelled four assaults, but Japanese ships on the Yangtze maintained a relentless bombardment, supplemented with poison gas. The defense collapsed not only under that pressure but because of a procedural failure. The overseeing general, Li Yunheng, had called his officers to a ceremony at a local military school, leaving most of the command structure absent from the fortress. Only three battalions from the marine corps and a single regiment of the 53rd division, totaling no more than five battalions, held the position. The 167th Division stationed in Pengze was ordered to reinforce them, but when the divisional commander Xue Weiying deferred to Li Yunheng for routing instructions, Li ordered a harder path to avoid Japanese bombers. Reinforcements arrived too late.

  Madang fell after a three-day battle. Chiang Kai-shek offered a 50,000 yuan reward for its recapture. On the 28th of June, the 60th Division of the 18th Corps and the 105th Division of the 49th Corps retook Xiangshan and were awarded 20,000 yuan, but could advance no further. Chiang then had Li Yunheng court-martialed and divisional commander Xue Weiying executed. Clearing the waterway around Madang of mines cost the Japanese five minesweepers, two warships, and a landing craft full of marines. Then the road to Jiujiang was open.

• 5. The Jiujiang Massacre

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  Jiujiang fell on the 26th after a five-day battle. The decision to retreat came so suddenly that the civilian population had no time to evacuate, leaving many behind when the Japanese army entered the city.

  What followed was described as a "mini-Nanjing Massacre." Male civilians were executed indiscriminately alongside prisoners of war who had not retreated in time. Women and children were raped on a mass scale. Japanese forces deliberately razed urban districts and suburban villages, including the city's ceramics factories and its maritime transportation infrastructure. As many as 90,000 civilians were killed by the Japanese army in and around Jiujiang.

• 6. The Victory at Wanjialing

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  South of the Yangtze, the Japanese 106th Division moved along the Nanxun Railway, and the 101st Division crossed Poyang Lake from Hukou County on the 20th of August to reinforce it. Together they pushed to breach the Chinese 25th Army's defensive line and capture Xinzhi. The goal was to take De'an County and Nanchang and protect the southern flank of the Japanese advance on Wuhan.

  Chinese commander Xue Yue, leading the First Corps, deployed the 4th, 66th, and 74th Armies alongside the 25th Army to hold them. Towards the end of September, four regiments of the Japanese 106th Division pushed into the Wanjialing region, west of De'an. Xue Yue then ordered those same armies to close around the Japanese position from the flanks. The Japanese 27th Division marched to reinforce the encircled troops but was ambushed and repulsed by the Chinese 32nd Army under Shang Zhen at Baisui Street, west of Wanjialing.

  On the 7th of October, the Chinese launched a final large-scale assault. Three days of fighting followed; every Japanese counterattack was repelled. By the 10th of October, the 106th Division and the 9th, 27th, and 101st Divisions sent to relieve it had all suffered catastrophic losses. The Aoki, Ikeda, Kijima, and Tsuda Brigades were destroyed in the encirclement. Of the four divisions that entered the battle, only around 1,500 men made it out. The Chinese called it the Victory of Wanjialing. In 2000, Japanese military historians formally acknowledged the scale of those losses, noting that the damage had been concealed during the war to preserve public confidence in the Japanese war effort.

• 7. Poison Gas and Imperial Orders

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  Historians Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Seiya Matsuno identified that Emperor Showa authorized the use of chemical weapons against the Chinese by specific imperial orders, known as rinsanmei. During the Battle of Wuhan, Prince Kan'in Kotohito transmitted those orders 375 times between August and October 1938. This occurred despite Japan being bound by the 1899 Hague Declaration on asphyxiating gases, Article 23(a) of the 1907 Hague Convention IV, and Article 171 of the Versailles Peace Treaty. A memorandum discovered by historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi further showed that Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni separately authorized poison gas use on the 16th of August 1938. The League of Nations passed a resolution on the 14th of May condemning the practice.

  The Japanese deployed chemical weapons to compensate for their numerical shortfall and because China possessed no gas stockpiles to retaliate in kind. At Tianjiazhen, a river fortress at a natural choke point where the Yangtze banks narrowed to 600 meters, Chinese troops built massive fortifications with Soviet advisors and thousands of local laborers since the end of 1937. The defenders, including veterans of the Battle of Shanghai and officers trained at the Whampoa Military Academy, held for over a month. The fortress fell on the 29th of September only after the Japanese deployed poison gas at scale. Historian Rana Mitter wrote that "at the fortress of Tianjiazhen, thousands of men fought until the end of September, with Japanese victory assured only with the use of poison gas."

  Across the whole Battle of Wuhan, as many as 13,410 Chinese troops suffered from the effects of poison gas. Of those, 4,342 died. At Guangji alone, large-scale gas deployment caused more than 2,000 Chinese casualties. Japanese soldiers wearing gas masks charged into positions while defenders were incapacitated. The method was repeated later against Chinese Muslim armies at the Battle of Wuyuan and the Battle of West Suiyuan.

• 8. Fall and Aftermath

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  The fall of Guangzhou on the 21st of October changed the calculus for Wuhan. The IJA had deployed three reserve divisions to seize the Guangdong port by amphibious landing, severing the two railways connecting Kowloon to Guangzhou and Guangzhou to Wuhan. With those supply lines cut, the strategic value of holding Wuhan collapsed. Chinese forces abandoned the city in October rather than fight to the last man. The Japanese army captured Wuchang and Hankou on the 26th of October and Hanyang on the 27th, concluding the campaign.

  After four months of fighting, both the Chinese Air Force and Chinese Navy had been decimated. The main Chinese land force, however, remained largely intact, and the IJA emerged significantly weakened. The battle bought time for Chinese forces and equipment in central China to withdraw inland to Chongqing, establishing the foundation for a prolonged war of resistance. For Japan, the captured city provided new airbases and logistics to support the terror-bombing campaign against Chongqing and Chengdu under Operation 100.

  The end of the battle marked the beginning of a strategic stalemate. No major Japanese offensives followed until Operation Ichi-Go in 1944. Between 1942 and 1944, limited Japanese attacks were mounted purely to train recruits. The IJA's diminished capacity also reduced its ability to respond to rising tensions with the Soviet Union on Japan's northeastern borders. Japan had won the battle and lost the war's momentum, with the conflict dragging on until the attack on Pearl Harbor pulled the larger world into what had been China's war for more than four years.