Drawing on Himeta's works and those of Akira Fujiwara, Herbert P. 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. 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". 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 to prevent guerrillas from moving around. Okamura's strategy involved burning down villages, confiscating grain and mobilizing peasants to construct collective hamlets. The authorization of the policy was given by Imperial General Headquarters Order Number 575 on 3 December 1941. 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. In response to the "100 Regiments" offensive, General Ryūkichi Tanaka, commanding North China Area Army devised a plan for the "total annihilation" of the Communist base areas so that "the enemy could never use them again." In August 1940, the Eighth Route Army (created from the Chinese Red Army) launched the "100 Regiments Campaign", an offensive targeting bridge, railroads, mines, blockade houses and telephone lines in northern China that caused extensive damage. The Imperial Japanese Army always saw the National Revolutionary Army and other forces loyal to the Kuomintang regime as their main enemy in China and tended to ignore the Chinese Communist forces, and by mid-1940, the Communists controlled vast tracts of the Chinese countryside, ruling over millions of people. The Showa Emperor gave his approval of the "annihilation campaign" in an order he signed on 2 December 1938. Description Īccording to historian and sociologist Herbert Bix, the prototype of the Sankō Sakusen policy were the "annihilation campaigns" launched in late 1938 by the North China Area Army to "pacify" the Hebei province, which was a hotbed of guerrilla resistance. The publishers were forced to stop the publication of the book after they had received death threats from Japanese militarists and ultranationalists. The Chinese expression "Three Alls" was first popularized in Japan in 1957 when former Japanese soldiers released from the Fushun War Criminals Management Centre 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. Contemporary Japanese documents referred to the policy as "The Burn to Ash Strategy" ( 燼滅作戦, Jinmetsu Sakusen). This policy was designed as retaliation against the Chinese for the Communist-led Hundred Regiments Offensive in December 1940. The Three Alls Policy ( Chinese: 三光政策 pinyin: Sānguāng Zhèngcè, Japanese: 三光作戦 Sankō Sakusen) was a Japanese scorched earth policy adopted in China during World War II, the three "alls" being "kill all, burn all, loot all" ( Japanese: 殺し尽くし・焼き尽くし・奪い尽くす, Hepburn: koroshi tsukushi-yaki tsukushi-ubai tsukusu, Chinese: 殺光、燒光、搶光).
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