Battle of Henan-Hunan-Guangxi

In 1944 Japan was losing ground in the Pacific, and its sea lanes were under serious threat from US forces. To open a land route from northeast China to Vietnam, the Japanese army massed over 500,000 troops for a major attack on the Kuomintang front, known as Operation Ichi-Go and in China as the Battle of Henan-Hunan-Guangxi. In April 1944 the Japanese struck Henan first; 400,000 Kuomintang troops under Tang Enbo and others collapsed at the first blow and in little more than a month lost 38 cities including Zhengzhou and Luoyang. In May the Japanese attacked Hunan and took Changsha in June. They then besieged Hengyang, where Fang Xianjue, commander of the 10th Army, held out for 47 days and inflicted heavy casualties, falling at last for lack of relief and ammunition. In September the Japanese attacked Guangxi, took Guilin and Liuzhou in November, and in early December a detachment reached Dushan in Guizhou, alarming Chongqing. In eight months the Kuomintang lost 500,000 to 600,000 men and large areas of Henan, Hunan, Guangxi, Guangdong, Fujian and Guizhou, along with 146 cities, leaving over 60 million Chinese under Japanese rule. The great rout exposed the corruption of Kuomintang rule and the weakness of its army, and people in Kuomintang areas strongly demanded an end to one-party dictatorship and a democratic coalition government. Meanwhile the battlefield behind enemy lines under the Communist Party began partial counteroffensives from 1944, recovering large areas and expanding the liberated areas. In spring 1945 Chinese forces defeated the Japanese in the Battle of West Hunan, and the situation on the main front improved somewhat.