Chapter XIII: Chi-Go Sakusen
Part IV: May 15 – July 1
Part IV: May 15 – July 1
As soon as Itagaki reached Wenshan, during the early afternoon of the 15th, his tired cavalry corps immediately came under attack by the Chinese in Haiphong. Six divisions under Chen Jitang, who seemed by that time to have taken over from Li Zongren, attempted to force a corridor through which the rest of the Chinese units in Haiphong could break out. As Itagaki could not hold off this effort with his exhausted soldiers, Hata and Sugiyama immediately ordered the attack. We threw twenty-four divisions toward Haiphong, running into resistance from sixteen Chinese divisions, including one armored and three mountain divisions.
I knew of the great battles of the Second Sino-Japanese War, which ran from 1936 to 1940, but I never participated in any as a commander; thus, this was the single largest battle I had yet seen from a command perspective. A total of forty-three divisions participated: sixteen Chinese and twenty-seven Japanese, including Itagaki’s defending corps. Our attacking corps were so many, not as much in the north as fron Hanoi, that each corps sector was the size that doctrine demand we usually dedicate to a single division and divisions were relegated to brigade-sized corridors toward the enemy. As one can easily imagine, this led to much chaos and heavy casualties as at times it was virtually impossible to fire blindly and not hit human flesh.
Itagaki’s corps gave way after a valiant eleven hour struggle against uneven odds and withdrew toward Bose. However, the Chinese breakout effort was being steadily ground down and by 1900 on the 16th Chen Jitang was forced to concede defeat and begin withdrawing toward the mountains of Luang Prabang. With the Chinese streaming out of Haiphong, Hata decided to send only Ishiwara into the town, turning his own and Kawabe’s corps around to face northward. He also sent Okamura rushing toward Wenshan to halt any possible Chinese attempt to link up from the outside of the encirclement.
Late on the 23rd, Kawabe attacked toward Nanning, which had been recovered by the Chinese, supported by Yamashita’s mountaineers in Zhanjiang, who were simply itching to see action after hearing the sounds and seeing the flashes of that vicious battle around Haiphong from across the Gulf of Tonkin. This attack was opposed by a familiar opponent, Lieutenant General Vorbrugg, who had under his command but a single armored division. Despite being outnumbered five-to-one, he again proved that he was indeed an armor specialist by holding out for ten hours before withdrawing northward.
Two days later in Indochina, Sugiyama launched an attack on Luang Prabang, eager to reclaim that famed mountain citadel before massive Chinese forces occupied and fortified it. He attacked with his entire army from Hanoi, throwing our weight against the three Chinese divisions under command of Lieutenant General Lu Han. Within hours, Sugiyama had proven that he had a special affinity with mountain warfare and within eleven hours the Chinese had broken and were streaming eastward toward Haiphong. The plan Sugiyama and Hata had come up with required that the Chinese keep shuffling between Haiphong and Luang Prabang until both were occupied by friendly forces and the Chinese thus forced to surrender.
Hata was, however, dedicating only Ishiwara’s corps to this plan; on the 28th he ordered Yamashita to attack Maoming, matching his two divisions against the single Chinese division under Lieutenant General Wang Zuanxu. It was no contest, and within fourteen hours the Chinese were fleeing northward away from Yamashita’s advancing mountaineers. This attack was followed two days later by a Chinese counterattack against Kawabe’s hastily setup positions around Nanning by Vorbrugg with his armored division as well as an infantry division. His armored divison had not, however, sufficiently recovered from the thrashing it had taken and thus his counterattack quickly stalled on the banks of Zhujiang River.
Haiphong was captured by Ishiwara’s corps on the 29th, and within days entire Chinese divisions were surrendering to his forces. On the 7th of June, Sugiyama decided to launch the final assault on Luang Prabang, where seven divisions remained holed up under the command of the defensive specialist, General Pang Bingxun. His force consisted of four infantry and three mountain divisions, but though they were well organized they were operating under a manpower shortage as the few reinforcements they received were far outweighed by their casualties. Against these seven, Sugiyama threw fifteen divisions, Ishiwara’s three and the twelve in Hanoi. In a twenty-seven hour battle, the Chinese were eradicated and Luang Prabang occupied soon after.
As soon as it was at all possible, our units began redeploying to the northern front. Sugiyama and Hata had swapped many units between them, leading to orders of battle that were entirely different, at the corps level, from the beginning of Chi-Go Sakusen. By the time all redeployments had ended on July 1, Sugiyama’s army consisted of fourteen divisions in five corps: his own corps was stationed in Wenshan along with mine and Okamura’s, Yamashita and Ishiwara were in Bose. Hata held Nanning with his own corps, Kawabe’s and Itagaki’s and Maoming was defended by Yamada’s and Imamura’s corps. The two Gensui were already planning the next stage of Chi-Go.
In retrospective, it is still very difficult, if not impossible, to determine the actual extent of Chinese losses around Haiphong and Luang Prabang. It is likely that some nineteen divisions were destroyed, as one only needs to look at the Chinese strength once they were hemmed in—one armored, three mountain and fifteen infantry divisions in the two provinces. Nevertheless, the great influx of prisoners wreaked havoc with our records and it is impossible to confirm that this many divisions were actually destroyed. A vexing mystery, but I personally believe it is safe to assume that two-thirds of what once had been one of Li Zongren’s proudest armies had been shattered.
The dispositions of Japanese and Chinese troops on July 1.
