1938 Yellow River flood
The 1938 Yellow River flood (Chinese: 花园口决堤事件; pinyin: huāyuán kǒu juédī shìjiàn) was a flood created by the Nationalist Government in central China during the early stage of the Second Sino-Japanese War in an attempt to halt the rapid advance of the Japanese forces. It has been called the "largest act of environmental warfare in history." [1]
The strategic decision and the flood
Following the onset of the Second Chinese-Japanese War in 1937, the Imperial Japanese Army marched rapidly into the heart of Chinese territory. By June 1938, the Japanese had control of all of North China. On June 6, they captured Kaifeng, the capital of Henan, and threatened to take over Zhengzhou. Zhengzhou was the junction of the arterial Pinghan and Longhai Railways, and Japanese success would have directly endangered the major cities of Wuhan and Xi'an.
To stop further Japanese advances into the western and southern part China, Chiang Kai-shek, at the suggestion of Chen Guofu, determined to open up the dikes on the Yellow River near Zhengzhou. The original plan was to destroy the dike at Zhaokou, but due to difficulties at that location the dike was destroyed on June 5 and June 7 at Huayuankou, on the south bank. Waters flooded into Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu. The floods covered and destroyed thousands of square kilometers of farmland and shifted the mouth of the Yellow River hundreds of miles to the south. Thousands of villages were inundated or destroyed and several million villagers driven from their homes and made refugees. An official Nationalist post-war commission estimated that 800,000 were drowned, which may be a low figure. [2]
Controversy
The strategic value of the flood has been questioned. Japanese troops were out of its range, either to the north and east or to the south. Their advance on Zhengzhou was halted, but they took Wuhan in October by attacking from a different direction. The Japanese did not occupy much of Henan until late in the war and their hold on Anhui and Jiangsu remained tenuous. Most of the towns and transport lines in the areas which were flooded had already been captured by the Japanese; after the flood they could not consolidate their control over the area, and large parts of it became guerrilla areas. The number of casualties in the flood remains disputed and estimates have been revised by the Chinese government and other researchers in the decades after the event. [3]
Aftermath
The dikes were rebuilt in 1946 and 1947 and Yellow River returned to its pre-1938 course.
See also
- 1938 Changsha Fire
- National Revolutionary Army
- Military of the Republic of China
- Military history of China
- Military history of Japan
Reference
Footnotes
- ^ Steven I. Dutch, "The Largest Act of Environmental Warfare in History," Environmental & Engineering Geoscience 15.4 (November 2009): 287-297.
- ^ Jay Taylor, The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-Shek and the Struggle for Modern China (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009): 154-155.
- ^ Diana Lary. "Drowned Earth: The Strategic Breaching of the Yellow River Dyke, 1938," War In History. 2001 Apr 1;8(2): 191-207. In: Academic Research Library [database on the Internet] [cited 2010 Sep 21]. Available from: http://www.proquest.com/; Document ID: 1082337951.
Sources and further reading
- Diana Lary, "Drowned Earth: The Strategic Breaching of the Yellow River Dyke, 1938," War In History 2001 Apr 1;8(2): 191-207. In: Academic Research Library [database on the Internet] [cited 2010 Sep 21]. Available from: http://www.proquest.com/; Document ID: 1082337951.
- Steven I. Dutch, "The Largest Act of Environmental Warfare in History," Environmental & Engineering Geoscience 15.4(November 2009): 287-297.