| Hainan Island Operation | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of theSecond Sino-Japanese War and theinterwar period | |||||||||
 Imperial Japanese Army soldiers in trucks during the invasion of Hainan (Asahi Shinbun news photo) | |||||||||
| |||||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||||
 Empire of Japan |  Republic of China | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
 Vice Adm.Nobutake Kondō |  Yu Hanmou | ||||||||
| Units involved | |||||||||
| Imperial Japanese Navy | Republic of China Army[1] : 11th and 15th security regiments 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, and 7th guard battalions An independent unit of the self-defense corps | ||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
| Elements ofIJN 5th Fleet | 11th security regiment : 104 officers and 1,557 soldiers Other units : unknown. | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| Unknown | Japanese Claim : 3,000 killed
| ||||||||
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TheHainan Island Operation (Chinese:瓊崖戰役), orKainan-tō sakusen (海南島作戦) inJapanese, was part of a campaign by theEmpire of Japan during theSecond World War toblockade the Guangdong mainland and prevent it from communicating with the outside world and from receiving imports of much-needed arms and materials.
Hainan Island lies midway betweenFrench Indochina andBritish Hong Kong, occupying a position south of theLeizhou Peninsula across the Strait of Hainan. It is also nearKwangchowan, a French-leased territory on the southern coast of China. The Hainan Island has an area of 33,920 square kilometres (13,100 sq mi), and had a population of 2,200,000 at the time. The island was guarded by two security regiments, six guard battalions, and a self-defense corps, under the command ofYu Hanmou, who was in charge of peace preservation in Guangdong Province.
The Japanese Navy, after the capture of Canton (Guangzhou) the previous year, had maintained a formidable blockade all along the coast of south, central and north China. However, loopholes were found in the southern end of the blockade line. These included the supply route toChiang Kai-shek with Hong Kong and Northern French Indochina as relay points and direct routes through Hainan Island andKwangchowan. Because of these loopholes, as well as the necessity to conduct air operations deep into the interior of China, as far as theKunming area, the Japanese Navy came to feel the necessity of establishing air bases on Hainan Island. The Central Authorities of the Navy advocated for this move. Operations were carried out by theSpecial Naval Landing Forces withArmy elements supporting them.
Escorting a convoy, theSouth China Naval Force (Fifth Fleet) commanded by Vice AdmiralNobutake Kondō entered and anchored in Tsinghai Bay on the northern shore of Hainan Island at midnight on 9 February 1939 and carried out a successful landing. In addition, Navy land combat units effected a landing atHaikou at 12:00 on 10 February. Thereafter, the Army and Navy forces acted in concert to mop up the northern zone. On 11 February, land combat units landed atSamah (Sanya) at the southern extremity of Hainan Island and occupied the key positions of Yulin and Yai-Hsien. Thereafter, the units engaged in the occupation and subjugation of the entire island.
Facing crisis, Nationalist forces evacuated all remaining civilians from Haikou to Qionghai to the safeWuzhi mountain range in central Hainan. However, they faced fierce opposition by theethnic Li highlanders there. In August 1943, an ethnic Li called Wang Guoxing started an uprising but was brutally crushed, and, in revenge, the Nationalists killed 7,000 of Wang Guoxing's family members in his village.[2]
The Communists underFeng Baiju and the nativeLi people of Hainan fought a vigorousguerrilla campaign against the Japanese occupation, the Japanese killed large numbers of Li in western Hainan (e.g.Sanya,Danzhou). Furthermore, numerous foreign slave labourers were also killed. Of the 100,000 slave labourers fromHong Kong, only 20,000 survived the war.[citation needed]
Later, Japanese-occupied parts of Hainan Island became a naval administrative district with Hainan Guard District Headquarters established at Samah. Strategically, the island was built as a forward air base as well as an advance base for blockading Chiang. At the same time, the iron and copper resources of the island were exploited. Partial control of certain areas of Hainan Island provided a base of operations for the invasion ofGuangdong province andFrench Indochina, as well as providing airbases that permitted long-distanceair raids of routes into China from French Indochina andBurma.
The occupation of some parts of Hainan lasted until thesurrender of Japan in September 1945.