1938 жылғы Сары Өзеннің су тасқыны: Қытай-Жапон соғысындағы стратегиялық қадам

Flood during Sino Japanese War

The 1938 Yellow River flood was a man made flood from June 1938 to January 1947 created by the Chinese National Army's intentional destruction of dikes (levees) on the Yellow River in Huayuankou, Henan Province. The first wave of floods hit Zhongmu County on 13 June 1938. The flood acted as a scorched earth defensive line in the Second Sino Japanese War. There were three long term strategic intents. Firstly, the flood in Henan safeguarded the Shaanxi section of the Longhai railway, the major northwest traffic where the Soviet Union sent their military supplies to the Chinese National Army from August 1937 to March 1941. Secondly, the inundated land and railway made it difficult for the Japanese Army to mobilize into Shaanxi, thereby preventing them from entering the Sichuan basin, where the wartime capital of Chongqing and the southwestern home front was located. Thirdly, the floods in Henan and Anhui crushed the tracks and bridges of the Beijing–Wuhan Railway, Tianjin–Pukou Railway and Longhai Railway, thereby preventing the Japanese Army from mobilizing their machines and troops across the theaters of North China, Central China and Northwest China. The short term strategic intent was to stop the quick mobilization of Japanese Army from North China into the Battle of Wuhan. The flood achieved the above strategic intent; in particular, the Japanese Operation 5 never captured Shaanxi, Sichuan or Chongqing. However, the flood came at enormous human cost, economic damages and environmental impact; in the immediate aftermath, 30,000 to 89,000 civilians drowned in Henan, Anhui and Jiangsu provinces, In 1935, Alexander von Falkenhausen was commissioned by the Chinese to write a report on the strategic planning of the upcoming Sino Japanese War. Falkenhausen's report After the Chinese were defeated in the Battle of Xuzhou, the Zhengzhou junction of the Beijing–Wuhan Railway was within reach by the Japanese. The goal of the operation was to stop the advancing Japanese troops by following a strategy of "using water as a substitute for soldiers" (以水代兵, pinyin: Yǐshuǐ dàibīng). The Chinese National Army implemented the flood plan. The original plan was to use explosives to destroy the dike (levee) of Zhaokou, but due to difficulties at that location, the dike of Huayuankou, on the Yellow River's south bank, was destroyed on June 5 and June 7 via tunneling, with waters flooding into Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu. The floods covered and destroyed thousands of square kilometers of farmland, and shifted the course of the Yellow River hundreds of kilometers to the south. Attempts to seal the breach and return the river to its former course were made in 1946 by the KMT with assistance from UNRRA. Work began in March and was completed in June, but the dams were again destroyed by large summer flows. Subsequent repairs succeeded and were eventually completed in March 1947.

The flood had three long term strategic intents. Firstly, the flood in Henan safeguarded the Shaanxi section of the Longhai railway, the major northwest traffic where the Soviet Union sent their military supplies to the Chinese National Army from August 1937 to March 1941. Most of the flooded towns and transport lines had already been captured by the Japanese; after the flood, the Japanese could not consolidate their control over the area. In fact, large parts of it became guerrilla areas. The flood bought time for the Battle of Wuhan. The flood stopped the Japanese Army from capturing the Zhengzhou junction of the Beijing–Wuhan Railway. Besides the massive death toll, the flooded areas were affected for years to come. The flooded countryside was more or less abandoned and all the crops destroyed. Upon the recession of the waters, much of the ground was uncultivable as much of the soil was covered in silt. Many of the public structures and housing were also destroyed, leaving any survivors destitute. The irrigation channels were also ruined, further adding to the toll on the farmlands.

The immediate drowning deaths were estimated to range from 30,000 (Kuo Tai chun, 2015) to 89,000 (China Academy of Sciences, 1995). Estimates of total deaths resulting from floods, famine and plague varied wildly. Two professional sources put it to between 400,000 and 500,000, according to Wang Zhibin (1986) and Bi Chunfu (1995), an editor at the Yellow River Conservancy Commission of the Ministry of Water Resources and a researcher at Second Historical Archives of China respectively. A much higher estimate of 893,303 total deaths given by the Nationalist government's relief statistics in 1948 was discredited for its unspecified methodology of body counting and its questionable approximation of the missing figure of Anhui province. Bi Chunfu (1995) estimated that five million peasants were living on the inundated land. Bi's figure was echoed by two early communist estimates in the 1950s, which estimated 6.1 million and 5 million respectively.