Operation Ichi-Go
Operation Ichi-Go (Japanese: 一号作戦, romanized: Ichi-gō Sakusen, lit. 'Operation Number One') was a campaign of a series of major battles between the Imperial Japanese Army forces and the National Revolutionary Army of the Republic of China, fought from April to December 1944. It consisted of three separate battles in the Chinese provinces of Henan, Hunan and Guangxi.
| Operation Ichi-Go | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific Theater of World War II | |||||||
Japanese plan for Operation Ichi-Go | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
| Japan |
China United States | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
|
Shunroku Hata Yasuji Okamura Isamu Yokoyama Hisakazu Tanaka |
Tang Enbo Xue Yue Bai Chongxi Zhang Fakui Fang Xianjue Li Jiayu † Joseph Stilwell Albert Coady Wedemeyer Claire Lee Chennault | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
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500,000 15,000 vehicles 6,000 artillery pieces 800 tanks 100,000 horses | 1,000,000 (400,000 in northern China) | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
|
100,000 killed heavy materiel losses |
500,000-600,000 casualties (according to "China's Bitter Victory: War with Japan, 1937-45") Armies totalling 750,000 'destroyed' or put out of action according to Cox | ||||||
These battles were the Japanese Operation Kogo or Battle of Central Henan, Operation Togo 1 or the Battle of Changheng, and Operation Togo 2 and Togo 3, or the Battle of Guilin–Liuzhou, respectively. The two primary goals of Ichi-go were to open a land route to French Indochina, and capture air bases in southeast China from which American bombers were attacking the Japanese homeland and shipping.
In Japanese the operation was also called Tairiku Datsū Sakusen (大陸打通作戦), or "Continent Cross-Through Operation", while the Chinese refer to it as the Battle of Henan-Hunan-Guangxi (simplified Chinese: 豫湘桂会战; traditional Chinese: 豫湘桂會戰; pinyin: Yù Xīang Guì Huìzhàn).