Three Alls policy

The Three Alls policy (Japanese: 三光作戦, Hepburn: Sankō Sakusen; Chinese: 三光政策; pinyin: Sānguāng Zhèngcè) was the Japanese scorched-earth policy (Japanese: 燼滅作戦, Hepburn: Jinmetsu Sakusen) adopted in China during World War II, the three "alls" being "kill all, burn all, loot all". This policy was designed as retaliation against the Chinese for the Communist-led Hundred Regiments Offensive in December 1940. The policy targeted suspected guerrilla base areas and used extreme measures to eliminate their inhabitants in order to transform them into "unpopulated zones" (mujin chiku, or a "no-man's-land"). Japanese tactics included indiscriminate massacres, destroying entire villages, forced starvation, and the widespread deployment of chemical weapons against rural populations. Japanese forces also targeted young men to deny Communist forces potential recruits; those not killed immediately were conscripted into forced labour units. In addition, Japanese troops stripped the countryside of their food stores and razed crop fields, deliberately engineering food shortages to starve the civilian population into submission. Japanese troops had already launched violent pacification measures since 1938 in Hebei, and Major General Ryūkichi Tanaka had formalized the campaigns in 1940. General Yasuji Okamura escalated these anti-partisan drives following the Hundred Regiments Offensive, with his forces doubling in size and conducting five pacification campaigns between 1941 and 1942 in Shandong, Hebei, Shanxi, Henan and Charhar. Pacification drives continued well into March of 1945, but they ultimately failed in securing North China. The Three Alls Policy killed millions of Chinese civilians. Chinese Communists recorded that the populations of their base areas dropped from 44,000,000 to 25,000,000. Some historians have characterized the Japanese campaigns as genocidal in their scale and intent.