In early July 1938 the floodwaters entered the headwaters of the Huai River, turning northeast to cut across the Jin-Pu railway before pouring into Hongze Lake. During the 2 nd Sino -Japanese War, the then Chinese authorities under the guidance of Chiang Shek rapidly opened the dikes along the Yellow River in order to thwart the attempts of the progressing Japanese Army. However, because in 1943 Henan’s spring famine was severe, the bodies of the starved filled the roads as had scarcely been seen since the third year of Guangxu [1877]. By some accounts abnormal weather over central China began in the winter months of late 1930. The southern dyke of the River was breached at Huayuankou (Flower Garden Mouth) in Henan, 30 miles to the west of the Japanese vanguard. During the second Sino-Japanese war, China was under pressure from the Japanese forces. The flood indeed prevented the Japanese from taking Zhengzou, but they could capture Wuhan, the new capital of the Republic of China. [3] Nur unmittelbar in Nähe des Dammbruches lebende Bewohner wurden vor der Katastrophe gewarnt. According to one postwar estimate, the civilian death toll in Henan’s flooded areas amounted to 4.8 percent of the prewar population. Bereits ein Jahr nach Beginn des Krieges hatten die Japaner große Gebiete im Norden Chinas besetzt und hatten Kaifeng, die Hauptstadt der Provinz Henan, erobert. On June 6, they captured Kaifeng, the capital of Henan, and threatened to take over Zhengzhou, the junction of the arterial Pinghan and Longhai Railways. By June 1938, the Japanese had control of all of North China. Bibliographic information. Courtesy of Qinfeng lao zhaopian guan, Kangzhan Zhongguo guoji tongxun zhaopian. The objective was to cut the Long-Hai railway, which ran along the river’s southern bank, before the Japanese could reach Zhengzhou, thereby halting the enemy’s advance and ensuring the retreat of Chinese armies. Armies stationed along the river and local units also had special missions and could not concentrate on making repairs. News reel clip of the Yellow River floods in central China, 1938. The rain increased into July and August of 1931. The Japanese were invading China, and Chiang Kai-shek decided he might stop them by loosing a flood upon them. Der Öffnung des Dammes erwies sich schwieriger als erwartet: Zwischen 4. und 6. Chinese armies kept the Japanese from crossing the Yellow River by destroying the railway bridge north of the city, but had little chance of maintaining their position for long. The city of Hankou, China’s provisional political center after the fall of Nanjing, won a temporary breathing spell. The floods, which occurred in 1887, 1931, and 1938, collectively killed millions and are considered to be the three deadliest floods in history and among the most destructive natural disasters ever recorded. As a Nationalist government report on disaster conditions in Henan province’s flooded area conducted in 1940 described it: “The flood region’s area extends to over ten counties, including Weishi, Fugou, Yanling, Huaiyang, Taikang, and Weichuan. The breach occurred at a critical juncture, with the Japanese less than 50 kilometers away. Yet the flat, alluvial plain of eastern Henan was densely covered with farm villages and fields. To the east, however, the river’s diversion halted the invading Japanese, who abandoned their westward march. Der Druck des Flusses öffnete schließlich die geschwächte Stelle am Damm und das Wasser ergoss sich in die Ebene. Chapter; Aa; Aa; Get access. Refugees displaced by the floods came to 67.7 percent of the total population in Xihua, 55.1 percent in Henan’s Fugou County, 52.2 percent in Weishi County, 32.2 percent in Taikang County, and more than 10 percent in Zhongmu County. The 1938 Yellow River flood (traditional Chinese: 花園口決隄事件; simplified Chinese: 花园口决堤事件; pinyin: huāyuán kǒu juédī shìjiàn, literally "Huayuankou embankment breach incident") 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 Japanese forces. The 1938 flood on the Yellow River was a man made event, caused when the Nationalist Army under Chiang blew up the Yellow River levees on the south bank of the river at Huayuankou. In Fugou more than 1,800 villages have been flooded, accounting for over ninety percent of the county’s total area. They are already in a dilemma and their livelihoods have been cut off. Some of the worst incidences involving the Yellow River in the past include 1931, 1938, and 1943 floods. In 1946 and 1947, tens of thousands of laborers supervised by UNRRA-CNRRA returned the river to its pre-1938 cour… But the Japanese simply redirected their advance from a north–south land attack along the railways to an amphibious assault along the Yangzi River that combined naval and infantry forces. Shocking, the flood was artificially created by the Chinese Nationalist Government during the second Sino-Japan war. Following the onset of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, the Imperial Japanese Army marched rapidly into the heart of Chinese territory. But floodwaters rolled steadily out of the dike opening and advanced southeast, cutting off the Japanese army’s path. Otherwise, Wuhan would fall in only a matter of days, the Nationalist regime might not have time to withdraw, and China would likely have to surrender. The many wartime documents related to the Yellow River flood detail the social trauma and dislocation that the floods caused. Muscolino, Micah S. 2015 The Ecology of War in China: Henan Province, the Yellow River, and Beyond, 1938-1950. UNRRA-CNRRA offered material support to refugees who returned to their homes in Henan’s flooded area and assisted them in bringing land back under cultivation, making it possible to turn war-torn environments back into productive agricultural landscapes. Before the 1931 floods, the 1887 floods was had emerged as the worst ever natural disaster in history. Great Leap famine, 1958-62 (Urban Perspective) Lauri Paltemaa. Advancing at a steady rate of around 16 kilometers per day, floods spread into narrow, shallow beds of rivers and streams that flowed toward the Huai. Yellow River Floods: 1931 China Floods, 1938 Yellow River Flood, 1887 Yellow River Flood, 1642 Kaifeng Flood. Wenchuan earthquake, 2008. Especially heavy rains fell throughout June and July. The Ecology of War in China Henan Province, the Yellow River, and Beyond, 1938–1950. 1938 Yellow river: 900,000–2,000,000: NA: 1934 Muroto Typhoon: 3066: NA: 1954 Yangtze river: 30,000: NA: 1938 Hanshin: 600: NA: 1998 Yangtze river: 3656: 135.4 billion CNY: 1959 Vera Typhoon: 5098: NA: 2010 China: 3185: 275 billion CNY: 1982 Nagasaki : 299: 3000 billion (JPY) Three main factors contributing to frequent flood disasters in China (1) Land use practice. "Flower garden mouth" is the placename Huayuankou (Huāyúankǒu); the name likely means 花园口 决堤 事件 = "Huayuankou embankment-breach events". In Anhui alone over 400,000 people died, while more than 325,000 people reportedly lost their lives in Henan. The flood, which began in September 1887, killed at least 900,000 people. The huge amount of sediment deposited by the river added to the disaster, with the threat of flooding growing as siltation caused the river’s bed to rise. Source: British Pathé/Pathé Gazette, ‘Floods in China,’ newsreel, 1938. TIL that in 1938 China's Nationalist government ordered the opening of dikes on the Yellow River to create a flood and slow the Japanese advance to Wuhan. Swept over 9000 square miles of the plain When? The displaced masses have left and returned only to return and leave again. In den darauf folgenden Tagen vergrößerte sich die Öffnung stetig. 3. Source: Guomin zhengfu Zhongyang xuanchuanbu. Refugees of Yellow River Flood.JPG 998 × 684; 216 KB. The outstanding Chinese-language history of the floods is Qu Changgen, Gongzui qianqiu: Huayuankou shijian yanjiu (Merits and wrongdoings for a thousand years: Research on the Huayuankou incident) (Lanzhou: Lanzhou daxue chubanshe, 2003). [1] The present essay draws upon Micah S. Muscolino, The Ecology of War in China: Henan Province, the Yellow River, and Beyond (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015). This river is prone to flooding due to the elevated nature of the river, running between dikes above the broad plains surrounding it. Yellow River Flood (1938) The Yellow river flood of 1938, was the largest act of environmental warfare. It claimed the lives of approximately 850,000-4,000,000 people. Title: Der südliche Bereich des Flusses wurde bei Huayuankou in Henan, 30 km entfernt von den Spitzen der japanischen Truppen, durchbrochen. [5] “Huanghe shuili weiyuanhui Henan xiufangchu sanshier niandu di yi er qi zhengxiu Huangfan wancheng gongcheng baogaoshu” (Yellow River Conservancy Commission Henan repair and defense office 1943 first and second period Yellow River flood repair project completion report) (1943). Chapter; Aa; Aa; Get access. Like the numerous scorched-earth tactics that the Nationalists employed during the Sino-Japanese War, the breaking of the Yellow River dikes was undertaken in an atmosphere of high-level desperation and panic that grew from the Japanese war of terror. The Japanese then set their sights on Wuhan, where the Nationalist regime had relocated. Throughout the war, the Nationalist government refused to take responsibility for the disasters caused by the Yellow River’s intentional diversion. [11], Micah Muscolino is Tutor in Late Imperial & Modern Chinese History at Merton College, University of Oxford. Media in category "1938 Yellow River flood" The following 7 files are in this category, out of 7 total. September 2018 um 10:06 Uhr bearbeitet. [10] Wartime flooding killed well over 800,000 people and displaced nearly 4 million people in Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu. Edgerton-Tarpley, Kathryn 2014. This is considered as one of the worst catastrophic disaster made by man. Note that 1 mu is equivalent to approximately 0.0666 hectares. In addition to the files held at Academia Sinica, a wealth of documents related to the floods can be found at the Yellow River Archives in Zhengzhou. [7] On shifting representations of the flood disaster see especially, Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley, “From ‘Nourish the People’ to ‘Sacrifice for the Nation’: Changing Responses to Disaster in Late Imperial and Modern China,” The Journal of Asian Studies 73:2 (2014), 447–469. Residents who have not died in the floods perish from hardship. The 1938 Yellow River flood (, literally "Huayuankou embankment breach incident") 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 Japanese forces.wikipedia. The Japanese advance came in the early summer rainy season, when the river’s floodwaters were at their highest. Etwa 3,9 Millionen Menschen wurden obdachlose Flüchtlinge (20 % der Bevölkerung in Henan, Anhui und Jiangsu). The 1938 Yellow River flood (traditional Chinese: 花園口決隄事件; simplified Chinese: 花园口决堤事件; pinyin: huāyuán kǒu juédī shìjiàn, literally "Huayuankou embankment breach incident") 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 Japanese forces. In July alone 7 cyclones hit the region. Nationalist leaders accepted this stratagem as a military necessity. As a report on dike construction explained: “Shandong-Jiangsu-Anhui-Henan Border Area Commander Tang [Enbo] organized an Inspection Group to carry out inspections and convened a meeting to mobilize soldiers and civilians along the river to quickly carry out repairs and complete them in a limited time, originally expecting to relieve the catastrophe caused by this flood in order to benefit military affairs and the people’s livelihood. Approximately 86,000 people died from flooding and another 145,000 died from subsequent disease. [3], http://www.earthmagazine.org/article/june-9-1938-huang-he-diversion-largest-act-environmental-warfare-history, https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Überflutung_des_Gelben_Flusses_1938&oldid=181184780, Militärische Operation im Zweiten Weltkrieg, „Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike“. Waters surged as a result. Facebook; Twitter; Pinterest; Tumblr; Reddit; For the natural disaster, see 1887 Yellow River flood… These three floods collectively killed millions and are considered to be the three deadliest floods in history and among the most destructive natural disasters ever recorded. The worst period of flooding was from the period July to November in the year 1931. Those not caught completely by surprise stacked their possessions on wheelbarrows and ox-carts or carried them on shoulder poles, joining the long lines of refugees. General Books LLC, 2010 - 22 pages. Chapter. “Drowned Earth: The Strategic Breaching of the Yellow River Dyke, 1938.” War in History 8:2 (April), 191–207. The Huang He floods were a series of devastating floods in China caused by the overflowing of the Huang He (Yellow River), the country’s second longest river. Nationalist soldier directing laborers working on dikes. News reel clip of Chinese workers ‘re-harnessing’ the Yellow River, 1946. On this day in 1938, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, Chinese Nationalist troops under the orders of Chiang Kai-Shek blew up the dikes holding back the Yellow River in an attempt to stop the invading Japanese. China 1938 Yellow River Flood Historical Impact: -During second Sino-Japanese war -The dikes were rebuilt in 1946–47, and the Recovery from the disaster did not come until after 1945, when large-scale external assistance to the Yellow River flooded area came from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), which launched redevelopment programs in war-damaged areas of China in conjunction with the Nationalist regime’s Chinese National Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (CNRRA). From a historical perspective, Chiang’s decision was not at all unique. The task of providing these inputs placed an even greater burden on localities that had already been devastated by warfare and flooding. The 1938 Yellow River flood (Chinese: 花园口决堤事件; pinyin: huāyuán kǒu juédī shìjiàn, literally "Huayuankou embankment breach event") 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 Japanese forces. Der seit 7. The highest estimated death toll is however 2,000,000. 4. Once Wuhan fell, the Sino-Japanese War settled into a stalemate. The Japanese forces were marching on and the Chinese government needed to stop them. On June 9 the river’s waters spilled through the opening. Table 2: Population killed and displaced in Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu. The resulting flood slowed the Japanese only slightly, but estimates of the Chinese who died in the resultant flooding vary from 200,000 to 900,000. Estimated death rates reached as high as 25.5 percent in Henan’s Fugou County and 26.8 percent in Weishi County. Chinese soldiers wade through the flooded Yellow River. But as refugees fled Henan in the wake of the 1938 flood and famine struck the province in 1942, those resources became extremely difficult to obtain. 3 Yellow River China 1938 500,000-700,000 River flood 4 River Ru China 1975 231,000 Dam failure 5 Indian Ocean Tsunami Indonesia 2004 230,000 Tsunami Yellow River Flood, They May Attack in Another PEIPING, Jane 21 - â– (JV†?Jipm* ese army officials predict...Yellow river flood blocking Japanese in an eastward advance along the Lunghai rail way to get at Hankow, Chine...Yellow river flood through Nonan province, although army engineers reported broken dikes near Kaifeng could be... Read More. Those who have fortunately stayed alive are already urgently gasping for breath and groaning in agony.”[2]. To carry out wartime hydraulic engineering projects, military forces and water control agencies that affiliated with them had to mobilize massive flows of labor and materials. In the affected counties in Henan, flooding reportedly inundated 45 percent of the villages. He told one of his generals to blow up an important Yellow River dike… Huang He floods, (1887, 1931, 1938), series of devastating floods in China caused by the overflowing of the Huang He (Yellow River), the country’s second longest river. (Editorial note: this useful map nonetheless contains several errors: the Taihung mountains should be spelled Taihang, and the 1048 course should appear between Line A and Line B rather than as Line E just above the Shandong peninsula. For them, national survival outweighed the damage they knew the floods would cause. Casualties: Close to a million Chinese peasants died or starved How much damage (in land)? Yellow River Flood, They May Attack in Another PEIPING, Jane 21 - â– ... Yellow River Flood Waters as Japanese Army Bogs Down Shanghai, June 'armies, wading knee deep through Yellow … Some villagers tried to build or strengthen dikes to protect their land and homes, but when waters actually came, many people decided to flee. From 1928 to 1930 a long drought preceded the flood. Institute of Modern History Archives, Academia Sinica, Taiwan: 18-20-02-18-02. LLC Books. In Xihua the [number of] flooded villages has also reached over 430. With the Yellow River’s diversion, its sediments also damaged the hydrological system of the Huai River and its tributaries, throwing that drainage system into disarray. Google translated this as "1938 Yellow River flood":: OK. The then Nationalist Government decided to halt the forces from further advancement. By extension, a River flood was a sign that the time had come for the people to rise up against a failing govern ment. Together, siltation and wartime dike construction made the river meander and shift unpredictably, causing the total area impacted by floods to expand. The Nationalist regime’s enlistment of civilian laborers to construct new dikes in the flooded area as a “work relief” project, in which disaster victims received badly-needed assistance in exchange for their labor, only put an additional burden on local society. Between 1938 and 1947, this disaster killed more than 800,000 people in Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu and displaced nearly four million. [6] “Huanghe shuili weiyuanhui Henan xiufangchu sanshier niandu di yi er qi zhengxiu Huangfan wancheng gongcheng baogaoshu (1943): Institute of Modern History Archives, Academia Sinica, Taiwan 25-22-170-(04). What people are saying - Write a review. Chapter. About 2 … Yellow River Flood – China – 1887 AD. Lauri Paltemaa. The wartime floods also turned almost four million people – over 20 percent of the total population – in Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu into refugees. The 1938 Yellow River flood (traditional Chinese: 花園口決隄事件; simplified Chinese: 花园口决堤事件; pinyin: huāyuán kǒu juédī shìjiàn, literally "Huayuankou embankment breach incident") 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 Japanese forces. Following the onset of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, the Imperial Japanese Army marched rapidly into the heart of Chinese territory. YELLOW RIVER FLOOD 1938 During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Chinese Nationalist blew up the dikes holding back the Yellow River in an attempt to stop the invading Japanese. Perhaps the single most environmentally damaging act of war in world history, this strategic decision threw long-established water control infrastructure into disarray, The 1938 flood on the Yellow River was a man made event, caused when the Nationalist Army under Chiang blew up the Yellow River levees on the south bank of the river at Huayuankou. The Japanese army anticipated little resistance in the Xuzhou campaign, but to their surprise Chinese armies held out for nearly five months. Wuhan fell in October 1938, after the Nationalist central government had withdrawn into China’s interior. Instead, the Nationalists claimed that Japanese bombing of the dikes had caused the floods, presenting the disaster as another example of Japanese atrocities against Chinese civilians. The flood coincided with the peak agricultural season, when wheat stood ripe in the fields or lay newly harvested, ready for threshing. [10] Han Qitong and Nan Zhongwan, Huangfanqu de sunhai yu shanhou jiuji, 7. The Chinese Nationalist regime consolidated its control over the northwest and southwest parts of the country. [9] Han Qitong and Nan Zhongwan, Huangfanqu de sunhai yu shanhou jiuji (Damage and recovery and relief in the Yellow River flooded area) (Shanghai: Xingzhengyuan shanhou jiuji zongshu, 1948), 13–14, 18. Because of frequent devastating floods and course changes produced by the continual elevation of the river bed, sometimes above the level of its surrounding farm fields, it also has the names China’s Sorrow and Scourge of the Sons of Han . Guilin: Guangxi shifan daxue chubanshe, 2008. Log in Register Recommend to librarian Print publication year: 2014; Online publication date: December 2014; 1 - A Militarized River: The 1938 Yellow River Flood and Its Aftermath. 1938 Yellow River flood The 1938 Yellow River flood (literally "Huayuankou embankment breach incident") 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 Japanese forces. Source: British Pathé/Pathé Gazette, ‘Reharnessing The Yellow River,’ newsreel, 1946. Chiang Kai-shek and his subordinates perceived and utilized the Yellow River in similar strategic terms. Three particularly devastating floods occurred in 1887, 1931, and 1938, resulting in millions losing their lives … Postwar investigations estimated that in the twenty counties of eastern Henan hit by the disaster, for instance, 32 percent of the cultivated land (7,338,000 mu = 489,200 hectares) was inundated. The course taken by the river after the breach of the dykes in 1938 is the southernmost line marked “I” on the map. The Huang He floods were a series of devastating floods in China caused by the overflowing of the Huang He (Yellow River), the country’s second longest river. The 1931 Chinese Floods went on record as the worst natural disaster in world history. The rivers of Huai, Yellow and Yangtze had managed to burst all the dikes and flood waters enveloped regions much bigger than the whole area of England. Juli 1937 tobende Zweite Japanisch-Chinesische Krieg führte zu einer rapiden japanischen Besetzung großer Flächen Chinas. [3] Ein zweiter Versuch wurde am 9. When they took Xuzhou in late May, the Japanese moved to bring the war to a decisive conclusion, striking west along the Long-Hai railway in order to press south along the Ping-Han railway and attack Wuhan. Diese Seite wurde zuletzt am 24. Marjaana Mäenpää 1938 Yellow River flood; Usage on fr.wikipedia.org Jianghuai; Usage on ko.wikipedia.org 1938년 황하 홍수; Usage on pl.wikipedia.org Powódź w Chinach (1938) Usage on ru.wikipedia.org Наводнение на Хуанхэ 1938 года; Usage on vi.wikipedia.org Trận Vũ Hán; Sự kiện phá đê … People tried to rescue young children and the aged. In a desperate attempt to block Japan's military advance, Chinese Nationalist armies under Chiang Kai-shek broke the Yellow River's dikes in Henan in June 1938, resulting in devastating floods that persisted until after the war's end. Map showing the changing course of the Yellow River over the millennia. Strategically, breaking the dikes may have bought the Nationalist army time to withdraw and regroup, bogging down Japanese tanks and mobile artillery in fields of mud as Chinese forces secured their defenses around Zhengzhou. The desperate disaster victims not only could not get any relief funds, but even had to sell their children and their property in order to repay work debts. The floods, which occurred in 1887, 1931, and 1938, collectively killed millions and are considered to be the three deadliest floods in history and among the most destructive natural disasters ever recorded. Thursday, Jun 23, 1938. Yet the situation was hardly secure. In 1938 the KMT decided to let the Yellow river flood an area of 54.000 km² to stop the Japanese advance. As the report concluded, “after the flood season passes, rapidly closing all breaches and shoring up all dilapidated dike section in order to defend against high waters and ease the flood disaster would be of even greater benefit to the national defense and the people’s livelihood.”[6]. Chinese Nationalist troops walking through Yellow River floodwaters. Following the river’s diversion in 1938, Chinese and Japanese armies confronted one another across its new course, making it a strategically vital frontline area. Juni 1938 im Zusammenhang mit dem Zweiten Japanisch-Chinesischen Krieg. The 1887 Yellow River flood was a devastating flood on the Yellow River (Huang He) in China. In a time of total war, when armies devoured or destroyed virtually all available resources, this cycle grew even more vicious. Ward and mutual security headman unavoidably embezzled them or deducted miscellaneous fees. Casualties: Close to a million Chinese peasants died or starved How much damage (in land)? In Henan, the province for which the most detailed statistics are available, the Yellow River floods displaced more than 1,172,000. Over the next few days, the river rose and weakened defenses at Zhaokou as well. Juni 1938 im Zusammenhang mit dem Zweiten Japanisch-Chinesischen Krieg. Little was distributed to poor households in accordance with regulations, so it was difficult [for them] to avoid the hardship of performing hard labor on an empty stomach. The most bizarre flooding of the Yellow River occurred in June, 1938. During the conflict known in China as the Anti-Japanese War of Resistance (1937-1945), the Chinese Nationalist military blasted the Yellow River dikes in Henan province in 1938 to forestall a Japanese advance. China was under pressure from the Japanese less than 50 kilometers away Close a... College, University of Oxford time of total War, the Sino-Japanese in! Into July and August of 1931 this stratagem as a military necessity Zwischen 4. und 6, 1938. War. Swept over 9000 square miles of the County ’ s waters spilled through opening... To stop the Japanese from taking Zhengzou, but to their surprise Chinese armies held out for nearly months. 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