In the occupied territories of China, World War II was waged using methods that went far beyond conventional military confrontation. In the headquarters of the Japanese North China Area Army, a strategy was formulated that aimed not just to defeat enemy troops, but to totally scorch the very human environment itself.
This doctrine entered history under the name “The Three Alls Policy” (Japanese: 三光作戦 — Sankō Sakusen), which literally translates to: “Kill All, Loot All, Burn All.”
History
Prior to 1940, the Japanese command attempted to use classical counter-insurgency methods but was met with fierce resistance. Chinese guerrillas literally “dissolved” among the peasantry, receiving food, shelter, and intelligence from them. For the Imperial Army, the answer became obvious: if you cannot catch the fish, you must drain the ocean.
General Yasuji Okamura (pictured) authorized the transition to scorched-earth tactics. Officially, in Japanese documents, this was called the “Strategy of Clean-up and Destruction,” but soldiers on the ground knew it by three simple verbs:
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“Kill All” (Satsu-kō): Any resident of a village in the operation zone—be it an elderly person, a woman, or an infant—was automatically equated to a guerrilla or their accomplice. Populations were often exterminated preemptively and entirely.
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“Loot All” (Raku-kō): From those peasants who were not killed, absolutely everything was seized: food, livestock, clothing, and seed grain. Entire regions were condemned to man-made famine to deprive the guerrillas of any means of supply.
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“Burn All” (Shō-kō): Residential houses, barns, Buddhist temples, and other structures were committed to the flames. The land outside Japanese fortifications was to be turned into a lifeless wasteland.
The Mechanics of the Void
The implementation of this policy bore little resemblance to the Nazi “death conveyor” (industrialized killing); it more closely resembled a locust raid. Japanese punitive detachments would surround villages, herd the residents into one place, and carry out mass executions—burying people alive, machine-gunning them, or locking them in barns and setting them on fire. Those who managed to flee into the forests died of cold and hunger, as their homes and food supplies had been turned to ash.
Furthermore, the “Three Alls Policy” was actively combined with the use of biological and chemical weapons. Special units (including the infamous “Unit 731” and its branches) poisoned wells with cholera and typhoid pathogens and dropped plague-infested fleas over agricultural lands to permanently establish “dead zone” status for rebellious provinces.
The Price of Silence
According to historians’ estimates, more than 2.7 million civilians were killed during the implementation of the Sankō Sakusen policy in the northern provinces of China alone. Millions more became refugees, and the economic infrastructure of entire regions was wiped off the face of the earth.
The tragedy of the “Three Alls” policy also lies in the fact that, for a long time after the war, these crimes remained in the shadows. The Tokyo Trials focused primarily on the Nanjing Massacre and crimes against Western Allies. Many officers who planned and carried out the scorched-earth tactics in China safely returned to civilian life in postwar Japan.
The Geography of Terror
The Sankō Sakusen policy was officially and purposefully applied by the Japanese mainly in Northern China (in provinces like Hebei, Shanxi, and Shandong), where the guerrilla movement was strongest. This means that the 2.7 million deaths were the result of extermination within a relatively localized territory, rather than across the entire country.
