On May Day some 150,000 Japanese troops began the first big drive of spring 1940 against Chinese forces on the plateau in northern Hupeh and southern Honan near Hankow, bomb-gutted "Chicago of China." Object was to win a victory spectacular enough to justify final and official recognition by the Imperial Japanese Government of their Chinese puppet ruler at Nanking, multiple-turncoat Wang Ching-wei.
Neither the victory nor the recognition went according to schedule. Soon the broadcasting stations of Free China began jubilant descriptions of how the Japanese spring drive was being routed, claimed...
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