Word: hainan
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...dreadful bombing and subsequent capture of Canton (TIME, June 30, 1938), cutting off the supply route from Britain's Hong Kong to the interior; the investment of most of the coast line as far down as Hong Kong; the occupation, for strategic reasons, of Hainan Island; and terrific bombings of Chungking-which served to consolidate rather than break Chinese morale...
This was a lot to swallow, but on instructions from defeated Bordeaux, Ambassador Arsene-Henry acceded. Of course, the Japanese were not satisfied. The Navy concentrated several units, including an aircraft carrier, off Hainan Island, opposite the French Indo-Chinese port of Haiphong. The Army was reported moving troops down from the Yangtze area, with 100,000 already billeted on Hainan...
Jumping off from Hainan Island, which the Japanese have held by squatters' rights since February, a combined Army-Navy party braved a monsoon and heavy rain, landed on the China coast near Pakhoi, about 100 miles from the Indo-Chinese border, and thence drove inland toward the city of Nanning. This was their long-expected drive to cut the routes to China from French Indo-China and British Burma. It was a threat not only to China (which will be dry as a rootless tree if the routes are cut) but also to French and British and indirectly Dutch...
...colonial powers scarcely needed this landing, or the newspaper campaign introducing it, to inform them of Japan's ambitions in their spheres of empire. There had been previous signals: the peremptory seizure of Hainan, the occupation of the strategic Spratly Islands, the frank avowal of many a world-imperialist Japanese. Punctuating the European war as it did, the landing served rather to make the world review just what was still to be found in the treasure of the Indies. Were the outposts worth defending...
...four nations concerned, only France, the legal if doubtful owner, entered a formal diplomatic complaint. The Japanese, who can keep silence as well as steal like gypsies, said little when France complained about the snatch of Hainan in February. They were mum this week...