With Japanese forces on south Yangtze front, Nov. 6.
Japanese forces today breached the outer defences of Changsha, capital of Hunan province, as Tsungyang, Pivotal point on the military road extending south from Wuchang parallel to the Canton-Hankow Railway, was occupied at 1230 o'clock this afternoon, Southeast of Puchi on the railway, Tsungyang was the centre of Chinese military supplies during the battle for Hankow. It was here that Gen.
Chen Cheng, chief of staff of the Kuomintang armies, directed the defence of Wuhan. Following the fall of Hankow, a defence ume ex-lending east from Yochow at the mouth of Tungting Lake to Tüngshan, in the hills sout of Wuchang, was established by the Chinese passing through Tsungyang.
In a lightning advance that brought them 60 kilometres from Sienning, from where they started on October 31, the Japanese forces appeared off Tsungyang today. Effeciing a crossing of the Chun River under heavy Chinese fire, they poured into Tsun-yang shortly after noon. Before abandoning the city, the Chinese set fire to the vast amount of supplies still left in Tsungyang.
20 Divisions Hold City The spectacular Japanese progress irom Sienning was noteworthy not only for its rapidity in the face of forbidding mountainous terrain, but also because of the success achieved in virtually annihilating the 75th Chinese Army beween Nanlinkiao and Painikiao.
Japanese military officers attached importance to the capture of Tsung-yang because of its effect upon the defence of Changsha for which 20 divisions of Hunanese troops under Gen. Chang Fa-kwei, erstwhile commander of the "Ironsides" Division, have been detailed.
Japanese troops later in the day were in hot pursuit of the Chinese troops retreating from Tsungyang to the. southwest, By nightfall, the Japanese vanguards were eight kilometres south of the captured city.
Meantime, another Japanese column operating farther west today neared the Hunan-Hupeh border as it prepared to attack Chinese positions at Yanglussu, railway station town on the provincial frontier. Yesterday, this column had advanced 26 kilometres from Puchi to reach Fengshuling peak, 12 kilometres from the Wanyangshan range forming a natural border between the two provinces.—Domei.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.