Japanese troops in north Hunan "ray or may not enter Changsha," a Japanese army spokesman said yesterday afternoon.
Declaring that the objective of the Japanese offensive east of Tungting Lake was unrevealable. the. spokesman hinted that Japanese troops may give the provincial capital a wide berth, He also suggested that the Japanese offensive might be continued "some in direction,"
Questioned regarding the cryptic remark concerning Changsha, the spokesman recalled that a Chinese spokesman declared that Changsha *no longer has any military value, "The Japanese command may agree with the Chinese comma: but that decision rests with the high staff officers," the spokesman added, "However, it may be safely said that one of the objectives of the Hunan operations consisted of inflicting heavy numerical material losses on the Chinese."
To Cut Up Chinese He drew an analogy between the Tungting Lake operations and the Han River campaign this spring, recent oberatiors around Kaoan, Kiangsi.
Engaging a total of 42 divisions conservatively estimated to number 100,000 men, Japanese troops in flicted "fatal lose: upon six Central Army, four affiliated, and four provincial' divisions, "considerably heavy losses" on one Central, one affiliated, and five, provincial ' divisions, who by October 3 abandoned 25,000 dead besides 2,500 prisoners, the spokesman stated.
Principal booty consisted of ten field and mountain guns, 30 trench mortars, 50 machine yn: Bren guns, 4000 rifles, 154 rounds of ' artillery ammunition, 3,000 trench-mortar bombs, 100,000 rounds of machine-gun ammu tion, 300,000 rounds of rifle ammunition, and 4,000 hand grenades.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.