During the Japanese occupation of Hainan (1939–1945), the Hlai suffered extremely heavily due to their communist resistance activities especially in western Hainan. Hlai villages were frequently targeted for extermination and rape by Kuomintang and Japanese soldiers. In four towns alone, the Japanese slaughtered more than 10,000 Hlai people. In another incident, Nationalist forces massacred over 7,000 Hlai in a village. Nationalist officers had 9,000 Hlai and 3,000 Miao executed after tricking them to the war fronts during a fake conscription campaign. As the Nationalists retreated with over 1.5 million civilians that they evacuated to the hills with, they massacred and stole food from the ethnic Hlai as well as other tribal peoples. The Nationalists executed 2,180 Miao women and children of Baisha and Baoting uprising origin. Tens of thousands of Hlai were also killed in Japanese labour camps, as unlike other Chinese civilians they and the Tanka were not evacuated by Chinese Nationalists to safety zones. Undercover Nationalist agents pretending to work for the Japanese observed how Japanese commanders gunned down thousands of Hlai while trying to escape the camp.