On September 12, 1937, after occupying Tianzhen Castle in Shanxi Province, the Honma Brigade and the Suzuki Brigade of the Tojo Column of the Japanese Kwantung Army carried out a bloody massacre for three consecutive days, and more than 2,300 people in Tianzhen City drank blades and blood and were slaughtered by the Japanese Kou, which was the eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth lunar month, and the local people called this Day of Disaster "The Eighty-Eight Massacre".
Tianzhen City Massacre
He Juheng of TianzhenCheng Northwest Street was stabbed five times by Japanese devils, fell unconscious in a pool of blood, the devils thought he was dead, He Juheng later woke up from his coma, luckily escaped, his son He Xian recorded in his memoirs that his father escaped from the Japanese massacre:
When Riko shouted for the courtyard door, my father went to open the door, and as soon as Niko entered the door, he untied his trouser belt, tied his back, dragged his pants off his knees, and drove him to the courtyard of the old police station on East Street. The devils gathered four or five hundred ordinary people here, and then drove them all to the Fox Temple outside the north gate of the county town, and stabbed them one by one with bayonets in a large puddle, covering it with another layer of soil. My father was stabbed five times, pushed to the upper level of the pit, and then woke up and crawled out of the thin layer of soil. I didn't dare to go into the city and go home, so I ran to my aunt's house in Xinping Village to hide and nurse for three or four months and saved my life. It is said that several people survived in front of the fox temple. The other four or five hundred died tragically in the pit. "People who were beaten to death by Riko in their homes and yards can also be seen everywhere. The two children of Wang San and Wu San next door to my house were killed in the courtyard by Japanese devils. ”
At about 6:00 a.m. on September 12, the Japanese army rushed into Tianzhen City under the cover of artillery aircraft, and the Japanese soldiers entering the city were divided into three ways: one along the east wall of Tianzhen City to the south; one way along the north city wall to the west; and the last way straight to the streets and alleys of the city. After the three-way Japanese army entered the city, regardless of whether they were men, women or elderly people, they killed people when they saw them, and more than a hundred ordinary people in the courtyard of the residents in the northeast corner of Tianzhen City were killed by the Japanese soldiers who broke in before they could hide.
At that time, the common people in Tianzhen City except for a few people who escaped from the city before the Japanese attacked the city and took refuge elsewhere, most of them chose to stay at home, hoping that the defenders could resist the attack of the Japanese Kou, so they lacked ideological preparation and evacuation measures for the invasion of the devils, and after the devils entered the city, the whole Tianzhen City became a mess, and everyone did not know where to hide, and at the moment when the city was in danger, some of the insensitive traitors in the city actually had illusions about the invaders, they burned tea and prepared rice, waving small flags. Coax some ordinary people to go to the streets to welcome the Japanese army into the city.
There was a man surnamed Wang in Northeast Street, beating gongs and drums to gather more than 200 people to go to the North City Gate to remove the earth sacks blocking the city gate, open the city gate to welcome the Japanese troops into the city, but the Japanese troops who entered the city did not "treat" these people who came to "welcome", the Japanese Kou drove all the more than 200 people to the North Urn City, took up the bayonet and stabbed, the crowd was in chaos, shouting, crying and wailing, they tried to break through the encirclement of the ghost soldiers, these devils saw the situation, switched to machine gun fire, and threw grenades into the crowd More than 200 innocent people were slaughtered in the North Urn City, creating the "Tianzhen City North Urn City Blood Case".
At about 9:00 a.m., a large number of Japanese troops who entered the city scattered and hunted down the fleeing people in the streets and alleys, while killing people, these ghost soldiers did not forget to loot their belongings, smashed and looted some shops and silver trumpets, and then set them on fire, and some Japanese soldiers gang-raped women in broad daylight.
From about 10:00 a.m., rikou drove the people they had hunted to the Mawang Temple on South Street, in front of the Yunjindian in the West City Gate, and the Fox Temple outside the North City Gate, and launched a horrific and bloody massacre, and the entire ancient county town suddenly turned into a hell on earth.
The Japanese Kou drove all the more than 500 men, women, and children who were searching for the South Street to the Mawang Temple, and the men and women were escorted to kneel on the east and west sides of the road, and the Japanese Kou on the south, south, and west sides were guarded by machine guns.
There is a large pit in the courtyard of the Mawang Temple that is 2 feet long and 5 feet wide and 5 feet wide and 5 feet deep, and the devils will be dragged into the courtyard by the captured masses in batches, and thrown directly into the big pit after they are stabbed with bayonets, and after the big pit is filled with corpses, rikou will cover the corpses with a quilt, press a large stone on the top, and force the living people to pile the remaining corpses into the rooms in the temple, and then slaughter the people, and the next batch of people will carry the corpses of the previous batch of people, and work in batches until the victims' bodies fill the three rooms.
There was also a yam kiln in the Mawang Temple, some of the fleeing masses hid inside, Rikou found out and rushed in to kill all the people inside, the bodies of the victims outside had nowhere to pile, Rikou threw the corpses into the yam kiln, until the yam kiln was full of corpses, the cruel ghost soldiers were afraid that someone inside was not dead and then climbed out, smashed a wall on the side of the kiln, and completely sealed the kiln.
The massacre inside the Mawang Temple lasted from 10 a.m. to about 1 p.m., except for a few people who took advantage of the chaos to escape and a few people who were injured and did not wake up and crawled out of the pile of corpses to survive, the rest of the people were slaughtered by the Japanese Kou.
At the same time as the Mawangmiao massacre unfolded, the Japanese Kou drove more than 300 adult men who had been arrested from house to house on Southwest Street and Northwest Street in the city to a vacant lot in front of Nanyun Jindian near the west gate of the city, and the east, north and west sides of this vacant lot were all houses.
Rikou set up machine guns on the high platform in front of the store, aimed at the crowd of crazy strafing, and suddenly the blood flowed into a river, piles of corpses, and the people who fled outside were all killed by the guarding Rikou with knives and axes, and those injured and undead who fell to the ground and cried out in pain were also killed one by one by the ghost soldiers who "cleared the field" to "mend the knife".
On the morning of the 12th, the massacre and atrocities of the Japanese army continued, they gathered the adult men caught in the East Street and North Street in front of the Dakui Pavilion on the East Street and behind the Dazhao Wall of the County Government, and the ghost soldiers pulled out a couple in public and beheaded the public, and then drove more than 500 people from these two places to the edge of a section of water trench under the slope of the Fox Temple on the north bank of the Beiyang River, with a water trench opening of about five or six feet and a water depth of more than three feet.
The Japanese Kou still used the method of slaughter at the Mawangmiao Temple, pulling the people whose hands were tied up to the edge of the water trench and lining up in a row, stabbing them with bayonets and then picking them into the trenches, and some of them struggled without dying, while the Japanese Kou slashed from top to bottom, except for a few people who pretended to be dead and escaped the disaster, the rest were all killed.
According to the recollections of witnesses who went to collect the bodies a few days later, a section of trench, which was about 30 meters long, was almost filled with horizontal and vertical corpses, and more than 500 people were killed.
On the morning of the 13th, the Japanese Kou continued to create the big playground massacre.
In fact, after the Japanese Kou captured Tianzhen City, it was already planned to slaughter the people of the city, after the massacre on the first day, the tired Japanese Kou imprisoned the remaining masses in the Circle of the North City Gate, in order to prevent them from escaping, the Japanese Kou untied their trouser belts and tied their hands in a row, because of the loss of the trouser belt, many people's pants fell off, they had to lie naked, and from time to time they would be beaten by the devils.
After these captives had been starving all night, the Japanese Kou escorted them all to a courtyard near the large playground on Northeast Street, in the center of the playground there were three large trenches dug by the previous defenders, about 3 meters deep, 11 meters long from east to west, and 2 meters wide from north to south, and the Japanese Kou would be dragged to the front of the trench in a row, strafed with machine guns, and the shots were all dropped into the trench, and then the next batch was pulled to continue the massacre, and the machine gun roared for a morning, until more than 500 civilians were all killed, and finally the devils buried the corpses in the trench with soil. Many of the unimmunked were buried alive by the devils.
Until the 1950s, when the ground was broken on the original large playground to build a new Tianzhen No. 1 Middle School building, there were still the accumulated white bones of the victims who were excavated.
On the 14th, the red-eyed Japanese Kou had not yet given up, and they continued to wander the streets and alleys, lest there were still men who had hidden and not been killed. (In addition to the indiscriminate killings on the first day, the next two days the Japanese mainly focused on killing adult males in the city, and in addition to forcing the surviving women to cook for them, the devils would also waste these women to vent their animal lusts.)
The streets and alleys of the city were repeatedly "cleaned" by the Japanese Kou, and after being sacked by the Japanese Kou, the Tianzhen City was like hell, with crows circling and barking during the day, and wild dogs wandering around at dusk to eat corpses.
Inside and outside the county town, the streets and alleys, corpses are everywhere, the smell is stinking, according to the survivors of the southwest street Gao Bi personally saw, in the Mawang Temple, wild dogs tore rotting corpses in droves, and dogs ate dead people's eyes were red.
After the restoration of Tianzhen City in 1945, the people of Tianzhen built the "Memorial Tower of the Compatriots who were martyred in Tianzhen County" in the county seat, and after detailed and effective investigation, the victims of the massacre of the Japanese Kou, 332 people in Southwest Street, 368 people in Southeast Street, 258 people in Northeast Street, and 290 people in Northwest Street, a total of 1248 people, inscribed on the monument, in addition, it is estimated that there are more than 400 families, plus foreign merchants and local victims who are unknown, and more than 2300 people have been killed.
As for the maimed and the loss of property, there are too many to count.