Yangzhou is the gateway to northern Jiangsu, and the fairy temple in the east is an important military stronghold.
According to the article "The Situation of the Fall of Yangzhou" (1938), after the invading Japanese army broke through the Jiangyin blockade line, it attacked Yangzhou in the early morning of December 14, 1937, and then the Japanese army burned and plundered Yangzhou, and more than 600 innocent people were killed in one week.
In order to avoid harassment by the Japanese army, the people of Erdaoqiao Township prepared chickens, ducks, pigs and sheep, and everyone held up small flags to greet the Japanese army at the mouth of the bridge. The brutal enemy saw each of them holding a flag in his hand, did not ask any questions, and used machine guns to strafe the confused and innocent villagers, and the flesh and blood of these bare hands fell in response, and the corpses on the banks of the river next to the road were lying on the ground, and the blood stained the river red.
The soldiers guarding Yangzhou were also bloody, and many of them sacrificed themselves in defensive positions.
According to records, in the Fangwei area of Guazhou on the south bank of Yangzhou, our army's fortifications were built in a warehouse, the third and fourth regiments of security in Jiangsu Province were responsible for garrisoning, and their strength was weak; the only barrier on the south bank, the Sanjiang Battalion Battery, had been destroyed by enemy artillery fire, and there was no danger to defend; in addition, the enemy warships were running across the river, landing successively at the mouth of the Shijiaqiao River, and swooping up along the Zhenjiang-Yangzhou automobile highway, and our security police force desperately resisted. However, the equipment is still old-fashioned guns, and it is difficult to stop the attack of the enemy's mechanized troops. These soldiers who defended the safety of Yangzhou with their lives were all sacrificed, and then the enemy soldiers came to the city.
There were more than 20,000 people in the Northeast Army stationed in the town of Fairy Temple, and they fought twice; the enemy's vanguard troops bombarded the Fuyun Gate with a platoon of artillery, and the police in the city were all killed in the line of duty; a certain sauce garden at the mouth of Liguan Lane cangxiang first lit a fire, and every time the enemy crossed a street alley, he used machine guns and box cannons to strafe, and the roof of the residents' houses was like a big hail, making a noise, and roof tiles and bullets flew randomly. There was chaos in the city, and the resulting corpses were everywhere.
Most of the residents of Yangzhou are local households, thinking that nanjing fell, the war can be over, some people are still thinking about production, so many people have not chosen to leave Yangzhou to flee, and some people have not had time to escape because Yangzhou City fell too quickly, and when the city was destroyed, there were no less than tens of thousands of people in the city, and all kinds of cruel acts suffered were unprecedented in history.
After the fall of Yangzhou, the commander of the enemy army went to the Chamber of Commerce first, and no one entertained him, so he took the Green Yang Hotel as the headquarters, and at dawn the next day, he began to search for burning, raping and plundering, and doing everything to the extreme.
In Yangzhou City, ten rooms and ten empty rooms, none of them can be spared, and the rich big households such as Wang Lumen, Jia Songlai, Xie Zhenzhai and Zhong Weizhen are the most severely damaged, and it is said that each family has been raided more than ten times.
The bookstores and cultural institutions in the downtown area were burned down; there were fifty or sixty seriously wounded soldiers in the Guli Daning Temple, and before they could be transported, all of them were shot and killed by the Japanese army, and even the seven monks in the temple were not spared.
The monks of Fulu Temple, when fleeing in gasoline boats, were regarded as officials and soldiers, and dozens of monks and civilians in the whole temple survived.
Even more tragic, the night after the enemy army entered the city, after passing through a deep street, worried about encountering an ambush, the Japanese army first opened fire on the street gate, the bullet bounced back from the solid wall, the stray bullet killed a Japanese soldier, the enemy thought that there was a plainclothes team in the city, so regardless of men and women, when they encountered a shadow, they shot or stabbed, and the people they encountered still had a chance to live.
The Japanese army that entered the city and plundered women, young and old, and searching for women everywhere was regarded as the first priority, no matter when and where, at any time, violence, flirtation, cutting milk and other mischief, it was indescribable. Some women were killed for resisting the violence of the Japanese army, and some were ruined by the Japanese army and could not escape the fate of death.
There were seven or eight shelters for women in the city, except for one run by the Church of God in France, which was not overly harassed by the priest because of the efforts of the priests, and the rest were not spared.
The French priest was almost killed once, and the church was found to have a radio, which was accused of being evidence of communication with the Central Army in Hankou, so he tied up the priest, and the commander of the Japanese army threatened: You Frenchman should be killed. The priest asked: The radio can only be transmitted and cannot be transmitted, so why should it be communicated? This was spared.
Three days after the enemy army entered the city, its commander was moved from Lu Yang to the home of Wang Bailing of the Central Committee, and by the fourth day, the burning of the Japanese army had slowed down slightly, but the innocent victims had not less than five hundred people.
When the enemy attacked yangzhou city, a part of the troops were divided, from Sizi Street, through Wanfu Bridge, to the town of Fairy Temple, and along the way, the bridges that our army did not have time to blow up, burned with fire, but only scorched the surface of the bridge, and the enemy's tanks and vehicles were still able to pass safely.
After the enemy entered the town of Fairy Temple, most of the residents woke up from their sleep, until they saw the soldiers on the street wearing yellow tweed costumes, and they did not know that the mountains and rivers had changed color and had become fish in the net.
At this time, our army was still facing the enemy on the other side, the sound of gunfire was incessant, the enemy hid in the houses, forced the local people to go down the river to collect rice and wash vegetables, and was asked to help dig trenches next to the riverbank, and many innocent people died in the shelling.
After a short pause in the fighting, the enemy began to set fire to the houses, claiming that there was an enemy on the other side of the river and that the obstacles must be destroyed. In the name of searching for the defeated soldiers, they plundered on a large scale, and at each alley entrance, there were wooden signs that read, "Those who are forbidden to pass in and out are killed." Under the wooden signs, there were three or five corpses that fell, and more than ten bodies.
There are many women who have no time to escape, and many have died as a result of rape. There were more than thirty young women who were abducted by the enemy to a large mansion for the Japanese soldiers to vent their animal lust.
The food in the town was looted by the enemy, even the fuel was nowhere to be bought, the surrounding farmers did not dare to buy and sell in the market, and the roads were full of urine and corpses on the side of the abandoned road, and the smell was stinking.
Five days after the enemy entered the city, the killings began to decrease, but the search for and pillage of women continued, and it is said that more than 600 innocent people were killed within a week of the enemy entering the city.
Guan Liting, chairman of the Chamber of Commerce in the town of Fairy Temple, agreed with the enemy at the request of the people to bury the body on the one hand, and on the other hand, he found more than a dozen prostitutes for the Sexual Pleasure of the Japanese Army. The tragic experience of homelessness and mutilation can be imagined.
In the process of attacking, the Japanese army was also blocked by the heroes of our army, according to the "Situation of the Fall of Yangzhou":
After the enemy occupied the Fairy Temple, the north attacked Shao bo, our army because of its unstable foothold, and then retreated to the border of Gaoyou County, and in the process of retreating, between Shaobo and Gaoyou, Zhaoguanba planted mines to block the enemy's advance, and the Japanese brigade tank convoy led the infantry to continue to attack Gaoyou, and marched to Zhaoguanba, and the tanks touched the mines and broke out violently. At this time, a certain unit of our reinforcements arrived and fought hard to counterattack, and all the enemy tanks and vehicles were destroyed in this battle, and the enemy was killed by touching mines, and some were slashed and killed by our army's large knives and grenades. The enemy on the embankment, some of the soldiers who crossed with a small boat of our army, bypassed and intercepted, so that hundreds of enemy soldiers could not return to the team.
In the second and third miles east of Hengyi to Yilingkou, villagers hid in the carport, and two women were picking vegetables in the field, but they did not have time to escape, and they were taken captive by the Japanese army, and their soldiers either had steel helmets, or no steel helmets, or steel helmets were mutilated like serrated teeth, and there were dozens of horses, and the people, horses, guns, and weapons were all mud painted like ghosts, and they were tired on the road.
After this setback, the enemy did not dare to take the plunge easily, and our army also needed to be sorted out and replenished after a long battle, so both the enemy and we held on to the danger and formed a confrontational posture, which lasted for more than a month, and neither side advanced or retreated.
After each land is captured, burned and plundered, the enemy then uses popular organizations in order to collect military supplies. Absorbing resources, completely for royal use, there were the so-called "autonomous associations" that were born, and there were probably three kinds of members:
One is that they are usually not happy with society, have long had the heart to betray the country and seek glory, but have not been able to get the opportunity, and want to use the power of the enemy to chase fame and wealth;
A kind of person who bears the expectations of society, is poor, has no means to migrate, and cannot work behind closed doors, in the name of the organization, talks about the poor who are free from frost;
A kind of person who has a considerable industry on other sides, wants to use the enemy's strength to maintain the local opportunity, and can also save his own life and property, such as Wu Mengjie in Yangzhou, to contribute to the enemy commander to obtain a position for a woman.
These people, who are slaves and servants, kneel before the enemy and ourselves, and act as a blessing to the common people of their own country. However, the "Autonomous Association" has no autonomy power to speak of, and even the safety of the women and children of the property of the members of the "Autonomous Association" itself cannot be fully guaranteed.
One day, the enemy division entered the home of Shen Mingzhu, a member of the "Autonomous Association," sat still, and heard a sound in the house, it was his concubine hiding inside, the commander asked who it was, Shen Mingzhu falsely claimed to be his niece, and the commander immediately led his concubine and laughed. The members of the Autonomous Council themselves are not yet able to protect themselves, let alone protect the people.
The enemy commander of the Fairy Temple asked for a bath, and the number of sixty women who wiped their backs did not reach the number, and the enemy soldiers immediately dragged the women into the bathroom to bathe together.
A certain member of the Zhenjiang Committee asked the commander of the enemy army to prohibit sexual violence, and the enemy replied: Japan does not have such a law, and Zhao Meng is precious, Zhao Meng can be lowly, and the enemy army is a member of the Committee, and the enemy army has no place to insult at every turn, and neither dares to speak out nor dare to be angry, and it is too late.
All the departments of the "Committee" are under the surveillance of the enemy, there is no room for freedom in action, and although it is not easy to request a way out, it is especially impossible to conquer and flee, but when it hears the sound of artillery and suspects that it is a counterattack by our army, it is frightened and faceless, and it is afraid that it will not be tolerated by the law of the land, and its situation is very sad and embarrassing.
It is said that the members of the Zhenjiang "Autonomous Association" are Liu Zhai, Zhang Guirong, Guo Qing, Yin Gongfu, Peng Ji, Ren Yushu, and Guan Jingyao, and Yangzhou is Fang Xiaoting, Zhang Xiaozhan, Wu Xiaoyuan, Shen Mingzhu, Chen Xiu, Yin Gongjian, Zhou Shiqing, Wu Mengjie, and nine others. As for the rogues everywhere, those who use the momentum to fish and meat in the countryside, such as the puppet of Yiling, are even less insignificant,
Looking at the war situation in Jiangsu, although Jiangnan entered the hands of the enemy, only Jiangdu, Yizheng, and Liuhezhao fell in northern Jiangsu, and more than twenty counties east of the canal and north of Jiangdu were still under our rule. The enemy's strength in the canal is only a few thousand, and in order to attack the left flank of the Jinpu line, our army has not only defended Xuzhou but also the canal, and will never dare to advance. In recent years, Jiangbei has been on a political trajectory, bandits have been eradicated, grain has been harvested, and self-defense is stronger than that of Jiangnan, while the guerrillas have been organized, the war situation is protracted, and they will be exhausted, and the people in the rear are also willing to join the guerrillas to resist the enemy, and whether their hometown will be returned or not is no longer in their minds. After the provincial government moved to Zhuanyin, it will handle the administration as usual and will never move else; if the enemy in Tianjin cannot gain a foothold, the enemy of the canal will not attack and go on its own, our army can go down the Yangtze River along the canal, the Beijing-Shanghai line will be threatened, and the key to the turning point of the overall situation should be the Xuzhou War.
Reference: Atrocities. The "Fall of Yangzhou" was published by the Literary and Art Society in 1938 as "Records of the Atrocities of the Enemy Army".
For more historical facts of the War of Resistance Against Japan, it is recommended to purchase the "Complete Record of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in China" click on the link below to buy and read.
Each of them who survived that horrific massacre carried the memory of blood and tears. Today, most of them are old or even dead. They, with painful memories of atrocities, each of them is ironclad evidence! Witnesses are withering away, but the truth should never sink!
Alarm bells ring for a long time, and the memory lasts forever!