On January 11, 1938, Han Fuyu, deputy commander of the Fifth Theater, commander-in-chief of the Third Army, and chairman of Shandong Province, was arrested while attending a military conference of senior anti-Japanese generals in North China.
On January 20, 1938, Liu Xiang, the leader of the Sichuan Army and commander of the Seventh Theater of Operations, died of illness in Hankou. For Liu Xiang's death, Chiang Kai-shek gave a high evaluation: "Liu Xiang, the former chairman of Sichuan, is also a military charm, who has been sent to Xinjiang, who has been praised as the center, and who is loyal and self-righteous. "The Nationalist government posthumously awarded him a general of the army and gave him a state funeral.
Han Fuyu's arrest and Liu Xiang's illness and death seem to have nothing to do with each other, but in fact, they have a lot to do with it, of course, this also involves the military commander Dai Kasa and the supreme commander of the Nationalist government, Chiang Kai-shek.
After the Nationalist government decided to withdraw from Nanjing and move the capital to Wuhan and Chongqing in November 1937, Chiang Kai-shek was too relieved of Liu Xiang, the leader of the Sichuan Army, so he authorized Dai Kasa of the Military Command Bureau to monitor and investigate Liu Xiang to ensure the safety of the Central Army's retreat to Chongqing. At the same time, Chiang Kai-shek ordered Han Fuyu, Song Zheyuan, and other northern local army generals to "fight to the end with the Japanese army and defend the Natural Danger of the Yellow River," and ordered Dai Kasa to send people to pay close attention to the movements of these "local warlords" in order to prevent these local troops from abandoning the city and fleeing in the face of the fierce attack of the Japanese. Chiang Kai-shek wrote in a letter to Dai Kasa: "It is necessary to prevent the local army from disobeying the orders of the Kuomintang Military Commission, and even more to prevent these local army generals from uniting with each other and twisting into a rope against the central army." ”
Everyone knows that Liu Xiang is a great warlord sitting in Sichuan, and his relationship with Chiang Kai-shek is that if he is separated, his face and heart are not harmonious, and he has an anti-Chiang kai-shek heart at the crucial moment.
After Dai Kasa received the task given by Chiang Kai-shek, he naturally did not dare to slacken off and immediately threw himself into the investigation of Liu Xiang. He divided the investigators into three roads, one of which was responsible for continuing to monitor Han Fuyu and others, paying special attention to the dynamics of Han Fuyu and Song Zheyuan's First and Third Armies; the second road managed to infiltrate the Sichuan Army and collect intelligence from within; the third road was mainly responsible for monitoring Liu Xiang.
On September 1, 1937, Liu Xiang led his troops out of Sichuan to resist the War of Resistance, and served as the commander of the Seventh Theater of Operations, operating in the area west of Taihu Lake in Jiangsu and parts of northern Zhejiang and southern Anhui. However, shortly after he arrived in Nanjing, due to the sudden recurrence of a stomach disease, he vomited blood and was escorted to Wuhu Hospital in a coma and sent to Hankou Wanguo Hospital for medical treatment.
Although Liu Xiang was a staunch anti-Japanese general, he was not loyal to Chiang Kai-shek. During the investigation, Dai Kasa found that since the Nationalist government announced the relocation of the capital to Chongqing, the correspondence and telegrams between Liu Xiang and Han Fuyu began to become frequent, and they were all encrypted, which had to make Dai Ka suspicious. Dai Kasa bribed Fan Shaozeng, the commander of the Sichuan Army, with a lot of money, and learned that Liu Xiang did indeed have a bad intention with Han Fuyu. One of the pieces of information was that Liu Xiang secretly mobilized two main divisions of the Sichuan Army to capture Yichang, and at this time Han Fuyu had already led his troops to Xiangfan, and after Liu Xiang captured Yichang, the two armies would make contact and then plan a "one-step operation".
One day, Dai Kasa also obtained information that Liu Xiang was plotting to return to Sichuan secretly, and he planned to take a military plane transferred from Chengdu. However, the plane that Dai Kasa secretly commissioned agents to call from Chengdu was blown up on the way, and the cause of the crash was a "mechanical failure". Although Liu Xiang was very angry after learning about it, he was still calm, and did not choose to return to Sichuan again in the short term, but chose to "consider the long term".
Another person in charge of monitoring Han Fuyu sent intelligence that in recent times, Han Fuyu had frequent contacts with Koiso Kunisaki, commander-in-chief of the Japanese Special Task Force in North China, and had made contact with nishiozaku, commander of the Japanese Tsuura section, and Kenji Doihara, a Japanese spy.
At the same time, Dai Kasa also received intelligence from Song Zheyuan. Song Zheyuan sent a secret telegram to Chiang Kai-shek on his way to retreat to Xinxiang and Puyang in southern Hebei, saying that Han Fuyu had secretly sent someone to lobby him to unite against Chiang Kai-shek. The specific action plan is: Han Fuyu led his troops to capture Nanyang, Xiangfan, and Hanzhong, while Song Zheyuan needed to capture the area west of Tongguan, so that the three armies would be in a "golden triangle" situation in the northwest and northeast of Sichuan, and even the central army would have nothing to do, coupled with the support of the Japanese, "this area will be the domain of Liu, Song, and Han."
The plan must not have changed quickly, after Han Fuyu's plan was detected by Dai Kasa, he was trapped, and Liu Xiang, who learned of Han's arrest, was in a rapidly improved condition, and he reflected to Dai Kasa through special channels that he hoped to return to Sichuan for recuperation as soon as possible, and Dai Kasa naturally would not let go of Liu Xiang, who was disloyal to the leader.
On January 19, 1938, Yichang set up a special military tribunal to try Han Fuyu. On this day, Chiang Kai-shek also sent He Yingqin to the hospital to visit Liu Xiang, informed Liu Xiang of Han Fuyu's arrest, and deliberately revealed that the reason for han Fuyu's arrest was "privately mobilizing the army to Xiangyang." Liu Xiang knew that the matter was exposed, so he attacked his heart, began to vomit blood the next day, and died on the operating table of the Wanguo Hospital in the evening.
Therefore, Han Fuyu's arrest and Liu Xiang's death seem to be two unrelated things, but in fact, they are very closely related, and they are all related to Dai Kasa.