After the outbreak of the Songhu War of Resistance in 1933, Japanese aircraft began to bomb the city of Nanjing indiscriminately from August 15. By late November, as the Japanese army advanced, the Nationalist government in Nanjing issued a declaration on the relocation of the capital on November 22, and the army withdrew from Nanjing. Before the Japanese army captured Nanjing, government officials and wealthy citizens had fled to relatively safe places, and most of the citizens who remained in Nanjing were lower-class civilians without economic ability, who had lost the protection of the government and the army.
Under such circumstances, more than 20 Westerners who remained in Nanjing formed a non-governmental organization to rescue refugees. Rabe, who was president of the International Committee, once wrote in his diary: "Today, in the country of my host, which has been treating me well for 30 years, has encountered serious difficulties, the rich have fled, and the poor have to stay. They don't know where to go, they don't have the money to escape, aren't they in danger of being slaughtered en masse? Shouldn't we try to help them? At least save some people, what if these are our own compatriots? ”
But for the Japanese army that captured Nanjing, there was no place in Nanjing, no one was safe, and the citizens who remained in Nanjing would face the threat of death every day, and they lived in a hell on earth controlled by the Japanese army.
On December 16, 1937, Deng Ronggui, a resident of Nanjing, and his wife, Liu Mingxia, took refuge in a refugee area on Shanxi Road with their children, who were not yet a year old. Early in the morning, just as they were about to eat, a large number of Japanese troops broke in. Close the iron fence door and shout loudly, "All out!" ”
When all the refugees in the refugee area came out. A traitor cried out, "Men and women stand apart!" ”。
Deng Ronggui held his child, who was less than a year old, and did not want to be separated from his wife. But the Japanese army drove away with bayonets and wooden sticks, and he had to hand over the child to his wife Liu Mingxia and then stand on the man's side. The Japanese blocked the gate with three machine guns, then picked out twenty or thirty-year-olds from the pile of men and re-stood in line to examine them carefully. It mainly depends on whether they have a hat mark on their head and no calluses on their hands.
Deng Ronggui was 35 years old at the time, and of the hundreds of people who stood out, he was the last suspect selected by the Japanese army. He knew that this was a lot of evil and did not want to go, but the Japanese army smashed and beat him with the butt of his rifle and hurried away. An old lady knelt on the ground and pleaded with the Japanese, hoping to leave one of his three sons behind. The Japanese raised their hands and fired a shot, and the old lady was killed on the spot, and the others were suddenly too frightened to move again.
Hundreds of men, including Deng Ronggui, were then escorted away at gunpoint, leaving looking back at his wife and the child in her arms. He knew very well that if he left, the family might be separated from yin and yang from now on. When going out of the gate, Deng Ronggui suddenly turned back to call his wife, and this final shout made Liu Mingxia no longer able to control her emotions, holding the child and crying loudly, and constantly shouting her husband's name, until Deng Ronggui's figure disappeared into sight, and finally Liu Mingxia sat paralyzed on the ground.
As the men were taken away by the Japanese army, the entire security zone wept and was miserable. At this time, a traitor-like person stood up and deceived the people: "Don't cry, people are called to carry the body at the city gate, and they will come back in a few days!" ”
After the cry of the traitors, many ordinary people actually believed it to be true, and the cries and shouts were suddenly much smaller. In the evening, news came back that all those who had been escorted out were tied with ropes and machine guns killed in the pond of Dafang Lane.
After Liu Mingxia heard this news, she hated and feared in her heart, and at the same time she had a glimmer of hope, always hoping that her husband would always come back one day if she was just arrested and became a husband. But after waiting and waiting, Deng Ronggui was not able to return miraculously.
Since then, Liu Mingxia, who is only 21 years old, has lived a difficult life alone with her children under the iron hooves of the Japanese, and she lives with wild vegetables every day in tears in order to survive. In order to commemorate her husband, who did not even know where the body was after his death, Liu Mingxia later changed her surname to Deng, and since then she has lived the life of an orphan and widow under the name of Deng Mingxia. In this way, she wanted to tell others that she was born into the Deng family and died as a ghost of the Deng family, and she would never forget the crimes committed by the Japanese for the rest of her life.