In the northeast of Jiangxi, east of Zhejiang, west of Anhui, south of Fujian, known as "eight provinces through the Qu", "Yuzhang first gateway" of the title of Shangrao, the geographical location is very important, since ancient times it has been known for "mountain lush and rare", "superior rich" and famous. The Xinjiang River, which runs through the city, is a beautiful landscape of the city. There is no hustle and bustle of the big city, there is a kind of harmony and tranquility of the street appearance, pedestrians, vehicles and no more.
About ten miles southeast of Shangrao City, there are several villages with different distribution directions, the former villages were called Maojialing, Li Village, Zhoutian Village, Shidi, Qifengyan, etc. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in the last century, the Kuomintang diehards forcibly relocated the villagers here, forcibly occupied the houses, and set up a prison for the officers of the New Fourth Army here.
Shangrao concentration camp site, now here has been opened as a red tourist attraction, every day there are a large number of tourists at home and abroad to visit, the size of the old site of the cell is basically the use of the year's houses, ancestral halls and temples built, the prison interrogation room is hung with a variety of torture equipment, interrogation is torture, the existing old site of the overall environment basically maintained the style of the countryside, and the building itself, whether it is architectural form or craft characteristics, have retained the original style, especially the base camp of the concentration camp Zhoutian Natural Village, It also preserves the historical style of the small villages in Jiangnan in a relatively complete way, which can be said to be a microcosm of the history of that year.
Panorama of Shangrao concentration camp
At the beginning of 1941 during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, more than 9,000 troops directly under the Headquarters of the New Fourth Army in southern Anhui province began to move north under the leadership of Ye Ting and Xiang Ying, and when the troops reached the Maolin area of Jing County, southern Anhui Province, they were suddenly attacked by about 80,000 people from 7 divisions of the Kuomintang diehards. In the case of great disparity, the New Fourth Army fought bravely, fought fiercely with the enemy for 7 days and nights, and was finally forced to break through due to the lack of ammunition and food. In the breakout, most of them died heroically, a few were captured, and only more than 2,000 people rushed out. The commander Ye Ting was captured, and the deputy commander Xiang Ying was killed after the breakthrough. This is the southern Anhui incident that shocked China and foreign countries.
Subsequently, these cadres of the New Fourth Army were detained in batches in these villages, and stipulated that all officers and men of the New Fourth Army would be changed into Kuomintang uniforms and wearing "updated" armbands on their clothes. In order to tightly control the concentration camp, the Kuomintang military and police xian specially designated 30 miles around the village where the prison was located as a forbidden area and 60 miles as a defensive area. Notices were also posted everywhere to strictly prevent the escape of the imprisoned "prisoners" and not to allow the common people to hide the "prisoners.", and if they found that there were those who hid and did not report them, they would be guilty of the same crime as the "prisoners."
In order to prevent prisoners from escaping from prison in the dark by taking advantage of the geographical environment, the village where the prison is located has been set up with barbed wire, and the surrounding trees have been cut down, and there are sentries everywhere, patrolling day and night. On the one hand, the so-called "political reform" brainwashing hopes that they will completely break away from the New Fourth Army, and that severe punishment will be imposed on those who are unwilling to be reformed, and many officers and men will be subjected to inhuman torture. Captured cadres of the New Fourth Army and patriotic democrats of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression were subjected to political deception, mental destruction, and physical heavy punishment and carnage in prison. As a result of the fascist atrocities in the concentration camps, many officers and men of the New Fourth Army died heroically in prison.
Although the imprisoned soldiers of the New Fourth Army were treated with extreme cruelty in prison, their revolutionary will has never diminished. In order to resist the cruel persecution of the enemy, they set up a secret organization, believing that they could not sit still and could not hope for the benevolence of the diehards, and collectively created brilliant poems such as "Snowflakes in January" and "Rebuilding Good Rivers and Mountains", which showed the firm confidence, tenacious will and awe-inspiring righteousness of the soldiers of the New Fourth Army in fighting the enemy to the end.
At the same time, through all kinds of information that can be obtained, we can find out the situation in the prisons in the concentration camps and carry out targeted prison struggles. It was decided to carry out prison escape operations in various ways, including for tat, using violence to combat the persecution of vicious agents, and also set up a riot committee to seize favorable opportunities to carry out riot escapes, and organized two successful prison escapes.
The first was the Maojialing Rebellion, in May 1942, the Japanese army attacked Zhejiang Ganlu, from Xiaoshan and Zhuji in Zhejiang to Jinhua and Quzhou, Shangrao was tight, and the concentration camp was ready to evacuate. At this time, the officers and men of the New Fourth Army, who were imprisoned in Maojialing Prison, decided to organize a riot, and on the evening of this day, one person pretended to be convenient to come to the gate, and the other person also arrived at the gate on the pretext of fetching water to take a bath. At this time, I saw that the person in charge of the command waved the towel, the door was closed, and they all started to move together. The situation is extremely tense, it is a struggle between life and death. In an instant, the comrade in charge of handing over the gun twisted with the guards. Finally, the guns of the second guard post were surrendered, and the rest of the personnel rushed into the guard room in groups to collect their guns. When a group rushed to the First Guard room to grab a gun, one of the guards tried to resist in vain, but when they saw the rioters with grenades entering, they were frightened and sneaked into the kitchen, and the First Guard room was solved.
The other group rushed into the second guard room, two guards stood in front of the bed, the gun on the side of the bed, at first sight, busy preparing to get the gun, at this time the soldier who had preemptively got the gun showed his bayonet: "Don't move!" Whoever moves will stab to death. The two guards were trembling and begging for forgiveness: "Look how good I usually treat you..." Then he grabbed the machine gun, and in less than three minutes, he solved the guard inside the gate. They immediately opened the side door nailed with nails, pulled out of the line, and ran over the wall in a southeasterly direction.
Unexpectedly, the first guard outside the gate discovered the situation, they used their rifles to shoot at the rioters, and the escaped grenades returned, killing the guard squad leader, but he was also shot by the enemy and could not run. In the Maojialing prison escape riot, nearly 20 soldiers of the New Fourth Army, after experiencing countless hardships, traveled from Longquan, Ningbo, Shanghai, Wuxi and other places in Zhejiang Province to finally return to the Maoshan base area of the New Fourth Army in southern Jiangsu.
The second was the Chishi Rebellion, 20 days after the success of the Maojialing Rebellion, they seized the favorable opportunity on the way to the concentration camp transfer, held a collective riot of the whole team, and found on the way to the camp under the Mei Town separated by a Chongyang Creek River, across the river is the Wuyi Mountains, the peaks are continuous, the forest is dense, the terrain is very favorable for the riot. Coupled with the fact that it is almost dusk, the time is also favorable. Several comrades who led the rebellion took advantage of the fact that they were waiting by the river to cross, quickly exchanged views, and decided to act as soon as they crossed the river.
At this time, one of the people leading the riot pretended to urinate, stood up and left the team to send a signal, he sang the introduction of the "Dawn Song" in a low and excited voice: "La, la, la..." Hearing the signal of the riot preparations, everyone tacitly tightened their heartstrings, quietly made final preparations, changed into new straw shoes, cleaned up the backpack, and swept away the fatigue of many days, waiting for that sacred moment.
When the time came, the leader waved his hand and shouted: "Comrades, rush! Suddenly, like a landslide, more than 100 comrades unfolded a large fan, some fighting with agents and gendarmes, and some rushing towards the opposite mountain peak. This sudden action stunned the agents and gendarmes who were on escort duty. By the time they came back, many comrades had waded through the paddy fields, jumped over the ditches, and entered the hilly area, and the captain of the special agent gave the order to shoot at the rioting crowd, bullets flew randomly, and a few comrades fell, but after most of the rioting crowd entered the deep mountains and old forests, the gunfire gradually faded.
As night fell, everyone gathered from all directions to the top of the hill. "Gollum, gollum, gollum!" "Gollum, gollum, gollum!" Everyone echoed the signal of contact with each other, pulling vines and climbing, and running to the meeting point. When they reached the top of the mountain, everyone embraced warmly, waved their hands and shouted: "We have won!" Counting the number of people, a total of more than 40 people arrived at the Qingzhu Pit in the middle of the Wuyi Mountain, and finally found the Fujian-Zhejiang-Gansu-Bian Special Committee. After that, under the leadership of the Special Committee, an anti-Japanese guerrilla group was formed with the former Red Army guerrilla group that persisted in the local struggle, and later dispersed and transferred, reaching the anti-Japanese front line in southern Jiangsu, northern Jiangsu, and southern Anhui, and returning to the embrace of the New Fourth Army.
Most of the officers and men of the New Fourth Army have firm organizational beliefs, build secret organizations in concentration camps, oppose the Kuomintang, organize struggles against the enemy, and even organize riots in prison. Among them, major general Chen Maohui, who was once an adviser to the political department of the Nanjing Military Region, who was awarded the rank of major general after the founding of the People's Republic of China; Li Sheng, who was the president of the military court of the Fuzhou Military Region, commander of the Ganzhou Military Sub-district, political commissar of the Longyan Military Sub-district of Fujian Province, and political commissar of the Shangrao Military Sub-district; Wang Haisu, who was once vice governor of Jiangsu Province; and Chen Niandi, a founding colonel who served as minister of health of the General Logistics Department, and dozens of others, all later became the pillars of new China.