In the 1990s, during the reform and opening up, the poor in Tengchong County, Yunnan Province, were informed that Mitsubishi, a Japanese military company in the top 500, would spend a huge amount of money to build an automobile production line in Tengchong.
Moreover, the four statues in tengchong memorial park were to be demolished, and after learning about this matter, no one agreed at all. Why would the Tengchong people refuse? It starts with a highway.
After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan, the Nationalist government decided to build a road to the Indian Ocean in Yunnan, the Burma Road, in order to ensure the smooth supply of transportation between China and the outside world. Because the national government had no additional funds and manpower to build the railway, the Yunnan provincial government spontaneously raised funds to mobilize residents along the highway to participate in the construction. Thanks to everyone's efforts, it was expected to take a year to complete, but it took only nine months to complete.
After the completion of the Burma Highway, China received more aid and materials, and the War of Resistance Against Japan also entered a stalemate. Japan sent a large number of troops to attack Vietnam, and soon defeated the French army in Vietnam and occupied Vietnam, approaching the Burma Road. The situation was so critical that in order to maintain the only international route, the Nationalist government set up the Chinese Expeditionary Force, hoping to cooperate with the British troops stationed in Burma to ensure the Burma Road.
Who knows, under the fierce attack of the Japanese army, the British army did not have any enthusiasm for combat, resulting in heavy casualties of the Chinese Expeditionary Force. The defeat of the expeditionary force gave the Japanese a chance, they struggled to catch up and fight, did not give them a chance to rest, the expeditionary force withdrew to Yunnan, temporarily abandoned Tengchong, but they blew up the Huitong Bridge. At this time the Japanese failed, and we stopped the Japanese on the bank of the Nu River.
After the occupation of Tengchong, in order to vent their anger, the Japanese army killed many people and organized bacterial experiments to make Tengchong a dangerous place. After the incident, the Japanese army established various strong defensive units under the ground and on the mountains of Tengchong, and even their men were in the alleys.
Because the Japanese knew very well that as long as they occupied this place, the aid would not reach China. However, after the disastrous defeat of the expeditionary force, it was difficult to rally the army to fight back effectively, and at that time, China did not have any surplus troops to open the Burma Road again.
In 1944, the Chinese counterattack began, and on May 11, the assembled 20th Army forcibly crossed the Nu River and was about to fight the Japanese. However, the Japanese had been in Tengchong for two years, and in those two years they had become stronger, resulting in the failure of every attack of the group army.
Many of the soldiers of the expeditionary force were not natives of Yunnan. After the rainy season, they were unable to adapt to the climatic conditions and their combat effectiveness became worse, so many soldiers were wounded and did not receive timely treatment, so they died heroically.
Despite the terrible situation, the soldiers of the expeditionary force fought very bravely, and many of them were defeated for the first time. Two years later, they really wanted to catch Tengchong.
Thus, every soldier of the expeditionary force charged in the attack. More than 20 days later, after a heroic battle, the expeditionary force quickly cleared the Japanese troops outside Tengchong City and surrounded Tengchong County, but the Japanese troops stationed in Tengchong were still unwilling to surrender. They still fought back tenaciously.
The fighting outside the city was fierce, and when the Tengchong people heard that the Chinese soldiers were fighting the Japanese, they were very happy. Some young people wanted to go out of the city to fight the expeditionary force, but it was difficult to get out of the city through the Japanese troops at all levels, so these people came up with a solution.
They gathered some like-minded people in the city and opened anti-Japanese training classes. At the beginning of the war, they tried to destroy the supplies of the Japanese army, although they could not defeat the Japanese army in a short time, but they caused great trouble for the Japanese army throughout the Tengchong Campaign.
In August 1944, the Chinese Expeditionary Force finally opened a hole and entered Tengchong County, followed by a fierce war between the two armies. Finally, after 42 days of hard fighting, the Chinese Expeditionary Force won the war and occupied Tengchong County, the first county of the Nationalist government to be guarded by japanese troops.
As a result of this tragic war, many soldiers of the expeditionary force were killed and could not be identified, and the remains of many could not be returned to their homes. Faced with this situation, some people proposed to build a martyrs' cemetery to bury the remains, the Tengchong people and the soldiers of the Expeditionary Force agreed, and the commander of the 20th Army, Huo Caizhang, reported to the Nationalist government and was quickly approved.
The main reason they were willing to bury these Japanese invaders was that the weather in Yunnan was hot, and if the bodies were exposed in the wilderness, they could contaminate water sources and cause plague.
At the same time, the Tengchong military and civilians also decided to bury these Japanese invaders out of revolutionary humanitarian considerations. But what the Japanese did afterwards was very sad, they wanted us to destroy the statue and return the remains of Japanese soldiers to them.
summary:
In this regard, the Chinese government said that there are three conditions for demolishing the Yasukuni Shrine; it will openly admit the invasion of China and apologize to China; and it will also apologize to the 9,158 martyrs in the Tengchong Martyrs' Cemetery. But Japan has never accomplished these three things, and these four statues have knelt in front of the martyrs in the cemetery for 76 years, and have not healed the pain in the hearts of Chinese people.