On July 7, 1937, the Beiping Lugou Bridge Incident broke out, and the Chinese and Japanese armies began to fight fiercely in North China, but far away on the Beach in the south of the Jiangsu Province, the Japanese army did not launch an attack, and the Nationalist army did not send troops to station, which was still a peaceful scene on the surface, but under the calm, there was an undercurrent, and the atmosphere was very strange. A few days later, He Yingqin, minister of military affairs of the Nationalist government, who had rushed back to Nanjing from Sichuan, issued an urgent military order, and it was this order that finally made the situation in Shanghai suddenly tense.
(Minister of Military Affairs He Yingqin)
He Yingqin had previously been ordered to "reorganize" the Sichuan army in Sichuan, met with a bunch of people, and held a bunch of meetings, but the reorganization of the Sichuan army still could not be fully implemented, mainly because there were too many internal factions, and neither side was willing to disarm. On July 6, 1937, He Yingqin officially held the "Sichuan Army Reorganization Conference" in Chongqing, ordering at least 20% of the staff of the Sichuan Army to be reduced, and the reorganization was completed within one month, and at the same time deprived the Sichuan Army of its personnel and financial autonomy, which triggered strong dissatisfaction among the generals of the Sichuan Army, and quarreled on the same day.
Unexpectedly, war broke out in Beiping the next day, which also marked the beginning of the all-out War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and the vast majority of the generals of the Sichuan Army were finally able to attach importance to state affairs and take the initiative to speed up the pace of the whole army, basically stopping noisy and shouting. Seeing that the Sichuan army was no longer making a fuss, and old Jiang's urgent telegram was placed on the desk again, He Yingqin was finally able to escape and return to Nanjing as quickly as possible. At that time, the Nationalist government also had a staff headquarters, and the chief of staff was Cheng Qian, the elder of the Xiang Army, but the number two person in the army was actually He Jingzhi.
After he studied the situation in North China, He Yingqin deeply felt that it was urgent for East China to prepare for war, so he ordered the immediate transfer of 30,000 sacks to the Shanghai area.
(Chief of Staff Cheng Qian)
First, the sack is coming.
What is the use of 30,000 sacks? According to the provisions of the humiliating Songhu Armistice Agreement of 1932, the Nationalist government was not allowed to remain in the city of Shanghai with regular troops, but could only use the police and security regiments to maintain law and order, and its combat effectiveness was certainly weak. Therefore, He Yingqin directly called Yu Hongjun, the mayor of Shanghai, and asked him to plan ahead and pay close attention to building barricades and fortifications in case of an accident.
Yu Hongjun, a native of Xinhui County, Guangdong (present-day Xinhui District, Jiangmen), graduated from St. John's University in Shanghai in 1919 and was known for his high level of English proficiency and financial expertise, and gradually became Song Ziwen's right-hand man. Since 1936, Yu Hongjun has been promoted to acting mayor and mayor of Shanghai, and the vicissitudes of history have made him a responsible parent official in Shanghai when the all-out War of Resistance broke out.
After receiving He Yingqin's call, Yu Hongjun, who was only 39 years old, did not dare to be idle, and immediately arranged for the security corps and the police corps to fill sandbags.
(Yu Hongjun)
Because Shanghai is a metropolis, there is no mountain to rely on, so the simplest and most convenient way to fight in the streets is to build barricades with sandbags. Therefore, the 30,000 sacks transported to Shanghai were quickly loaded with sand by the military and police of the Security Corps and the Police Corps, temporarily hidden in buildings near various intersections of the streets, and as soon as there was a hint of wind and grass, they were immediately moved out to build combat fortifications.
Yu Hongjun was very sad, not long ago to the suburbs to ride a horse to watch the flowers, accidentally fell off the horse and caused a fracture of the left arm, to say that a scholar-type official has nothing to ride any horse, in short, every day the pain is grinning. However, Mayor Yu's head melon seed was not broken at all, and while ordering his subordinates to grasp the sandbags, he called He Yingqin back: As far as this little person under my hands is concerned, it really doesn't work to fight, so send reinforcements quickly!
Indeed, there are only a few thousand people in the shanghai metropolitan area, including the Police Corps and the Security Corps (two regiments), and what is even worse is the irregular army with insufficient military training and basic combat experience.
(Police during the Republic of China)
He Yingqin, of course, was well aware of the combat effectiveness of the security regiment and the police, so he presented himself to Old Chiang Kai-shek and received the following instructions: First, from now on, the equipment and ammunition of the Shanghai Police Corps and the Security Corps should be directly allocated by the Ministry of Military Affairs, which is to improve the treatment; second, immediately mobilize some regular troops, disguise themselves as security regiments, and secretly infiltrate Shanghai to deploy defenses. To say that the Nanjing government is also instigated enough, it must be sneaky to send some troops to its own territory.
He Yingqin returned to his office and thought about the map, and decided to use the independent 20th Brigade in Suzhou to immediately go to the Songhu area to seize the opportunity. Don't be fooled by the name of "Independent Brigade", this unit is actually very special and very forked, everyone remembers Wang Yaowu's starting force to supplement the 1st Brigade, right? In fact, there is a supplementary 2nd brigade, both of which are
In order to organize and train a new type of infantry division, an experimental unit was formed based on the soldiers of the "Baoding Army Formation and Training Office."
The purpose of the Military and Political Department's training of the new infantry division was to prepare for war against Japan, so although it was nominally the name of the "supplementary brigade," it was only for the sake of secrecy, but it was actually a real division-level field unit.
(Armed police during the Republic of China period)
Second, the troops are coming.
The commander of the supplementary 2nd Brigade was Zhong Song, a student of the Huangpu Ii, and yes, it was the commander of the reorganized 36th Division who was completely annihilated by Peng Laozong in the Battle of Shajiadian during the Liberation War, and as early as July 1945, Zhong Song had been promoted to commander of the 36th Army, indicating that the performance during the War of Resistance Was still good. In October 1934, the 2nd Brigade was renamed the Independent Brigade of the 2nd Division, which was actually a cover-up.
History buffs know the so-called "German Mechanic", the standard title should be "Adjuster", of which the first batch of 10 divisions were adjusted and installed.
And on the list of these 10 adjustment divisions, you count and count the teaching corps and there are only 9 division numbers, in fact, the last one is Zhong Song's independent brigade.
Therefore, it should be understood that the Zhong Song Brigade is actually a well-equipped "adjustment division" model.
The brigade has three infantry regiments, anti-aircraft artillery battalions, artillery battalions, engineer battalions, communication battalions, heavy battalions, as well as special service companies, combat defense artillery companies, cavalry companies, howitzers, and health companies, and the strength of the whole brigade has exceeded 10,000 people.
In early 1937, Zhong Song led the Independent Brigade of the 2nd Division from Henan to Suzhou, a step away from Shanghai, and the name was changed again to the Independent 20th Brigade, that is, directly under the administration of the Ministry of Military Affairs.
(Zhong Song)
Therefore, when He Yingqin decided to send troops to Shanghai, the first thing that came to mind was the independent 20th Brigade, and this clock Zhong Song was being trained in the Lushan Officer Training Corps, so He Yingqin urgently summoned the deputy brigade commander Yang Wenxuan (have you seen any lurking?). Familiar with it), after some face-to-face instructions, the Independent 20th Brigade immediately took action, and by the end of July, the entire line was completed.
Yang Wenyu's specific deployment was: The brigade's 658th Regiment (regimental commander Li Zhong) pretended to be the "13th Regiment of the Gendarmerie" and went out to Songjiang, while the 659th Regiment (regimental commander He Fan) pretended to be the "3rd Regiment of the Shanghai Security Corps" and directly stationed at the Songhu Garrison Headquarters and Hongqiao Airport. Of course, in order to avoid unnecessary friction, the 659th Regiment entered Shanghai in the uniform of the Security Regiment.
Major General Zhong Song, who hurried back, led the brigade headquarters of the 20th Brigade and another regiment still stationed in Suzhou, ready to enter the battlefield at any time.
Leading sacks, filling sandbags, and entering the troops, this series of operations inevitably had some movements, and the Japanese nose was more than the dog Turin, and soon smelled some unusual smells, so the commander of the Special Marine Corps in Shanghai of the Japanese Navy, Okawa, was a bit on fire. The Japanese chieftain Ōkawa Uchihachi had only about 4,000 men under him, and he had not received orders from Tokyo to start a campaign in Shanghai, so he had an instinctive fear of the Chinese side's preparations and reinforcements: What if he was driven into the Huangpu River to feed Wang Ba?
After all, war has already begun in North China, and the strength of the Japanese Navy is not enough in Shanghai, and it is understandable that the devils are a little nervous.
(Yang Wenyu)
3. Japanese reconnaissance.
Dachuan's eyes widened and he decided to send people to explore the truth, so he sent several groups of "reconnaissancers" disguised as civilians and sent them to various parts of Shanghai for reconnaissance. One of the squad leaders, with a cobia, touched a building on Zhongxing Road, which was the station of the heavy machine gun squadron of the 2nd Brigade of the 2nd Regiment of the Security Regiment, and the two devils were surprised to find that the courtyard not only stored a large number of stuffed sandbags, but also several heavy machine guns, and the gate was heavily guarded.
So the two devils took out a small book, planning to write down the house number and draw a sketch by the way, but they had already been targeted by the bright and dark sentry of the security regiment, and suddenly rushed out of a group of people, pulled their hair and armed them to get the two goods in. Squadron Leader Yang Jun heard that two spies had been caught and personally came to interrogate him, and he found such a record in the small book he found:
Here is the Shanghai Security Corps heavy machine gun unit stationed, it is estimated that there are more than ten heavy machine guns, the team of about 200 people.
Yang Jun was shocked when he saw it, how come the spies are so rampant now? So I asked who sent the two people, and it turned out that the two goods were not saying a word (the Chinese language must be unfavorable, and the mouth had to be exposed), so angry that the security guards punched and kicked, and the two devils still gritted their teeth and did not say a word.
(Japanese Marine)
Yang Jun was happy: Oh, still quite carrying a beating? He was already a little suspicious that he was Japanese, so he gave the order to the brethren: pick up your shoes and take off your socks! During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, this method was tried and tested many times, and the brothers ripped off the two spies' shoes and socks with seven hands and eight feet, and sure enough, they found that the big toes and the second toes were very separated, and Yang Squadron asked with a bad smile: Japanese? Naru continued the trial, so he ordered him to be detained and reported to him by shaking his phone.
Weak countries have no diplomacy, and it is reasonable to catch spies and kill them directly, but Yang Hu, commander of the Songhu garrison, hesitated again and again, deeply feeling that these two goods are indeed hot potatoes, after all, They are Japanese soldiers, whether they are killed or not, they may give the Japanese the excuse of provoking war, and after communicating with Mayor Yu, they finally ordered Yang Jun to release people. When the blue-nosed and swollen squad leader and cobia returned, they were beaten with a big ear scraper on the grounds that it was too wasteful, but the situation they detected was reported step by step.
While protesting to the Shanghai municipal government, Rear Admiral Oikawa informed the Japanese Consulate in Shanghai of the situation, and the military attaché of the Navy in China, Honda Fu, immediately telephoned the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Nationalist Government: Your side is secretly engaged in combat fortifications and violates the "Songhu Armistice Agreement.", and our side protests!
(Yang Hu)
3. The first confrontation.
In view of the fact that chiang kai-shek's "Lushan speech" has already been published, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Nanjing is much tougher than before, and the Japanese on the phone are not polite: You have flipped through the "Songhu Armistice Agreement", which article stipulates that the Chinese side is not allowed to build fortifications in downtown Shanghai? Honda closed his eyes and recalled, as if there really wasn't, so he began to sprinkle: You secretly transport sandbags, very provocative? The other side is still stiff: even if our side builds fortifications, it is still on China's own territory, who is it provoking?
Honda was choked up and couldn't answer, so he had to throw down a sentence in a hurry: You are responsible for your actions! After dropping the phone, he immediately sent a special envoy to the Shanghai Security Corps Headquarters to negotiate and protest. After this naval minor named Okino Yoshio rode to the headquarters of the regiment, Cowhide coaxed and asked to see the commander-in-chief Yoshiaki, in the eyes of this guy, the leader of a local security regiment, frightened a few words must have to wet his pants.
Shao Zuo thought wrongly, this Ji regiment leader was a huangpu second-term graduate of the Eight Classics of Zheng'er, or an important backbone of the "Revival Society", the waist pole was so hard that it was a mess, the Shanghai Security Corps was in a special situation, and ordinary people could not be the commander-in-chief.
As early as the day after the outbreak of the Lugou Bridge Incident, Ji Zhangjian, out of the sensitivity of a professional soldier, had already made a rough judgment of the situation, and immediately issued four orders to the Security Corps:
1. All officers in Shanghai immediately left Shanghai and returned to their places of origin for safety.
2. All security team members shall not leave the station without permission and respond to emergencies at any time.
3. All regiments and brigades have stepped up the organization of live-fire training, especially for street warfare.
(4) All officers must write a will and be prepared to die at any time.
Such a Huangpu officer can be imagined in his attitude toward the Japanese, so after Okino Yinan danced zaza to protest, Ji Jianzhang did not pay much attention to him, and hummed a few words to send a guest. Who knew that this devilish young man would not leave, and after the protest, he suddenly put forward a request: Commander Ji, we want to visit your fortifications, and Ji Zhangjian listened to Yilin and was amused by the shamelessness of the Japanese:
If I were to visit your Marine Fortifications, would you agree? You and I are both soldiers, "You know"!
(Adjust division soldiers)
In this way, the diplomatic attaché Honda Fu and the envoy Okino Yoshio both touched a nose of ash, and the Japanese Consul General in Shanghai, OkaMotoki, decided to go out personally, and according to the principle of reciprocity, this old devil directly went to Yu Hongjun, the mayor of Shanghai. Okamoto repeatedly asked Mayor Yu the following question: Why did the Shanghai Security Corps and the police build fortifications, were they aimed at the Japanese army? Yu Hongjun was soft and hard: The armistice agreement of that year did not restrict this, and if your country were to build fortifications in Tokyo, we would not ask about it.
Okamoto
: Note that Shanghai is not Tokyo!
Yu Hongjun
This is not Manchuria, which you have occupied for six years!
Unpleasant things have already happened in North China, and your attitude will affect the situation and atmosphere in Shanghai.
: Is the atmosphere in Shanghai something I can influence? Didn't the Consul General find that the atmosphere in all of China had been influenced by you?
(Chinese soldiers and concession soldiers)
Okamoto was speechless, and suddenly asked: Why did you send regular troops to Shanghai?
: Catch the wind and catch the shadow, there is no such thing!
: We got the exact message.
: How did the news come about?
Okamoto almost slipped his lips, just about to say that it was the intelligence obtained by our spies, but he stubbornly held back the words and replaced them with another diplomatic rhetoric: You have no right to know this.
: Well, I can only tell you that your sources are unreliable. In addition, it is reported that your Marines have crossed the Hongkou Bazi Bridge Armistice Line demarcated in 1932 many times, and you go back to them and ask them not to cross the line again!
(Japanese Marine Corps)
Okamoto returned to the consulate depressed, and the more he thought about it, the more he wanted to get angry, so he called Honda Fusuke to the Japanese Marine Corps Headquarters building in Hongkou to discuss countermeasures with Nanaji Okawauchi and others. Japanese spies and bribed traitors were pervasive at that time, so the Japanese were basically sure that near Hongqiao Airport, there was at least one regiment of regular Chinese troops secretly stationed, and if they wanted to take the initiative in negotiations and protests, they must get relevant evidence.
After half a day of whining and shouting, Major General Oikawa finally decided to send "powerful personnel" to directly conduct a close reconnaissance of Hongqiao Airport in order to obtain the "evidence" of the Chinese army's violation of the armistice agreement. The two ghosts sent out were Lieutenant Ōyama Andao and First Class Soldier Saito to hide, driving a military sidecar motorcycle and heading straight to Hongqiao Airport, and Oikawa also specially ordered Lieutenant Oyama to bring a camera, otherwise there would be no picture and no truth.
The exact time of the departure of these two devils was 5 p.m. on August 9, 1937, and the sky in Shanghai was actually still bright.
4. The Hongqiao Incident.
Hongqiao Airport is of course a military powerhouse, so the two devils, Oyama and Saito, initially just walked around the airport and took a bunch of photos blindly, but this certainly could not be a bad, so they drove a motorcycle straight to the airport gate. In the eyes of these two devils, they were wearing the uniforms of the Japanese Marine Army, and the Chinese security regiment certainly did not dare to do anything with them, so after arriving at the airport gate, instead of stopping for inspection, they accelerated the accelerator with one foot and were about to break in.
As mentioned earlier, it was not a security regiment stationed at Hongqiao Airport at this time, but the officers and men of the Central Army of the 659th Regiment of the Independent 20th Brigade, as the first batch of adjustment divisions, which had been strictly trained by German advisers, and their reaction and marksmanship were not bad. Seeing that the two Japanese soldiers were about to rush the card, the guards at the gate did not hesitate to pull the trigger, and a shot would hide Saito's head, in fact, the guards still had some consideration in just a few seconds, that is, to hit the Japanese soldiers driving the motorcycle first.
It means to leave some room for the officers to get out of the car for inspection, and as a result, Oyama is already frightened, only shouting "We are the Japanese Navy", and then getting out of the car and turning around and running, where can I run? This was followed by another gunshot, and the Japanese lieutenant was killed on the spot.
(Soldiers of the Security Regiment)
The soldiers of the Central Army were indeed very fierce and painful, but things were big, after all, they killed Japanese soldiers, which is the famous "Hongqiao Airport Incident". After the incident, Yang Hu sent Zhu Xia, chief of staff of the Songhu Police Headquarters, and others to the scene for inspection at the first time. After Zhu Xia verified the identity of the deceased, while ordering the units of the 20th Independent Brigade to protect the scene, he urgently reported to the leaders of the three competent units: Yang Hu, commander of the Songhu garrison stationed in Longhua, Yu Hongjun, mayor of Shanghai, and Zhang Zhizhong, commander of the Beijing-Shanghai garrison in Suzhou.
When the Lugou Bridge Incident broke out, Zhang Zhizhong was recuperating in Qingdao, and after receiving the emergency telegram from Nanjing, he quickly returned to his post, and immediately ordered Sun Yuanliang's 88th Division and Song Xilian's 36th Division to return from Shaanxi to defend, these two divisions were transferred to the northwest after the Xi'an Incident, and now we understand why He Yingqin chose the independent 20th Brigade to take the lead in going to Shanghai.
Previously, Zhang Zhizhong, who had led the army in the "Songhu War of Resistance," strongly advocated that once a sino-Japanese all-out war broke out, it was necessary to "preemptively attack" in the direction of Shanghai and sweep away the Japanese Marine Corps. Old Jiang has always hesitated, and the unexpected outbreak of the "Hongqiao Incident" has made the situation in Shanghai suddenly tense, and there is a great possibility that the mountain rain will come and the wind will fill the building.
The strong reaction of the Japanese made Zhang Zhizhong clear, and the old Chiang also understood that war in East China was inevitable.
(Zhang Zhizhong, Commander of the Beijing-Shanghai Garrison)
Fifth, the mountain rain is coming.
On the Shanghai side, the Songhu Police Command first notified the ministries to be on guard against Japan, and then formally informed the Japanese Consulate in Shanghai.
Have Japanese Navy personnel gone out to China without authorization?"
？ The other party said no. Okamoto and Honda initially thought that the Chinese side was investigating the "cross-border behavior" warned by Yu Hongjun, so their heads shook like rattles, and the people at the security headquarters said that they would investigate again?
After more than half an hour, the Attitude of the Japanese side changed drastically, thinking that they knew about the "disappearance" of the two devils, and Honda Fu led people to Longhua, saying that there was a lieutenant named Ōyama On their side who was "plain alcoholic and did not return all night." Tong Yuanliang, chief of staff of the Security Command, said that this boy was in trouble, and there was a clash with our security team at the Hongqiao Airport without permission, but now that it is dark, tomorrow morning we will jointly send personnel to the scene to investigate and solve the problem.
Chief of Staff Tong was a strategy to delay the army, because Yang Hu, Yu Hongjun and others were urgently discussing countermeasures, and Mayor Yu knew very well that this was the same as the "Nakamura Incident" before the 918 Incident, even if the Japanese had trespassed on the military forbidden area and lost money first, once they killed people, the Japanese would still not give up.
(Japanese Army)
In the end, the method discussed was to propose a death row prisoner from the prison and then put on the clothes of the security team and put it on the scene, which means that the two men not only trespassed into the forbidden land, but also killed Chinese soldiers, so the security team was forced to fight back in self-defense. In fact, it is not very useful, how can the Japanese really be reasonable? Sure enough, the next morning, Honda and the others saw the corpse and shouted on the spot: "Do you dare to attack the Imperial Navy soldiers"?
While the Japanese Consulate General in Shanghai urgently reported to Tokyo, it sent people to negotiate with Yu Hongjun and put forward a large number of harsh conditions in writing, including what "retreating fortifications and troops from various streets" Yunyun, which Mayor Yu categorically refused, and the Japanese side immediately intimidated by force, and the situation in Shanghai suddenly escalated. After receiving the report, Chiang Kai-shek in Nanjing also judged that a Sino-Japanese war in Shanghai was inevitable, and two days later ordered people to sweep up the operational plan of the Japanese Marine Corps stationed in Shanghai and secretly deliver it to the Songhu Garrison Headquarters.
On August 11, 1937, Zhang Zhizhong also received a call from Lao Jiang in Suzhou: "Drive the Japanese troops from Shanghai down the Huangpu River!"! That is to say, after the unexpected outbreak of the "Hongqiao Incident", the Nanjing side finally made up its mind to "preemptively attack" the battle.
6. The Battle Breaks Out.
General Zhang Zhizhong, commander of the Beijing-Shanghai garrison, immediately mobilized Wang Jingjiu's 87th Division, Sun Yuanliang's 88th Division, and Zhong Song's Independent 20th Brigade, which had already returned, and other elite German weapons, and rushed to Shanghai. According to the unified deployment, the 87th Division needed to drive by train, while the 88th Division's vanguard brigade took the lead in entering downtown Shanghai in more than 300 military trucks.
In the early morning of August 12, 1937, the citizens of Shanghai woke up and suddenly found that the streets were full of Nationalist soldiers in grass-green uniforms, and they were overjoyed, they had not seen the regular Chinese army for nearly six years. During this period, in accordance with the latest order from the Nanjing side, the front-line troops were uniformly organized into the 9th Group Army, with Zhang Zhizhong as the commander-in-chief.
The scheduled attack on the Japanese Marines was due to be on the evening of August 12, but Zhang Zhizhong considered that most of the troops were not fully seated and decided to postpone it by one day. At about 3 p.m. on August 13, the vanguard battalion of the 88th Division was ordered to search and advance in the direction of Hongkou, and when it reached the bazi bridge of the armistice dividing line, it suddenly encountered the Ito Brigade of the Japanese Marine Corps that was trying to stretch forward.
Yi Jin, the commander of the Major Battalion of the Pioneer Battalion, immediately gave the order to open fire, and the gunshots were instantaneously loud, and the "August 13 Incident" that shocked China and foreign countries broke out!