After the July 7 Incident, enthusiastic men and children from all over the country joined the army one after another to defend their families and defend the country, spilling their own blood on the front line of the War of Resistance. But there was a man who had pulled up a team in Japan and fought a fierce battle against Japanese imperialism, which caused a sensation in the whole world at that time.
Geng was born in 1915 in Xiangyang County, Henan Province, to a shuxiangmendi father who was the chief of the police, and later resigned to start a business. When Geng Zhen was 11 years old, his family encountered robbers, the shop was burned down, and the family fell into poverty, but Geng Zhen still finished four years of private school and had a certain culture. The family road is backward, and Geng Zhen set up an old book stall to subsidize the family by selling books. In 1932, Geng Zhen enlisted in the 15th Army of the National Revolutionary Army, from a soldier to a squad leader, a platoon leader, and a company commander.
After the outbreak of the All-out War of Resistance, Chinese soldiers rose up to resist the invaders, and Geng Zhen participated in the Battle of Xinkou and the Battle of Zhongtiao Mountain with a large army. In 1944, the situation of the international anti-fascist war took a major turn, whether it was the European battlefield or the Pacific theater, the fascist national armies were gradually retreating. The Chinese Expeditionary Force's counterattack in Burma was also overwhelming, and the Japanese army was beaten to pieces and fled in all directions.
In Chinese mainland,
The Japanese army was divided into several pieces, and could not form a complete strategic body, the main force of the Japanese army was trapped in China and could not extricate itself, in order to open up the Chinese mainland line of communication, and contact the Nanyang Japanese army that was cut off from sea communication, formulated the so-called "No. 1 Battle Plan" (the Chinese army called it the "Battle of Yuxianggui"), preparing to launch an all-out attack on the Chinese army in Henan, Hunan, Guangxi and other places.
The first phase of the Battle of Yuxianggui took place in Henan, in April 1944, when the Japanese army was in Northern China
Front
Commander Ninji Okamura commanded the 12th
Army
A total of 5 divisions and 3 brigades, 1 flying regiment (168 aircraft), 1st Army and 1 unit directly under the Front Army, a total of more than 148,000 people, in the 11th,
13th Army
With the cooperation of each unit, wanting to annihilate the main force of the Chinese First Theater in Henan, the Kuomintang army ordered the commander of the Chinese First Theater to resist the japanese attack
Jiang Dingwen
Commanded 8 army groups and 1 corps with a total of about 400,000 people in 17 corps, and blocked the Japanese army with the support of the Eighth Theater of Operations and the air force (156 aircraft).
In this campaign, the Chinese army had an absolute superiority in terms of troop strength, and due to the assistance of the United States, the weapons and equipment were also greatly replaced. However, due to the corruption of the upper echelons of the Kuomintang and the mistake of command, it caused serious defeats. In this campaign, Geng Zhen served as the commander of the 2nd Battalion and 5th Company of the 191st Regiment of the 64th Division of the 15th Army, and the 15th Army was the main force defending Luoyang at that time, but the battle lasted less than a day, Luoyang was lost, Geng Zhen was hit in the abdomen by a Japanese stray bullet while commanding the troops, and then he passed out and woke up and was already lying in the prisoner of war camp.
After being captured, Geng Was first imprisoned in the Luoyang Xigong Prisoner of War Camp and later sent to the Qinghuayuan Prisoner of War Camp in Beijing. On July 28, 1944, the Japanese army escorted Geng Zhen and more than 300 other prisoners of war to the coast of Qingdao, threw them on the ship Shinano Maru to Japan, and also escorted to this steamship were captured officers and men of the Eighth Route Army, suspects of the Eighth Route Army, captured soldiers of the Kuomintang, progressive youth, students, peasants and other groups.
In August 1944, Geng And thousands of Chinese were escorted
Japan
Akita Prefecture
Hanaoka-cho did hard labor for the Kashima Group, a Japanese company, but they were not the first Chinese laborers to be escorted to Japan for hard labor. After the outbreak of the Pacific Theater, the Japanese army lost a lot of troops, in order to make up for the shortage of young and middle-aged labor at home, the Japanese began to capture prisoners of war from the occupying power to their own country to do coolies, from March 1943 to August 1945, the Japanese army successively sent 41,000 Chinese laborers to Japan as coolies, on the way because of disease, hunger and persecution, 2823 people died, Geng Zhen and his comrades-in-arms were also escorted to Japan.
After Geng Zhen and his comrades-in-arms were escorted to Japan by the Japanese army, they found that the Japanese government and enterprises did not regard Chinese laborers as people at all, and the prisoners of war laborers lived in simple houses made of temporary wooden planks, with no windows, ventilation on all sides, sweltering heat in summer and cold in winter. The room is a two-storey bunk with straw mats and very few futons, and when it snows in winter, the house is also snowy. The labor station was surrounded by high walls, some with barbed wire fences, guarded by Japanese police or Japanese troops.
The prisoners of war labor ate mixed noodles made of mixed grains, no vegetables, and only a bowl of thin soup except for the nests made of mixed noodles. Some of the laborers were so hungry that they couldn't stand it, so they went to pluck the roots of wild grass, pick up orange peels and apple cores thrown away by the Japanese, and some catch rats and burn them to eat. Workers work at a high level of intensity, with general hours of more than 12 hours and sometimes 16 hours. The laborers also often endured severe beatings from Japanese overseers, and 115 workers in Hanaoka, where Geng's family was located, were severely beaten, humiliated, and abused to death.
After being escorted to Japan, Geng Zhen served as the captain of the prisoner of war camp, and he was very dissatisfied with Japan's brutal behavior. By March 1945, the Japanese had been defeated in major battlefields, and in order to produce military supplies, the Japanese army's mistreatment of Chinese laborers had intensified, and if the laborers were slack, they would be punched and kicked, and the death rate of laborers also rose sharply, sometimes four or five people were tortured to death in a day.
Geng Zhen secretly gathered some of his henchmen together and said to them: "No riot is not enough to wash away the hatred of the country and the family, and no riot is not enough to safeguard national dignity." ”
Although they knew that the success of the riot was death, but not rioting was also death, so they braked the riot plan together with Geng Zhen and prepared to fight to the death.
I would rather jump into the sea with Geng Zhen and commit suicide than suffer inhuman torture again.
Before the riot, Geng Zhen also specifically demanded: "Everyone is not allowed to enter the people's houses, the Japanese people are not guilty, they must not hurt them, especially not women and children, we cannot let people say that our laborers are bandits, and if we die, we will also die a glorious death." ”
At midnight on June 30, 1945, Geng Zhen led more than a thousand laborers to hold a riot in Hanaoka, Japan, and angry laborers
On the spot, 4 Japanese overseers and 1 traitor were killed, and the whole mine was suddenly in chaos and alarms were raised. After the riot, Geng Zhen asked everyone to go up to the mountain to fight guerrilla warfare with the Japanese army, and the Japanese authorities mobilized more than 20,000 military police to encircle and suppress Geng Zhen and other laborers.
Because they were in a foreign land and had no foreign assistance, the riot laborers were quickly suppressed by the Japanese military and police, and Geng Zhen was also arrested. After their arrest, the Japanese army tortured the captured laborers to extract confessions, forced them to kneel on the rubble, and did not give water to drink or food for three days and three nights. After Japan surrendered, the Allies released Geng Ande and other persecuted laborers and arrested the main leaders of the Kashima Company, which mutilated the laborers, but for various reasons, some important criminals were not punished.
In November 1946, Geng Returned to China and worked as a farmer in his hometown after liberation. In 1989, in order to comfort the victims of the Huagang Riots, under the organization of Geng Zhen and others, an open letter was issued to kashima Company, asking them to apologize to thousands of local victims, set up a memorial hall, and compensate the victims. However, Kashima still refused to admit its mistake and tried its best to shirk its responsibility.
In June 1995, Geng Zhen and 11 representatives of the Victims of Huagang came to Japan together and filed a complaint with the Tokyo District Court, opening the first Sino-Japanese civil claim case, in which Geng Zhen and other victims complained about the numerous crimes committed by the Japanese Kashima Company that year, but Geng Zhen and the Huagang victims lost the case. However, Geng Zhen did not give up and applied to the Japanese court for many years. Until Geng's death in 2012, the Japanese authorities did not admit it.