"How hard is it to escape from the Japanese army? —Liu Tianquan
In the summer of 1944, the Japanese sent the 11th Army to attack Changsha for the fourth time, and the Japanese commander Isamu Yokoyama ordered to attack Changsha on the left, center, and right. The 3rd and 13th Divisions on the left side were the main forces, and the 27th Division was the third echelon, which was inserted from Chongyang, Hubei Province along the mountains and dense forests on the Hunan and Jiangxi borders to the south, passing through Pingxiang, Jiangxi.
Interspersed with Japanese troops
Liu Tianquan was just 16 years old at the time, and his home was in Qingnijiao, 5 kilometers west of the county seat, on a hillside next to the Pingxiang-Liling Highway. Liu Tianquan happened to be in the first year of junior high school at the time, and he was still a middle school student. Due to the poverty of his family, he had no way to stay away from it, so he could only hide in the mountains behind the house.
On the morning of June 24, Liu Tianquan and a 12-year-old friend from the same village, Liang Qiuyuan, hid on a hill behind the village. Unexpectedly, the Japanese soldiers searched the mountains with sabers in their hands and arrested them, and the Japanese soldiers suddenly burst out of the mountain where they were hiding and arrested them on the spot.
Posing of the Japanese army
The Japanese did not kill the two teenagers, but took them to the Japanese garrison and let them pick up bullets and luggage. Due to Liu Tianquan's young age, thin body, and hot weather, he went to Chaling through Liling and Youxian County, and carried a heavy burden for more than 20 days, and suffered from intestinal dysentery on the way.
One night in Chaling County, Liu Tianquan went out to have diarrhea, took advantage of the change of guard of the Japanese soldiers, and escaped and hid in an old cave used to burn bricks nearby. In this broken cave, Liu Tianquan hid for a night.
Children of Japanese prisoners
In the early morning of the next day, Liu Tianquan stood in the cave and poked his head out to look in the direction of his home, but unexpectedly, the Japanese soldiers who had arrested him as laborers were passing by here. The Japanese soldiers grabbed him and shouted to him: "You are dead today!"
The Japanese then led him to a river in front of him, dragged him on the head with a rifle, and then stabbed him with a bayonet. Liu Tianquan blocked the bayonet with his left hand, and his hand was pierced by the bayonet. The Japanese soldier raised his bayonet and stabbed him more than 10 times in the neck and chest.
The people under the bayonets
After Liu Tianquan was stabbed more than a dozen times, he immediately fainted to the ground, he held his breath and did not move, only faintly hearing the sound of bleeding. The Japanese soldiers, thinking that Liu Tianquan was dead, wiped the blood from the bayonet on his clothes, and then raised the bayonet and left.
After Liu Tianquan lay on the ground for a while, he vaguely realized that he was not dead, so he slowly moved his body towards the river little by little, and sat on the dirt steps of the river beach to breathe.
At this moment, two more Japanese soldiers walked towards him in the distance. Seeing that he was covered in blood and his face was haggard, the Japanese soldiers slapped him fiercely, and Liu Tianquan was immediately knocked down into the river.
The Japanese army advanced towards Changsha
The Japanese soldiers looked at Liu Tianquan fluttering in the river, clapped their hands and laughed, shot him indiscriminately, and then carried the gun away. The shot missed the point, and the bullet passed through the flesh of the thigh, leaving a bloody hole.
After the Japanese soldiers left, Liu Tianquan floated in the water for a few minutes, crawled out of the river and fell unconscious on the sandy and pebble ground of the river beach, bleeding from the place where he was shot in the thigh. I don't know how long I fell asleep, but my soaked clothes and pants were dried after waking up, and my thighs no longer bleed.
Old canopy
Liu Tianquan slowly climbed into an old boat canopy on the river beach, where he slept for five days and five nights. For five days, he did not eat anything, except that every morning in the early morning and evening, he climbed to the water's edge and scooped some river water with the palm of his right hand to drink.
On the sixth day, Liu Tianquan felt extremely hungry and thought about going home. He climbed out of the canopy and saw several decomposing corpses not far away. After Liu Tianquan left the canopy, he went to the vegetable field on the river beach and found some eggplant, pepper and ginger to eat.
In a thatched hut on the bank of the river, an old lady gave him a bowl of cowpeas to eat. That night, he stayed in the haystack behind the old lady's house. On the third day, he crossed the hill and walked in the direction of Jiangxi, when a Japanese sentry stood on the mountainside, and he pointed a gun at Liu Tianquan and asked him to approach him.
Japanese troops passed through the village
Liu Tianquan thought to himself that this was not good, it seemed that he was really going to die here today, and he really got out of the tiger's mouth and entered the wolf's den. Who knew that this Japanese sentry saw that Liu Tianquan's face was full of dirt and skinny, and he expected that he was not an anti-Japanese element, so he let him pass.
After leaving this small hill, he walked a few miles or more than a dozen miles every day, trekking through mountains and rivers along the way, and Liu Tianquan met many laborers who had escaped death, and also saw many corpses lying on the side of the road and in the fields. It was not until August 3 that Liu Tianquan returned to his hometown Shuikou Town, and finally escaped from the clutches of the Japanese army.
After Liu Tianquan returned to his hometown, someone asked him about the atrocities of the Japanese army he had experienced, and he once cried and complained: "If you want to say how brutal the Japanese army was, I am the best proof that the Japanese soldiers did not even let go of the students!"
Academician Liu Tianquan
Decades have passed, and Liu Tianquan has always told people about his experience and the atrocities committed by the Japanese army. He used the knife wounds all over his body to show the ferocity of the Japanese army and the difficulty of escaping from the Japanese army's butcher knife. He exhorted future generations never to forget this period of history and to keep in mind that only by working hard can we protect our homes and defend the country......
Liu Tianquan, member of the 8th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, director of the Academic Committee of the General Institute of Coal Research Institute, and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
Fumishi Ichika
April 29, 2024
Written in Guilin