The first page of Chongqing's "Xinmin Bao" carried a striking super short news with the headline "Chen Gongbo Fears Crime and Commits Suicide": Chen Gongbo committed suicide and was injured yesterday, and he has died of injury today.
This happened on August 30, 1945. This was also the 15th day after the Emperor of Japan announced his unconditional surrender by radio.
Seeing this news, people were surprised at the same time, but also not surprised. Because this traitor who surrendered on his knees and betrayed the country and sought glory was full of sins. Now that his master is finished, it is time for him to die, because society does not need his existence! The people don't need him to live.
However, there are also many people who have all kinds of doubts about this. It is logically incomprehensible that a national scum like Chen Gongbo, who has lost his national integrity in the face of the aggressors and is greedy for life and fears death, can end his own life on his own.
However, some people rejected the news from another angle. Dai Kasa mentioned this to Lao Jiang at that time: "Now there are legends outside that Chen Gongbo has committed suicide. But in fact, it is not simple, and students have already sent people to visit. Old Jiang thought about it a little and said, "Chen Gongbo committed suicide? Then he said, "Then I must have been hiding somewhere, maybe there are many pearl treasures, let me find it!" ”
As for how to secretly search for Chen Gongbo's whereabouts and whereabouts, and what the results were, I don't know. Now let's look back at a strange thing that happened in Japan on August 25, 1945.
At nearly 1 p.m. on this day, Yonago Airport on the western outskirts of Tottori Prefecture, Honshu, Japan, was silent when suddenly a dilapidated MC plane from the west landed at the airport. After the plane stopped, the door opened, and out of the plane came a Japanese officer, Captain Ogawa, an adviser to the Japanese invasion of China. Then 7 Chinese came down from the plane. When these people stepped off the plane, they seemed overwhelmed, standing on the empty airfield that had been destroyed by the war, looking around, as if looking for something. At this time, a truck passed by, Ogawa stepped forward to intercept the car, and then the gang rode to the city together, and Captain Ogawa found a small hotel for the 7 people, Asazu Onsen.
On the second day, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent the former Economic Adviser Oka, Minister Oka, and the affairs officer Yamamoto and section chief Yoshikawa, and others, and they took the seven people by plane to Kyoto, Japan. Although Minister Oka had set up a Kyoto hotel for the gang in advance and prepared a place to stay, the leading Chinese insisted on refusing to go, on the grounds that they wanted to avoid crowded hotels, so the seven people moved into TeradaBetsu, demichi, and later moved to Kinkaku-ji Temple, a relatively secluded area on the outskirts. They lived in a deeper corner of the temple, and even the citizens of Kyoto didn't know who the gang was or what they were doing. Although no one restricted their movements, they still did not dare to take a step out of the temple.
Who was this gang that was brought to Japan by Captain Ogawa and greeted by Okabe's advisers?
Among them are Lin Baisheng, Chen Junhui, Zhou Longxiu and He Bingxian. The man in charge was Chen Gongbo, China's second-largest traitor who was rumored to have "committed suicide in fear of sin", and the other two were Chen's wife, Li Lizhuang, and his secretary, Mo Guokang. As everyone knows, these 7 people are a group of sworn enemies of Wang Fei.
Why did Chen Gongbo flee to Japan under the smoke screen of "suicide" after Japan's surrender?
After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan, he surrendered to the enemy with Wang Jingwei and became the president of the Legislative Yuan of Wang Fei. Later he gradually climbed to the highest position.
On December 20, 1944, the day before Wang Jingwei's coffin would be buried at Meihua Mountain in Nanjing, Chen Gongbo, except for Wang Fei's position as chief executive, was promoted from Zhou Fohai to the post of chief executive, Chen Gongbo included almost all the top pseudo posts in the party, government, and army.
Chen Gongbo was a loyal disciple of Wang Jingwei, and he was determined to inherit Wang's mantle. However, on the eve of Japan's surrender, Chen also felt that there was no hope of relying on the Japanese. Since Zhou Fohai had a relationship with the military command, Chen Gongbo also sent someone to Chongqing in June 1943 to deliver a letter, asking Dai Tou to report to Old Jiang, expressing his willingness to make meritorious atonement for his sins and listening to the driving force, so he established contact with Chongqing.
By August 1945, the defeat of Japanese imperialism was a foregone conclusion. The leaders of the Wang puppet regime all had a premonition that the end was coming. When the Japanese Emperor officially announced his acceptance of the Potsdam Announcement of unconditional surrender on August 15, the Wang puppet regime collapsed in an instant. On August 16, Chen Gongbo personally presided over the last meeting of Wang Puppet, announced its dissolution, and completely destroyed the puppet regime that lasted 5 years and 5 months. As Wang Jingwei's heir, Chen Gongbo's future is uncertain, leaving him in a state of extreme nervous worry.
"Heaven has no invincible road", a blank paper in Chongqing finally brought him a glimmer of "light". Old Jiang Power generation ordered Chen Gongbo, Zhou Fohai, Ren Yuandao, Ding Moyou, and others to be responsible for "maintaining law and order." Based on this, Chen Gongbo believed that there was still hope for his future, which existed in the contribution to Chongqing's "retribution to Li", and this order made Chen Gongbo begin to cheer up, and immediately said that he would give 360,000 troops to guard the Triangle areas of Nanjing, Shanghai, and Hangzhou, and hand it over to Lao Jiang in its entirety.
But the facts shattered Chen Gongbo's dream, and the old Chiang's series of appointments to other traitors besides Chen Gongbo unexpectedly gave him an unexpected cold reception. On the contrary, other colleagues such as Zhou Fohai, Ren Yuandao, Luo Junqiang, and others were successively appointed by Lao Jiang and Dai Kasa to "maintain order" and "receive" various posts under different names.
Just when Chen Gongbo was in a state of extreme disappointment and unable to do anything, he found the only way out from a Japanese officer who invaded China— to flee to Japan.
On August 24, Takeo Imai, deputy chief of staff of the Invading Japanese Army, who had just returned to Nanjing from Zhijiang, visited the Chen Gongbo Mansion. Imai Takeo talked to Chen in detail about the contents of the Zhijiang talks, and Chen Gongbo seized this opportunity, suddenly stood up from his seat and approached Imai Takeo's side, put his left hand on Imai Takeo's shoulder, and then extended his right hand to shake Hands with Imai forcefully, thanking Imai for his past close friendship with him in both public and private aspects.
At this time, Chen Gongbo changed the subject and said his hope: "I listen to someone (according to Chen Gongbo himself, on August 24, Ren Yuandao brought Zhang Haifan to see him and advised him to rush to let go. He thought that if I stayed in Nanjing like this, it would be an obstacle to the reception of Chongqing, so I wanted to travel to Japan temporarily. ”
Faced with Chen Gongbo's pleading expression, Imai Takeo recalled: "At this time, after I heard this hope raised by Chen, I considered the atmosphere of the meeting in Zhijiang until yesterday, considering that if Chen was allowed to go to Japan at this time, this matter would probably provoke the anger of the victorious army. But this was his last hope, and I was determined to make it happen even if there were difficulties, so I made a decision without permission and promised it.
However, on the 25th day of the 2nd day, according to the orders of the Allied forces, from noon on this day, all Japanese aircraft were strictly prohibited from flying in Japan. Therefore, if Chen's plane could not reach Japan before noon to land. The realization of this will also become impossible.
I returned to the General Headquarters to report the truth to Commander-in-Chief Okamura, and immediately negotiated with the Military Advisory Department, and selected Captain Tetsuo Ogawa as my guide. I specially called Ogawa and told him the precautions for Chen Gongbo and his party to go to Japan, and instructed him to land in Qingdao after taking off from Nanjing to refuel, and at the same time to find out the intelligence in Japan there before continuing to fly.
The party decided that in addition to Chen Gongbo, there were 7 men and women, including Mrs. Chen's wife Li Lizhuang, secretary general Zhou Longxiu, Chen Junhui, Lin Baisheng, Jing He Bingxian, and secretary Ms. Mo Guokang.
In order to avoid people's eyes and ears, the General Headquarters of the Dispatch Army let only Staff Officer Ogasawara know about everything, and everything was arranged by him to go to the Forbidden City Airport. The plane was the only MC plane left, departing from Nanjing when the sky was hazy on the 25th, and everyone in the plane decided to change the original scheduled landing in Qingdao to a direct flight to Japan in order to save time. Therefore, although he arrived in Japan, due to lack of fuel on the way, he had to suddenly land at Miyu Airport in San'in and finally arrived in Japan. ”
However, the crimes committed by Chen Gongbo and others against the country and the people cannot be escaped.
The truth about Chen Gongbo's "suicide" is well known at home, and the demand for the Japanese Government to hand over the traitor Chen Gongbo and others as soon as possible is getting louder and louder. On September 9, at the end of the ceremony of Nanjing's surrender, Chinese representative He Yingqin immediately submitted a formal request to Japanese representative Okamura Ningji to extradite Chen Gongbo and others to return to China. On August 18 and 19, the above-mentioned request was again made to the Japanese side. Under these circumstances, Japan officially handed over Chen Gongbo and his gang of traitors. On October 3, they were escorted back to China, and Chen Gongbo and his gang spent a month and 8 days of trembling in Japan, and finally fell into the net.
He was sentenced to death by the Suzhou High Court on April 13, 1946, and executed on June 3.