Source: People's Daily Overseas Edition
In 1938, at the invitation of Singapore's Sin Chew Daily, Yu Dafu went to Singapore to participate in the anti-Japanese propaganda work, and infected many overseas Chinese with his outstanding literary skills and writing. His remarks such as "China will never perish, the War of Resistance will be fought to the end, and it will certainly be victorious" and "The final victory, of course, is ours, will be our belief in victory, and we will never waver" and other remarks have aroused strong repercussions.
After the outbreak of the Pacific War, under the leadership of Hu Yuzhi, a member of the Communist Party of China and editor-in-chief of Nanyang ShangBao, colleagues in Singapore's cultural circles set up the "Sin Chew Overseas Chinese Cultural Circles Wartime Working Group." Yu Dafu served as the head of the regiment and concurrently served as the head of the cadre training class, and Hu Yuzhi served as the deputy head of the regiment, playing an important role in organizing overseas Chinese to jointly resist the war with the local people. After the fall of Singapore, Yu Dafu went into exile in Indonesia, assumed the pseudonym Zhao Lian, and opened a "Zhao Yuji" distillery. Later, the Japanese gendarmes learned that he was proficient in Japanese and coerced him into working as a translator for 7 months. During this period, he secretly rescued and protected a large number of exiled friends in the cultural circles, patriotic overseas Chinese and local residents. Chen Jiageng once recalled: "At that time, Yu Dafu not only covered me, but also rescued many overseas Chinese who were arrested by the Japanese. Once, when the Indonesian Communist Party apparatus was exposed, Japanese gendarmes entered the room to arrest people and found a list of important party members on the body of a caretaker. The Japanese could not understand it, and "Zhao Lian", who was the translator, took a look at it and immediately understood that this list could not be leaked. He pointed to the caretaker and said, "Abominable, usury harms the people." This is the bill he collects. When the Japanese gendarmes heard this, they were very angry, slapped the man hard, and scratched the "bill" and tore it to pieces.
After that, due to the traitor's whistle-blowing, the Japanese gendarmes began a comprehensive investigation of Yu Dafu. On the evening of August 29, 1945, Yudaf was called away from his home by an Indonesian youth, and his whereabouts are unknown. It was later confirmed that he was secretly killed by Japanese gendarmes. In September 1952, the Central People's Government posthumously recognized Yu Dafu as a "martyr martyr martyred for national liberation."