According to normal weather conditions, the summer and autumn seasons in Henan should have been seasons with abundant rainfall. However, from 1941 onwards, henan had a strangely low amount of precipitation, and by the summer and autumn of 1942, the situation was getting worse, the crops were out of harvest, and the people were worse off than dead. (This is a set of real old photographs reflecting the Great Famine in Henan in 1942, many of which can't bear to look at it.) ）
After Wang Yunsheng, the chief writer of the Ta Kung Pao, came to Henan for a field investigation, he wrote in an editorial in 1942 entitled "Look at Chongqing, Read the Central Plains": "The violent bones and flesh that starved to death, the fleeing old and the young, the wives and children scattered, the crowds of people, and the beatings, may not be able to get the registration certificate of the Relief Committee." Eating weeds poisons and dying, eating dry bark can't help but sting the throat and intestines. Transporting wives and daughters to distant human meat markets may not be able to exchange them for a few buckets of grain. ”
According to incomplete statistics, the Great Famine in Henan in 1942 caused at least 3 million people to starve to death. At that time, the situation was like this, the victims ate bark and grass roots, ate mud, sold wives and children, etc., and in the end, there was even a tragic situation of "cannibalism". If it weren't for the real old photographs, it would be hard to imagine how severe the disaster was at the time.
This group of old photos was taken by two American journalists, namely Time Magazine reporter Berdyd beau and British Times reporter Foreman. At the end of 1942, Bai Xiude and Fuhrman entered Henan from Chongqing via the Longhai Railway, and as soon as they entered Henan, they were stunned by the scene in front of them, "Most of the villages are deserted, even those places where there are people, they hear the cries of abandoned babies before they die, and all they see is wild dogs pulling corpses from the sand pile and tearing them apart." ”
[The Little Boy Who Was Starving] Bai Xiude decided to let the world know about the great famine in Henan, and he wrote a report on what he saw and the photos he took, and sent it back to the United States for publication in Time magazine, entitled "Waiting for the Harvest". Due to the huge influence of Time magazine, the pressure on the national government was great. At that time, Song Meiling was visiting the United States, and she hoped that the boss of Time magazine would fire Bai Xiude, but the latter refused.
In Waiting for the Harvest, Bai Xiude described the situation of the disaster: "Dogs nibble on the corpses of people on the side of the road, and farmers look for meat from the dead under the cover of night. Endless abandoned villages, beggars gather at every city gate, abandoned babies crying and dying on every road. There is no way to portray the horrors of the Henan catastrophe. This is the description of foreigners, which shows the severity of the famine.
Bai Xiude wrote at the end of the report, "No one really understands the severity of the disaster in Henan. Bureaucracy hides the truth of the famine. In fact, chiang kai-shek was furious as early as the publication of the Ta Kung Pao's article "Looking at Chongqing, Reading the Central Plains," which he did not believe in the severity of the famine in Henan, and demanded that the Ta Kung Pao stop publishing for three days.
[Father was starved to death] In addition to natural disasters, this great famine also had man-made disasters. At that time, it was during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and the food of the soldiers on the front line needed to be collected from the common people. According to the data, the quota of military food allocated to the people of Henan in 1942 was 2.5 million bales, and at that time, one bale was 140 catties. In order to complete this huge number, the grain collection agency immediately assigned a large number of officers to supervise and urge in various places, and as a result, the task of collecting military grain was exceeded, and even received praise from Chiang Kai-shek for his meritorious service.
After writing the report, Bai Xiude decided to take the photos he and Forman took to Chongqing and hand them over to Chiang Kai-shek in person. According to Besshode's memoirs, "the chairman's knees shook slightly, and it was a nervous spasm. Subsequently, Chiang Kai-shek offered to have Bai Xiude submit a complete disaster report to him and expressed his gratitude.
I believe that everyone has seen Feng Xiaogang's movie "Nineteen Forty-Two", in which the victims are very miserable. However, the real year 1942 is a few points worse than the movie. A great famine that killed 3 million people, equivalent to the total number of chinese troops killed and wounded in the War of Resistance, was truly shocking.