The holes in the walls of the Xi'an City Wall should have been built at the time of the construction of the city wall, for example, in the four city gate urns, and near the four city corners of the city, there are hidden soldier caves. In 1926, during the famous "Two Tigers Guarding Chang'an", the soldiers dug holes to prevent shelling and built dark forts for a sneak attack. The digging of air raid shelters was mainly during the eight-year War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, in order to avoid the bombing of Japanese aircraft, there were resettlement radio stations dug by the government and the army, air raid shelters in warehouses, and air raid shelters dug by ordinary people to "hide from alarms." Ordinary people called drilling air raid shelters "hiding alarms." At the end of the Liberation War, the Kuomintang troops dug a bunker for the defense of the siege, but the peaceful liberation of Xi'an did not come in handy. Later, most of them became the cave dwellings of refugees who had fled to Xi'an and poor citizens.
The following mainly talks about the air raid shelter on the city wall of Xi'an during the War of Resistance Against Japan. These large and small, winding and winding holes all over the city wall have indeed played a great role in protecting the ordinary people of Xi'an, who have weak air defense, from being destroyed by life.
Since the 1950s, I have lived under the city wall in the southwest corner of Xi'an, and I am very familiar with the air raid shelters left over from the "War of Resistance" on the walls of this area, and I have drilled almost all the air raid shelters in this area that have not been destroyed.
Ximenli to the southwest corner of the city to climb the city road there were more than a dozen air raid shelters that year. There are several types of air raid shelters: one is a single hole that leads directly to the ring forest outside the city; the other is a double hole with a horizontal passage in the middle of several single holes. There are three kinds of cave openings, one is a low opening dug from the foot of the city wall that is as flat as the ground, and the other is a high opening outside the city that is about one meter higher than the ground. There is also a small hole facing upwards near the top of the city wall, which is generally an air circulation vent to prevent the opening from being blown up by bombs dropped by Japanese ghost planes, and the people hiding in the air raid shelter are suffocated.
There is a hole in the outer part of the city wall near the West Gate Tower, and I climbed up to observe it, and when I looked to the right, I could clearly see the city gate tower.
Listen to my mother say that it is a lookout hole, and observe the signal lights hanging on the West Gate Tower or the Arrow Tower, that is, a string of red lanterns. When hung up, it means that the plane is going to bomb, or it may take turns to bomb, and after stopping the bombing, it is necessary to see that the lantern has been collected, proving that the danger has passed. Cooperate with pulling alarms to warn.
The roadway of the air raid shelter is generally about one meter and five meters, and the main roadway has a height of nearly two meters. Every few meters, a small hole is dug next to the cave, which is a cave dedicated to Tibetans. The older one is enough for a family of three or four people, and the smaller one is only enough for two adults.
My mother was born in 1925 in Egret Bay, not far from the city walls, and was about to graduate from high school during the War of Resistance. Memories of the War of Resistance and the bomb shelter were told by my mother.
The primary school attended by my mother was Xiajiashizi Primary School, which was the second experimental primary school in Shaanxi Province. It belongs to the "complete small", that is, it includes the primary primary (four years), the high elementary school (two years), and the six-year system. According to the recollections of the elderly in the streets and alleys of Bailuwan, when Lien Chan, the honorary chairman of the Kuomintang in Taiwan, went to elementary school, he transferred from Houzaimen Zuoxiu Primary School to the Second Experimental Primary School. According to the recollection of his old classmates, the Lien Chan family once lived in Qixianzhuang, and then because of the heavy bombing of Japanese ghost planes, they moved to the Dongdi Temple Shizi, and only then did they go to the nearby Xiajia Shizi "Ershi". The time should be during the War of Resistance. Lien Chan wrote an article saying that he had drilled the air raid shelter of the Xi'an city wall, and there should be an air raid shelter in this section of ximen Nanma Road, which is about four hundred meters away from Xia Jiashizi.
In 1937, that is, in the 26th year of the Republic of China, for the purpose of air defense and rectifying public order in the city, the then provincial government air defense association and the police department jointly surveyed the air raid shelters of the city wall, and found that there were 211 large and small caves. However, in 1938, the planes of the Japanese invading army continued to bomb Xi'an indiscriminately, and some ordinary people dug holes in the city wall themselves to facilitate refuge when the bombing came. By 1983, the Xi'an City Wall Management Office counted the air raid shelters on the city wall again, and the number of caves in and around the city reached 1991.
The temperature inside the bomb shelter of the city wall is much lower than outside the cave, so it was once used by vegetable companies to store vegetables, and many of them were placed here after the original carriage pulled vegetables into the city. When my little friend and I were drilling air raid shelters in this section of the West Gate, there were a few people who went into the warehouse of the vegetable farm on the shore of the vegetable pit to store fine vegetables such as onions, garlic, leeks, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, kale, garlic moss, and some people secretly brought up a few bundles of green onions.
After 1983, Xi'an City repaired the city wall and filled almost all the air raid shelters, and I am afraid that Lien Chan could not find the air raid shelters that he had avoided in the past. ”
As a member of the Xi'an Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference around 2002, I saw in the newspaper one day that all the air raid shelters should be closed and filled, so I was busy writing letters to the relevant leaders of the city to request the protection of the air raid shelters of the city wall in this section of the South Horse Road. I thought at least a few holes should be left as a kind of anti-war memory, as long as the support is well reinforced. Later, I received a reply from the City Wall Committee that the expert opinion was to protect the overall integrity of the city wall and to be filled. At that time, I was very angry and scolded a "bullshit expert".
After the bomb shelter was filled in, I was notified by the City Wall Committee to go to a meeting, and I naturally refused. When Lien Chan returned to Xi'an from Taiwan in 2005 to find the air raid shelter of the city wall that he had drilled, I did not take a breath, and always thought that filling in the bomb shelter of the city wall was a short-sighted act that lacked a historical view. The Xi'an City Wall has the memory of the ming city wall as a whole for 600 years, and there are also the memories of the light gate ruins of the Sui and Tang Imperial City with a thousand years of history, the memory of the circular southwest city corner, and the memory of the 60-year Anti-Japanese War air raid shelter, which is continuous and cannot be cut off.
Who knew that after I retired, I was hired as a special researcher of the Xi'an City Wall History and Culture Research Association, and I also became a so-called "bullshit expert". He participated in the writing of the national key book project "Xi'an City Wall Series and Cultural Volume", wrote more than a dozen articles of 80,000 or 90,000 words, and also served as the editor-in-chief of the "Cultural Volume".
My memories of the Japanese bombing of Xi'an during the War of Resistance were fragmentary, mainly listening to my mother. My mother recalled: In the last year or two of the War of Resistance, the Japanese did not have enough bombs, so they threw large stones at Xi'an. Smash the walls of the city into pieces. Wang Ji, a xueyou who lives with me in Egret Bay, said: His mother also talked about the Japanese plane throwing stones at Xi'an. The Japanese, who had been frantically bombing Xi'an for nearly seven years, finally weakened their national strength, and the evidence that "the sun is about to set" is evidence. Ordinary people say that the Japanese are no longer able to do it. At that time, even the dropping of bombs and the absence of many stink bombs proved that little Japan was rapidly decaying in the later stages of the war of aggression against China, the depletion of weapons and the weakening of its manufacturing capacity, and its evil can also be imagined. There is also a record that during the bombing of Xi'an, "most of the bombs dropped were not exploded." ”
Once, when I went with my mother to buy grain at the street grain station in Hebailu Bay and then Xizizi City, my mother told me that when the Japanese bombed Xi'an, there was a Japanese bomb stuck in the middle of the road and did not explode, which frightened the people from approaching. Legend has it that after the bomb was discharged, there was not enough explosives in the bomb to explode.
Two
Beginning in November 1938, the inhumane and heinous Japanese devils continued to bomb the densely populated areas of Xi'an City with great ferocity, creating a series of horrific human tragedies. I owe a blood debt that will never be forgotten.
According to the "Xi'an Chronicle", the number of people injured and killed by the japanese air raids and bombings in Xi'an reached more than 3,489, and more than 6,781 houses were destroyed.
My mother once recalled the 28th year of the Republic of China, 1939, which was the craziest year when Japanese planes bombed Xi'an. Our family in Egret Bay was spared because it was close to the city wall and quick to avoid warnings, and there were not many deaths and injuries among the people in the old streets and alleys in this area. My mother once hid from the alarm, and when the Japanese plane flew away, she returned home and heard that the Temple of God on Shizi Street, a street away from Egret Bay, had been bombed. My mother's house in the northwest entrance of the Land Temple Shizi Street and several other houses were also seriously damaged, fortunately, no one, they all drilled the holes in the city wall in time. More than two months later, the Air Raid Shelter at the Zikou Of the West Street Bridge, not far from the Catholic Church on Shizi Street of the Land Temple, was blown up, causing the largest massacre during the Xi'an War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.
Later, I learned from the "Xi'an Chronicle": "On May 24, 1939, Japanese aircraft attacked Xi'an, blowing up the air raid on the air raid cave at the zikou of the West Avenue Bridge, and more than a thousand civilians were smothered alive in the cave. ”
My father's old mansion was in Guo Zhishi Lane, today's Guangming Lane, which was also the hardest hit area by Japanese aircraft bombing. In the north of the alley, there is a commemorative sign that reads "On November 23, 1938, Japanese aircraft bombed the ruins of Xi'an", and remnants of the walls such as craters left by the splash of bomb fragments can be seen. The sign was hung here by the Lianhu District People's Government on August 15, 2005. It is said that Japanese planes dropped 6 bombs here, and an old house behind this wall, the north courtyard of the old courtyard, was completely destroyed, and the northwest corner of the south courtyard was also destroyed. Many of the courtyard houses in GuoZhishi Lane have been damaged by the explosion, and the Japanese aircraft bombed very badly that year. I heard the old man who once lived in this alley say: "When the Japanese plane came, the piercing alarm sounded several times, and there were a few rich and large families in the alley who dug air raid shelters, but most of them also hid in the suburban countryside, and most of the people had nowhere to hide, so everyone had to run toward the nearby Lianhu Park, where the boundary was empty, easy to hide, and it did not seem to be an important target for japanese devils to bomb."
In 1939, my father worked at the Xijing Machine Factory in NanmaDao Lane, repairing ordnance, which was close to the southwest foot city wall and close to the air raid shelter. Fortunately, the family in Guo Signing Lane also safely hid away, and no one was killed or injured.
At that time, Xi'an's air defense was extremely weak, and the only anti-aircraft guns and anti-aircraft machine gun units also focused on protecting the western suburban airfields, as if they could only force Japanese planes to drop bombs at high altitudes. Indeed, around 1939 and 1940, the people of Xi'an suffered a great sin.
In addition, listening to my parents recall that during the Japanese bombing, there were often traitors who signaled the devil's planes, and sometimes there were more than a dozen places in the city. Originally, I thought that there were many traitors in the enemy-occupied areas in order to save their lives, but Xi'an, which was far away from the front line, was actually quite a traitor, so how many traitors could the Japanese send in?
When I wrote this article, I happened to see two articles in the magazine "Zhongnan Culture" in the winter of 2014, Wang Minquan's "During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression Tianshui Xingying Was Bombed and Sunk", and Wei Fuxing's "There is an Anti-Japanese Tomb on Cuihua Mountain", only to learn that the Xi'an military and political organs were bombed, the most dead, the highest rank, and the most seriously damaged, on March 7, 1939, the Tianshui Xingying camp was bombed, 64 people were killed and 43 people were injured. Among the victims were "Lieutenant General Li Guoliang, Major General Zhang Chenxing, Deputy Chief of Staff of Major General Zhang Chenxing, and Major General Staff Chief Zhao Xiangzhi." At that time, the two major norths of the country were the Tianshui Camp and the South Guilin Camp, which uniformly supervised the south to stop the battlefield operations. Tianshui Xingying has jurisdiction over 13 provinces and regions, including Ji, Cha, Yu, Lu, Jin, Sui, Shaanxi, Gansu, Ning, and Qing, with Cheng Qian as its director. Admiral Cheng Qian, director of the general, was also buried in the air raid shelter, where he was shocked and unconscious, and was rescued and rescued.
Such an extremely serious incident, as a writer today, I only know, which makes me ashamed and shocked, so I thought: such a national hatred, blood and deep hatred, should be erected on the monument, carved in stone, so that every Xi'an person will always remember. This is also the only intention I used to end this article with this "Tianshui Xingying Bombing Incident", because xi'an people who have not heard of this incident do not know how many more!