preface
On the occasion of The Qingming Festival, I went to Tengchong memorial Cemetery in Yunnan with the Hunan Veterans’ Care volunteer team, where thousands of Soldiers of the Chinese expeditionary Army who had been killed in the War between Burma and Japan were buried. Flying over the tengchong area, looking down from the porthole, we could see the Gaoligong Mountain undulating and winding, like an unfolding strategic map. The “polar city” carries a bleak history that the Japanese army calls the “Jade Scrap” war.
1
A ceremony is held to pay tribute to the fallen soldiers of the Chinese expeditionary Force at the National Memorial Cemetery in Tengchong, East China’s Jiangsu province, April 2, 2007.
At the top of the cemetery, bathed in sunlight, was a short saber-shaped monument set up by the 20th Expeditionary Army for soldiers killed during the recovery. On the four sides of the conical slope, running down from its top, the little mass radiates 3,346 small gravestones, more than a foot high, “A tablet, a jar, a handful of ashes,” each inscribed with a name and rank.
These names do not exactly correspond to the ashes below. Most of the bodies of the fallen soldiers were so fragmented that they had to be incinerated and then put into cremated ashes.
Li, a 72-year-old scholar of Chinese resistance history, is a rigorous historian of the expeditionary Force, often visiting the mountains and surviving veterans to ask questions.
Some people came from other places specially to pay tribute to the veterans. Volunteers from the Hunan Veterans’ home had visited the cemetery the day before, bringing soil, water and wine from their hometown to the fallen soldiers.
These volunteers have been looking for and taking care of veterans of the War for many years. They have also seen that most of them are poor and sick, and the scenery is bleak at night. They no longer have the style of fighting with the Japanese army.
Many veterans have been the impact of the political movement, the twenty group Army major staff Zhang Ziwen after the war in prison for 26 years, a veteran scared to the volunteers knelt down, asked them not to cross-examine the past. 20 group army lieutenant General Chief of Staff Liu Zhaodong, prepare 2 division major staff and spy captain Stone was executed by shooting……
2
Bo Shaohai, deputy director of the West Yunnan Anti-Japanese War Memorial Hall, is one of the organizers of the ceremony. He is less of a public man and more of a folk scholar: “I am a grave-keeper,” as he puts it.
He was loosely dressed, his hair a little curly, and most of the time his face was stern and his eyes cold. He is well known in this circle not only for his research on the history of the West Yunnan War, but also for his involvement in charity activities for veterans of the War and children. Perhaps because of his unruly appearance and this warm, familiar with his people call him “Little”.
“Tengchong in Yunnan, Longling in Yunnan and Mi ** * in Myanmar are the three cities that the Japanese soldiers did not want to mention. They suffered terrible defeats here. Tengchong was the first county town recovered by China. These three cities were fought by the Chinese expeditionary forces (united American and British). They all won, but they also won miserably.” Belshahai spoke of that history in a low voice.
“There lies our benefactress; we must not spoil their souls.” “There lies our benefactress; we must not spoil their souls.”
In May 1942, the First Route Army of the Chinese expeditionary Force lost the battle in Burma, general Sun Liren withdrew to India, General Du Yuming lost the Wild man Mountain, and the 56th Division of the Japanese army took advantage of the opportunity to break into the Western Yunnan Province with mechanized troops, and tengchong, an important border town, was captured.
In addition to the military occupation, the Japanese also set up the administrative department in Tengchong, with Tajima as minister. The Japanese used li Zheng’s neighbor’s house as an Arsenal of weapons and ammunition filled the room. Unable to bear their house to help the Japanese, the neighbors secretly threw a mirror onto the roof and managed to notify the Allied 14th Air Force through spies. Soon after, a wing crashed through the sky and dropped bombs marked by the reflected light of a mirror. The first wave of bombs accidentally hit The Home of Li Zheng, the house collapsed, three relatives were killed.
The Japanese were immediately searched for after being attacked. Li Zheng’s mother is about to give birth, and runs out of the city with her neighbors. In a place called Dang Ga, she meets a group of Japanese troops and a guerrilla army of expeditionary forces. A group of old people were hurriedly hiding in the mountains.
After a bumpy ride, the mother gave birth to a baby girl, li Zheng’s sister. When the birth, the mother was afraid of the Japanese not far away, clenched his teeth and did not utter a word, but the child fell on the ground on crying, scared the public panic. When the midwife saw that a fleeing family had brought a wooden basin, she ordered her sister to be captured with the basin. The crying under the basin is more and more weak, after the Japanese retreat, sister has suffocated under the basin.
3
In April 1944, He Yingqin issued the order to counterattack the West Yunnan. In May, Huo Kuizhuang led the 20th Group Army to cross the Nujiang River, attack Gaoligong Mountain and attack Tengchong City.
Bo Shaohai said that many of the tough battles in Tengchong were led by commanders and commanders, and 1,234 officers were killed in more than 100 days. On the right side of the Shrine of the Martyrs, there is an unremarkable tombstone, which commemorates them. Major General Qin Zibin, Major General Li Yi… It is a strange name to me, but it is the soul of the bloody battlefield at Bethshaohai.
Qin Zibin, commander of the 594 Regiment, known by his subordinates as “Tiger Ye”, was killed in battle in the position of Beizhai Gongfang in Gaaligong Mountain. Gaoligong Mountain is the natural cutting north of Tengchong City, the highest altitude is more than 5000 meters, the mountain is a hot day, but the peak is miasma clouds, extremely cold bitter rain. The elevation Angle of the steep part of the mountain reaches 70 or 80 degrees, Qin Zibin pushes against the rocks and grasps the grass to attack. the Japanese in danger, on the mountain as long as one or two people, a machine gun, a regiment of people can not go up.
Qin Zibin attacked the cold ditch at the highest point, and the Japanese built solid pillboxes on the two mountains, surrounded by layers of trench fortifications, forming a cross-controlled situation for the pass. The expeditionary force rushed to the position, the Japanese machine gun fire, artillery use instant fuze, out of the chamber more than ten meters on the explosion, the bodies of charging soldiers piled up like a hill, the latter put the machine gun on the pile of bodies to fight back, blood and rain collected in the gully splashing torrent.
Qin Zibin was 52 years old at the time and the most senior commander of the expedition. However, he rushed to the front of the brigade and was sprayed with machine-gun fire in front of the Beitai Public house. He received several bullets in his body, smashed his thigh and bled to death. Soldiers carried his body to a tree on the slope, division commander Ye Peigao division officers and soldiers came to pay their respects.
When I was in Tengchong, Mr. Li Zheng and his volunteers launched a campaign to find qin Zibin’s descendants. When he died, he left behind three teenage daughters, but no one now knows where they are or if they are alive. If they were still alive, the youngest would be in their 80s.
Li Yi, a student of the Huangpu Military Academy in 6th term, was killed in the Battle of Tengchong. the Japanese received the command of the 56 Division command “Jade crusher”, in every street and every lane are built underground bunker, desperate resistance, Li Yi and his 5 regiment can only advance more than ten meters a day.
The day before the capture of Tengchong, Li Yi was shot by bullets, but refused to bandage up, still holding a submachine gun to block the fire of the other side’s bunker. When he fell, he said, “I wonder how the begonia is this year?” His new wife came to receive his coffin, crying and saying, “Return my men.”
When I arrived at the American gravestone, it was raining. The rain beat on the inlaid stone inlaid by the volcano, and spilled copper-sized water stains.
Few people knew that there was an American advisory group of more than 4,000 people in the West Yunnan Battlefield, with General Stilwell’s deputy, Donne, as commander-in-chief. Under the agreement, the advisory group will be responsible for tactical instruction, teaching weapons use and ground and air liaison, without having to go to the front lines. But the 21-year-old Chabal, inspired by death and blood, charged with the 592 and was killed on the grey slopes of Gaoligong.
Major Memree, whose name is also on the gravestone, was killed by a Japanese shell shortly after the birth of his second daughter.
4
After the cemetery worship ceremony, Li Zheng, Bo Shaohai and more than a dozen volunteers climbed to the South of Tengchong city to pay their respects to the more than 6,000 soldiers killed in the preparation of the 2 division in front of the Pagoda.
The pen tower is like the pen panchi, panchi is perilously situated and used to be a major position of the Japanese army. When the Japanese army in order to open the shooting range, the lai Feng Mountain trees were cut down, now the mountain has been heavily Shadowed, pine and cypress, into a forest park.
At my feet, a layer of damp yellow leaves lay in the battlements, where the Japanese squatted and strafed in front of the charging expeditionary forces.
Laifeng Mountain is more than 300 meters above the bazi where Tengchong city is located and is a natural barrier to the south of Tengchong. The Japanese were well aware of the stakes, which were painstakingly managed for two years and built a very strong fortress. Li Zheng said, the Japanese named their position after the commander, Sakura position, Plum position, song position… The mountain guns, infantry guns, heavy machine guns and command posts on the position are semi-underground works, and covered with thick tree trunks, layer upon layer of protection, bombs can not be exploded.
Prepare 2 division soldiers stepped through the bamboo stick array, cut open the barbed wire, a platoon, a even rushed in, immediately by the Japanese machine gun sweep down. The bullet grazed the throat of zhang Jianshan, a company commander of the 6th regiment, and the blood ran down his throat. He felt the back of his neck and knew that he had not been punched through. He said “Ok” and continued to charge forward. None of the soldiers dared take a step back, for the colonel had ordered that all but the wounded and the signalmen should be shot on the spot. The regimental spy battalion, armed with submachine guns, supervised the battle in the rear.
General Stilwell (first man in front)
Dozens of B-25 fighter jets were deployed to help with intensive bombing and machine-gun fire on The Japanese positions. At the same time, the mountain cannons of the expeditionary army concentrated their fire on the enemy’s fort, blowing up rocks and smoke so that people could not see each other face-to-face. Prepare 2 division take advantage of the situation to storm into the enemy, and the Japanese launched hand-to-hand combat. When the gunners saw us hanging together, they didn’t know where to go, so they dropped their machine guns and fought hand to hand.
After this battle, fengshan mountain all over the mountain bullet mark, blood stained, everywhere is broken limbs and scattered bullets. Li Zheng teacher when I was a child often came to the mountains to find shell casings, a machine gun bullets can be sold for 2 cents, the next day’s breakfast money.
After the war, the people of Tengchong changed a lot of military supplies for household use. Li Zheng wore a vest made of parachutes. A fellow countryman is killing pigs, look closely at the killing of pigs knife – is a zhong Zheng jun stab.
5
In the street of Tengchong, I met an old man. He was not short in stature, but his shoulder bent forward, which made him a little lower. He was about to cross the road, but his head was still half lowered, his white hair hanging to his ears, and he stood in front of the stream of traffic with an air of confusion. Li Zheng, a fellow teacher, sighed. “This man’s life is so pathetic.”
The old man’s family name is Peng, but as a baby he had a special name — Tian Teng Yua Xiong. His biological father was The administrative minister of Tengchong, Shouji Tajima. When Tengchong fell, his mother, CAI Lanhui, a high school graduate with a beautiful face, was sent to Tiandao by the puppet county magistrate after being separated from her family during the refugee crisis. Tajima has a wife in Japan, but in order to show the “Sino-Japanese goodwill”, he still held a wedding with CAI Lanhui, as the “uncle of Tengchong” to win people’s hearts.
The day Mr Peng was born, the two armies were fighting in the streets of Tengchong, And CAI Lanhui hid in the underground bunker and gave birth to him. Tajima’s translator, Bai Binghang, delivered her, cutting the umbilical cord with a bayonet and wrapping the baby with a piece of clothing from the fallen soldier’s body. Tian Teng Yu Ya Xiong this name, is tian Dao transferred from Tengchong took good.
Shortly after the birth of CAI Lanhui was captured in the temple of wealth. In his memoirs, Sun Jianfeng, a company commander of the preparatory 2 division, briefly described the process of CAI Lanhui’s interrogation.
The interrogator asked: “You are an intellectual, why do you reconcile yourself to the enemy, marry the enemy administrative class minister Tajima?”
CAI Huilan answer: “I am to sacrifice the ego, complete the ego. Japan came, the front, the local civil and military officials fled at the sound of the wind, let a few traitors as his agents, ravage the place, fish the people, My heart can not bear. Married to Tajima, I rescued many people.”
On the way to Baoshan city with 18 comfort women, CAI fell ill and had her milk cut off. Mr. Peng, who was more than a month old, lay dying in his mother’s arms. When they went to a village called Yingying, the soldier who was escorting CAI said to her, “The child is following you. If he can’t live any longer, send someone away at once.
CAI Lanhui listened to the advice and gave her son to a local Peng family. Years later, Mr. Peng’s aunt searched around, found him, married him, and tried her best to take care of the lonely child.
Mr. Peng was always called “Japanese pig” when he was a child, and received a lot of bullying. He has developed the habit of walking with his head down since he was a child. When he grew up, no girl would marry him, and his aunt let her daughter marry him.
In the 1960s, Mr. Peng’s life became more and more miserable. He heard from people from Myanmar that he saw Tajima there and became the son-in-law of a Burmese. The story was very true, so he decided to look for him.
When he left, he bought a packet of candy and wrapped it in a newspaper as a gift to his biological father.
At the border, the border guards checked his luggage, dug out the packet of sugar and unrolled the newspaper. Because of a domestic political story in the newspaper, the soldier suspected That Mr. Peng was an enemy spy. He was immediately arrested and later sentenced to five years in prison. From then on, he gave up the idea of looking for his relatives.
6
On September 14, 1944, Chinese expeditionary forces recaptured Tengchong. Li Proposed the construction of a cemetery for the fallen soldiers at the foot of Laifeng Mountain, citing the title of Qu Yuan’s poem “Nine Songs? National Mourning” as the cemetery’s name. Several landlords gave up the plot of land to be used as a cemetery, overseas Chinese sent donations, and many Tengchong residents donated what little money and a few pieces of timber they were planning to rebuild their homes.
On the day when the bones and souls of the fallen expeditionary troops were buried in the cemetery, a tidal wave of people poured out of the streets of Tengchong, laying out incense tables, crying, Shouting, worshiping… Mages were invited to perform an amphibious ritual, chanting songs and praying to the dead. One local elder recalls that even the Japanese crossed the line together: “Let them go home. They also have wives, children and parents. Don’t interfere with tengchong people’s lives any more.”
As a child, Mr Li would come to the cemetery with his father and be ordered to recite inscriptions by Kuomintang dignitaries. To this day, he still recites Mr. Yu Youren’s inscriptions in every lecture: for the world, to defend justice, to fight for the motherland, to fight for freedom, and to fight for the war in Tengchong.
During the Cultural Revolution, tengchong people told their sons and daughters, who had become Red guards: “There are our beneforces buried there. Do not spoil their souls.”
The cemetery was not saved. One day in 1969, a group of rebels in military fatigues burst into the cemetery and first blew down the monument, breaking it in three parts, then smashed with hammers the inscriptions on monuments, tombstones and memorial halls containing the names of the fallen soldiers. According to legend, these people are “four wild” troops, the liberation war with the expeditionary army troops fought bloody battles.
In the 1970s, the National Cemetery was changed into the Party school of Tengchong County party Committee. Some of the broken steles were used as stepping stones for corridors and steps, while others were picked up and used as ramming stones or other uses.
‘The memory of the nation cannot be erased,’ Mr. Li said. In 1984, he sent a letter to tengchong County Party Committee, calling for the restoration of the cemetery. After layers of approval, he got the red seal of approval and began the difficult reconstruction project. Li and his colleagues are going around collecting lost cultural relics.
Most of the gravestones were never found, and the ones that were found were worn by the sun and the moon, making it difficult to identify the names of their owners. They had to do their best to put the broken gravestones together and rub them, and ask the calligrapher to re-seal the tablet in accordance with the original size and handwriting. Eventually, 3,346 pieces were re-carved, roughly half the original amount.
The only intact plaque at the Hall of Heroes survived because it was taken by a family to make a bed board.
In 2010, the government built a memorial to the West Yunnan War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression next to the cemetery. The museum contains more than 20,000 cultural relics of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression. “All of them are real objects, and there are no replicas,” said Mr. Bo, who was involved in the preparation and exhibition of the museum. “Few national memorial halls of Resistance against Japanese aggression can do this.”
Most of the cultural relics are donated by the people. The grandson of Que Han Qian, commander of the 54th Army of the 20th Group Army, filled an exhibition hall with cultural relics donated by Chen Canpei, an Overseas Chinese living in the United States, who saw cultural relics of the Anti-Japanese War in the overseas market and donated them to the memorial hall. “We are struggling financially and many donors pay for postage themselves.”
A few years ago, the Kuomintang dignitaries Jiang Xiaoyan, Hao Bai Village have come to visit the cemetery worship. Hao Bai village is an expeditionary army veteran, when leaving a set of “War in Burma Dian India-General review”.
Today, They have done seven exhibitions on the theme of resistance against Japanese aggression in the country. ‘I’m not doing this to promote hatred,’ he said. ‘I just want people to know about that history and remember those who died fighting for their country’s freedom.’
(This article was greatly helped by Mr. Li Zheng and Mr. Bo Shaohai.)
Resources:
Tengchong’s Siege by Yu Ge
“National glory” tengchong National Memorial Cemetery Management compiled
Documentary “China Expeditionary Force”
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