Chapter 4 The third chapter records the "88" tragedy in Tianzhen City (1937.9.12-14)

On September 12, 1937, the iron hooves of the Japanese invaders stepped into Tianzhen City, Shanxi Province, and carried out a massacre for three consecutive days, killing more than 2,300 people.This day is the eighth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar, and the locals call this disaster day the "August 8th" tragedy. In early September, the Honma Brigade and the Suzuki Brigade of the Tojo Column of the Japanese Kwantung Army committed crimes westward along Pingsui Road and entered Tianzhen County. On September 6, Panshan (located 8 miles southeast of the city), the main position of the Jinsui Army's strategic defense line, was captured.Tianzhen County has lost its barrier. The Jinsui Army responsible for defending the city, the 399th Regiment of the 200th Brigade of the 61st Army, was isolated and helpless, and withdrew from the west of the city on the night of September 11.At around 6:00 am on the next day, September 12, the Japanese army bombarded the northeast corner of the city wall and entered the city, starting an inhumane massacre.

Before the Japanese army attacked the city, Japanese planes came to bomb from time to time, and a few residents in the county evacuated women, the elderly, and the weak to their relatives in the mountainous area.Most of the residents thought that there were Jinsui troops guarding the city, and they were not mentally prepared for the Japanese invasion. Some wealthy households were unwilling to leave their homes because they wanted to protect their property.These thousands of residents who remained in the city became the targets of the Japanese beast army's arbitrary massacre and ravages. The Japanese army entered the city from the collapsed city wall and divided into three groups: one went south along the east wall, one went west along the north wall, and the other went straight into the streets and alleys of the city.Liu Quanyi, Northeast Street, went up the city wall early in the morning to move the door panel of his house (borrowed by the Jinsui army as a bunker). He was the first to find the Japanese army.Then the Japanese army first broke into the homes of the residents in the northeast corner of the courtyard, regardless of age, and killed everyone they met. Many people were killed when they woke up and had no time to hide.According to statistics, more than 100 people were killed in this place.Just when the city was in danger, some gentlemen, businessmen and wealthy households in the city were insensitive and had illusions about the brutal Japanese army. They prepared to welcome the Japanese army by cooking tea, preparing meals, and making small flags.Headed by Wang Guoan, the mayor of Northeast Street, he beat the gong and assembled more than 200 residents to carry the soil sacks blocking the gate to the North City Gate to welcome the Japanese army. As a result, Japanese tanks and cars entered the city directly, followed by a large number of Japanese troops.After these militarists entered the city, they rampaged and murdered. First, they drove the more than 200 residents who had moved the sacks into the grandma temple in Beiweng City (Beimen Wengquan), and chased and killed these innocent compatriots with bayonets. For a while, the crowd was in chaos, crying and screaming. Hou Yu on Xixi Street cursed the Japanese soldiers and was beheaded with a knife.People desperately rushed towards the road inside the temple or the gate of the temple like crazy, struggling and shouting, trying to break out of the devil's snare.Seeing this, the Japanese army switched to shooting guns and throwing grenades at crowded places. Amidst the sound of explosions and shooting, more than 200 unarmed people fell down one by one, and even a monk guarding the temple could not survive. spared.This was the first fascist atrocity committed by the Japanese invaders after the fall of Tianzhen County.

At 9 o'clock in the morning, the Japanese army fired shots everywhere in the city, searching for and killing refugees who fled in the streets and alleys.He Xian and other 14 people on Northwest Street were forced into a courtyard by 7 Japanese soldiers, and all were killed. He Xian dodged with his head in his arms, and was shot nine times.A dozen or so people in a compound surnamed Ma on the same street were shot dead except for an 8-year-old girl who survived the gunfire and passed out next to the dead body of a 70-year-old grandmother in the same courtyard.A young mother on this street was sitting on the edge of the kang nursing her child. She was shot to death by the Japanese invaders and fell to the ground. The innocent and poor baby crawled on the mother in the pool of blood and sucked the nipple in her mouth. Crying and crying, the mother's blood stained the ignorant child, which was unbearable to watch.

The ancient buildings in the city, such as the Ciguang Building on South Street and the Industrial Bank on North Street, were burned down."Jihoucheng", "Qingfuyuan", "Deqinglong", "Yihecheng", "Tiandegong" and other shops in West Street, the stores are wide open, the shelves are messy, the goods are looted, and the goods are worthless Throw it all over the street.After the robbery, the Japanese army poured gasoline on these more than 20 shops and set them on fire. Immediately, fires broke out everywhere, covering the whole city with smoke. After a large number of Japanese soldiers entered the center of the city, they went in groups of three or four and ordered the doors to be opened door by door.Japanese troops broke into houses, looted and raped wantonly.An old man surnamed Ma on Dongnan Street was brutally killed because he competed with the Japanese army for a new leather jacket.Every time the Japanese army came to a house, they searched the men. The purpose was first to fear hidden weapons, and the second was to want Bai Yang.Wang Chihe on Southeast Street was unbuttoned by a Japanese soldier and searched all over his body. He was beaten to death because Bai Yang was not found.A girl surnamed Yan on the same street, whose auspicious wedding day was approaching, was gang-raped by several Japanese soldiers and thrown into a puddle.What's more, some Japanese soldiers openly raped women in broad daylight. A girl surnamed Zhang, who was only fifteen or sixteen years old, was gang-raped by seven Japanese soldiers, grabbed her legs and divided her body alive.Guo Juzi in Southwest Street was forced by the Japanese army to tear down the anti-Japanese slogans on the wall of Mawang Temple in West Street (formerly the meeting place of the Ximen League), and he was also killed. Beheaded.An old man on Northeast Street saw the Japanese army approaching and had nowhere to hide. He hurriedly grabbed a pair of scissors from the kang and committed suicide.Three members of Wang Mianjiang's family committed suicide by throwing themselves into wells one after another in order to preserve their bodies under the butcher's knife of the Japanese army.

From around 10 a.m., the Japanese army drove out the refugees from door to door along the four streets, and escorted them to Mawang Temple on South Street, in front of Yunjindian at Xichengmen, and Fox Temple outside Beichengmen. A horrific massacre turned an ancient county town into a hell on earth. The Japanese army drove out more than 500 men, women and children from house to house in South Street, and all of them rushed to the Mawang Temple on the east side of Nanjie Road. The men and women were escorted to kneel on the east and west sides of the road respectively (children followed their mothers).There are machine guns on the south, north and west sides, and Japanese troops guard the four sides.The Mawang Temple is divided into two courtyards, the inner and outer courtyards. In the inner courtyard, there is a large pit (an air-raid bunker left by the Jinsui Army) about 2 feet 5 feet long and 1 foot 5 feet wide and deep.The Japanese army gestured to let Yan Yi, Zhang Fengxiang and other five local gentlemen from the men's side enter the temple first, and they were immediately assassinated in the pit.Afterwards, several groups were driven into the temple courtyard. People only saw those who went in, but not those who came out. They didn't know what kind of medicine was sold in the devil's gourd.A few daring young men tried to sneak away, but were immediately stopped by the guarding Japanese soldiers.The murderous Japanese bandits stood in a row behind the pit in the inner courtyard, holding bayonets, and under the command of the commander, they all started together. The bayonets pierced people's backs to their chests, and with a little more force, they picked the corpses into the pit.When the executioners were tired of killing, they ate and drank.Later, they felt that the people were wearing clothes that were not easy to stab, so they forced them to take off their clothes before entering the temple. Some people were stabbed more than a dozen times, and the most was stabbed 32 times. The big pit was full of corpses, so they were covered with cotton quilts Actually, put big stones on top.For the remaining corpses, the living were forced to pile them up in the house, and then killed until the dead corpses filled three houses.

There is a yam kiln in the Mawang Temple. Some people who were eager to escape wanted to jump in and hide. After being discovered by the Japanese army, they stabbed them with bayonets and picked them into the kiln until the corpses were piled up.Fearing that some living people would escape, the Japanese army knocked down an earthen wall beside the kiln and covered the kiln entrance.From 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., except for the women and children who were kneeling on the west side of the road, more than 300 men were almost killed (there were more than a dozen children accompanying adults). A few survived.Yu Jinhai was wounded in seven places. When no one was guarding him at night, he climbed out from the top floor of the dead man, untied the dead man's belt to make a bandage, wrapped the wound and fled back home.Teacher Ren Dingguo survived 11 stab wounds.Gao Zan, his two sons and one grandson in Southwest Street, a family of four from three generations, were all murdered.His grandson Gaofu, who was only 13 years old, was assassinated on the edge of the pit.

After waking up the next day, he was so thirsty that he struggled to climb into the north room, drank a few sips of the remaining dirty water in front of the half-cut water tank smashed by the Japanese army, and died of excessive bleeding. Almost at the same time as the Mawangmiao massacre, there was also a massacre on the south side of the west gate of the city.There is an open space in front of Nanyunjindian on Lunan near the west gate of the city, and the east, north, and west sides are all houses.The Japanese army gathered here more than 300 adult men who were driven out from Southwest Street and Northwest Street door by door.A machine gun was pointed at the crowd on the high steps in front of the store, and then they were divided into groups of 10, and the machine guns were used to sweep wildly. The corpses were piled up immediately, and the blood dripping from the pile of corpses turned the ground red.Hou Er, who lived nearby, was dragged out and killed even though he was blind.While escaping, Zhang Jinen was chased by the Japanese army and cut off his leg with a Japanese knife. Zhang glared at the enemy and shouted: "Give grandpa a good time!" He was shot to death.Zhang Fengyou, who lives on the south side of the road near Ximen, went out to carry water before the massacre, and his two sons followed behind worryingly. He was bumped into by a group of Japanese soldiers who suddenly came from Dongmian Street. A Japanese soldier raised a machine gun. After sweeping the shuttle, the three father and son fell in a pool of blood. In addition to the massacre in front of the Yunjin store, a total of 9 members of the Zhang family were killed.Wu Tang (son-in-law Zhang), who was driving a shop across the road from Zhang Fengyou, saw his relatives being killed and compatriots killed. When the enemy approached him, he was not afraid of violence, and used cast cars as weapons to use the piled up piles in the car shop. Covered by debris, he dealt with the enemy, hacked and killed 4 Japanese soldiers one after another, and then sacrificed heroically.

Around 11 a.m. on the same day, a group of Japanese soldiers drove more than 40 men seized from Zhoupailou Lane on Dongnan Street into the cave in the Wengquan Wall of Xichengmen. Zhou Ju and Wu Zhengde resisted entering the cave and were shot dead immediately.Then the enemy blocked the entrance of the cave with a machine gun, fired three rounds of bullets at the refugees in the cave, and then threw a grenade in.Because there was a thick wooden door frame in the middle of the cave, more than 10 people narrowly escaped death.Zhou Bing, who escaped from the city in the dark, ran all night, and went to Xue Xinyao Village the next day, took off his cotton vest, and shook out a waste warhead that only scratched his chest.

On the morning of the 12th, adult men in Dongjie and Beijie were also driven out of their homes by the Japanese army, and they were gathered in front of Dakui Pavilion on Dongjie and behind Dazhaobi of the county government respectively.At Dazhaobi, the Japanese army chopped off the heads of Zhang Mo and the old couple in public, and threw them bloody on the table. A Japanese officer yelled "Ji Li Du Lu", threatening the people.Later, there were more than 500 refugees in the two places, all of whom were taken with their hands behind their backs to the edge of a ditch at the foot of the collapsed building behind the Fox Temple on the north bank of the Yanghe River in the north of the city.The opening of the trench is about five or six feet, and the water depth is more than three feet.The Japanese army still used the method of the Mawangmiao massacre, stabbing the refugees into the trenches with bayonets in batches.There were a few who were not stabbed to death, and they groaned or screamed. When the devils heard it, they stabbed the bayonet with the point of the bayonet like garlic.When Ren Hong was stabbed, he fell on top of the corpse and escaped by pretending to be a dead person.He Juheng on Northwest Street was stabbed five times in a row, and then he woke up from a coma and survived. He Juheng’s son He Xian’s memoirs narrated how his father narrowly escaped death in the Japanese massacre:

"Before I was arrested, when the Japanese invaders shouted at the gate of the courtyard, my father He Juheng went to open the door. As soon as the Japanese invaders entered the door, they untied his belt, tied his back, dragged his trousers down to his knees, and rushed to the East Street. In the courtyard of the old police station. The devils gathered 400 to 500 ordinary people here, and drove them all to the Fox Temple outside the north gate of the county seat. They stabbed them one by one in a large water bath with a bayonet, and covered it with another layer of soil. I My father was stabbed five times and pushed down on the upper floor of the pit. After waking up, he broke through the thin soil layer and climbed out. Not daring to go back to the city, he ran to my aunt’s house in Xinping Village and hid for three or four months. It is said that there were still a few survivors in front of the Fox God Temple. The other four or five hundred people died tragically in the pit.

"People who were beaten to death by the Japanese invaders at home and in the courtyard can be seen everywhere. The boys of Wang San and Wu San next door to my house were beaten to death in the courtyard by the Japanese invaders." According to eyewitnesses who went to collect the corpses a few days later, a section of the trench about 30 feet long was almost filled with scattered corpses. The above facts prove that there were more than 500 victims in the Fox Temple massacre. On the morning of the 13th, the Japanese army created another mass playground tragedy.In fact, the Japanese army made preparations to continue the massacre on the first day.The executioners who slaughtered for a whole day, and the refugees who were not able to slaughter in the future, were imprisoned in the urn circle at the north city gate to spend the night.During the escort, in order to prevent people from escaping, the Japanese army untied the belts of the refugees, tied their arms behind their backs one by one, and lined up in a row. Because of the loss of the belts, the trousers of the refugees fell below their knees. trousers), her lower body was exposed, and she suffered all kinds of humiliation.Some people were beaten by the devils from time to time because they couldn't walk slowly and couldn't keep up with the team.What's even more hateful is that the Japanese army imprisoned the young and middle-aged men who were forced by them to carry water and put out the fire together in the open-air urn circle, and the Japanese army sent strict guards outside.After the poor 500 refugees froze and starved all night, what awaited them was not food and clothing, but death.Early the next morning, the enemy picked out 40 refugees, including Yuan Mei, each wearing a white cloth armband with the word "coolie" to clean up the corpses on the street, and some people were assigned to pull water outside the city for the Japanese army. (Because there were dead bodies in more than 40 wells in the city), and the rest were taken to a courtyard near the playground on Dongbei Street.In the playground, there are three large trenches dug by the Shanxi-Sui Army. The trenches are about 3 meters deep, 11 meters long from east to west, and 2 meters wide from north to south. The three trenches communicate with each other and were originally used for air defense.The imprisoned refugees were divided into groups of 10, and they were escorted to the edge of the trench one after another by the Japanese army, and they were swept away with machine guns. When they fell into a group, they swept another group. The machine guns roared for most of the morning, and more than 500 refugees were shot to death. spared.The Japanese army still took pictures here.Until the 1950s, when the ground was broken to build the Tianzhen No. 1 Middle School building on the original playground, there were still many bones of the victims. On the 14th, the carnage continued.These invaders were so red-eyed by killing people, lest there were still men who were hiding that they would not be killed, so they "cleaned up" the holes and pits in the surrounding city walls on the same day. Take a shuttle. After being looted by the Japanese army, the county town was as silent as death.In the past few days, crows circled and screamed during the day, and dogs bit and wolves howled at dusk.Inside and outside the county seat, in the streets and alleys, dead bodies are everywhere, and the stench is suffocating.Gao Bi, a survivor on Southwest Street, saw with his own eyes that in the courtyard of Mawang Temple, pigs and dogs were tearing up carrion corpses in groups, and the eyes of the dogs were red when they ate the dead.It took many days after the massacre before the Japanese army allowed residents to clean up the dead bodies.Most of the corpses are bloody and rotten, and the family members can only identify the corpses based on the fabric of their relatives' clothes and the needlework they have done.Gao E, who was tortured in the Fox God Temple, had only one arm left on his body, and the family members recognized it from the ragged sleeve that wrapped the arm.The unclaimed corpses that died in the city were pulled by seven or eight carts to the area of ​​Sanguan Temple, about a mile west of the south gate, where they were dug and buried.One survivor, Wang Jiazhen, counted 286 dead bodies in just one pit. The killing methods of the Japanese army were extremely cruel.In addition to arbitrary shooting and stabbing anytime, anywhere, and stabbing with a knife, various other killing methods have been exhausted, such as beheading, splitting the brain, cutting the stomach, piercing the vulva, and throwing it into the water after killing, etc.The head of Wei Kezi in Xijie was split into four by the Japanese army and died.As for the bodies of men and women who were killed or raped and thrown into puddles, there are countless.A large sewage pit on Southeast Street was almost full of dead bodies.After a woman saw it, she mistakenly thought that there was the body of her man who had been taken away. She lost hope in life, drowned her own baby boy in grief, and then jumped into the puddle to commit suicide. The women who were raped by the Japanese army were even more innumerable.Those young women who couldn't hide were mostly raped by them. There was a group of young girls and their wives on Dongnan Street who hid in a room and raped them after they were discovered by the Japanese army.One girl was gang-raped by these beasts for a whole day.Liu Yinlan and Liu Yulan, two female students from West Street, were raped by the Japanese army and hanged themselves.Women in Northwest Street and Northeast Street committed suicide by jumping into wells after being raped by beast soldiers.According to the recollection of some old people, there were more female corpses than male corpses in the well, and several wells were already filled with female corpses. Except for a few who committed suicide due to fright, most of them jumped into the well and committed suicide because they felt shameless to live in the world after being humiliated.In order to escape the disaster, many women shaved their hair and disguised themselves as men, disfigured their faces and changed their clothes, smeared pot black on their faces, or hid in yam kilns. They dared not show their faces for many days and lived a life of darkness.There are also those who fought bravely against being killed by the enemy in order to protect their own personality. He Yuee, a girl from Northwest Street, faced the beasts in clothes and hats.Later, it was buried outside the North City Gate, and was honored as the "Virgin's Grave".The brutality of the Japanese invaders is heinous, and they wantonly insult women for fun. On September 14, several Japanese soldiers drove a large group of women who had been searched from everywhere to Northeast Street. On the large playground where people were shot and killed the day before, they forced these women to pull their trousers down to their knees and beat them around in circles with gun butts. Weeping and swallowing, they turned around the corpses of their compatriots scattered all over the place, while the Japanese devils stood aside and laughed wildly. After the recovery of Tianzhen in September 1945, the people of Tianzhen built the "Tianzhen County Memorial Tower for the Distressed Compatriots" in the county seat.After a more detailed investigation, 332 people were killed in Southwest Street, 368 in Dongnan Street, 258 in Northeast Street, and 290 in Northwest Street, a total of 1,248 people whose names were inscribed on the stele.In addition, it is estimated that there are more than 400 households that have lost their homes, plus about 700 foreign businessmen and local victims whose names are unknown, and a total of more than 2,300 victims.As for those who were mutilated and injured and those whose property was robbed, it is even more difficult to count. The Japanese massacre in Tianzhen City was the most barbaric and brutal in the history of modern warfare, and it will always be nailed to the pillar of shame in history.

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Notes: This material is based on Comrade Wu Zicheng's "Records of the People's Suffering in Tianzhen", and interviews with He Xian, Duan Pigong, Zhou Bing, Gao Rirong, Zhan Gui, Gao Bi, Wu Zhaoji, An Jinbang, Ma Rui and other parties.