Chapter 5 Chapter 4 Blood-stained Lingqiu (1937.9.20-10.23)

The Sakagaki Division of the Japanese invaders occupied Lingqiu County on September 20, 1937, and began a planned massacre on September 23, killing more than 600 county residents in the first two days.At the same time, the enemies who invaded the four villages near Lingqiu also killed people and set fire everywhere.Within a month, more than 1,200 people were killed in Lingqiu, creating an extremely brutal Lingqiu tragedy. On July 7, 1937, the gunfire of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident launched by the Japanese invaders soon spread to Lingqiu.The county magistrate, government officials and their troops appointed by Yan Xishan abandoned the city and fled south without firing a single shot.The rich families in Lingqiu County also fled with their families, gold and silver.Only the majority of poor peasants couldn't leave their pots and pans behind and had nowhere to escape. Even if they ran out, they had to come back because they had no food, drink or shelter.Some fled to the houses of relatives and friends to hide, and ran back every three days to have a look.Most of the residents stay in Lingqiu urban and rural areas.

At that time, Yiquanling, the pass that Guangling must pass through to reach Lingqiu, was guarded by Yan Xishan and Liu Fengbin. Many people thought that the Japanese would not be able to reach Lingqiu at once. Yan Xishan's troops in the Lingling Ridge were immediately defeated when they saw the Japanese army, and some of them fled without a trace even without hearing the gunshots of the Japanese army. On the afternoon of September 20, the Kawahara Brigade of the Japanese Sakagaki Division invaded Lingqiu City unimpeded.This is an advance force of the Japanese invasion of the south.Because they were eager to enter Pingxingguan in the south, they carried the captured young and middle-aged men with supplies for them, and arrested the women to cook for them. In the first few days, there were no mass murders, and many of those who escaped returned to the county.

Unexpectedly, this was a plan of the Japanese invaders to delay their troops. On September 23, the Japanese 21st Brigade led by Miura Toshiji took over the defense and closed the city gates tightly, only the common people were allowed to enter the city and not allowed to leave the city.Early in the morning, the Japanese army searched and arrested them door by door in batches.All men were arrested, even children, and all were driven to the concentration point.There are three concentration points in the city, one is the Damachang behind the Dayun Temple in the northeast corner of the city, the other is the large vegetable garden outside the Grandma Temple under the north city wall, and the other is the empty space of the God of Wealth Temple and Laojun Temple in the northwest corner of the city. field.Some people expected that this was not a good thing, and they always wanted to find opportunities to hide and escape, but they were all beaten to death on the spot by the devils.Wang Jinfu, who lived at the gate of the south city and opened a shop, was beaten to death by the Qingshui River when he broke out of the city gate and fled south. A guest surnamed Ma was found hiding in the toilet and was stabbed to death by the devil with a bayonet.

Groups of people were forced to the concentration point.The Japanese army has brought in large quantities of straw ropes and shovels in these three places.People have already seen that this is a massacre planned by the enemy, but it is too late to escape.A group of devil soldiers forced some young and middle-aged men to shovel and dig pits, and tied up the rest of the people with straw ropes.For a whole morning, they dug many large pits with a depth of more than ten feet and a width of more than ten feet.It turned out that the pit he dug was his own grave.After the big pit was dug, the enemy machine guns opened fire, killing all the people who dug the pit, and then forced the tied people to the edge of the pit, and pushed them down the pit one by one with bayonets.

In Damachang, more than 300 people were shot and killed by devils, including 4 brothers Liu Tinggan and Liu Hanying, 3 brothers Liu Laide and their two children.In Nai Nai Temple, more than 200 people were massacred by the enemy, including 4 members of Li Hai's family and 3 members of Hao Dengzhi's family.In front of the God of Wealth Temple and Laojun Temple, more than 100 people including Yuan Yaoguo, Wu Zhong, and Liu Tingyu were killed.More than 600 people were massacred by the Japanese army in the three venues. On this day, many people were sporadically killed by the enemy.Liu Yuzhu and Nie Yongyao from the Kuijian hat shop outside the city went to the city to look for someone, but they were caught by the devils, tied to a tree on the East Street, and stabbed to death with bayonets.The Japanese army also gathered the captured women, forcibly stripped off their clothes and even the foot wraps, completely naked, beat them and forced them to writhe naked, and then the group of beasts raped them collectively and gang-raped.Many women fought with the devils at that time, and some fought desperately with the enemy, killing more than 10 people on the spot.

The Japanese army continued to hunt around, and brought the captured residents to this killing field for so-called killing competitions and killing performances.They tied the captured people into several groups according to their size, forced them to kneel down, and the Japanese soldiers slashed and killed them in batches with big knives.Some had their heads cut off and rolled on the ground, some were still attached to their necks, and some were still struggling in a pool of blood without being hacked to death.If the Japanese soldiers with knives were able to cut off the heads of several people who were tied up, they would be praised by the surrounding Japanese officers and soldiers, and they would laugh wildly; if the Japanese soldiers with knives could not even kill a single person , they would be yelled and scolded by the Japanese officers, and the surrounding Japanese soldiers would also yell and laugh.Some even forced the captured people to sit on stools and chopped them down one by one.Sometimes, the captured masses were used as "live targets" for bayonet practice, and a group of Japanese soldiers stabbed randomly with one stab and another.There was a man surnamed Ding in the city who was stabbed 17 times by the enemy.The enemy thought he was dead on the spot, but he woke up again in the middle of the night, crawled home and hid, and soon the Lingqiu was liberated and brought him back to life.Later, in order to never forget this deep hatred, "Seventeen Knives" became the name of this person.This is how the Japanese invaders brutally slaughtered our innocent compatriots.

The Japanese army who invaded Lingqiu, while carrying out a planned massacre in the county town, also caused massacres in various parts of Lingqiu.In the four villages of East Henan, Xiaozhai, Guangou, and Tangzhiwa in Lingqiu alone, Japanese bandits slaughtered more than 200 innocent people. Donghe River is the largest town in Lingqiu. On September 23, the Japanese soldiers stationed in Donghe River began to massacre the villagers.They arrested people along the street, and drove all the arrested people to Wudaomiao Lane in the west of the village to kill them.There are many ways of killing the enemy, some shot to death, some stabbed to death with bayonets, and some slashed to death with war knives.There was a middle-aged farmer named Liu Dacheng, who was crucified alive by two devils with his arms crossed, and another devil nailed him to death from the back of his head and neck along the spine with a furnace rod. After death, his body stood upright for a long time .More than 30 people were brutally killed on the first day.A larger massacre was carried out the next day, with house-to-house searches in the village and searches outside the village.More than 70 old and weak women and children were found in the village, and they were all driven to Wudaomiao Lane to be brutally killed.Outside the village, 7 people were harvesting crops near the Majia River. Among them, 2 brothers Song Qiyao from Zhongyewo Village were shot and killed.An old man in Guluhe Village went to Donghe River to sell firewood, carrying bundles of firewood on his back, and carrying a ball of bean dregs cakes as dry food. He was arrested, pushed down and stabbed to death by Japanese soldiers.Only Lu Chang from Donghenan Village was a student studying in Japan. On the 23rd, he went to the street to talk to Japanese military officers in Japanese, and his family was spared from being searched and killed. However, he went to the street again the next day and was also arrested and taken to Wudaomiao Lane. kill.More than 100 people were brutally murdered in Donghe South Village in two days.

On September 23, some villagers in Xiaozhai Village were already on the ground, and some were still at home. Once the devils entered the village, they divided into several groups, searched and killed them door by door in the village, and spread out to search the mountains outside the village.The ghost soldiers entered the mud houses of Li Mengbi, Li Wensheng, and Zhang Tongtang in the west of the village.Li Mengbi's family saw the devils barge into their house with a murderous look, and his wife and son huddled together in fright.The devil stabbed Li Mengbi's son's buttocks with a bayonet, and the blood gushed out like a spring. He was so painful that mother and father screamed. Li Mengbi and his wife quickly blocked their son with their bodies. The devil stabbed them down with a bayonet. At the same time, the ghost soldiers swung their knives and slashed randomly. The lower limbs of the family of three were all cut off and died in a pool of blood.Zhang Jianglin's mother and son were harvesting crops in Shuwan, Dengjialing. Sun Zheng's father, Sun Jingui and his son were both harvesting crops in Muguagou.When Yang Zirong and his son were harvesting crops in Dengjialing, they were forced by Japanese soldiers to the river ditch beside the village.An old man from Hunyuan County came to a small village to sell fruit, but was also shot and killed under the fruit tree by the devils.Only one person survived, he is the old man Zhang Benxiang who lives in Shageda at the entrance of the village.A Japanese soldier broke into his house and stabbed the old man with a gun. Old man Zhang was a craftsman who twisted a wire lantern. The ghost fired hurriedly, and the bullets flew past the old man Zhang. The old man swooped at the ghost with a bayonet in his hand, and the ghost screamed in fright, turned around and ran away.Old man Zhang probed and saw that there were many Japanese soldiers in the river channel outside the village. He considered that he couldn't escape, so he hurried into the cellar.After a while, the devil led a group of Japanese soldiers into the courtyard to search. When he found the cellar, he shot into it, threw grenades, and then threw dry wood and set it on fire to smoke. He didn't want the old man Zhang Benxiang to use a bayonet to dig through another cellar next door. escape.The next day, the enemy continued to kill and set fire.Li Shitou and his wife hid in the oat straw pile in the house.The Japanese soldiers searched the whole village and couldn't find anyone, so they set fire to it. More than 200 houses were burned down, and Li Shitou's mother and son were both burned to death.More than 30 villagers were killed in Xiaozhai Village in two days.

Dozens of people were also killed in Guangou and Tangzhiwa villages.The enemy searched and killed all over Guangou. More than 20 villagers who were hiding in Luminggou near the village were all searched out. Pick one, chop one with a big knife for a while, and shoot another with a gun for a while.There was Wang Liangshu, whose limbs were all removed. The Japanese soldiers laughed wildly when they saw the pain of these seriously injured survivors struggling.In Tangzhiwa, Japanese soldiers killed anyone they saw.Eight farmers in the village were harvesting crops in the field, and they were also shot dead by Japanese soldiers for no reason.Villager Wu Lianyun heard the screams and climbed up the wall to look south. Seeing the tragic scene of the murder of his fellow villagers, he trembled all over with shock, blood gushing up, and then died of vomiting blood.Song Pei of Bencun ran to the accident site, saw the bloody corpses, screamed and passed out, and soon died of fright.

On September 25th, the Great Battle of Pingxingguan, which shocked China and the world, won the great victory of annihilating the Sakagaki Division. The Japanese army took revenge by massacring the common people. Most of the men they served killed.They went out of the city to Kuijian, Shazui, Shapo, Chengdaopo, Dongguan, Xiguan and other streets and courtyards in Chengguan to search and kill them from house to house.On the streets, in many courtyards, there are bodies of massacred masses everywhere.In Shapo, Nie Yao's 15-year-old nephew heard that the Japanese army was hunting him, so he hurriedly hid in the cellar. The enemy found him outside the wall and took aim at the target, and killed him at the cellar entrance.After the devil entered the courtyard, he threw a few grenades into the cellar and left.Nie Yao's sister-in-law was hiding in the woodpile. Seeing her son being beaten to death, she ran out of the woodpile, hugged her son and cried bitterly. The enemy returned and shot Nie Yao's sister-in-law to death.Du Jinxiu's family was hiding in Futian Village in the west of the city. On that day, he and his son Du Si went home to fetch things. They met the Japanese soldiers coming out of Nie Yaoyuan. Du Jinxiu was stabbed to death at home by the enemy with a bayonet. Du Si jumped out of the window. , Fighting with the Japanese army with bare hands.The Japanese army stabbed him with a bayonet. He grasped the enemy's bayonet with both hands and grabbed the gun with all his strength. Ten fingers were cut off, dripping with blood, but he still didn't let go.Du Si kicked down a devil, and when he rushed out of the yard and fled behind the temple, he was shot and killed by the chasing Japanese army.In Kuijian, Ma Yuanxiang was caught by the enemy, tied to a tree outside the Dongcheng Gate, and stabbed to death as a living target.In Dongguan, the Japanese army knifed Qiao Guodong and captured several women for rape.A woman named Zhang Jin'e struggled to fight with the Japanese soldiers, cursed at the enemy, and bit the enemy fiercely. Her intestines were picked out with a bayonet and opened.More than 400 people were massacred in the city and the city gate.

On the afternoon of October 14, Japanese soldiers went to Xiguan to search for the masses, and the masses fled towards Dongfutian in the southwest of the county.After the Japanese found out, they followed and chased them out.Dongfutian is located on the slope beam on the south bank of the Donghe River, only three miles away from the county seat. There are many ravines here, leading directly to the foot of Taibai Mountain.People in Chengguan often hide in these ravines in order to avoid being killed by the enemy.The crowd ran and shouted, and the Japanese soldiers fired guns while chasing them. The villagers of Dongfutian Village shouted and scattered to hide when they heard the gunshots.A woman from Deng Laiyun in Dongfutian Village ran up the earth beam with her luggage, and was shot dead by the forced Japanese army.Guo Xiaoma looked around and was found beaten to death.After all, the children and women ran slowly and were soon overtaken by the Japanese army.They panicked and ran into Yaojiangou in the west of the village.This is a dead end, there is only an entrance, no way out, and the suffocating Laoniugou is surrounded by steep earth cliffs on three sides.A large group of children and elderly people were blocked in the ditch by the Japanese army.The Japanese army seized Mizoguchi, took women and children as living targets, and aimed and shot one by one.The daughter of Li Taiheng in Xiguan, the county seat, was about to give birth, and was shot through the stomach by the enemy, and the soon-to-be-born baby flowed out of the mother's womb.Before Li Taiheng's daughter died, she struggled and convulsed in pain. The Japanese soldiers walked up to her and stabbed her face with bayonets, causing her face to be bloody.A woman from Xiguan also ran into this ditch with a little girl. After the woman was beaten to death, the innocent child crawled on top of her and shouted, "Mother, mother, go home!" Beside her mother.Deng Le's mother ran to the edge of the ditch to fight the Japanese soldiers. She picked up rocks and threw them at the enemy. The Japanese soldiers stabbed her down and cut off her arm.Of the 54 people who ran into the ditch, except Liu Guilian's mother who fell into the water whirlpool and was crushed by other corpses and was not killed, the remaining 53 people died.Among them were 36 from Xiguan and 17 from Dongfutian. The women living in the county town could not bear the daily torture of the Japanese soldiers. Some women hanged themselves from the beam, some threw themselves into the well, and some women escaped from the city wall by climbing ropes from the city wall at night with the help of the monk Guangxian of Dayun Temple.The Japanese soldiers found that there were fewer and fewer women left behind, so they searched everywhere. After finding a big rope from behind the Buddha statue in Dayun Temple, the Japanese soldiers poured gasoline on Monk Guangxian and burned him alive.Some women were shot and killed by Japanese sentries on the city wall when they climbed ropes to escape from the city wall, and some fell off the city wall and died. The massacre in the urban and rural areas of Lingqiu happened in the eighth month of the lunar calendar, and the weather was still warm. The murdered corpses were all decomposed, and the stench of dead corpses was everywhere. On October 23, the 687th Regiment of the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army and the Yang Chengwu Independent Regiment finally drove away the Japanese troops who occupied Lingqiu.The people who had fled abroad returned home one after another. Under the guidance of the survivors, the family members who came back found pit after pit of relatives’ bodies behind the Dayun Temple (now the County Machinery Factory) in the northeast of the city. Another pile of corpses was found in Muda vegetable garden (now the county hospital); another pile of corpses was also found behind the Temple of Fortune and Laojun Temple (now the county guest house) in the northwest corner of the city.On the trees outside the east gate, inside and outside the houses on the sand slope outside the west gate, on the city road slope, outside the north city wall, and by the Nanhe River in the south of the county seat, there are blood and dead bodies of relatives everywhere.People identify and look for their relatives from thousands of corpses, some howl, some choke with sobs, and some are in agony.When the earth pit where the relatives were buried was opened, most of the relatives' corpses had rotted away, beyond recognition, and could not be recognized from the face. Ding Yangxuan (former director of the Judicial Bureau of Datong, now retired) recalled the tragic situation at that time and said: "The day the Japanese invaded and occupied Lingqiu City, I was still in the city. The devils caught us and forced us to carry things back to the east and south. Returning from the east and south, I ran from Zuoxin village along the north slope to Yipo village. My brother-in-law went back to the county seat. My father’s name was Ding Shu, who used to hide in Yipo village , My mother and I were guarding the door in the city. On September 20, after the Japanese invaded Lingqiu City, I heard that no one was killed. My father went back to the city to check the news. Three or four relatives were killed, and my brother-in-law was also killed. After the enemy was driven away, we searched for my father's body, and scraped away the thin layer of soil under the north wall. It was autumn, and I had been beaten to death for a month, so I couldn’t identify it clearly, so we had to identify it from the clothes. We identified a jacket that looked like my father’s, and carried it to burial. The family couldn’t afford a coffin, and the person who died at that time There were too many, and there was nowhere to buy a coffin, so I buried my father in the hall box. Later, I saw the shoes worn by another dead man, like my father, so I dumped out the former corpse and buried the latter." Liu Guilian, a woman from Shapo Village, said: I am from Shapo, Chengguan. Before the Japanese invaded the city, I fled to Dongfutian Village.After the Eighth Route Army beat the devils away, my aunt and I searched for the bodies of my uncle and brother Xiaogedan.My aunt lives in the back, which is now the county hospital. At that time, it was a vegetable garden, a killing field for the Japanese, and the garden was full of dead people.I couldn't recognize him from the face, but from the clothes, I recognized a corpse who looked like my uncle.The murdered body of my uncle Ma Yuanxiang was found from a tree outside Dongcheng. In Nancheng Moat, a few dogs pulled and gnawed on a corpse.At that time, the corpse had not been killed for a long time, and it was recognized from the gray-haired face of the deceased that it was the corpse of Grandpa Qiao Sen.Except for the head, the meat on the body was almost eaten by dogs. The corpses of extinct families were buried with the help of neighbors, relatives and friends who returned to the city, and cadres and soldiers from the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army.At that time, everyone swore angrily: mountains of corpses and seas of blood filled the city with sorrow, every household burst into tears, their chests were full of anger, and they vowed to never stop killing the devils.