Chapter 30 Chapter 29 Personal experience of the suffocation tragedy in the Chongqing Grand Tunnel (1941.6.5)

On the night of June 5, 1941, an air defense tunnel suffocation tragedy occurred in Chongqing, the capital of the Nationalist government. Overnight, nearly 10,000 citizens died due to suffocation. Tragic event. The author experienced the tragedy at that time and survived by luck.As a witness of history, I will now truthfully write down the situation on the spot and make it public to the world. After the fall of Wuhan in 1938, the Japanese invaded Yichang along the Yangtze River to spy on Chongqing. They used a large number of air forces to carry out air strikes day and night, carrying out inhumane "carpet" bombing of the urban area of ​​Chongqing.

Chongqing is a foggy mountain city. Every year in late autumn, the fog fills the air at dusk, and it clears up at eight or nine o'clock the next morning.The foggy season lasted until the spring and summer of the following year. During this time, the visibility was low. The number of Japanese planes coming to attack the area was less than usual, and they seldom came at night. Chongqing citizens could sleep a little more peacefully. Under the threat of frenzied bombing by Japanese planes, the agencies and groups of the Kuomintang government all occupied favorable locations in Yishan and built their own air-raid shelters.The average citizen has no choice but to go to the public air-raid shelters. The terrain of these public air-raid shelters is not good, and the equipment is particularly simple.Therefore, many people were evacuated to the Jiangbei, South Bank and suburbs of Chongqing during the Japanese air raids.

The large air defense tunnel in Chongqing is built near Shibati in Shizhong District. It is a large tunnel that is dug from the ground about 10 meters deep into the ground, stretches for about two kilometers, and bifurcates into three crossings in the middle. , It is specially used by ordinary citizens to avoid air raids. The ground entrance of the large tunnel is wide, the stairs are made of slate stones, and there is a large gate made of wooden fences at the junction of the stairs and the underground tunnel.Whenever the enemy plane took off and flew towards Chongqing, the monitoring station in the east of Xiachuan immediately alerted the accompanying capital.At this time, the Chongqing Air Defense Headquarters immediately issued the first alarm, and the citizens and civilian police were evacuated immediately, and the gates of the large tunnel were opened to let citizens in.However, once the enemy plane approaches and the emergency alarm sounds, the gates of the large tunnel will be closed, and the protection team will guard the steps outside the gates, preventing citizens from entering or exiting.

The large tunnel was built hastily after the beginning of the Anti-Japanese War. The width and height of the tunnel are about two meters, and there are wooden benches on both sides, and an oil lamp is lit every three to forty meters. other equipment.There are no pillars in the tunnel, no brick walls on the road wall, and no cement structure support on it. There is no ventilation, fire prevention, anti-virus, medicine, telephone communication equipment, etc., and everything is missing. In case of Japanese air raids, if the citizens could not (or had no time to go) to evacuate in the suburbs, they would help the old and the young, carry gold and silver, and go into the large tunnel to escape.The reason is that they are afraid of being bombed to death, and they are afraid of being suspected of being a "traitor" if they don't enter Dong, so they don't want to stay on the ground.Although the large tunnels are poorly equipped, they are free and open. The well-equipped air-raid shelters are either dedicated to government agencies or charged per person.Therefore, citizens in the central city generally run into the large tunnel.

In the midsummer of 1941, the smog season in Chongqing was over, and the day and night raids, which had been suspended for a long time, began again. At 6:00 pm on June 5, the sirens of the air raid sirens sounded.At that time, the author was trained in the third phase of the foreign affairs class of the Military Commission of the Nationalist Government. More than 60 students in the class hurriedly finished their dinner under the urging of the alarm, then hurriedly gathered and ran to the big tunnel, and entered the underground from the tunnel entrance near the only movie theater.According to regulations, students from the foreign affairs class of the Military Commission were allowed to enter another solid air-raid shelter belonging to the Inspection Office of the Chongqing Garrison Headquarters. big tunnel.

According to the usual situation, it usually takes 50 minutes to an hour from the initial alarm to the emergency alarm.About 50 minutes after the emergency alert is issued, the Japanese plane will fly over Chongqing.Enemy planes often bombed back and forth in turns, so people sometimes had to hide in air-raid shelters for half a day, a day, or even longer. At that time, there was no day or night attack for a long time, and the citizens were unprepared. Most of the people who could not evacuate after hearing the police rushed into the tunnel to escape, and the number of people surged by more than double than before.The original volume of the large tunnel can accommodate four to five thousand people, and nearly ten thousand people poured into it that day. In addition to the full benches on both sides of the cave, even the aisle in the middle is full of people, which is very special. Crowding seriously hinders the circulation of air.

At about 7:00 p.m., the emergency siren sounded, and as usual, the protection team closed the gate outside, cutting off entry and exit.My classmates Huang Heling and Tan Xilin from the foreign affairs class and I sat on the bench at the corner about 10 meters away from the gate. Because we are all Cantonese, each of us refused to go deep into the air-raid shelter. At around 9:00 p.m., the evil Japanese planes dropped a large number of bombs on Chongqing again. In the tunnel, thunderous explosions could be heard, and shock waves of vibration and shaking could be felt.At this time, the people who had gathered in the cave for two hours already felt dry and hot and had trouble breathing, and the oil lamps on the tunnel walls gradually faded and flickered erratically.Anyone with a little knowledge understands that this is the phenomenon of lack of oxygen and sudden increase of carbon dioxide in the cave, and the situation is getting serious.

The temperature in the large tunnel is getting higher and higher, the oxygen is getting less and less, and the danger of death has threatened all the refugees in the entire tunnel.But people remained silent, no one wanted to do anything first, just watched the development of the situation nervously, enduring the pain of squeeze, heat and difficulty in breathing. The lack of oxygen is getting worse, and so are the cries of babies and children.Some of the oil lamps began to go out, the catastrophe was imminent, and no one wanted to sit still.As a result, patience turned into tension, gentleness turned into roughness, and people rushed towards the entrance of the cave in unison, just wanting to get out of the tunnel and get on the ground as soon as possible.

I realized that the situation was serious, so I immediately stood up and rushed towards the tunnel entrance with Tan and Huang.Unexpectedly, the gate of the large tunnel was closed from the inside out, and the crowd rushed in, squeezing the gate so hard that it couldn't be opened.Shouts of anger and groans of pain came from the crowd in front, squeezed against the gate. Later, the wooden fence was opened somehow, and the protective team guarding the steps outside also ran away.The flow of people passing through the gate is like a river breaking its embankment, rushing towards the entrance of the tunnel with all its strength.Being young and strong, my two classmates and I tried our best to squeeze out of the wooden fence with the flow of people, climbed the stairs in a daze, and finally came to the ground.Was I volleying at the time?Is it rolling?Or was it caught and pushed out by the flow of people?It's really unclear.I just felt that as soon as I got out of the cave, I breathed fresh air, and my whole body felt cool and comfortable, and then I was confused and in a trance for a moment, and I lay down half asleep, half awake.

I didn't have a watch at the time, and I woke up after falling asleep for about half an hour, only to hear deafening shouts and screams from the tunnel.I got up from the ground and saw that I was lying about 30 meters away from the entrance of the tunnel, surrounded by 100 people, some of them were waking up, and some were standing there blankly. However, no one came out of the tunnel again. .I looked down and saw that my jacket had been torn, most of the buttons had fallen off, my hat was missing, and all the letters, photos, and diaries in the shoulder bag were gone.Things were damaged and lost, but I finally escaped death and returned to the world.

I tried my best to concentrate, looked around, and found several other students walking staggeringly, like ghosts one by one.The screams coming from the tunnel were very miserable, so two classmates and I turned around and ran into the tunnel, trying to rescue our classmates. As soon as we entered the large tunnel, we were greeted by hot and smelly air, which forced us to cover our mouths.Gas lamps are hung on the wooden gates, and under the lights, a terrible picture of human decay is displayed. At the junction of the underground tunnel and the stairs, where the gate is located, there are twenty or thirty corpses piled up, blocking the road leading to the tunnel entrance.Kneeling and pressing down behind this pile of corpses were countless people who were struggling desperately, screaming and unable to rush out.They are like wooden rafts in the river, squeezed one by one.The person in the front prostrated himself on the pile of corpses, the person behind pressed the leg of the person in front, the third person knelt and pressed the leg of the second person, the fourth, fifth... none of them could get out of their bodies.The passage had been blocked to death, and thousands of people deep in the tunnel were still trying their best to squeeze out, causing the crowd in front to squeeze tighter and tighter, and the pressure became heavier, making it impossible to get up.The only thing people can do is to let out the last wail before death. The smell coming out of the tunnel is hotter and more tropical. We had to use a handkerchief moistened with water and hold it over our mouths as a mask, and ran to the last few steps of the stairs.Among the countless victims, we saw that six or seven students from the foreign affairs class were caught in the crowd and struggling.We stretched out our hands across the corpses to pull them out. We touched their hands but couldn't pull them out. Some tea was sent down the tunnel and served in cups and bowls to the victims closest to us.For people in the distance, we can't deliver water, so we simply pour tea on their faces, hoping that they can use this tea to relieve some pain and prolong their life for a moment to wait for the professor. The air is really thin, every few minutes, we are forced to go outside the cave to change the air, discuss it and run in again, still thinking about rescuing our classmates.We unhooked the belt, attached it to a borrowed rope, threw one end over a fellow student, and gestured (due to the shouting) to him to tie the rope under his armpits so we could drag him out.However, this method failed. Not only did the student's body not pull, but his face changed drastically, and his hands waved wildly, signaling us not to pull any more.Seeing his painful expression, we knew that if we pulled harder, even if the waist and abdomen were not broken, we would die sooner, so we had to run out of the tunnel again, at a loss what to do. Afterwards, we learned that because there was no ventilation equipment in the tunnel, there were too many people and there was little air, and the lack of oxygen caused people to generally suffocate.The few people who were near the entrance of the cave were lucky enough to get a little fresh air, and they still had the strength to rush up the steps to the ground. I survived with this only condition.Most of the people who were far away from the entrance, squeezed for a long time, and had difficulty breathing were already exhausted and confused. Although they barely squeezed out of the gate, they were unable to step up the steps. The latecomers trampled and squeezed, and as a result, the first group of people were crushed to death. Although the later people were not dead, they were as immobile as stakes in the ground.Only their upper torso could move, so they waved their hands, screamed, their faces were red and swollen, the corners of their mouths were covered with gelatinous foam, and their clothes were uncomfortable due to suffocation, and they scratched themselves to pieces. At around 10 o'clock in the evening, two small cars drove up on the road, and several officials and guards got out of the cars. Some people recognized them as Liu Zhi, He Guoguang and other senior Kuomintang officials.As soon as these people got out of the car, they were surrounded by the crowd present. They had just exchanged a few words, and the sound of rumbling motors sounded in the eastern sky again, and the Japanese planes came to carry out fatigue bombing again.The officials were so shocked that they didn't go to the entrance of the tunnel to take a look, and then hurriedly slipped away.Japanese bombers bombed Chongqing again. The big tunnel tragedy continues to develop, and the victims are still struggling and screaming.Suddenly, one or twenty people crossed the heads of the crowd from the depths of the tunnel, stepped and crawled out to get new life.They were originally in the middle of the tunnel, and fell to the ground due to hypoxic shock at first, but they did not follow the crowd to the crossing and stayed where they were.After a large number of people poured out, the middle of the tunnel became empty and it was easier to breathe, so they lay awake for a while, recovered some of their physical strength, and finally climbed out on top of the victims' heads. Near midnight, the shrill screams in the cave gradually weakened. After more than four hours of hypoxic torture, the victim was dying, his complexion changed from red to purple blue, and the saliva at the corner of his mouth turned from white to red with bloodshot eyes. Few people have silently pounced on others.We saw Gong Cunti, a classmate in the foreign affairs class, raised his hands violently and shouted out the tragic slogan "Down with Japanese imperialism! Down with Japanese imperialism!" in a hoarse voice. After struggling for a moment, he died of hatred.The six or seven classmates we tried to rescue also fell to the ground and died one after another like other victims. Death came.At this midnight, the Grim Reaper spread its black wings and took the lives of victims one after another.We walked out of the cave full of grief and indignation, neither thinking about anything nor wanting to leave. We sat with the other survivors in a daze, neither of whom wanted to talk more. Just after midnight, we suddenly heard a faint voice coming from the tunnel again, so we put on wet handkerchiefs and entered the cave again. We saw a few victims regain consciousness, moaning and calling for help, but we could not help them.The government authorities have never organized any rescue force, and the members of the loosely organized protection team have long disappeared. At one or two o'clock in the morning on June 6, the few people who woke up fell to the ground again to die. The tunnel was dead silent, filled with countless corpses and a sultry stench.Horror replaced anxiety, we no longer had the courage to stay in the cave, and we exited the large tunnel with our heads down. At daybreak, the air-raid siren was lifted, and the government authorities began to send personnel to clear the bodies in the large tunnel.These corpses were dragged out and piled up near the entrance of the tunnel. All of them had their clothes torn, some were still naked, and their skin had all turned blue-black, beyond recognition.Because there were too many dead bodies, there was nowhere to pile them up, so they were transported away by truck for burial while cleaning them up. The relatives of the deceased were unable to claim the corpse, firstly because the clothes of the corpse were torn and the face was disfigured, making it difficult to identify; secondly, because the corpse was piled up in a mountain and it was difficult to turn over; thirdly, because there were three crossings to clear the corpse at the same time, the relatives could not separate themselves to claim the corpse , and clearing and transporting, the time is short; Fourth, because many people died with their families, no one claimed them.At that time, only 41 students in our foreign affairs class survived, and the bodies of the dead students were retrieved by identifying them from their military uniforms. A few days after the tragedy, there were many shops and residential buildings in the central district of Shizhong that no one came to open the door for a long time, because the whole family had died tragically and became extinct.

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