Chapter 36 Chapter Thirty-Fifth Tomb of a Thousand People—Record of Fuping and Pingyang Massacre (Autumn 1943)
Originating from the banks of the Pingyang River at the foot of the Immortal Mountain of Hengshan Mountain in the ancient Beiyue——On the North Hill of Pingyang Village, Fuping County, Hebei Province, there stands a tombstone.It is not a thousand-year-old monument, but an ironclad historical evidence accusing the Japanese invaders of massacring thousands of compatriots in Pingyang District more than 40 years ago and implementing the "three alls" policy.
In the autumn of 1943, Okamura Ningci, the commander-in-chief of the Japanese North China Front Army, mobilized 40,000 of the main force of the Japanese army to launch a three-month "mopping up" against the Beiyue District of the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Anti-Japanese Base Area with Fuping as the focus.More than 500 devil soldiers from the Arai troops of the Japanese army carried out a horrific massacre in the Pingyang area. Wherever the hooves of the beasts came, they implemented the policy of "burning, killing, and looting" in an attempt to turn this old base into a "no man's land." .When the "mopping up" began, because the people in the old areas practiced to avoid clearing the wild, the common people moved to the wild, and the devils rushed everywhere.Captain Arai, who was born in the royal family, is a famous murderer. He was the culprit in the Yebei tragedy in Quyang County in 1941 and many massacres. !” Under his command, the Japanese two-legged beasts carried out round-robin raids on nearly a hundred villages within a length of more than 60 miles and a width of more than 40 miles.In the end, they used Pingyang as a temporary base, set out at night, and "encircled and suppressed" short distances.Long-distance raids, the method of encircling the village at dawn, and then searching the mountains one by one, left the unarmed people who fled the mountains and fields with nowhere to hide, so many villagers were captured by the devils.Some of the arrested people were killed on the spot, and some were taken to the stronghold to massacre.Arai's troops "mopped up" for three months and massacred more than a thousand people. A total of 823 people were known to be traced, and 587 people were killed in the villages of Pingyang District alone.Hundreds of people who fled from Quyang County and other places to seek refuge in Pingyang Mountain were also massacred by Arai's troops, many of whom were unidentified corpses.When the Japanese army's "mopping up" retreated, our investigators found more than 280 dead bodies in Shangpingyang Village alone, and more than 20 more bodies were found in a yam cellar in the east of the village.According to the announcement on the investigation of the Pingyang Massacre by the Bethune International Peace Hospital of the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region on January 10, 1944: "The Japanese invaders massacred more than a thousand compatriots in the border region in Pingyang, most of whom were old and weak women and children, that is, 4-year-old babies and 80-year-olds. The elderly are not spared either."
The massacre by the Arai troops in the Qianyang area was a planned action by the Japanese army.They claim to arrest and exterminate the Communist Party and the Eighth Route Army, but in fact they want to kill all the civilians in the base areas.Please see the evidence of the mass massacre of the masses by the Japanese aggressors:
On September 21, when the enemy raided Nanshan Mountain in Pingyang, they arrested 32 male and female villagers in a ravine that was four miles long, and took them to the grain threshing ground in various old villages. The Japanese soldiers forced the captured men and women to strip naked They danced yangko together for the amusement of the beast army. The arrested masses refused to follow, and the devils used bayonets to pierce their underwear. People were stabbed with blood, but they still refused to give in. They were all killed on the spot, and no one survived.
On October 15, when the enemy moved to suppress Tieling, more than 30 people were killed, burned, and stoned to death in Tiger's Nest (also known as Old Man's Nest) in the west mountain of this village.
On October 18, the enemy found 25 women and children in a cave in Nanshan, Pingyang.The devil found a "good citizen certificate" on a 16-year-old girl Zhang, cut off her head with a knife, and then put the head on a chair. The devil said: "Look, is it good-looking!" "Anyone who doesn't say anything will be killed!" Everyone cried.Suddenly, a woman in her fifties embraced the head and burst into tears. The devil pointed her bayonet at her chest and said, "Don't cry, laugh." When the woman's mother was killed, she immediately stabbed the old woman's chest with a bayonet.Then the devils selected five beautiful women to escort them back to the stronghold, and all the other women and children were killed.
On October 24, 16 villagers were found and arrested by the enemy in the earth cave in Lushuiyu, Xigou, Pingyang.
On the evening of October 25, the enemy took 21 young people who had been arrested to a roof with a machine gun mounted on a corner of the roof. Answer, the officer waved his knife, the machine gun howled, and all 21 people were killed by the enemy.
On October 29, the enemy moved and suppressed Hexi Village, stayed there for 9 days, and killed more than 100 people.
On October 14th of the lunar calendar (November 29th), the enemy encircled and suppressed Shangyangyang, and divided into four groups to round up Beishuiyu Mountain (Beijialiang) asylum seekers. In this mountain with a radius of 20 miles, many people were arrested. There are 98 people in Jiajiakou Village (Quyang).They are a pair of two, with their hands tied behind their backs with thin wires, and then tied in pairs to thick wires.Electronics deliberately asked the first person to "pull" back and forth, so that people had to stagger around, and the sound of crying was unbearable.At night, the devils squeezed 49 pairs of arrested people into a hut. If they couldn't squeeze in, they beat them with big sticks. After 6 days and 6 nights, except for 8 people who took the opportunity to escape, the rest were massacred one by one.
The more brutal massacre was discovered when the enemy retreated to Pingyang (December 9).It was a secret massacre.Since no one escaped, no one can understand the tragedy at that time.According to Liu Qingfu of Shuimo Village, who was arrested as a hero at the time, Arai went to Jiajiakou for a meeting on the fifth day of the eleventh month of the lunar calendar, and did not come back until the afternoon of the eighth day. In the evening, he heard the commotion in Arai's yard, the sound of whipping and moaning. Then I watched a group of Japanese soldiers escort more than 150 villagers who were tied together with ropes out of the village, but they never came back.He saw the group of Japanese soldiers washing blood-red bayonets in the large basin in the yard when they returned to the village.
On December 9th, the eve of Arai's troops retreating to Pingyang, the murder became even more frenzied. More than 60 women were tied together at one time and asked, "Would you like to follow or go home?" Everyone said in unison: "Would you like to go home! "It turned out that this was a cliché from the Japanese devils. The devil soldiers stripped them naked and beheaded them all.
As for how many people were buried alive by the enemy, I am afraid that an accurate figure will never be obtained. In Jiajiakou Village alone, 8 people were found buried alive.
After the enemy "mopped up", people returned to Pingyang Village, and there were corpses and bloodstains everywhere. In the five killing fields, the ground was covered with bones, the loess turned purple-black, and the purple-red bloodstain was as thick as two "coins". .In a threshing floor, except for the corpses lying horizontally and vertically.People also saw all kinds of hats on the field, including white, gray, and red felt hat heads, some old ones that looked like they had been worn for several lifetimes, and some brand new ones; There are also various women's headscarves: blue coarse cloth, black foreign cloth, white towel with red lines..., and occasionally there are clumps or pieces of scalp hair-some of them are as short as a few points, There are also some that grow to two or three feet long, and occasionally a few shoes are found with chopped-off feet inside. The seventeen yam cellars are all filled with dead people. "There are more than 300 dead bodies on Pingyang Street, most of them are young men and women. Many heads are piled up together. Rotten intestines and bones and strands of human skin are everywhere. The trees on both sides of the street are also covered with flesh and blood. It's creepy and unbearable to watch."
It is not too much to describe the Japanese fascist gangsters as "two-legged beasts".The Arai troops who created the Pingyang tragedy used inhuman and brutal methods of massacring our compatriots, and their strength is rare in the world. "Jinchaji Daily" reporter Cang Yi, heavy.Zhang Fan said in the report on the massacre: "This is how more than a thousand of our dear villagers were murdered—some of them were bitten to death by foreign dogs, some were burned to death, and some were stoned to death. Some were stabbed all over their bodies with awls and died, some were thrown down the hillside and fell to death, some were cut in half, some were crushed to pieces, some had their eyes gouged out, some had their hearts, livers and brains eaten... Most of the victims were hacked and stabbed to death after various tortures and interrogations. After being caught by the enemy, not many were killed with bullets. The enemy did not allow a Chinese to "easily" dead."
The cruel scene of the Japanese devils massacring the common people is indescribable in any language, and it is too numerous to describe.
On September 21, in Nanshan, Pingyang, Zhang Weiwei, the head of our traffic station, and his pregnant sister-in-law were captured by the enemy who searched the mountain, and they were taken to Arai. Arai and his interpreter pointed at the pregnant woman who was 7 months pregnant and made a bet. Happy, one said she was pregnant with a boy, the other said she was pregnant with a girl, they argued endlessly, Arai ordered his beast soldiers to strip off her clothes, and then examined her abdomen, a devil stabbed her violently with a bayonet, immediately blood splattered, intestines and fetus together Roll to the ground.
On September 23, devil soldiers surrounded Yangshugou, captured the 60-year-old mother of Meng Lianshu in the village, cut her with a knife, threw her into the fire and burned her to death; The ignorant baby saw his mother lying on the ground, and crawled onto her body in a pool of blood, grabbing her intestines to be fed.
On September 24, the enemy captured Han Xiaogeng, a sheep-herding officer at Shanzuitou, and forced him to ask where the Eighth Route Army was and what the name of the village cadre was. He refused to answer, and a devil stabbed him with a bayonet. , Lifting the stone and throwing the devil off the cliff.The other devils hurriedly beat Han Xiaogeng to death with random guns, dug out his heart and liver and brought them back to the base for cooking.
On October 22, when the Japanese devils harassed Beishuiyu, they grabbed a young man, tied him up and dragged him to a steep hillside, and rolled him down the hill with a rope. Roll, repeat several times, until rolling dead and thrown off the cliff.At the same time, Meng Xiang's son in the village was arrested. Japanese soldiers tied him up and ordered dogs to bite him.The ferocious wolfhound howled and jumped on the child, tearing the living person to death one by one.The gangsters laughed from the sidelines.
There are many such tragedies.A young man was captured by the enemy. The devils stripped him of his clothes, tied his genitals with a rope, dragged him around the mountains, and finally got him to the village and stabbed him to death with an awl.At Shanzuitou, the enemy put their heads into their crotches, kicked them down the hillside and rolled them to death; another woman was pushed to the top of the cliff with her child in her arms, and the devils forced her to stab herself with a bayonet. Her child was thrown off the bottom of the cliff, but she refused, and both mother and child were pushed off the cliff.But the enemy laughed.
The brutality and cruelty of the Japanese invaders is simply outrageous.The three women in Tumen Village saw with their own eyes that the enemy dug out Li Xiaogeng's heart and fried it for food.Chen Chunrong, a young woman from Luoyu Village, saw the enemy beheading Liu Yaomei to death with her own eyes. She cut off the meat from her leg with a bayonet, put it on a wire skewer, and ate it in Shangpingyang.After the pregnant woman Wang Jinting was brutally murdered by the Japanese invaders, her heart and liver also became a dish for the devils.
The Japanese devils are a group of savage beasts. They even force the captured people who are still alive to eat the slaughtered human flesh and hearts for fun.Comrade Li Chengrui, who was sent by the border region government to do the aftermath work, recorded in "Witnesses of the Pingyang Massacre":
"Passing through a group of burnt houses and turning to Shangpingyang, behind a broken earth wall is a red lacquered catalpa wood coffin, in which lay a female corpse. Between the ripped jacket and the ripped trousers, purple and messy A thin layer of yellow sand covered the mixed internal organs, the arms were bent, the five fingers looked like they were trying to catch someone, and the roots of the nails were bright red for some reason. The villagers who came with us told us that the pregnant woman had been killed. after:
"The enemy captured more than 30 women and pulled her out from the middle. A few devils took her down in a coffin, peeled off her chest layer by layer, and then cut her belly open to pick out the fetus. , she died. In the end, the devil dug out the heart and put it in a white porcelain washbasin and fried it with oil.
"'Do devils really eat people's hearts?' I asked unconsciously.
"'No, devils don't eat it!' An old lady trembled and said: Tell the captured women in my village to eat it, and whoever doesn't eat it will be 'dead like her!' If you eat it, I will ask you, 'Is it delicious? Xiang'... This is the tragic scene of Wang Jinting, a 20-year-old pregnant woman in Shangpingyang, who was disemboweled, her belly was dismantled, her heart and liver were taken out, and her fetus was picked out."
On November 21, Liu Yaomei, director of Luoyu Village Women's Federation and member of the Communist Party, was killed, which was even more shocking.Comrades Zhao Xian and Zhao Youhai from the Party History Office of the Fuping County Party Committee stated in the investigation materials:
"When Arai learned that she was a member of the Communist Party and the director of the village women's federation, he immediately interrogated her personally and forced her to reveal the addresses of the border authorities and the Eighth Route Army, and hand over the names of the village cadres and Communist Party members. Liu Yaomei stood proudly and remained silent. Arai was furious, Ordering the Japanese army to torture her, she was severely reprimanded by Liu Yaomei. Interrogated again the next day, Liu Yaomei was righteous and unyielding, and angrily denounced the Japanese army's brutality. Arai, furious, ordered the traitor agent to strip off Liu Yaomei's clothes, and personally cut the meat on her thigh. The meat was cut off, let people roast it, and stuck a piece with a knife, and said while eating: "It's delicious, it's delicious." Enduring the pain, Liu Yaomei cursed the Japanese army as beasts with two legs, and warned the enemy: "Chinese people The blood debt must be paid with blood!" Arai ordered the Japanese soldiers to cut off Liu Yaomei's legs, arms, and chest piece by piece. Liu Yaomei endured the severe pain, Passed out several times without groaning, showing the tenacious will of a Communist Party member who would rather die than surrender. Finally, the vicious Arai approached Liu Yaomei with a sword in hand, trying to dig out her heart. Liu Yaomei said in "Down with Japanese imperialism!" ''Long live the Communist Party of China!' she died heroically. After her death, Arai cut off her head and threw it into the well, and dug up the flesh from her body, took it back, chopped it into dumpling stuffing, and ate it."
There are many heroic heroes like Liu Yaomei among the thousands of victims, and more heroic deeds will not be known, because most of them were secretly killed by devils, but the heroic deeds we know are enough. It shows that the heroic image of the outstanding sons and daughters of the Chinese nation would rather die than surrender, and the thousand victims declared to the world: The Chinese people would rather die standing than live on their knees!Please see the heroic deeds of our compatriots in the Binh Duong tragedy!
On October 22, the enemies stationed in Hexi Village rushed to Beishuiyu Village. Three devils captured Liu Ergao who was harvesting crops. Gao was finally knocked down to the ground and escorted back to the village. When he saw the Japanese devils humiliating women in the house, Liu Ergao couldn't hold back the anger in his chest anymore. He picked up a wooden rafter at the door and knocked down five Devil, the women took the opportunity to escape from the tiger's mouth, but Liu Ergao was caught by the devil, tied to a ladder, first beaten with a stick, and then roasted with charcoal fire, his whole body was scorched. Constantly cursing the devil's atrocities, he was finally thrown into the yam cellar and stoned to death by the devil.
Our compatriots have the character and strong bones of "wealth and honor cannot be promiscuous, and might cannot be subdued".Zhang Zhengxue, a cadre of the Women's Rescue Association of Pingyang Village, is such a glorious example.Zhang Zhengxue and her sister were searched by the enemy in Nanshan Dong, Pingyang. The devils wiped her neck with a knife, put a bayonet against her chest, beat her, and asked her to tell, "Where is the Eighth Route Army? Where are the things of the government?" The 18-year-old girl firmly replied: "I don't even know if I'm killed!" The enemy drove her mother and fellow villagers into the earth cave in front of her, and suffocated her to death in the cave.Because she was beautiful, they brought her and her 15-year-old sister to Tieling Village. The enemy wanted her to submit, and asked her to sew clothes, but she said no; She threw the cloth on the ground in front of the enemy and said, "I don't want your old foreign ghost's stuff!" The enemy gave her rice and meat rice, but she refused to eat it; the enemy gave her sister shoes to wear, and she forced her to take The shoes were thrown away, and she said: "What are you doing wearing these! We don't wear the old foreign ghost's things, throw them away!" In the evening, she said to her sister: "You are young, run away while the old foreign ghost is not paying attention! I have time Run too, don’t care about me!” The sister finally found a chance to escape from the tiger’s mouth.Unexpectedly, the two of them were captured by the enemy on the mountain ridge of Beishuiyu.The enemy took her to Shangpingyang and poured water on her. She struggled with her hands, tied her up and hung her up. She still kicked the devil with her feet. The devil tried all kinds of punishments, but they couldn't subdue the girl's will. Translated by the enemy The officer had no choice but to shamelessly threaten: "Okay, if you are so determined, your head will be chopped off!" She cursed firmly. "Cut it off! I'm not like you, I'm a traitor." Enraged, the enemy captain jumped off the kang to strip her clothes and rape her. She fought hard and kept her loyalty and integrity.After all the threats and lures failed, the enemy tied her up and chopped her down with a knife.Later, people took her body out of the yam cellar. Her eyes were still wide open, her teeth were clenched tightly, and her spirit of perseverance remained unchanged until death.
Zhang Ze, who escaped from the dead, also recalled a touching scene:
On the night of November 5th, we took refuge in an extremely remote Chang'an village. Because of Han Hao's informant, the devils stationed in Hexi surrounded the village in the early morning.There was thick fog at that time, and when people noticed the devil's sneak attack, Wanzi had already blocked the gate.Some village cadres died at that time, some were seriously injured, and many villagers were captured.The enemy began to interrogate, and whoever said they were Communists would admit it, and as long as they admitted it, they would be released. No one was fooled.The devils were helpless, so they beat the masses severely, and forced them to ask: "Where is the Eighth Route Army? Where is the crossing agency?"The enemy escorted the masses back to the Hexi stronghold for interrogation overnight. The first person to be interrogated was Duan Zhengfa. The devils tied his arms and legs and hung him upside down on a tree. Then they asked, "Will you tell me?" Duan Zhengfa said firmly, " I don't know!" The enemy piled firewood under the tree to burn him while interrogating him, but Duan Zhengfa continued to say "I don't know." Until the burnt skin was scorched and the flesh was rotten, and the hanging rope also burned and fell from the tree.Duan Zhengfa, who was already half dead, was still struggling to sit up, and the enemy shot off his skull.Despite all the cruel punishments imposed by the enemy, none of the people surrendered.Zhang Ze, the leader of the militia squadron, was beaten unconscious to the ground. Fuzi thought he was dead and threw him into a pit.After being rescued and recovering from his injuries, he did not stop fighting.Concentrate the deep hatred on the mouth, and demand the blood debt from the Japanese aggressors.
The tragedy in Pingyang angered the people of the Jinchaji Border Region, and the cry of "Revenge for the dead folks!" immediately rang out in the Pingyang area.The Wuzhangwan guerrilla group and the Donggudao guerrilla group headed by Li Yong became more active.The militiamen in Pingyang District killed and injured more than 500 enemies and puppets during the three-month anti-"mopping up".The Border Region Government and the Fuping County Government actively organized the military and civilians to carry out disaster relief work, and decided to build a "Thousand People's Tomb" between Shangxiapingyang to commemorate the glorious death of compatriots forever.
Beiyue Ancient Hengshan Mountain—Shenxian Mountain still stands tall and majestic on the top of Fuping. It symbolizes that the Chinese nation cannot be humiliated, and the elders of Pingyang who sacrificed for the motherland and the people will be immortal.
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