Chapter 44 Chapter 43: The Bloodbath of Feng County by the Japanese Army

Feng County is located in the most northwestern part of Jiangsu, adjacent to Shandong and Anhui;The land is fertile and the plants are flourishing. It is the birthplace of Han Gaozu Liu Bang, Xiao He, and Lu Wan. It is a county with a long history. During the eight-year Anti-Japanese War, the Japanese invaders burned, killed and looted wantonly, which was extremely cruel.According to incomplete statistics, 3,992 people were killed, 1,415 were maimed, 676 were maimed by rape, and 4,257 were arrested by the puppets in the county. The bloody crimes committed by the Japanese invading army in Feng County are briefly recorded as follows:

In early May 1938, a mechanized unit of the Japanese army invaded southward through the west of Fengxian County; another division today detoured from Nanyang and Yutai in Shandong to Dangshan, cut off the Longhai line, and formed a siege of Xuzhou. On May 13, an invading army from the Imada Division bombarded the county from the northwest suburbs of Fengcheng.Another group of Japanese troops came to Fengcheng to join forces from Zhang Wulou, Jingfeng County, Peixian County.When the war started, Japanese aircraft hovered over Gucheng and released balloons to transmit military signals.On the same day, a company of the Kuomintang army stationed in Huzhuang was surrounded and all its officers and soldiers were killed. On May 14, under the cover of artillery fire, the Japanese army attacked the city with vertical ladders on the northwest wall of the city. After repeated fierce fighting, they entered the city and started street fighting with the Kuomintang army. On the afternoon of May 16, the Kuomintang army withdrew from the south of the county seat. On May 17, Feng County was completely occupied by the Japanese army.

In this battle of Fengcheng, more than a thousand Kuomintang defenders and residents died, and more than 300 residents were killed.Xiguan, Nanguan, and Beiguan killed the most people. For example, there were 9 residents stabbed to death by Japanese soldiers in Weikeng by the river in Caishenmiao Street, Xiguan. On the tree, he was disemboweled and disemboweled, which was horrible.Dongjie Liu Jinshan and Yang Jianmin were killed by the Japanese invaders.Most of the residents who were killed were stabbed to death with bayonets. Some women were first raped and then killed. After the Japanese army invaded Feng County, they killed everyone they saw and burned houses when they saw them.Houses in Dongguan, the county seat, were the most burned.From Dongchengmen to the current Fengxian Workers' Cultural Palace, more than 300 thatched cottages on both sides of the street were burned; a piece of Beiguan Road was burned in the east; several shops in the east and west of Beitaishun Railway Store on Datong Street in Xiguan were all burned; Houses in Lunanwen Hutong Lane were also burned down.The county town at that time was reduced to ruins everywhere.

After the fighting in the city ceased, the Japanese army broke into the Catholic Church in Fengxian County to bury the corpses, and captured 11 young and middle-aged people who were hiding in the church.Chen Fenglin from the Chen Family Dyeing Workshop in Xiguan, who made a detour to visit his home on the way to labor, was captured by the Japanese army and threw him to death. On the afternoon of May 17, 1938, a group of Japanese troops chasing the Kuomintang army rushed into Huangzhuang in the southeast of Feng County, a small village with less than a hundred people.At that time, most of the young and middle-aged people in the village ran to hide in the pampas grass in the river north of the village. Those in the village and neighboring villages who were too late to escape, as well as the elderly and children, were all driven to the wheat threshing ground by the Japanese army.At the beginning, the captain with a mustache grinned and said, "Your... mine... good people's... there are big gold tickets." Holding a large stack of banknotes in one hand, he walked back and forth in front of the crowd several times, nodding and bowing.But he was ignored at all.The Japanese army commander was annoyed, and immediately lowered his face, his eyes were wide open, he pulled out his Japanese sword, and cursed: "Bageyalu...it's broken, it's broken...the bearded man is dead! There are dead ones!" The people remained silent and resisted with silence.The Japanese army commander got angry, so a dozen Japanese soldiers stabbed women, old people, and children with shining bayonets.When several Japanese soldiers picked four or five people with bayonets, Ma Fengqi, an old man in his 60s, couldn't bear it any longer.Then, the Japanese army started a crazy massacre. All 48 people on the wheat threshing field were stabbed to the ground, 46 people died on the spot (25 people from Huangzhuang, the rest were escaped from other villages), and two people were seriously injured.Among them were 11 women and 10 children.Li Tangshi, one of the seriously injured, is now 70 and still alive. She was stabbed four times, passed out, and then regained consciousness, mixed with the corpse and survived.There is also Zhang Zhicheng, who is still alive now. He was only 5 years old at the time, and he climbed under a Taiping car to hide. His lip was pierced by a bullet, and his mouth is still open.Of the houses in the village, only a small car house in the middle of the village remained, and the rest were all burned down.

In the autumn of 1939, the Japanese army set up a gendarmerie in Feng County, and the gendarmerie ran rampant in the city like demons.Once, a Japanese gendarme was drunk and went on a rampage killing people on Xiguan Street with a Japanese knife in his hand, scaring people to close their doors. One day in 1940, when school was over at noon, students of Confucian Temple Primary School were walking on the street when a Japanese car suddenly drove up and ran rampant on the street. He went to the wall and beat Song Bizhai's child outside Beiguan to death. In March 1943, due to the Pacific War, the connection between mainland China and Canada was cut off.In order to solve the expenses, the Canadian priest Tu Dengxiu adopted the method of fundraising, and asked the county's industrial and commercial gentry and puppet military officials to help. District 1 Mayor Shao Yunpeng, Mayor Huangfu Minglun, Police Chief Zhang Wenzhi, subordinate Yang Shaoqing, and Heavenly Church President Zhang Hongliang were accompanied by three Canadian priests, Tu Dengxiu, Long Renchang, and Na Shirong, and missionary Huang Wenbiao.He was hated because he failed to invite Xin Quan, the Japanese consultant of the pseudo-Feng County Office, and Chang Yongzhong, the pseudo-magistrate of the county.Because Canada is an ally and an enemy of Japan, on March 20, Tu Dengxiu, Long Renchang, and Nashi were sent to prison on the pretext of having an affair with the "beard" (referring to the Kuomintang standing team and the Eighth Route Army in Feng County at that time) by a Canadian priest. The three priests were arrested and detained at the Puppet County Police Station.Four days later, the three of them were tied up, with a white flag on their backs, and the words "Down with Britain and the United States" were written on it, paraded through the streets, and then returned to the church.However, at 9 o'clock in the evening on March 28, the Japanese military adviser Shininu arrested the three of them, tied them outside the headquarters of the Japanese military stationed in Fengfeng, and shot them dead.

From 1944 to early 1945, the Japanese Gendarmerie arrested more than 50 people in Fengxian County and sent them to Hokkaido, Japan to do hard labor.Among the more than 20 people escorted to Japan, Sun Jiwu, Sun Jianli, and Zhou Yuting were tortured to death. The crimes committed by the Japanese invading army in Fengxian County are too numerous to write down. This article only lists a small part of them, and we can also see the brutal face of these aggressors.