Chapter 51 2. The first drop of red blood——Zhao Shangzhi's overthrow of the Japanese army's "Triumph Train"

On the night of April 12, 1932, a fully loaded Japanese military train was driving on the railway line leading to Harbin like lightning.The military column was not only loaded with a large amount of supplies, but also carried a large number of Japanese officers and soldiers.According to Japanese historical data, these Japanese officers and soldiers belonged to the Second Division (the commander of the division, Lieutenant General Tomon Jiro), and their designations are speculated to include the 3rd Battalion of the 63rd Infantry Regiment, the 3rd Artillery Squadron, and the Communication Team of the 2nd Division. Wait.Starting from April 2, they launched an attack on the anti-Japanese armed forces in Yanshou, Fangzheng and other places. On April 4, they defeated the Jilin Self-Defense Forces under the command of Feng Zhanhai and others, and occupied Fangzheng City.The Japanese handed over Fangzheng to the puppet army and were "triumphing" in Harbin.At 10:00 p.m., when the train passed above the Dingjiaqiao culvert of Chenggaozi Station in the suburbs of Harbin, there was a loud noise, the train derailed and overturned, and all the passenger cars behind the locomotive fell from the six-meter-high roadbed.For a while, thick smoke rose everywhere, explosions were like thunder, and a large number of Japanese soldiers were killed and injured.Organized by the Manchuria Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, the battle to overthrow the Japanese military column in Chenggaozi won victory.

According to our information, it was Zhao Shangzhi, then 24-year-old secretary of the Quanman Anti-Japanese Association, and Fan Tinggui, a progressive student from the Northeast Merchant Marine School, who carried out this operation. At the beginning of April, the Manchuria Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China received information that Fangzheng County had fallen. On the night of April 12, the multi-door divisions would pass through Chenggaozi Railway Station in special military trains mixed with passengers and goods.The provincial party committee immediately made a decision to dispatch Zhao Shangzhi and Fan Tinggui to try to overthrow the Japanese army column.

Zhao Shangzhi, born in 1908, Han nationality, from Chaoyang, Liaoning, is an anti-Japanese general. In 1925, he entered the Whampoa Military Academy to study. After the "Zhongshan Ship Incident" in 1926, the CCP sent him back to Northeast China to take charge of the student movement.Interestingly, Zhao Shangzhi, who was born in the army, was once in charge of women's work in the then Manchuria Provincial Party Committee.This attack on Cheng Gaozi's Japanese military column was Zhao Shangzhi's first shot into armed struggle. Since February 1934, Zhao Shangzhi has successively served as the commander of the Northeast Anti-Japanese Allied Army and the commander of the Third Army of the Northeast People's Revolutionary Army. On February 12, 1942, when Zhao Shangzhi led his troops to attack the Wutonghe Police Station, he was attacked by traitors and died a heroic death.

Fan Tinggui, originally a student of Feng Zhongyun, the political commissar of the Third Route Army of the Anti-Japanese Army, was arrested by the Japanese army shortly after the Chenggaozi train overturned case, and unfortunately died. Chenggaozi, located in the suburbs of Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province, is an important railway hub connecting Harbin with the outside world. At the beginning of 1932, the patriotic general Li Du and others led four brigades of the Northeast Army to defend Harbin and fought bloody battles with the Japanese army. Finally, due to the disparity in strength and lack of support, they were forced to retreat towards Yilan. On February 1, Harbin fell.Since then, the Japanese army has used Harbu as an important stronghold to control the northern part of the three northeastern provinces. They not only stationed a large number of troops, but also often launched crusades against Chinese resistance forces from here. On the afternoon of April 12, Zhao Shangzhi and Fan Tinggui came to Chenggaozi Station in disguise to observe the terrain, and then selected a section of railway 500 meters away from Chenggaozi Station.According to Sa's on-the-spot investigation, the location they chose was very scientific.The road here has a wide view, but it is at the place where the train is going downhill, it is not easy to brake, and the roadbed is relatively high, and there is a culvert below. The Japanese army brought more casualties.Zhao Shangzhi and Fan Tinggui chose the method of destroying the railroad tracks and caused this train overturning incident.

On April 14, the "Shengjing Times" published a report titled "The Japanese Army Tried from Fangzheng to Harbin, and the Train Overturned Casualties" and exclaimed, "I never thought this would happen in the heavily guarded suburbs of Harbin."The newspaper reported that the Japanese army had "11 dead and 93 wounded" in total. Afterwards, the Japanese Kwantung Army also erected a monument to the 11 dead Japanese soldiers including Captain Asatsuma (which no longer exists). After the success of this operation, Zhao Shangzhi's military ability was recognized by the Manchuria Provincial Party Committee at that time, and he was transferred to assume military responsibility.

Sa Zeng met Mr. Shi Yijun, an expert on the Northeast Anti-Japanese Allied Army in Beijing.During the conversation, when the battle of Cheng Gaozi was mentioned, Sa suddenly remembered that he had seen a photo collection published in Japan in 1932 called "Manchuria Incident Photo Album", which contained a photo of the Cheng Gaozi train being overturned . After joint research with Mr. Shi Yijun, this photo was indeed taken by the Japanese army after Cheng Gaozi's attack. The derailed train in the photo is still burning. Interestingly, there is also a description on this photo, titled "The Great Tragedy of the Explosion of a Military Train".After careful identification, the content reads: "At 10:40 p.m. on April 10th, near the Chenggaozi Tunnel on the Eastern Branch of the North Manchuria, our military train returning from Changchun exploded and caught fire because Russian soldiers quietly hung bombs on it. After the derailment, 54 people were killed on the spot and 93 people were slightly or seriously injured. The photo shows the scene after the train was blown up.”According to this explanation, the Japanese army went to Changchun after completing the mopping up of Fang Zheng and Yanshou, and then returned to Harbin. Cheng Gaozi in the south passed through this strange place, which also reflected the accuracy of the Chinese intelligence at that time.In the Japanese explanation, the place name of Cheng Gaozi was wrongly written as "Cheng Gaozi", which may also be the source of our country's subsequent misuse of this example in the study of this war.

Judging from the description, Zhao Shangzhi killed 54 Japanese soldiers in this operation, not 11 as stated in the fake newspaper.You must know that the Japanese army fought the entire Luoyang campaign and fought fiercely with the two defenders for nearly 20 days. The losses they claimed were only 55 killed. The results of the two armies were over.It seems that this is another typical example of the Japanese army concealing war damage, but it is not known whether the more than forty Japanese soldiers who were concealed entered the Yasukuni Shrine, or whether the Japanese military department even deceived Amaterasu.

On August 24, 2011, Mr. Wei Yunsheng, who is the curator of the local Zhao Shangzhi Memorial Hall, took Sa and relevant researchers to Chenggaozi to survey the explosion site and conduct on-the-spot investigations.Several experts at the scene determined that the location of the photo was accurate, and it was indeed taken at the same location shortly after the Japanese train capsized.It's just that the wooden culverts of the past have been replaced by cement today, and the woods where Zhao Shangzhi and others hide are also covered by buildings. However, during the inspection period, Sa received another batch of materials from Japan, and found another photo (the photo at the beginning of this chapter) about Cheng Gaozi subverting the Japanese military ranks.

This photo comes from the "Complete Collection of Photos of the Manchuria Incident and the Shanghai Incident" produced by Japan in 1933. It also describes the overturned Japanese train of Cheng Takako, but from a different angle.From the newly discovered photos, one can see the thick smoke burning after the explosion of the Japanese train. The derailed train carriages have been burned into a frame shape, and the roof panels were thrown aside by the shock wave of the explosion.Its shooting location is behind the "Manchurian Incident Photo Album", and it should be in Chenggao. According to analysis, this photo was taken during the firefighting process of the Japanese army, and there is also an annotation on the side of the new photo, in which the Japanese army stated that the accident caused a total of "More than 50 people in our army died tragically."

The Japanese label also indicated why the loss was so heavy. The reason was that after the train derailed, the gasoline it carried exploded and burned.After Cheng Gaozi's subversive incident, the Japanese and puppet military police carried out a large-scale search and arrest, captured and killed the martyr Fan Tinggui, and also intercepted the explosives that we planned to blast the Songhua River Railway Bridge.However, because the Chinese Communist Party mainly adopted the upper-level line in the anti-Japanese war activities in the Northeast, it supported the local patriotic generals such as Ma Zhanshan from the aspects of propaganda and logistics, and there was almost no direct armed resistance against the Japanese and puppet troops (previously, the Manchuria Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China organized The blasting of a Japanese troop carrier was unsuccessful due to the failure of the detonating device), so the Japanese army did not believe that the Chinese Communist Party was capable of organizing such a "surgical" operation. Comintern agents among the Russian employees arrested the so-called "suspects" among the Russian railway workers and tortured them to extract confessions. Of course, the result was the opposite.

The so-called isolated evidence does not stand, it seems that this newly discovered historical material just annotated the first photo.In the first battle between Zhao Shangzhi and the Japanese army, the number of enemies killed was indeed several times more than what we originally thought. The photos of the Chinese workers arrested in the Japanese military raid were published in the Japanese "Historical Photo" magazine, No. 8, 1932. According to Japanese information, what these three people held in their hands was the tool used by Zhao Shangzhi and others to destroy the railway at that time .Their names, judging from the tags on their chests, are Wang He, Yin Chengcai and Li Liangyu respectively.According to our historical data, the king and queen died in prison. This subversion of the Japanese train was originally planned by Zhao Shangzhi and others to be completed by blasting. Due to the failure of the detonation in an attempt to blast the Japanese railway facilities, the action plan was finally changed to dismantling the spikes and destroying the rails.This change was only reflected in our documents since then, and the Japanese army had no way of knowing it.The tools in the hands of the three arrested are very consistent with Zhao Shangzhi's sabotage work.Therefore, it is very likely that the three of them were really involved in this attack, rather than being scapegoats captured by the Japanese army indiscriminately. At the same time, the Japanese side also published photos of two Soviet-Russian suspects, both employees of the Middle East Railway, namely Basanov and Danskeevsky. In Zhao Shangzhi's report, there was no mention of Soviet Russian personnel participating in the attack.However, its intelligence work is very important to be able to capture the arrival time of the Japanese military column so accurately that the attack can achieve maximum results.At that time, the railway was still under the management of the Soviet Union, and the Manchuria Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China had close relations with the Soviet Union. Before the September 18th Incident, Zhou Enlai, Qu Qiubai and others entered and exited the country through the Suifenhe secret communication line controlled by the Soviet Union. Zhou Enlai was in Suifenhe The residence is the former staff building of the Middle East Railway.Therefore, it is not unreasonable to think that Zhao Shangzhi's attack was coordinated by the Soviet Union or the Communist International's spies among the Middle Eastern railway workers.Perhaps, it was for this reason that the Japanese army pursued the two Soviet-Russian railway workers. After sorting out the above information, I noticed another old photo taken by the Japanese army. Below is the English description of the confrontation with the Chinese resisters by the Japanese side. There is a line of notes about the Cheng Gaozi incident in it-"...near Harbin on April 12th and some 50 soldiers lost their live..." (On April 12th, near Harbin, about fifty soldiers were killed.) Afterwards, Shi Yijun and I discussed the life of General Zhao Shangzhi, commander-in-chief of the Northeast Anti-Japanese Allied Forces.Mr. Shi believes that the Cheng Gaozi incident has more important significance.The first battle of the Communist Party of China's armed resistance against Japan, after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, was regarded as a Pingxingguan. The war was six years too early.Judging from the current data, there is no record of an armed resistance war directly led by the CCP earlier than this war.This may be regarded as the first shot fired by the Chinese Communist Party against Japan, so it has symbolic historical value. "We should not forget that before the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the Northeast resistance forces had been fighting bitterly in the white mountains and black waters for many years." Mr. Shi joked, "Zhao Shangzhi didn't beat the devils because he had personal enmity with the Japanese." In English, the beginning of revenge is called "first blood". The famous movie star Stallone also starred in the movie of the same name, which is very popular.From this perspective, Cheng Gaozi's explosion may be regarded as the first drop of blood for the Chinese Communist Party to fight back against the Japanese invaders.