Chapter 68 17. Resisting Japanese aggression and saving the country is the sacred duty of everyone in China——A record of the discovery of General Cao Yafan’s martyrdom

In the "History of the Eighth Brigade of Independent Defense" of the Japanese Kwantung Army, some historical photos that we have not seen before were published. The place where General Cao Yafan, the first commander of the First Route Army of the Northeast Anti-Japanese Allied Army, was killed is one of them. Cao Yafan is a name that sounds quite unfamiliar to us.Sa remembered this name because in the record of General Yang Jingyu's last battle, it was mentioned that the main force of the Anti-Japanese Army had discovered that Yang Jingyu was in an extremely dangerous situation at the last moment, and Cao Yafan, who was active in the Fusong area, led his troops to rush. They came to the rescue, and they had already arrived at Huangsongdianzi in the territory of Mengjiang, but it was a pity that their success fell short.

In fact, Cao Yafan was one of the important generals of the First Route Army of the Anti-Japanese Army. Perhaps because of Yang Jingyu's brilliance, other generals of the First Route Army were not well known.Speaking of Cao Yafan's background is very strange, if Feng Zhongyun and Yu Tianfang can be regarded as the "Tsinghua Gang" in the Anti-Japanese Alliance, then he should be regarded as the "Northern School" in the Northeast Anti-Japanese Allied Forces - Cao Yafan was born in Xiangshan Salesian in his early years. Xiong Xiling, a famous politician and Prime Minister of the Beiyang Government, created it alone.Like Chen Hanzhang, another anti-Union hero, Cao Yafan also worked as a primary school teacher before joining the army, but at that time he was appointed by the party organization to work in Jilin. He went to the Northeast to develop A veteran party member at work, in the Anti-Union sequence, he partnered with Kim Sung-joo, serving as the political commissar and division commander of the third division of the second army respectively, and fought the troops from two regiments to four regiments.Later, he served as the commander of the Second Division of the First Army and the first commander of the First Route Army. He fought bravely and made many military exploits.Cao Yafan died in April 1940, slightly later than Yang Jingyu, and persisted in resistance on the Northeast battlefield for nearly ten years.

So, what level of general should Cao Yafan be considered? In order to strengthen the momentum, the Northeast Anti-Japanese Coalition Army has a relatively large establishment, and some armies have only one or two thousand troops, so it is often difficult to determine their rank.In fact, most of the senior generals of the Northeast Anti-Japanese Army have received formal military education, and the troops are organized in an orderly manner. There are still rules to follow.Compared with the Eighth Route Army in the pass, except for the united front team, the grassroots troops of the Northeast Anti-Japanese Allied Army were also organized according to the three-level standard of company platooning. A company was slightly smaller than the troops in the pass, about 60 to 80 people.Companies above companies do not set up battalions according to the cavalry formation, but directly set up regiments. A regiment contains four to six companies, so the full strength of a regiment is roughly around 400 people, which is equivalent to the strength of a battalion of the Eighth Route Army. There is a guard brigade directly under the Ministry, and its strength is about the same as a division). Usually, a division governs two to four regiments, with about 1,000 people, which is equivalent to a regiment of the Eighth Route Army.An army governs one division (such as the 11th Army) to six or seven divisions (such as Xie Wendong's Eighth Army has six divisions), ranging from more than one thousand to eight or nine thousand people, which is roughly equivalent to the division of the Eighth Route Army. between brigades.In addition, there are logistics units, such as clothing factories, etc., which are not counted yet.

Of course, this is the figure when the development of the Anti-Union was relatively stable. In the later period, the Anti-Union troops lost a lot. Zhou Baozhong gathered all the Anti-Union troops that had withdrawn to the Soviet Union, and they could not even make up a brigade. This formula cannot be followed. calculated. However, it is not accurate enough to calculate the level of the generals of the Anti-Union League from the number of people alone.One reason is that fighting in this special battlefield in the Northeast, most of the Anti-Japanese Army was cavalry (Yang Jingyu was mostly infantry, because he gave his horses to the common people when he entered the mountainous area to fight), and the value of a cavalry was far higher than that of infantry; One reason is that the strength of the Northeast Anti-Japanese Allied Forces was restricted by logistical supplies. Due to the blind command of Wang Ming and Kang Sheng, the construction of the anti-Japanese base areas was not high, and almost all guerrilla bases were lost in the later period. It was forced to demobilize personnel when supplies were insufficient.Therefore, the anti-union fighters who stayed in the main force were often particularly outstanding in combat effectiveness.

Taking Yang Jingyu's troops as an example, we recorded that the last two guards around Yang Jingyu, Nie Donghua and Zhu Wenfan, ventured out to buy food, but were betrayed by traitors and sacrificed by the Japanese army.However, it is recorded in Japan's "Manchukuo Police Important Photographic Document Collection" (collected by the Osaka Prefectural Library) that the two soldiers struggled with only two shell guns and a large number of Japanese and puppet troops who were besieged, and they fought fiercely for 30 minutes. He was shot and sacrificed, and Zhu Wenfan had already been injured before!

The combat effectiveness of the Anti-Union can be seen. Records were found in Japan. On November 2, 1939, an artillery unit of the Japanese army was wiped out in Huitougou, Jinchuan County (recorded as Huihuigou in our records).Later, the scene where the commander of the Japanese army went to offer sacrifices in person was hidden in the private photo album of Japanese military officer Shijiro Tamura. According to our records, this battle was jointly commanded by Cao Yafan and Yang Jingyu, and it was also the last time the two old comrades fought side by side. In the case of Cao Yafan, when he served as the division commander of the Second Division of the First Army, he had more than a thousand people under his command. It is mentioned that in 1939, Chen Hanzhang, the commander-in-chief of the third front army, had more than 1,300 officers and soldiers under his command, and the first front (army) should be similar to it.The front army under the First Route Army of the Anti-Japanese Army seems to be treated as a "division" internally. Therefore, the Japanese army called Chen Hanzhang "Mr. Chen" during the last battle. It is said that it is compiled into a "new division".From a military point of view, the troops commanded by Cao Yafan are equivalent to a main cavalry regiment of the Eighth Route Army in Guannei, but in terms of the scope of the guerrilla zone it controls, it is far beyond the scope of an independent division of the Eighth Route Army.Therefore, if it is roughly calculated, his rank should be between the commander of the Independent Division of the Eighth Route Army (such as Yang Chengwu, the commander of the Independent First Division, the founding general) and the head of the cavalry regiment (such as Kang Jianmin, the commander of the cavalry regiment of the Eighth Route Army Left Behind Corps, and the founding major general) between.

Cao Yafan fought bravely. When Yang Jingyu fell into a tight siege, he still took the risk to lead his troops into the rescue. After the last two guards Nie Donghua and Zhu Wenfan died on February 18, Yang Jingyu was left alone. The Crusade to the Heroic Records" (written by Miyamoto Traveler, a reporter from Manchurian Railway Magazine "Xiehe") included "Diary in the Battlefield", but it recorded that on February 21st a fierce battle took place with a large number of anti-union troops at the Dasha River in the north of Mengjiang City. The two sides fought for an hour, and then On February 22, they fought fiercely with the Anti-Union forces again in Daniugou, Mengjiang, and the Japanese army dispatched planes to gain an advantage.Yang Jingyu died on the 23rd, the next day, in Nansandaoweizi, Mengjiang. The straight-line distance between the two sides was only seven kilometers!

According to the judgment, this army that dared to break into the Japanese army's siege and rescue Yang Jingyu was Cao Yafan's. After the death of Yang Jingyu, Cao Yafan still commanded the headquarters to fight tenaciously, and joined other anti-Japanese troops to fight in Linjiang, Mengjiang, Huinan, Liuhe, Fusong and other vast areas, and continued to show in the South Manchuria area close to the heart of the Japanese and puppet rule. With the existence of the Anti-Union.Therefore, Cao Yafan's sacrifice was a major loss to the First Army of the Northeast Anti-Japanese Allied Army. In April 1940, Wei Zhengmin wrote to the Communist Party representative of the Communist International, and Cao Yafan ranked fourth among the existing cadres of the First Route Army. , second only to Park Deok-beom, Han In-hwa and Xu Zhe.In July, Wei Zhengmin wrote a letter to the CCP representative Kang Sheng (Wei Zhengmin didn't know that Kang Sheng had been replaced), describing Cao Yafan's sacrifice, saying that "Comrade Cao Yafan was killed by a traitor in the team, and most of the troops of the First Front Army collapsed. At present, there is only one cadre leading a small number of team members to continue the glorious cause of resisting Japan and saving the country, and if there is one more mistake at this time, there is a danger of complete collapse."

Regarding Cao Yafan's sacrifice, there have been two theories: combat sacrifice and being killed by a traitor. At present, it is basically certain that Cao Yafan was assassinated by a traitor in April 1940 at the secret camp of Xiwengquan, Longquan Town, Mengjiang. He was 29 years old at the time. Judging from the newly discovered information, whether it is in Wei Zhengmin's letters or in the records of the Japanese army, it shows that Cao Yafan was indeed assassinated by insiders, which indirectly confirmed the cause of Cao Yafan's death. According to the third part of "A Brief History of the Manchukuo Police" (written by Toyotaka Kato), the Japanese army found the remains of Cao Yafan on the nine-nine-nine highland at the junction of Jinchuan and Mengjiang and took pictures nearby, saying that Cao should have died on April 1940 April 4th.Although the Japanese army did not record the time of discovery, it is worth noting that the Japanese army in the photo had already changed into summer uniforms. The Japanese army’s crusade troops changed their summer uniforms in June, so the place where Cao Yafan was martyred should not be discovered until several months later.Since the Japanese army had fought with the rest of the former Cao Yafan in this area many times, and successively caused the Anti-Japanese Alliance to lose about a hundred officers and soldiers. Therefore, the process and location of Cao Yafan's sacrifice were probably provided to him by the captured Anti-Japanese personnel.

Although the photo of Cao Yafan's sacrifice site did not indicate which Japanese army it was, judging from the combat area, it was found that the Japanese army in Cao Yafan's camp was the Ogata Crusade Team of the Eighth Independent Garrison Brigade of the Japanese Kwantung Army.Next to this photo is a photo of the Seta Squad of the Japanese Army during the crusade, and the Seta Squad belonged to the Ogata Crusade Team, which can be regarded as evidence. The brigade is one of the most elite units of the Kwantung Army (enlisted soldiers are all selected from the first-class first-class inspection of recruits, and the recruits are trained to shoot at a distance of 450 meters). The "Three Provinces Joint Crusade" was deployed, and it was put into combat as one of the main forces of the crusade.This was an unprecedented crusade against Yang Jingyu's First Route Army, and its mobilization of troops and materials was astonishing.In fact, it was December 1940 when the last combat unit of the Ministry returned to the camp after the crusade.

In the face of the unprecedented attack by the Japanese army, the Anti-Union troops put up an extremely tenacious resistance. The fierce battle lasted for nearly 15 months. Until November 1940, Chen Hanzhang, who had run out of ammunition, severely injured the tight Following the pursuit of the Japanese Dongning police team, they killed Saburo Murakami, the deputy captain of the Dongning County Police Force, and stumped the pursuing Japanese army.The Independent Eighth Garrison Brigade is an important mobile force in the hands of Vice Chandler No, but it was also repeatedly hit by the Anti-Japanese Alliance in this crusade and suffered heavy losses. The Independent Eighth Defensive Brigade has four squadrons and directly affiliated teams. It was originally planned to form four crusade teams based on squadrons, but as soon as it was dispatched, on September 24, 1939, the No. Waiting for the ambush, almost wiped out (only more than 20 people escaped. Part of the Fifth Army of the Anti-Japanese Army also participated in the battle, and sacrificed a regiment leader named Ren), the squadron leader Captain Matsushima Kokichi was killed, and the fourth squadron was also attacked. Hit hard.Due to the loss of the basic cadres of the Second Squadron, it was difficult to rebuild, so the brigade was actually organized into only three crusade teams. "May 1st Troop" is the Ogata crusade team composed of the backbone. This Ogata crusade team also encountered stubborn resistance from the Anti-Japanese Alliance, and suffered a heavy blow during this mopping operation. The attack on the Ogata Crusade Team occurred during their "crusade" over the Harbal Ridge towards Shahezhang. At that time, its troops consisted of three infantry squads, a command squad, and a transport team.Seta's No. 1 Squad was the vanguard in its marching ranks, walking about 100 meters in front of the team, followed by the Command Squad and the Second Squad, followed by the Luggage Squad and the Third Squad.There were 120 Japanese soldiers in the entire queue, and the luggage team was not Japanese, but mainly composed of Koreans, and there were also a small number of local coolies. There were more than 100 people in total, each carrying 30 kilograms of luggage. On September 29, after two weeks of "crusade", the troops marched to the Sidaogou area, where the mountain was as steep as a horse's back, and the Japanese army could only march in a single file on a road only 50 centimeters wide. Although Lieutenant Lieutenant Ogata, the squadron leader, has a lot of combat experience and tried his best to keep the combat troops ready to fight at any time, the luggage team was inevitably pulled into a long queue and moved slowly. "History" records that due to the slow movement of the luggage team, the marching team of the crusade team was actually pulled to a length of four kilometers.In order to avoid attacks on the backward luggage team, Lieutenant Ogata specially ordered the third team under the command of Second Lieutenant Eijiro Hashimoto (specially promoted after the death of the battle) to act as a "luggage monitoring force" and be responsible for protecting the luggage.Marching to about three o'clock in the afternoon, the luggage team was walking on the most difficult mountain section when they were suddenly attacked violently from the flank by the Anti-Japanese guerrillas. The Japanese army speculated that the total strength of the Northeast Anti-Japanese Allied Forces that launched the attack was about 300 people. They fiercely cut into the Japanese army from both sides, and the two sides fell into a melee almost immediately.Second Lieutenant Eijiro Hashimoto, who was in charge of covering the baggage convoy, made a big mistake. He dispersed more than thirty of his subordinates to march with the baggage convoy. Combat teams were formed "three, three, five, five" to fight hard with the Anti-Union troops.With only a 50-meter field of vision, the Japanese army gathered on the road could only be beaten and unable to fight back. The result of such a battle can be imagined. The scattered Japanese troops were killed one by one. By 4:30 p.m., the battle was long over.The luggage monitoring team was completely annihilated, Lieutenant Hashimoto's chest was honeycombed by several bullets, and all the luggage they escorted was taken away by the Anti-Japanese Allied Forces. The Anti-Japanese Allied Forces did not embarrass the unarmed supply team members and preserved their lives.But when the squadron leader Ogata had to rely on airdrops to get supplies out of the jungle, he also had to provide them with food, which must have greatly increased the burden on the Kwantung Army's flying team.The Ogata subjugation team was unable to fight for a week.However, the Japanese troops of the Ogata Expedition Team said that there was an additional method when they searched for the Anti-Union troops. They would look for the Japanese cans discarded by the Anti-Union fighters after eating, which were obviously "looted from our army." This battle resembled a pocket-sized Pingxingguan, and it is still unknown which Anti-Union force fought it.But from this we can know that Yang Jingyu, Wei Zhengmin, Cao Yafan and Chen Hanzhang fought tenaciously with the Japanese army in this way. The loss of the Ogata crusade showed how the Anti-Japanese Alliance dealt with the enemy wittily and bravely in the encirclement of the Japanese army.These heroic achievements cannot be recorded because only a few officers and soldiers of the First Route Army of the Anti-Japanese Army survived. Today, we can only understand it from the records of the enemy.Another example is that when General Chen Hanzhang, commander-in-chief of the Third Front Army of the First Route Army of the Anti-Japanese War, died, among the relics around him listed by the Japanese army was "a telephone."It is obviously impossible for the Anti-Japanese Federation to use the telephone to communicate. What is this telephone used for?The Japanese army finally unlocked its secret - it turned out that General Chen Hanzhang's staff would use this phone to find an opportunity to connect to the Japanese army's telephone line to eavesdrop on the communications of the Japanese and puppet troops, and often used the obtained information to give the Japanese army a mysterious blow. In September 1939, the First Route Army of the Anti-Union Army had only a few thousand troops. Facing the 80,000-day puppet army's meticulously designed and almost crazy encirclement and crusade at any cost, in the maneuvering space of only a few counties, they stubbornly resisted for 15 months.This kind of battle is not just for survival.In such a difficult environment, what we see is not despair, but the Chinese people's pursuit and confidence in national independence and freedom. This point was also confirmed when a photo of General Cao Yafan's martyrdom site was discovered. The death of Cao Yafan should be said to be a tragedy of the Northeast Anti-Japanese Allied Forces.When he was camping at night, he was assassinated by Quan, the machine gun squad leader of his subordinates, and his guard Yang Youkang was killed at the same time.It is somewhat reluctant to say that he was killed by a traitor, because several assassins who assassinated him were still engaged in anti-Japanese activities and died one after another in battles with the Japanese and puppet troops.The reasons for their assassination of Cao Yafan can be found in Kim Il Sung's memoirs.Kim Il Sung mentioned that Cao happened to be the Secretary of the East Manchurian Special Committee when the "Minsaengdan" incident created by the Japanese spy agent Kim Donghan (later killed by the 11th Army of the Anti-Union Army) occurred, and this movement caused harm to many comrades .At that time, many officers, soldiers and local cadres of the Anti-Union League were labeled as "Minshengtuan", the division commander Zhu Zhen and others were forced to become traitors, and some people were still shouting "Long Live the Communist Party" when they were shot. Anti-extreme "left" tragedy.Cao Yafan took a more objective stand in this incident, but his status as a political officer was the root cause of his murder.This is also recognized by many comrades who survived the Anti-Japanese War. Therefore, when I saw this photo of the place where he died, I couldn't help but sigh in my heart. However, the big tree in the photo caught my attention.According to the records of the Japanese army, Cao Yafan's remains were found near this big tree, and the slogan of the Anti-Japanese League was written on the big tree. According to the information provided by Mr. Shi Yijun, the place where Cao Yafan died was the secret camp of Xiwengquan, Longquan Town, one of the secret camps of the Anti-Japanese League.This is the intersection of the three counties of Jinchuan, Mengjiang, and Dunhua. Cao Yafan led his troops to retreat here. Is he unable to fight anymore, or should Xu Tu rise again?This promotional slogan written on the big tree should be his last handwriting. What was this anti-Japanese general thinking at the last moment of his life? However, in today's era, technology can do many things that previous generations could not.After using IT technology to process this photo, the handwriting on the trunk finally floated out as if from underwater. We can finally see the historical information hidden deep in the photos of the Japanese army by the Anti-Japanese War. It took 70 years for this information to be conveyed to us. It can be seen that there are four vertical lines of writing on the trunk. The left and right lines cannot be seen clearly due to the curvature of the trunk, but the middle two lines are faintly discernible. The line in the middle is: overthrow the puppet state of Manchuria And a line on the side reads: Resisting Japan and saving the nation is the sacred duty of everyone in China I think everything is clear. This is the cause that Cao Yafan still cared about at the last moment of his life, and this is the soul of the Chinese people who resisted unyieldingly in the white mountains and black waters. Dashu, testify for them after 70 years.