Posted on 04/10/2008 6:33:50 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
The Chinese had been reorganized under the puppet Governor, Ma Liang, and had been used to maintain order in sections of Tsinan. Inspired by the approach of victorious comrades from the south, the Tsinan forces revolted, using pistols, the only arms they were allowed to possess, and seized the southern, eastern and western suburbs, according to reports from Suchow.
The Japanese were reported to have executed Governor Ma and now are attempting to round up the rebels.
There is fighting in the area occupied by the Shantung Christian College. A number of Americans are believed to be living in the college though no recent information regarding them has been received by the United States Embassy here.
The Japanese forces in Tsinan are believed to be small because all available men are thought to have rushed to attempt to push southward to assist the beleaguered Japanese along the Grand Canal north of Suchow, the goal of the Japanese drive.
The Chinese claim they are besieging Tsining and Tihsien. One report said the Japanese garrison at Yihsien had broken through the Chinese cordon to join the Japanese who withdrew from Taierhchwang.
The united Japanese forces were said to show signs of breaking, seeking safety in the mountains or attempting to join forces that have been trying to push through the Chinese troops southward from districts northeast of Lini.
A correspondent of the Hankow newspaper Ta Kung Pao, who entered Taierhchwang, reported the city was bereft of civilians, all of the 20,000 inhabitants being fugitives or dead. Indicating the full Chinese control, he said lines of Chinese soldiers were at he near-by Grand Canal washing their tired feet along the banks.
Describing the South Shantung situation for foreign newspaper correspondents, General Hau Peiken, the information section director, admitted the Japanese had pushed through Taierhchwang Sunday but charged they used poison gas to do so. They then tried to cross the canal at Chiaotsun, a few miles south, but had overreached themselves and were caught in a far-flung Chinese counter-envelopment.
General Hau said the invaders were forced to fall back, many being caught. Five or six thousand were killed at Taierhchwang, he said. Several thousand wounded were captured, he declared, but most of these died of wounds because of their nearly starved condition.
HANKOW, China, April 9 (AP). – Reports from Kaifeng, on the Yellow River in Honan Province, said trains daily were taking about 1,000 Chinese wounded westward along the Lung-Hai Railroad from Southern Shantung battles.
The wounded are being treated by American and British missionary doctors at Kaifeng, assisted by the British China Inland Mission Hospital, American Benedictines and Sisters of Providence.
The whole foreign community is engaged in general relief. Medical assistance at Kaifeng and in the Chengchow area have reached such proportions that representatives have been sent to obtain assistance at Hankow.
Tsinan is about 150 miles in an air line north of Taierhchwang, and only a week ago the prospects seemed bright for the Japanese Army to crash southward from Taierhchwang to cut the Lung-Hai Railway and imperil the entire Chinese defense line along the Yellow River. Today, if the Hankow reports are correct, the Japanese Army has met a reverse of astounding extent and it faces a most difficult task, with the Tientsin-Pukow Railway cut in scores of places and large bodies of troops and important concentrations of Japanese supplies imperiled.
If even half of Hankow’s claims can be substantiated, General Li Tsung-jen, the Kwangsi leader, has developed into one of China’s outstanding strategists. Hitherto he has been considered mainly as an able provincial administrator and adroit politician while his Kwangsi partner, Genaral Pai Chung-hsi, has supposedly been the team’s military genius, but General Pai is at present engaged in training reserves in Hunan Province.
Probably the most surprising development of the series of recent battles in Southern Shantung has been the good showing made by various Chinese provincial units and other units hitherto believed to have poor morale. Their latest fighting record indicates a new spirit of resistance coupled with the belated achievement of a unification in the high command.
Chinese said the further retreat of Japanese forces north from Taierhchwang was cut off by Chinese troops which recaptured Tsaochwang. They added that 1,000 Japanese were killed in the flight from Taierhchwang.
Yihsien, they said, was in flames and apparently destined to the same fate as Taierhchwang whose mud walls had been flattened by weeks of heavy fighting.
Inland on the corridor between Japan’s conquests in North and Central China, Chinese guerrillas reported the recapture of Sinsiang, in Northern Honan Province, where a spur line crosses the Peiping-Hankow Railway.
A combined force of Chinese regulars and guerrillas said it was besieging Japanese garrisons at Wenhsien, Menghsien and Taiyuan on the north bank of the Yellow River.
A guerrilla unit attached to the Chinese Eighth Army of Communists under General Chu Teh said it captured coal mines thirty-eight mile west of Shihkiachwang in Western Hopeh Province. They reported the small Japanese garrison there was taken by surprise.
CARDIFF, Wales, April 9 (AP). – The South Wales Miners Federation today urged a united labor front to meet the “serious situation created by the national government and its support of fascism.”
The federation adopted a resolution advising labor and Communist party executives to settle their differences for greater unity.
Here is how I know the Japanese are in a quagmire in China: The fighting has gone on around Taierhchwang for so long that I can now spell it from memory. I cannot, however, pronounce it.
There is a bonus article about Welsh miners at the end.
Nice history post.
Never get into a war with China. An hour after you win, you’ll just have to do it all over again..................
Another late news report? In other breaking late news, General Lew Wallace is celebrating his victory at Pittsburg Landing with General Grant.
Real time + 146 years, 3 days. I wonder how long it took the news of Shiloh to hit the northern newspapers. I guess the telegraph could have made it about as fast as cables reaching the U.S. overseas in the first half of the twentieth century.
You’d have to fight the next million they throw at you?
Or am I off base?
They have the largest standing army in the world. We have the largest bombs.................
Invisible airplanes and magical bombs...
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