In October 1948, 100,000 enemy troops in Changchun City had been besieged for almost seven months. At this time, the head of General Yang Jingyu, the anti-Japanese national hero, was still in the isolated city and became an important target for our party's underground workers.
At this time, three groups of enemy agents in the crumbling isolated city are also paying attention and looking for Yang Jingyu's head. Among them, there are the spy chief Xiang Naiguang , the Changchun Station of the Military and Police Supervision Office, the chief of the Changchun Police Department, the spy Yuan Jiapei and another spy Yuan Xiaoxuan, etc.
Why did the enemy and us pay so much attention to a single head during the siege? This shows that this is something extraordinary.
Yang Jingyu
Yang Jingyu is an anti-Japanese national hero valued by both the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. When the Kuomintang and the Communist Party split and carried out a brutal siege and defense war, the remains in the isolated city increasingly showed their special value. The people of the Northeast praised the "South Yang Bei" "Nanyang" refers to Yang Jingyu, the leader of the Anti-Japanese Alliance who fought bloody battles with the Japanese invaders in Southern Manchuria.
Mao Zedong once commented vividly to the foreign reporters he interviewed:
"The famous leaders of the Volunteer Army, Yang Jingyu, Zhao Shangzhi, etc., are all members of the Communist Party. Their record of persisting in the hard struggle against Japan is well known to the people."
Yang Jingyu , joined the Communist Party of China in 1927. In 1929, he was sent to work in the Northeast and North Manchuria Provincial Committee. After the "9·18" incident, the First Army of the Anti-Japanese Allied Forces was established. He was an anti-Japanese general who was frightened by the enemy. He once made the puppet Manchukuo "uneasy".
At noon on February 23, 1940, Yang Jingyu, armed with two guns, was surrounded by the enemy in three dense forests in Mengjiang County, Changbai Mountain, while suffering from hunger and cold. He fought back from left and right, but was outnumbered and died heroically. He was only 35 years old.
The ferocious enemy ripped open his abdomen, and there was not even a grain of food in his stomach except undigested bark, grass roots, and cotton wool. The enemy was stunned and frightened. The Communists were really tough guys. They were so hungry and refused to surrender. The enemy brutally cut off his head with a guillotine, took several pictures of sacks, and scattered them to places where the Anti-Japanese Alliance fought and some residential areas. They vigorously promoted that "Yang Jingyu's tribe has been eliminated" and showed off their "war exploits." Then the head was soaked in potion in a medicine bottle, sent to the medical room of the Kwantung Army Headquarters in Changchun, the capital of the puppet Manchukuo, and hid secretly.
The Northeast Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China instructed: Secretly search for the head of General Yang Jingyu
On August 15, 1945, after Japan surrendered, Changchun was temporarily taken over by the remnants of the puppet Manchukuo. The former Changchun Medical College of the Japanese puppet took away the head of General Yang Jingyu. On April 18, 1946, after four days and nights of fierce fighting, our army captured Changchun, a city with a population of 800,000, from the remnants of the Japanese and puppets. Due to the panic and chaos, our troops withdrew from Changchun before they had time to question General Yang Jingyu's head.
After our army besieged Changchun this time, in order to prevent the head of the national hero from falling into the hands of the spies, the Northeast Bureau of the Communist Party of China immediately instructed the underground workers of the Songjiang Military Region who attacked the city to secretly search for the head of General Yang Jingyu in the isolated city.
Zhang Zhengping, an underground worker in the city, took advantage of the favorable conditions of his home in Changchun City to form a reconnaissance team with two other underground workers, Li Yeguang and Li Xuesong. During the day or night, the three people often disguised themselves and appeared near Changchun Medical College. After tracking and reconnaissance, they found that because the school was empty of food, one of the teachers and students starved to death, and the other had already fled. After several days of careful investigation, they finally found out some information: In the medical equipment room of the medical school, there were several large glass bottles containing human heads, which were usually very scary.
That night, the medical school was very quiet. With the darkness, Li Yeguang and others pushed the cart into the courtyard and went straight to the door of the anatomy classroom. After Li Yeguang opened the door, he stood guard at the door with a gun. Li Xuesong and Zhang Zhengping moved several valuable equipment into the car, including an extra large glass bottle containing Yang Jingyu's head, and loaded it into the car. They quickly covered the bottle with straw and quilts, then simply tidied it up and locked the door. Zhang Zhengping, Li Yeguang and others immediately sent the specimen to the Changchun office at the front of the Songjiang Military Region.
On December 20, 1948, the head of national hero Yang Jingyu was secretly escorted to Harbin by officer Zhang Yu and five soldiers, and was placed in the newly established Northeast Martyrs Memorial Hall.Hundreds of thousands of people paid homage to the martyrs' heads.
Chen Guang, the former commander of the Songjiang Military Region who besieged Changchun, asked General Feng Zhongyun, one of the former leaders of the anti-Japanese coalition forces who returned to China with the Soviet Red Army, to identify himself. These old comrades who had also fought against the Japanese in the Northeast definitely believed that it was Yang Jingyu’s head. .
So far, Yang Jingyu’s unyielding head has finally returned after going through hardships and dangers for 8 years.
Today, the people have established a martyrs cemetery in Tonghua City, Jilin Province, where Yang Jingyu died. The cemetery stands tall with a statue of the mighty and unyielding national hero Yang Jingyu, surrounded by the green pines of Changbai Mountain.
