On the same day, people from four townships gathered in the county town, carrying cars on their shoulders and bustling. Although there have been grapevine reports from Wan Ding and Ruili a few days ago, as long as the war doesn't come, life is still the same for people who are used to it. Therefore, the business in the market is still very hot.
At eleven o'clock, Pohaishan air defense surveillance post found a large number of planes in the southwest sky, and she quickly reported to the county government. But the phone rang for a long time and no one paid attention, because the only air defense alarm officer left work early to catch the street.
1 1 hour 15 minutes, the first batch of 27 Japanese bombers flew over Baoshan. The rumble of the plane attracted people's attention. Because there was no alarm in advance, and recently there was a rumor in the city that an American plane would be stationed at Baoshan Airport, the people thought that the American plane had arrived and were elated, and the children cheered in the air.
Only one teacher on the playground recognized the Japanese national emblem of the plane and quickly hid the students under the hillside, avoiding many people's sacrifices.
Japanese planes circled over Baoshan for a week and began to bomb. The first bombs landed accurately on the streets in the center of the county town, collapsing department stores and Nanyang Hotel. Because there are too many vehicles and pedestrians in the street, bombs almost invariably fall into the crowd and explode, leaving many shocking pits on the ground.
Then the second round of roaring bombs collapsed countless houses and blew up a lot of pink minced meat and blood fog. Black smoke is everywhere in Baoshan city, dead bodies are stuck on the road, and the noise of the sky falling is endless.
Baoshan was bombed and the whole city was burned to the ground. Shi Zhizhi said, "There used to be a river in the city. The river has changed color and it is unclear for several days. " According to statistics, 90% of the houses in this city were destroyed and tens of thousands of people were killed or injured. In May, in western Yunnan, the climate was hot, and a large number of corpses rotted and no one buried them, so wild dogs prevailed and plagues prevailed. Many local people died of the plague. Later, the plague spread to Yunnan and Sichuan, Guizhou, Guangxi and other places. According to the exact data, this year the plague ravaged the whole country, and hundreds of thousands of people died.
The "May 4th" Baoshan bombing was just one of countless blood debts that Japanese imperialism owed to the people of China. It's only two weeks before American planes bomb Tokyo. In particular, after the war, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East tried to sue the Japanese Emperor for "ordering the execution of captured American pilots". The Japanese government argued that those pilots did commit the crime of killing civilians when they bombed Tokyo. The prosecution is invalid.
1942 in may, the wind on the front line in Myanmar became increasingly tense. The number of defeated soldiers and refugees from the West Bank suddenly increased. All the bad news came from people, and the atmosphere on the bridge suddenly became tense.
On May 2, General Ma, commander-in-chief of the Expeditionary Force Corps of Engineers, evacuated from Kunming and passed Huitong Bridge, leaving a group of gendarmes and engineers guarding the bridge. General Ma authorized the gendarmerie captain Zhang Zuwu to take over the bridge and blow it up immediately in an emergency.
Zhang Zuwu, a native of Guangxi, is a minor. According to local history books, there is only one sentence left, saying, "Zhang Zuwu is short in stature, good at using firearms, brave and witty."
On May 2, the situation became more tense. On the Panshan Highway in the west bank, the traffic and crowds waiting to cross the bridge are endless. Unconfirmed news said that Japanese tanks had entered mangshi.
All morning, Captain Zhang felt that his right eyelid kept jumping. As the saying goes, "jump left for money, jump right for cliff", and jumping in the right eye is not a good sign after all. Mangshi is less than100km from Huitong Bridge. If the Japanese are happy, they can drive the tanks to the river in half a day. If they send plainclothes across the bridge in advance, Captain Zhang and his dozens of brothers will have to surrender, or go back to work with their heads in their hands. Can a mere gendarmerie stop thousands of Japanese troops?
Fortunately, Huitong Bridge is a natural barrier. "One person defends it, but ten thousand people can't force it". Captain Zhang ordered the engineers to install explosives on the bridge in advance, and the gendarmerie guarded the bridge to prevent the Japanese plainclothes from crossing the bridge.
After taking measures, my heart felt safe. So captain Zhang ordered someone to move a cane chair and personally sat by the bridge to check the pedestrians crossing the bridge.
At noon, the Japanese bombed Baoshan. When the news came, the crowd was in an uproar At 2 o'clock in the afternoon, a plane with a plaster flag repeatedly flew over Huitong Bridge, neither shooting nor dropping bombs. At four o'clock, three more planes passed by. The frightened crowd just wanted to cross the bridge and squeeze in, when the suspension bridge shook violently and several people were shaken into the river. Finally, the order of crossing the bridge was restored, and the time was approaching that dangerous dusk.
At about six o'clock, a dusty truck drove from Baoshan to Qiaotou, trying to take people across the bridge in reverse. The gendarmerie refused to let him return. The owner claimed to have something to do with Xifeng Brigade and was in no hurry to speak. He was slapped twice by the military police in public. The owner was wronged and had to turn the car around angrily. Unexpectedly, the operation was too fierce, and the front of the car collided with another car, causing the bridge to be blocked.
Captain Zhang was furious and ordered the gendarmerie to push the truck into the river. The owner refused, clamoring for land and protecting the car with his body. The captain added fuel to the fire to "hinder the execution of military affairs" and dragged him to the river. The host was afraid at first, but it was too late. A row of guns made him roll and fell into the steep Nujiang River.
The sudden gunfire caused a series of great repercussions in the twilight canyon. Horrified people came in and out, and the rough steel cable suspension bridge groaned. In order to quell the riot, the gendarmerie fired a gun into the air again.
Gunfire suddenly broke out, and hundreds of Japanese death squads invaded China sneaked in disguised as refugees, and their leading teams were less than 200 meters away from the bridge. The cable suspension bridge is close at hand, and the people crossing the bridge can be vividly seen. Twilight masks the insidious Japanese and their nervousness. People in the west bank just want to cross the bridge quickly, and no one is aware that a huge conspiracy has quietly approached.
The sudden gunfire on the bridge not only shocked the refugees in the west bank, but also strained the nerves of the Japanese army. The Japanese commander didn't know that there was a trivial tragicomedy on the bridge at the moment. He just relied on the soldier's intuition, thinking that someone had exposed the target and the enemy was on alert, so after half a second's thinking and hesitation, he ordered the death squads to charge. At that time, gunshots came from the west bank of the Nujiang River.