it's nice to see you posting again.
i remember you previously suggested that Heh Jifeng instigated the Lugouqiao incident. can elaborate further on it?
In last post, when I talked about Fu Zuoyi, I mixed up a bit. The guy who wrote on the Suiyuan-Peking Railway defence was Doak Barnett.
Fu Zuoyi was so successful in defending the railway that Mao repeatedly failed to cross the railway to get to Manchuria to find an airfield to fly to Moscow for meeting with Stalin.
Now for redstick, do not buy into Jung Chang's claim about Zhang Zhizhong or Shao Lizi. Both guys had never recruited any communists nor had any channel to report to the communists or the Soviets. In 1927 or earlier, KMT and CCP was one house. Both Hu Hanmin and Shao Lizi were invited as guest speakers or observers at the Comintern congress. The Soviets duped the KMT in giving a quasi membership to the KMT at the Comintern. Shao Lizi was merely representing the KMT in attending the congress in Moscow when Chiang had a coup against the communists in Shanghai in April 1927. Shao would not know who was right and who was wrong at the time while he was in Moscow. It meant nothing if he said good words about STalin and communsist in Moscow.
Back to the Marco Polo Bridge conspiracy.
Some communist veteran, called Liu Zhao, had stirred up a debate about the new publication by the Chinese Political Consulatative Congress to revise some writing done by communist mole Heh Jifeng in 1960, entitled "The Documentary Writing on the July 7 Incident". See
http://www.xfgjls.co...ent-itemid-2800What Liu Zhao was saying was that there was an ongoing internal struggle within the 29th Army (Corps), namely, a fight between the undercover communist Zhang Kexia and pro-Japan 38th Division commander (and concurrent Tientsin mayor) Zhang Zizhong in regards to the dealings with the Japanese.
In 1960, Heh Jifeng et al., wrote an article about how the Marco Polo Incident erupted. Heh recalled that Zhang Kexia, Feng Yuxiang's communist brother-in-law, had received in April-May 1937 instructions from Liu Shaoqi's North China communist bureau to devise a strategic plan for the 29th Corps to proactively attack the Japanese at the Mountain and Sea Pass, termed the 'Plan for Marching Out of the Mountain and Sea Pass". Additionally, Zhang Kexia, who was deputy chief of staff for the 29th Corps, had hired top communists, including Zhang Youyu, for launching an indoctrination course among officers within the 29th Corps. This was against chief of staff 张樾亭 Zhang Yueting's draft plan to withdraw the 29th Corps to the Baoding-Shijiazhuang area so as to avoid friction with the Japanese. Note at that time, commander-in-chief Song Zheyuan was taking a hike for vacation in Shandong for evading the Japanese. Among lecturers of the teaching corps would be Feng Hongguo, i.e., a Moscow-returned Soviet agent and Feng Yuxiang's elder son. (Do note that Feng Yuxiang's wife and all her brothers were communists.) At Zhang Kexia's suggestion, an army intelligence division was set up within the 29th Corps, with communist Ren Jingqiu as director.
How incredible it is to see a full house of communists controlling the operations of the 29th Corps.
In Zeng Zhi memoirs, you had Zeng Zhi, this communist wife of Tao Zhu's, recalling a talk with Moscow-returnee Xiao Ming about when Zhang Kexia enrolled in the party. (Xiao Ming, like Yang Xiefeng, was on the same boat as the rest of Europ-returned or Moscow-returned Soviet agents.) It was confirmed to be in 1929 that Zhang joined the party, termed the order of "Mi-zi-hao" (i.e., rice? numbering) who reported direct to Zhou Enlai et al. In communist Yang Xianzhen's Biography, you would see this communist head in North China was instructed to go to Peking-Tientsin to liasion communists on a five-men list, including both Zhang Kexia and Heh Jifeng. That was in year 1931. This meant that Heh Jifeng was not what I figured had enrolled in the communist party in 1933, but 1931 or earlier. Both Heh and Zhang were classmates of the brigade commanders who conducted the mutiny in Jiangxi to join the Red Army in 1931. Zhang Kexia was a Moscow-returnee, and his brother, who was recruited by Yang Shande for GRU training in the Soviet Far East, was later purged by the Soviets in late 1930s.
Liu Shaoqi, after giving instructions to the undercover agents in the 29th Corps, left for Yenan for a meeting with Mao in May-June 1937, where they devised the "Defend North China and Defend Peking-Tientsin" political slogans. Back in Peking, in June, the Soviet GRU sent Su Ziyuan, top agent from the Mukden YMCA gang and a cohort of Yan Baoyang, was in the 29th Corps for military agitation. Su Ziyuan was said to have followed Zhang Kexia and Heh Jifeng in attending a Sino-Japanese officers' dinner party in the forbidden city on June 6.
You won't know exactly what the communist directives were until you read a recollection done by a Japanese called 葛西纯一 (?Kasai Junichi) who was retained by the communist army in Manchuria from 1945-1950. In 1974, he wrote a book called "new information: Marco Polo Bridge incident," and published it in Japan, claiming that while he was in Manchuria, at the PLA Fourth Field Army logistics department of the Ordnance Department, he had seen soldiers studying the political textbooks that was printed in 1947 by the PLA General Political Department, which carried contents to the effect that the CCP Northern Bureau had instructed students to sneak into the middle of the two armies to fire shots, so as to stir up the Sino-Japanese conflicts. Specifically, Hu Fu (Comrade Liu Shaoqi) instructed the patriotic students at the Peking Universities to use the campus as base for organization and guidance of the anti-Japanese national salvation.
Now, from Imai Memoirs. On June 29th, 1937, mysterious shots were fired at the Wanping town while the Japanese military were conducting night-time exercises. Feng Zhi’an, chairman of Hebei Province and commander for 37th Division of 29th Corps, immediately ordered a curfew for the Peiping city as a precaution. On July 1st, Imai takeo inquired with police chief Chen Ji’an’s secretary about the curfew. After return from the Baoding visit, Imai convened a news conference to brief reporters about the purpose of Japanese military exercises – the second phase inspection of the annual exercises scheduled for July 9-16th. On July 3rd, Feng Zhi’an invited Imai Takeo for a trip to Baoding the provincial capital, during which an informal protest was raised in regards to the shooting. Upon return to Peiping, Imai secretly ordered a lieutenant at the North China Stationed Ryodan to conduct an investigation. Imai checked out bullet holes to have determined that they were not from Japanese guns. On July 6, Imai, while having a party to see Chen Zigeng off for the Mt Lushan meeting, was interrupted by Shi Yousan who asked the Japanese to intervene to stop the war between China and Japan, that was purportedly scheduled to be ignited near the Lugouqiao Bridge at around 3 pm of that day. When Imai denied the knowledge of such a conflict, Shi Yousan advised the Japanese not to attack his Northern Hebei Constabulary Forces stationed at Huangshi (yellow monastery), north of Peiping. Heh jifeng the secret communist , in charge of the 37th Division at the bridge, enrolled in communists before 1933, not in 1938
or later as the CCP records claimed. Heh made arrangement for live ammuniton to be distributed in the immediate days ahead of the July 7th incident; and further ordered the buildup of barricades and embrasures, with target set against Dawayao (big tile furnace) to the east. More, one week ahead of 7-7-1937, the Peking police arrested a team of plaincoats who disguised themselves as communists. Japanese spy agency was recorded to have wide collaboration with Chinese communists agents and student activists.
After the eruption of war, Imai Takeo learnt that rumors were in wide circulation in Tokyo that “on the night of double seventh day, there would be a replay of an incident similar to Liutiaogou in North China”, over which Okamoto Kiyotomi was sent to Peiping from Tokyo by Ishihara, head of the First Section of the Japanese Imperial Staff Headquarters. (Back in late June, Ootani, brother of Japanese colonial minister, descended upon Peiping without advance notice, and inquired with Imai as to the urgency in diffusing any possible flareup of Sino-Japanese incidents. Count Otani Kozuiwas the 22nd Abbot of the West Honganji Monastery.)
One more corroboration is from Owen Lattimore. There are 100 books citing Lattimore's claim that there was a rumor in Peking that on July 7th, 1937, something similar to 9-18-1931 would happen. (You know Lattimore was a top Russian agent recruited in China by Comintern. In fact, over half of top American Comintern agents had their root in China, possibly including George Marshall as well. Also note that Lattimore-related writings talked extensively about a rumor that circulated in Tokyo and then Peking that some incident similar to the 9-31-1931 Manchuria invasion could happen in North China on July 7, 1937.)
The conspiracy against China was immense, and beyond your ken. Only after you read books about the 1926-1927 Northern Expedition would you find all major Comintern agents swamping onto China at Moscow's instructions, and later dispersed back to their countries or back to Moscow before a return to China for the continuous sabotage against the Republic of China. Think twice before you think that's all Comintern work in China. It is not the end of the story.
Tanaka, a former staff officer of the Japanese Kwantung Army, in the trials and interrogations of June 1946, disclosed that in testimony to the Tokyo International Military Tribunal that on July 8, he flew to Tientsin from Inner Mongolia, meeting mokawa hidekazu and was told that Mokowa had ordered the communist students to fire the first shot of the Sino-Japanese War.Additionally, Sakurai Tokutaro testified that on July 13, 1937, communist students from Qinghua University were caught by the
Sino-Japanese joint patrol to be litting the fire works in the middle ground of the Japanese Army and the Chinese Army. This recollection was fully corroborated by Imai takeo in his memoirs. There is no sligh doubt that the Chinese Communists were behind lighting the fuse of the 1937 Sino-Japanese War. In the past, I had talked about the assassinations of Japanese soliders, sailors, navy and merchants from Chengdu to Wuhan to Shanghai to Beihai (Guangxi) to Amoy (Fujian) from 1935 to 1937. The Soviet consipracy against China could not be denied.
