On the afternoon of June 25, 1931, Lu Hongxun, commander of the first battalion of the 3rd Regiment of the Tunken Army in the Xing'an District of Northeast China, led the soldiers to train on the playground in front of the regimental department.
Ning Wenlong, the commander of the Third Company, keenly noticed that these four people were a little suspicious, because it was already summer at this time, but the person in charge was wearing a fur hat with goggles, cotton pants and a cotton jacket.
Battalion commander, these guys don't look like good guys, should we bring them back for interrogation? Ning Wenlong asked the battalion commander Lu Hongxun. The battalion commander Lu Hongxun replied: "Okay, you go and chase them back." ”
So, Ning Wenlong ordered the soldiers to chase the four people back and take them to the playground for questioning. However, no matter what they were asked, the four of them just shook their heads because they couldn't understand words.
In desperation, the battalion commander Lu Hongxun reported the situation to the deputy regiment commander Dong Pingyu (later renamed Dong Kunwu). Dong Pingyu was born in a famous family, and his father Dong Gengyun participated in the alliance and had dealings with Mr. Zhongshan and Jiang.
Dong Gengyun went to the Northeast as a special envoy of Mr. Zhongshan and became the liaison between Jiang Jun and Zhang Zuolin. Dong Pingyu graduated from Peking University, and was later assigned to the Fengtian Negotiation Office as a secretary.
In 1925, he was sent to study at the Japanese Army Non-commissioned Officer School, which is enough to prove that his background is not ordinary. Having spent time in Japan, Dong Pingyu's Japanese skills are excellent.
On this day, Guan Yuheng, the head of the Third Regiment of Tunken, happened to go out on business, and Dong Pingyu temporarily served as the head of the regiment. After he received Lu Hongxun's report, his intuition told him that two of them were Japanese, and he immediately stepped forward to interrogate him in Japanese.
Dong Pingyu is a clever military officer, and in recent years he has heard too many Japanese spies conducting reconnaissance in the northeast region. Japan is a country that attaches great importance to intelligence gathering, and began to collect information in the first newspaper ten years before the outbreak of the First Sino-Japanese War.
In preparation for the invasion of Tohoku, Japan has been collecting intelligence from various parts of Tohoku since the Russo-Japanese War, with an astonishing level of detail. This time, Shintaro Nakamura and Entaro Isugi claimed to be agricultural experts sent by the Tokyo Agricultural Society, but they turned back on their way to the area around Mt. Sauron to investigate the soil quality and crop growth, claiming that they had heard of bandits in front of them.
However, Nakamura pointed to the other three, who were his Japanese counterparts, **, and Mongolians, who were responsible for feeding the horses and acting as guides. Dong Pingyu became suspicious of this suspicious situation, and he began to investigate the backgrounds of the four men, hoping to reveal their true identities and purposes.
Japanese spies infiltrated the Northeast, and Dong Pingyu had a keen intuition and ordered soldiers to search their luggage. The professional equipment, guns, military maps, and investigative notes found in the luggage all revealed the identities of the Japanese spies of Nakamura and his party.
Dong Pingyu hated these spies, but as the head of the ** regiment, he had no right to deal with them. So he invited Nakamura and his entourage to stay for one night and wait for the arrival of the head of the group, Guan Yuheng.
After Guan Yuheng learned of the situation, he immediately rushed back to the regiment headquarters.
After listening to the detailed report of his subordinates, Guan Yuheng decided to interrogate Nakamura and others, hoping to force them to confess. However, in the face of ironclad evidence, Nakamura still firmly denied it.
In addition, the Japanese materials carried by Nakamura have been translated by Dong Pingyu, showing that he used to be a Japanese Daisa. However, Nakamura argued that he had retired from the army, trying to shirk responsibility for the Japanese army.
He thought that he would be able to fool him by doing so, but Guan Yuheng was not an ordinary person. Guan Yuheng was born in 1898, his father was a councilor in Ning'an County, Jilin Province, and he himself was a classmate of Zhang Xueliang's lecture hall in Northeast China.
This background makes Guan Yuheng not only act in a high-profile manner, but also hate evil deeds very much, and will not be intimidated by Nakamura's Japanese identity. When it was discovered that Nakamura was resolutely uncooperative, Guan Yuheng asked Dong Pingyu to interrogate another Japanese person, Entaro Isugi.
Dong Pingyu patted the table, widened his eyes and said, "If you don't tell the truth, today will be your death!" ”
Igsugi Entaro was obviously not mature enough, he had never experienced this kind of scene before, and his psychological defense line collapsed in an instant, and he immediately softened. It turned out that Entaro Isugi was Cao Chang, who has now retired, and he works for a lumber picking company and is Nakamura's assistant.
Nakamura's identity is indeed different, he turned out to be an "intelligence officer of the Intelligence Section of the Imperial Japanese Ministry of Staff". At the beginning of 1931, Nakamura Shintaro came to Northeast China with the task of spying on the military situation in Northeast China and preparing for the war of aggression against China.
On 2 June, according to the arrangement of Captain Katakura, a special agent of the Japanese Kwantung Army, Shintaro Nakamura took a train to the Asahi Hotel, a secret secret agency of the Kwantung Army stationed in Qiqihar.
On June 5, Nakamura Zhentaro and his assistant Isugi Entaro and a group of 4 people departed from Qiqihar by train, and after getting off at the Ilekde Station in the north of the Great Khingan Mountains, they got 4 horses from the Japanese residents of the Japanese Pioneer Group and found a Mongolian and ** people.
Nakamura and his entourage crossed the Daxing'an Mountains and went all the way south to survey, map, take pictures, and visit, collecting a large amount of data for updating the map, and also collecting a large amount of military intelligence.
If all goes well, Nakamura will be able to return with a full load and receive the reward from his superiors. However, they were very unfortunate and met a few ** people who were not easy to fool. You must know that after Zhang Zuolin was killed by the Japanese army in Huanggutun, all the Northeast soldiers held their breath in their hearts and gritted their teeth with hatred for the Japanese army.
The two young men, Shintaro Nakamura and Dong Pingyu, were dressed in Chinese-style clothes and were in the prime of life. They are as brave and fearless as newborn calves, and they have an incomparable dislike for **, but also have a deep patriotic heart.
Nakamura's identity as a spy has been confirmed, and whether his fortunes can be turned around is questionable. If he is a diplomat, he can be declared "persona non grata" for espionage, but Nakamura is not a diplomat and does not even qualify as a prisoner of war, so the Chinese side has every right to deal with it.
According to the normal procedure, the Northeast Army also has no right to deal with foreign spies, and should be handed over to ** for trial. As a person who had studied in Japan and knew some international law, Guan Yuheng originally hoped to publicly deal with Nakamura's crimes, but Dong Pingyu, Lu Hongxun and other officers of the Northeast Army objected.
They believe that ** is weak on the outside and strong on the inside. In the encirclement and suppression of the Red Army, Chiang was merciless; But when dealing with the great powers, he appeared weak and powerless, and could only endure it.
If Nakamura were handed over to Nanjing, he would probably be released soon, which would instead benefit Nakamura and possibly take away the information he had gathered, causing trouble.
Dong Pingyu suggested that Nakamura and others could not be sent to Nanjing, because they might become heroes of Japanese intelligence spying in Northeast China, which would encourage more Japanese to come to Northeast China.
Therefore, the best thing to do is to secretly execute them here to prevent them from becoming a threat. Lu Hongxun agreed, and was worried that the Japanese would beat us up and say that we were illegally detained.
When Guan Yuheng heard this, he decided to conduct a second interrogation of Nakamura and others in order to obtain their confessions. After nightfall on the 26th, Guan Yuheng sat in charge, Dong Pingyu presided over the trial, and at the headquarters of the Third Regiment of the Xing'an Tunken Army, Nakamura was interrogated again.
Although Nakamura didn't care at first, thinking that the Northeast Army would just go through the motions and let him go, when he saw this formation, he began to feel bad. He still tried to gain freedom by scare, but the fire in Guan Yuheng's heart was ignited after mentioning the three words of the Kwantung Army, he used to be Guo Songling's subordinate, because of the obstruction of the Kwantung Army, the anti-Zhang Zuolin mutiny fell short.
Guan Yuheng's hatred for the Kwantung Army stemmed from an encounter, and even after Zhang Zuolin's men showed mercy, this hatred still quietly grew in his heart. In one incident, Nakamura's unyielding resistance strengthened Guan Yuheng's resolve.
In the process of transcription, Nakamura tried to recapture ** and held Guan Yuheng hostage, but was eventually **. During this struggle, Nakamura's watch was ripped off and fell to the ground. Despite Nakamura's defeat, his actions inspired Guan Yuheng's determination and his hatred for the Kwantung Army deepened.
In the tense atmosphere, no one noticed a small detail of Nakamura's death. This negligence gave the Kwantung Army an excuse to launch the "September 18 Incident". Nakamura's arrogance angered Guan Yuheng and others, and they decided to secretly execute him that night.
Lieutenant adjutant Zhao Heng carried out the task and led the law enforcement team to escort Nakamura and the others to a secluded place in the back mountain to execute the blade. After that, they burned Nakamura's luggage and horses.
As for the method of secret executions, some say that they were burned to death by pouring kerosene on them, while others say that they were killed with knives. Importantly, the military spy Shintaro Nakamura and four others mysteriously disappeared in the area of Chalson.
As soon as the day dawned, Guan Yuheng reported the documents and evidence to Zhang Xueliang, who was recuperating in Beiping. Zhang Xueliang could only say four words: "Try to wipe out the traces as much as possible and strictly keep the secret."
Within the Third Regiment, Guan Yuheng repeatedly emphasized that no one is allowed to divulge a word, and there will be no forgiveness for violators. Unfortunately, the Nakamura affair was eventually leaked. Twenty days after Nakamura and his entourage disappeared, the Japanese consul Taonan felt abnormal and immediately sent Captain Katakura to search for him along Nakamura's scheduled route.
At the same time, the Japanese Kwantung Army Headquarters also walked into a woman in a hurry, and she told Senior Staff Officer Seishiro Itagaki with an anxious face: "It's been a month since my husband disappeared. ”
This woman is none other than the wife of Nakamura's deputy, Nobutaro Isugi. Seishiro Itagaki immediately ordered the Japanese intelligence agencies in Tohoku to start searching, and soon Nakamura had news.
A railroad worker named Wang Yixian went to the Asahi Hotel, a brothel opened by the Japanese in Qiqihar, and inadvertently told the young lady there, Uematsu Kikuko, "Do you know?
Not long ago, two Japanese, one ** and one Mongol were made by the cantonment army. Kikuko Uematsu is also a Japanese spy, and she was shocked when she heard it. But she questioned quietly: "It's not bragging, anyone can say big things." ”
No way, my friend Li Debao told me personally, he was Li Li, the chief of the third company of the Third Regiment of Tunken, he was at the scene when the murder was made, and he still had a watch left by the Japanese in his hand. ”
Japanese spies followed Wang Yixian and found the coward Li Debao. Out of greed, Li Debao took Nakamura's watch that fell on the ground and mortgaged it at the pawnshop. A few days later, the Japanese spies got the watch back and found that it was a "three-beam" watch specially customized by the Japanese military department for officers, which was very special.
The Kwantung Army believed that Nakamura had been killed by the squadron, and a month later, the "918 Incident" broke out. Some people believe that the Nakamura incident was the trigger for Japan's invasion of Tohoku, but in fact, Japan has been planning for a long time, and Nakamura is just an excuse.
Looking back at the Nakamura incident, there is much to think about. The vigilance of the officers and men of the Third Regiment of the Northeast Reclamation Regiment made the Japanese spies worthy of appreciation. In non-war times, Japan's espionage activities against China violated international law and should be condemned.
However, according to international practice, these spies should be handed over to Nanjing, where they should be tried or solemnly negotiated through diplomatic channels.
By exposing the crimes and war plots of the Japanese army, we will convey our voice of justice to the whole world, and make Japan appear shameless in front of the world, at least it can delay the outbreak of the Tohoku Incident.
Although some people believe that even without the Nakamura incident, Japan's war of aggression against China would have been ready to break out, and killing Japanese spies is both a proper and a way to vent their indignation.
However, it was still inappropriate for the Northeast Reclamation Army to execute Japanese spies without authorization; Despite righteous indignation, the execution of Japanese spies in a non-war state without foresight of the possible consequences of war, and without prior advice, were misguided.
Regrettably, the execution process was poorly arranged, there were many people in the know, and the secrets were leaked on a large scale, leaving behind a false pretext. In any case, under the special historical circumstances, we cannot be too harsh.
As Zhou Gong said, Guan Yuheng is a "lover of ** people" and deserves our admiration.