Document "The Huayangzhen Incident" (2003-70)

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  Repost. CCTV International 2003-07-04 09:27 (Editor: Wei Zhenyang)

  In April 1938, after the great victory of Taierzhuang, due to Chiang Kai-shek's misjudgment of the situation, he hastily transferred his more than 200,000-strong Central Army to the Xuzhou battlefield, attempting a decisive battle with the Japanese army in Xuzhou.

  The Central Army gathered in large numbers in the Xuzhou area, and the Japanese army thought this was a good opportunity to annihilate the main force of the Central Army. In early May, the Japanese army quickly assembled more than 10 divisions with over 300,000 men to attack the Xuzhou area from both sides.

  On May 15, when the encirclement of Xuzhou was about to be formed, Chiang Kai-shek found that his main force had the danger of being surrounded in Xuzhou, so he decided to abandon Xuzhou. In this way, the so-called Battle of Xuzhou failed as soon as it started.

  At this time, the 14th Division of the Japanese Army, with about 20,000 men, forced its way across the Yellow River. Its objective was to block the reinforcements from the First War Zone from reaching Xuzhou. In this way, the Tada-Hori Division formed a deep and isolated position near the Longhai Line.

  Chiang Kai-shek hastily flew to the Zhengzhou headquarters of the First War Zone commanded by Cheng Qian, deciding to personally command the Henan East Campaign. At this time, the 6 armies of the Central Plains Army had 120,000 men surrounding the 20,000-strong Tada Hayao's division, and Cheng Qian believed that 'even if we just eat, we can swallow up Tada'.

  On May 23, Tōjō launched a breakout and shifted the focus of his attack to Lanfeng. However, the defender of Lanfeng was none other than Chiang Kai-shek's favorite general, Gui Yongqing, who was both greedy for life and afraid of death. He defended for less than a day before Lanfeng fell.

  Tofu jumped out of the encirclement circle, and Cheng Qian had no choice but to redeploy his troops again to surround Tofu.

  The battle is being fiercely fought, and according to Cheng Qian's prediction, there will be a possibility of annihilating Tōjō in two or three days. Unexpectedly, at this critical moment, Huang Jie, who was defending Shangqiu, escaped again.

  Chiang Kai-shek's two trusted troops were fearless and disobedient, refusing to follow orders, fleeing in the face of battle, completely disrupting Cheng Qian's strategic deployment, and wasting the precious opportunity to annihilate Tōjō. The escape of these two generals ruined everything.

  Because Chiang Kai-shek's direct line troops were afraid of death, the central army invested more than 150,000 people in front and back, but failed to eliminate Tōjō's 20,000 people. Even Chiang Kai-shek himself had to admit that the Battle of Lanfeng was "a thousand-year-old joke in the history of war".

  As soon as Jing Zong retreated, Tōyama immediately reoccupied Lankao and launched an attack on Kaifeng, which was only 50 kilometers away. The fall of Kaifeng was a foregone conclusion.

  Zhengzhou is in a precarious situation. Being forced to the city walls by Tōjō so quickly was something Chiang Kai-shek had not anticipated at all. Chiang Kai-shek decided to go all-in and breach the Yellow River. On June 3, Tōjō launched a fierce attack on Kaifeng, and Chiang Kai-shek feared that if Kaifeng fell, it would be too late to breach the river again, so he urgently called Chen Guang to order him to breach the dike, warning him "to break through all concerns, resolutely take action, and strive for complete victory", without any hesitation.

  Professor Xu Yan of the National Defense University: It should be said that (breaching the Yellow River to block the Japanese army) had been conceived for a long time, but the order was given relatively hastily. The task of breaching the dike was assigned to Shang Zhen's troops guarding the Yellow River. The location was initially chosen at Zhao Kou in Zhongmu County where the dike was thinner. However, due to excessive quicksand at Zhao Kou, it was impossible to breach the dike. After Chiang Kai-shek learned that breaching the dike at Zhao Kou was hopeless, he instructed to change the location and re-breach the dike.

  On the morning of June 9, after two days and nights of continuous digging, almost at the same time as Zhongmou fell 30 kilometers away from Zhengzhou, Huayuan Kou was finally opened.

  After the breach of Huayuankou, the Yellow River water flowed rapidly down the Jialu River. The next day, a heavy rainstorm hit the middle and upper reaches of the Yellow River, causing the river's water volume to surge, and the breach at Huayuankou was enlarged, while the silted-up Zhao Kou was also washed open. After the two streams of water from Zhao Kou and Huayuankou merged, the Jialu River began to overflow, and the overflowing river water broke through the Longhai Railway, flowing southeast into eastern Henan in a mighty torrent.

  The vanguard of the 14th Division of Tsuchihashi with 1,500 men and another branch of the 16th Division with more than 3,000 men had begun to advance on Zhengzhou when they suddenly found themselves surrounded by the Yellow River.

  After the Japanese army was blocked by the Yellow River, they abandoned their plan to attack Wuhan from the Ping-Han line. They retreated to Xuzhou and then marched south to Bengbu, crossed the Huai River, and arrived in Hefei where they joined forces with other Japanese troops, and began attacking Wuhan again from the north bank of the Yangtze River.

  The Yellow River changed course, although it gave Chiang Kai-shek time to catch his breath, but by October 1938, four months after the Huayangkou breach, Wuhan still fell. The Huayangkou breach ultimately failed to save Wuhan from its fate of falling.

  Professor Xu Yan of the National Defense University: In fact, it has not played a role in stopping the enemy for a long time. Moreover, our resistance war is a protracted war, and it is not about one more day or one more month. In a protracted war, whether it is a few more days or a few less days, it is not unrelated to the overall situation. However, in order to preserve the country's strength and the people's power, persisting in long-term resistance is fundamental.

  When the Huayangkou dam burst, Chiang Kai-shek used military secrecy as an excuse to seal off the news tightly and did not notify the people to evacuate and relocate. After the yellow water came down, the ordinary people who had no mental preparation suddenly fell into a vast ocean. The bursting of the Huayangkou dam resulted in the deaths of 890,000 people by drowning or starvation, while the Japanese army suffered only over 1,000 casualties.

  After the Yellow River burst its banks, one route flowed westward along the Yinghe River into the Huai River, and another route flowed eastward along the Weihe River to Anhui Huaian into the Huai River. The Huai River and the Hongze Lake overflowed immediately after the confluence of the Yellow and Huai rivers, turning their banks into a vast expanse of water. This flood inundated 44 counties and cities in Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu provinces, with an affected area of 29,000 square kilometers and an affected population of over 10 million. Wherever the Yellow River waters reached, houses collapsed, and refugees were everywhere. In this flood, a total of 3.9 million people from Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu provinces lost their homes and wandered away, begging for food along the way, with some fleeing as far as Shaanxi and Gansu provinces, creating a long and tragic picture of famine refugees stretching from Central China to Northwest China.

  Nanyue Village villager Tian Fangwu: The house was washed away, the wheat was also washed away, and the common people had no way to live. They had no choice but to go to relatives or friends for help, or to beg for food. What else could he do? He couldn't just sit there without doing anything, so he went to beg for food.

  Chiang Kai-shek, to shirk responsibility, decided to dump this dirty water on the Japanese army's head. He mobilized the propaganda machine, claiming that it was the Japanese aircraft that destroyed the Yellow River dyke. The Japanese themselves were not willing to show weakness either, and insisted that it was the Nationalist Army that had breached the Yellow River. Both sides became embroiled in a war of moral accusations.

  As the Garden Mouth mouth grew larger and larger, the downstream ancient course gradually dried up, and all the Yellow River water flowed out from the Garden Mouth, and the Yellow River completely changed its course. Due to the lack of a fixed river channel, the new Yellow River rolled back and forth, forming a swamp area between Henan, Jiangsu, and Anhui provinces, which is the Yellow Flood Area. The Yellow Flood Area stretches about 400 kilometers from the Garden Mouth to the Huai River, with a width of 10-50 kilometers, and the widest point can reach 80 kilometers.

  August 15, 1945, Japan finally surrendered. At this time, the Huayuankou had also been opened for more than 7 years, and the mouth of the river had widened from its original width of over 4 meters to a kilometer or more in length, with a vast expanse stretching out as far as the eye could see. As soon as the war was over, Chiang Kai-shek declared that he would let the people of Henan return home early and made the decision to block the Huayuankou and let the Yellow River return to its original course.

  After more than a year, by March 15, 1947, the Huayuankou Embankment Closure Project was finally successful. After 8 years and 9 months, the wildly overflowing Yellow River had finally returned to its original course.

  During his time on the mainland, Chiang Kai-shek never dared to admit that he had ordered the opening of the Huayangkou dike. Later, in Taiwan, the "History of the War of Resistance" acknowledged this fact, and finally took responsibility for this historical debt on behalf of Chiang Kai-shek, but tried to justify it as a necessity of the war. However, no matter how they justified it, "Huayangkou" was an unforgettable nightmare for the people of Central Plains, and the two words "Huayangkou" and "Yellow Flood Area" became Chiang Kai-shek's lifelong taboo, which he never wanted to mention.

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