Against the Current

After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, an anti-Japanese group spontaneously organized by middle school students, the Anti-Japanese Kill Traitors Group, was active in the Pingjin area occupied by the Japanese army. They repeatedly carried out anti-Japanese assassination and bombing operations in Tianjin and Beiping.

After the Anti-Japanese Group's organization was destroyed by the Japanese army, their activities shifted to intelligence gathering and mobilizing intellectuals to leave the occupied areas.

Most members of this group were descendants of high-ranking officials, nobles, wealthy merchants, and celebrities, all of whom were rich and powerful, such as:

Feng Jianmei, granddaughter of Xiong Xiling, Premier of the Beiyang Government;

Liu Youshen and Liu Yougan, grandsons of General Liu Guanxiong, Minister of the Beiyang Navy, and Wang Wencheng and Wang Wenjian, his grandsons from his daughter's side;

Zheng Tongwan and Zheng Kunlun, two grandsons of Zheng Xiaoxu, Premier of Manchukuo;

Sun Xiangde, son, and Sun Huishu, daughter, of General Sun Lianzhong, Commander of the 11th War Zone; and so on.

They personally organized, planned, and executed assassinations that had far-reaching impact and even caused diplomatic disputes among China, Britain, and Japan.

The Chinese traitors who were injured or killed by them that year included:

Wu Juchi, director of the editorial board of "Xinmin Daily";

Yu Dachun, director of the Beiping Construction Bureau and the General Labor Bureau;

Tao Shangming, director of the Education Bureau;

Wang Zhulin, president of the Tianjin Chamber of Commerce;

Cheng Xigeng, manager of Tianjin Reserve Bank and customs inspector, etc.

Kawashima Yoshiko and Zhou Zuoren, who were not successfully assassinated.

Today, the members of the Anti-Japanese Kill Traitors Group have dwindled, and this period of history is rarely known.

Lai Endian, the author of this book, self-funded and spent several years traveling to Beijing, Shanghai, the United States, and Taiwan to find and interview seven surviving members of the Anti-Japanese Kill Traitors Group from that time. He recorded valuable video materials and compiled over 300,000 words of oral history from them into this book, "The Defiant," preserving precious first-hand information for this period of history.

Now, only three of these seven elderly members remain in Taiwan; there are no members of the group left in mainland China, and only five members remain worldwide.

2022-02-18

1 Plus Books

492

9781949736373