836【Government relocation and American people boycott Japanese goods】
December 14th, sunny.
There was no news about the Nanjing Massacre in the newspapers. There were only articles about the fall of the capital and calling on the Chinese people to unite and resist. In history, the first complete text exposing the Nanjing Massacre was "In Witnessed by Outsiders" written by British journalist Timberlake.
"Japanese Military Atrocities", this book will not be written until early next year.
American pastor John Magee should be filming a documentary on the Nanjing Massacre at this time, but he will not be able to smuggle the film to the United States until next year.
"Ta Kung Pao" war correspondent Liu Junyang has now completely lost contact with the outside world. This reporter was recruited by Zhou Hexuan in Tianjin and was transferred to Nanjing when he opened a branch. Zhou Hexuan refused to listen to his repeated orders to evacuate, so his life and death are now unknown.
Zhou Hexuan took a private boat, forcing himself not to think about anything about the massacre, and took a detour to Chaotianmen to go to the Central University to serve as the chairman of the history department.
When we arrived at Chaotianmen Pier, we happened to encounter a relocation ship. The ship carried Zhu Qinglan, Chairman of the National Relief Committee, and more than 20 staff of the Relief Committee. This was the sixth batch of government agencies to move inward to Chongqing. Head of State Lin
Sen arrived in Chongqing half a month ago.
Most of the remaining Nanjing government agencies, as well as 99% of the enterprises and schools that moved in, are still in Hubei and Hunan at this time.
Chang Kaishen initially planned to divide the capital relocation into three parts, that is, moving the National Government to Chongqing, the Military Commission to Luoyang, and the Executive Yuan to Hengyang. By early November, he held a meeting to discuss the matter of moving the capital.
Wang Zhaoming also expressed his opinion on this and advised Lin Sen to move the central government to Wuhan or Guangzhou. As for Sichuan, it was too remote and Mr. Wang felt it was too inappropriate.
Chang Kaishen did not accept Wang Zhaoming's suggestion. He discussed with Lin Sen alone and decided to move the capital directly to Chongqing. The final decision was as follows: "First, the Central Party Headquarters and the National Government will be moved to Chongqing. Second, the Military Commission will not
In a hurry to move out, Chiang Kai-shek made a temporary decision. Third, all ministries, commissions and agencies were broken up and moved to the south of Changsha or to various places in Sichuan and Guizhou."
As for companies and schools, Chang Kaishen believes that they should be moved to Wuhan and Yichang, so now most of the companies and schools are concentrated in Wuhan and Yichang.
It was not until October next year that Okamura Neiji led an army of 100,000 troops to advance toward Yichang, and the vigorous "Yichang Great Retreat" began. This internal relocation was called "the Dunkirk of the East" by European and American scholars, and it preserved China's
Industrial and cultural vitality.
When talking about the Yichang Great Retreat, one person must be mentioned, and that is the great capitalist Lu Zuofu.
Long before the Songhu Battle began, the Nanjing Nationalist Government implemented the "Jiangyin Shipwreck Plan" to scuttle 24 ships in the lower reaches of Jiangyin to prevent Japanese warships from going up the river. At that time, Du Yuesheng also offered to scuttle his ships.
After the fall of Shanghai and Nanjing, the Nanjing government organized a second shipwreck in Jiangxi and proactively scuttled dozens of river ships.
As the boss of the Minsheng Shipping Company, Lu Zuofu received orders from the government to sink ships many times, but he refused to carry out the orders. He believed that sinking ships to cut off the enemy's route would undoubtedly lead to no way out. As a result, during the Yichang retreat, the ships of other shipping companies
After being sunk to the point of being sunk, Lu Zuofu's Minsheng Shipping Company became the only shipping capacity he could rely on.
The Yichang evacuation coincided with the dry season of the Yangtze River, and ships carrying large equipment and ships with too large tonnage could not pass through the Three Gorges. According to the transportation capacity at the time, it would take at least a year to transport all the materials and personnel to Chongqing. By then, Daylily
It's all cold.
Lu Zuofu and his technical staff repeatedly studied and created the "three-stage navigation method" that does not stop sailing during low water periods. It took less than 40 days to transport all the personnel and more than two-thirds of the supplies. After another 20 days, Lu Zuofu
Transport all the remaining supplies.
In order to rush to transport supplies and personnel, Lu Zuofu lost 4 million in two months because he only charged a small amount of freight, and the three-stage navigation method was extremely expensive and he recruited nearly a thousand small wooden boats to help along the way. But he fought for the Anti-Japanese War
He has made a huge contribution. The arsenal equipment he transported alone can produce 300,000 grenades, 70,000 mortar shells, 6,000 aerial bombs, and more than 200,000 pickaxes every month.
During the entire Anti-Japanese War, Lu Zuofu's Minsheng Company transported a total of more than 2.7 million people to the army alone.
By the way, when the Minsheng Company retreated from Yichang, the first ship carried away more than 300 war orphans.
Although some people did not go to the battlefield to kill the enemy in person, their contribution to the Anti-Japanese War is difficult to measure and indispensable.
The same is true for Zhou Hexuan. Twelve of the factories he opened in Sichuan have been officially put into production so far, and it is expected that at least ten more factories will be operational in the next six months. These factories will continuously provide logistical supplies to China during wartime.
And solve people's livelihood problems to a certain extent.
Zhou Hexuan even set up a grenade factory, specializing in manufacturing "seven-man backs" and simple grenades. These "seven-man backs" will be sold to the vast battlefields behind enemy lines.
Among other things, the Sichuan Army purchased a large number of simple grenades when they came out of Sichuan to fight the war. Although they were not very powerful, they were superior in quantity.
The Sichuan Army was really poor. Although Zhou Hexuan helped Liu Xiang get a rifle production line, the rifle factory often stopped working due to financial collapse. Most of the rifles produced were sold to Guizhou warlords to make extra money, and they are still in arrears.
The officers and soldiers of the Sichuan Army received countless military pay.
As several batches of government agencies moved to Chongqing, the garden villas and high-end apartments built by Zhou Hexuan sold very well. As they are all high-ranking officials, they must live decently, and it is worth spending more money.
Now is just the beginning. After the retreat from Yichang next year, Zhou Hexuan's business will reach a new peak.
As for the ink and paint factory invested by Zhou Hexuan last year, it now accounts for more than 70% of the market in Sichuan. Under the slogan of the Sichuan people to boycott Japanese goods, the sales of several Japanese ink and paint companies have dropped sharply. If Japanese goods were not cheap, they would have to directly
B.
During the Anti-Japanese War, the national capitalists played a big role in patriotism. For example, these brands of cigarettes appeared: Qiqi, Marco Polo Bridge, Zhengqi, Wealth and Power, National Defense, Liberation, Victory, Strong Country, Armed, Lion Awakening, etc. Cigarette packages often printed airplanes and cannons.
With the image of a soldier, those who didn’t know better thought they were selling arms.
It’s funny to say that although the United States continued to sell strategic materials to Japan, American citizens launched a boycott of Japanese goods at the end of 1938.
This is related to the propaganda of Hu Shi and others in the United States. As the American people have a deeper understanding of the situation in the Far East and the brutality of the Japanese army (the Nanjing Massacre), more and more Americans have begun to sympathize with China's war of resistance.
U.S. business owners took the opportunity to add fuel to the flames and guide public opinion to attack Japanese goods, leading to an intensification of the boycott of Japanese goods among the American people.
By the spring of 1939, the American people formally put pressure on Congress to ban the delivery of supplies to Japan. This trend reached its peak in June 1939, and sympathy and support for China's war of resistance became the mainstream of American public opinion, forcing the U.S. government to abrogate the U.S.-Japan trade agreement in July.
, which laid the groundwork for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.