Yang Jingyu

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(1905-1940)

Yang Jingyu, 杨靖宇, Chinese Communist commander-in-chief and political commissar of the First Army of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, in the guerrilla war in Manchuria against the Japanese campaign to pacify Manchukuo during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Yang Jingyu, was born in Queshan, Henan, China, on February 26, 1905.

Yang joined the Chinese Communist Youth League in his hometown in 1926, and joined the Communist Party of China in 1927. After the Autumn Harvest Uprising he organized local farmers in Queshan into a Revolutionary Armed Force unit. Later he did other underground work in Kaifeng and Luoyang.

In 1929 he was sent to northeast China, where he held the post of Communist Party of China Fushun special branch secretary. Imprisoned by the regime of , he was rescued during the chaos following the Mukden Incident. After the rescue from prison, he successively held the offices of Harbin district party committee secretary, municipal party committee secretary, and Manchurian Acting provincial party committee secretary of the Central Military Commission.

In 1932 he set up the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army 32nd Army as a guerrilla force, and Shixian county in Jilin province as his guerilla base.

In September, 1933 he was appointed commander-in-chief and political commissar of the Independent Division of the First Army of the Northeast People's Revolutionary Army. In 1934, the Independent Division became the First Army of the Northeast People's Revolutionary Army, with Yang commander-in-chief of the army and the Anti-Japanese United Front Army Headquarters.

In February, 1936 Yang was appointed Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army First Army commander and political commissar, in June he was appointed Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army First Route Army commander-in-chief concurrently political commissar. Zhou Baozhong commanded the 2nd Route Army , and Li Zhaolin the 3rd Route Army. This army was open to all who wanted to resist the Japanese invasion and proclaimed its willingness to ally with all other anti-Japanese forces. This policy won over some of the shanlin bands, including former National Salvation Army units. After the Marco Polo Bridge Incident a number of Manchukuoan troops deserted to the Anti-Japanese Army.

The Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army conducted a protracted campaign which threatened the stability of the Manchukuo regime, especially during 1936 and 1937. By the beginning of 1937 it comprised 11 corps in three armies, estimated by the Japanese to be about 20,000 men. Lacking the troops and materiel to conduct full-scale conventional warfare, the army's strategies were primarily to form pockets of resistance in occupied areas to harrass the Japanese troops and undermine their attempts at administration, and to put up small attacks to divert resources from Japan's advance into China or against the Soviet Union after the border clashes of 1938 and 1939.

Yang twice commanded western marches that threatened Japanese lines of communication to Tieling and Fushun in Liaoning Province. From the latter half of 1938, Japan concentrated large numbers of its troops in Manchukuo with the mission of encircling Yang's army and placed a 10,000-yuan bounty on his head. By September 1938 the Japanese estimated that the Anti-Japanese Army was down to 10,000 men.

By 1940, the war was stalemated although Japan held most of the Manchurian coastal areas and the open country along the railroads, small forces of Chinese guerrilas fought doggedly on from the mountains and woodlands. The Kwantung Army then brought reinforcements into the northeast with a plan for "maintaining order and mopping up anti-Japanese elements." They cut off the supply lines to the troops of the United Front, the Chinese soldiers persevered, frequently launching attacks that compelled the enemy to divert its main force from punitive expeditions against the Chinese forces.

With a critical lack of supplies, and closely encircled by the Japanese in January to mid-February 1940 Yang led more than 40 engagements in Jilin Province. He at last organized the army to disperse into small units and break out of the encirclement. It is said that his detachment of 60 people was betrayed by a staff officer to the Japanese on February 18, when Yang was killed along with two soldiers at his side in the Haojiang area. When the enemy cut open his stomach after his death, they found only tree bark and grass roots within, without a single grain of rice.

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