Yang Jingyu

Yang Jingyu the Chinese communist commander and resistance leader (1905-1940) who led the guerrilla armies of Manchuria against the Japanese occupation and became one of the most celebrated martyrs of the war of resistance. His death in the frozen forests of the northeast made him a symbol of unyielding patriotism.

Early Life and Revolutionary Work

Yang Jingyu was born on 26 February 1905 in Queshan county, Henan province, into a peasant family. He studied at a teachers college and worked as a schoolteacher, and as a young man he was drawn into the revolutionary movement. He joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1927 and took part in the peasant uprisings that followed the split with the Nationalists.

He worked as an underground organiser in the cities and the countryside of the northeast, then as a labour organiser in the mines and factories of Manchuria, where he was repeatedly arrested and imprisoned. His reputation for courage and for his success in building clandestine networks among the workers made him a marked man, and he was jailed several times for his activities.

After his release from prison in 1929 he was sent to organise resistance in the northeast, where the Japanese presence was growing. When Japan seized Manchuria in 1931 and set up a puppet state, the communists began to organise armed resistance in the region, and Yang Jingyu became one of its leading figures.

The Anti-Japanese United Army

Yang Jingyu was one of the principal founders and commanders of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, the coalition of communist and other guerrilla forces that fought the Japanese occupiers in Manchuria. He commanded the First Route Army, which operated in the forests and mountains of the southern part of the region.

His forces employed the methods of guerrilla warfare in difficult country, striking at Japanese garrisons, railways and supply lines and then dispersing into the forests. His campaigns tied down large numbers of Japanese and puppet troops, and he was regarded by the occupation authorities as one of the most dangerous of the resistance leaders in the northeast.

He insisted on strict discipline among his troops and on good relations with the civilian population, from whom the army drew its food and its information. Upright and austere in his own conduct, he won the loyalty of his followers and the respect of the peasants, and he worked to combine military struggle with the political education of the soldiers and the villagers.

Isolation and Hardship

From the mid 1930s the Japanese intensified their campaigns against the resistance in Manchuria. They built fortified villages, forced the rural population into controlled settlements, and conducted repeated large-scale sweeps through the forest country. These measures cut the guerrillas off from their sources of food and support and made survival in the open increasingly desperate.

The United Army suffered severe losses, and many of its units were destroyed or dispersed. Yang Jingyu and his remaining troops were forced to break into small bands and to live off whatever they could find, enduring the bitter winters of the northeast with little food and shelter. Letters and reports from this period describe the extreme privation of the resistance.

Despite the collapse of much of the movement, Yang Jingyu refused to abandon the fight or to flee across the border. He kept together a small body of men and continued to harass the Japanese, moving through the frozen forests of Jilin and Liaoning, and he sent messages urging the survivors to hold out until better times.

Death and the Martyrdom

In February 1940, hunted by large Japanese and puppet forces, Yang Jingyu was finally trapped in the forest near the town of Mengjiang in Jilin province. He had been betrayed by a local informer and had gone for days without food. He fought on alone against the pursuing troops until he was killed in the snow on 23 February 1940, at the age of thirty-five.

The Japanese, recognising the importance of their quarry, cut open his body and found only grass, tree bark and cotton in his stomach, evidence of the extremity of the privation he had endured. The discovery was reported with astonishment, and it became one of the most powerful images of the resistance, a testimony to the lengths to which he had gone to continue the struggle.

His death was mourned across China, and he became the most celebrated of the martyrs of the war in the northeast. His story was told in schools and in the press as an example of devotion to the nation, and the place of his death and his grave were honoured as sites of public memory.

Legacy and Commemoration

Yang Jingyu was honoured after the founding of the People's Republic as one of the great heroes of the anti-Japanese war. Monuments and memorial halls commemorating him and the Anti-Japanese United Army were built in the northeast, and his name was given to towns, schools and the county where he died. He is remembered in official histories as the foremost martyr of the resistance in Manchuria.

The history of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, with its long isolation from the main communist forces and its terrible losses, is one of the most tragic chapters of the war. Yang Jingyu's leadership and his refusal to surrender became the emblem of that struggle, and the survivors of his army went on to serve in the civil war and in the new state.

His legacy is one of endurance against overwhelming odds. The image of the commander who fought on alone in the winter forests, with nothing left to eat but bark and cotton, has passed into the common memory of modern China, and he stands with the other great martyrs of the resistance as a symbol of patriotic sacrifice.

See also

• Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army
• Second Sino-Japanese War
• Manchukuo
• Martyrs of the resistance