Chapter 837 836 [Government Relocation and American People’s Boycott of 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 written text that fully exposed the Nanjing Massacre was "Japanese Atrocities Witnessed by Outsiders" written by British journalist Timberlake. 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 an inward migration 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 inland to Chongqing. Head of State Lin Sen had 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, the National Government would be moved to Chongqing, the Military Commission would be moved to Luoyang, and the Executive Yuan would be moved to Hengyang. By early November, he formally 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 If they are in a hurry to move, Chiang Kai-shek will make a temporary decision. Third, ministries, commissions and agencies will be dispersed 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 company schools are concentrated in Wuhan and Yichang.

It was not until October next year that Okamura Neji 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, which preserved China's industrial and cultural vitality.

Speaking of the Great Retreat to Yichang, 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 downstream of Jiangyin to prevent Japanese warships from going up the river. At that time, Du Yuesheng also offered to scuttle his ship. After the fall of Shanghai and Nanjing, the central government organized a second shipwreck in Jiangxi and proactively scuttled dozens of river ships.

As the boss of Minsheng Shipping Company, Lu Zuofu received orders from the government to sink ships many times, but he refused to carry out the orders, believing that sinking ships to cut off the enemy's route would undoubtedly lead to no way out. As a result, during the evacuation of Yichang, the ships of other shipping companies were sunk to pieces, and Lu Zuofu's Minsheng Shipping Company became the only shipping capacity that could be relied on.

The Yichang evacuation coincided with the dry season of the Yangtze River, and ships carrying large equipment and ships with too large tonnage were unable to pass through the Three Gorges. According to the transportation capacity at that time, it would take at least a year to transport all the materials and personnel to Chongqing, and the day lilies would be cold by then.

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 finished transporting all the remaining supplies.

In order to rush to transport supplies and personnel, Lu Zuofu lost 4 million yuan in two months, lost 16 ships, 116 company employees died, and 61 people were injured and disabled. But they made a huge contribution to the Anti-Japanese War. The arsenal equipment they transported alone could 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 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 war of resistance was 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 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. However, due to the financial collapse, the rifle factories often stopped working, and most of the rifles they produced were sold to Guizhou warlords to make extra money. In this way, they still owed countless military pay to the Sichuan army officers and soldiers.

As several batches of government agencies moved to Chongqing, the garden villas and high-end apartments built by Zhou Hexuan sold very well. They are all high-ranking officials, so they must live in a decent place. No matter how much money they spend, it is worth it.

Now is just the beginning. Zhou Hexuan's business will reach a new peak after the Yichang retreat next year.

As for the ink and paint factory invested by Zhou Hexuan last year, it already accounts for more than 70% of the market in Sichuan. Under the slogan of Sichuan people boycotting Japanese goods, the sales of several Japanese ink and paint companies have dropped sharply. If Japanese goods were not cheap, they would have gone bankrupt.

During the Anti-Japanese War, the national capitalists played the patriotic card. For example, these brands of cigarettes appeared: Qiqi, Marco Polo Bridge, Zhengqi, Wealth and Power, National Defense, Liberation, Victory, Strong Country, Armed Forces, Lion Wake, etc. Cigarette packages are often printed with images of aircraft, cannons and soldiers, and those who don't know better think they are 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.

American business owners took the opportunity to add fuel to the flames and guide public opinion to attack Japanese goods, causing the wave of boycotts of Japanese goods among American people to intensify.

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, when 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, paving the way for Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.