Yang Jingyu - Last Stand

Last Stand

Yang led more than 40 engagements in Jilin Province, despite critically lacking supplies. In response, the Japanese committed a scorched earth strategy by routinely looting rural harvests, confiscating food from villages, and forcefully segregating civilians into "lawful settlements", in the attempt to deprive the resistance any means of supply. Large collaborationist patrols were also frequently deployed to inflict attrition on the guerrillas.

Yang and his men were closely encircled by the Japanese in January to mid-February 1940. Facing a dire situation, he organized his forces to disperse into small units and break out of the encirclement. It is said that his detachment of 60 troopers were betrayed to the Japanese by a staff officer on February 18. After the last two soldiers at his side was killed in action, Yang continued fighting alone, starved and worn, for another 5 days. He was eventually cornered in a small forest by a large combined force of Japanese and collaborationists in the Mengjiang County (蒙江县), and was killed during a fierce firefight by multiple shots from machineguns. It was reported that the Japanese troops, fearing Yang's famed marksmanship from previous encounters, dared not to approach his body for a long time after his death.

Unable to understand Yang's source of perseverance (Yang had not eaten for over 6 days), the Japanese ordered an autopsy after cutting off and preserving Yang's head. When they cut open Yang's stomach, they found only tree bark, cotton batting and grass roots within — not a single grain of rice. It was said that the Japanese commander at the scene, Ryuichiro Kishitani (岸谷隆一郎), was so shocked at the revelation that he "went silent, and appeared aged a lot within the next day". Kishitani committed seppuku after Japan's defeat, but wrote in his will that "His Majesty might be wrong in launching this war. China has steely soldiers like Yang Jingyu, and it would not fall."