Time flies to January 1943, and Zhou Weihan has been in Yanzhou for eight months.
During this period, the situation in North China was changing rapidly. After the Chinese army lost a large area of Zhongtiao Mountain, its 24th Group Army in the Changzhi area, the 3rd Group Army in the Jincheng area, and the 80th Army and 98th Army directly under the theater jointly defeated the Japanese army.
The important town of Jincheng, and forced the Japanese army to abandon fraternity, Xiuwu, and shrink the main force to Xinxiang.
Secondly, a great uprising of workers, peasants and soldiers broke out in the Kansai region of Japan. The rebel army was so powerful that it swept through several important cities in the Gyeonggi region.
Most of the Japanese troops who participated in the Tianjin Mutiny hijacked the Japanese people in the concession and fled into the Yanshan Mountains with a large amount of supplies. Since then, they have been fighting guerrillas with the 27th Division stationed in Tianjin. This group of "rebels" was divided into two divisions with the Jidong Army.
The Eighth Route Army came to each other's aid, leaving the little Japanese helpless.
However, the main function of this group of "rebels" is to attract the attention of Japan's top leaders. The real killer is Nobuo Yumoto and others who have sneaked back into the country.
Nobuo Yumoto and his group of Japanese troops were originally transferred back to China from Shanghai to rest and recuperate. However, after the transport ship arrived in Tanggu, they were intercepted by the North China Expeditionary Force. This group of Japanese troops became dissatisfied and launched a mutiny.
During the Tianjin Mutiny, Zhou Weiguo secretly contacted the rebel leader Nobuo Yumoto, and the two parties reached a secret deal to divide Jinmen's machinery, equipment and wealth.
Zhou Weiguo tailored a program of activities for Yumoto Nobuo and his group of "rebels", and then Yumoto Nobuo led more than 400 backbones to secretly return to the country on an Osaka merchant ship.
Japan is different from China in that it is a deformed industrial country, which means that the working class has a strong foundation in Japan's major cities, but it is exploited by the aristocracy and capitalists.
Therefore, the main purpose of the activity program is to use workers as the backbone, give full play to the power of the working class, launch riots in big cities, and seize power with arms.
At first, Nobuo Yumoto did not start a rebellion rashly after returning to Japan. The reason was that there were well-established garrison divisions stationed in various regions in Japan, so he did not dare to expose his traces casually.
Most of this group of Japanese troops came from Kobe in the Gyeonggi region, with a small number coming from Kyoto and Osaka. As the Japanese army's war in Southeast Asia became more intense, newly formed divisions were gradually transferred away, significantly weakening the local defense force.
During this period, Nobuo Yumoto and others sneaked into various factories in Kobe to develop their strength. At the same time, they secretly connected with the garrison in various places, and actually developed a lot of strength.
Japan mainly has four major regions: Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu. Honshu is the core region and is divided into Kansai and Kanto by mountains.
In ancient Japan, important cities such as Kyoto, Kobe, and Osaka in the Kansai region have always been the political center. With the rise of the Meiji Restoration, the political center shifted to Tokyo and other places in the Kanto region.
The contradiction between the two regions has been around for a long time, and as the economic deviation has become more and more severe, militarism is prevalent in Japan, and class contradictions are acute. The war has not benefited the ordinary people, but has made them miserable, just like a
Like a powder keg, a spark can ignite it.
"Princes and nobles, would you rather have the seed?"
The Japanese people have been suffering from tyranny for a long time. This propaganda slogan made the Japanese people's hearts float. The first to start the uprising was not the team of workers secretly organized by Nobuo Yumoto, but the local garrison division in Kobe.
Most of the Japanese troops in this garrison division were new soldiers, who were being trained at home and preparing to go to the battlefield. I don’t know when they started. Many soldiers received letters from their families. The soldiers were incited by the contents of the letters, which made everyone afraid of fighting and did not want to fight.
Being transferred out of the country.
On the day of the incident, a group of more than 300 Japanese soldiers gathered together and suddenly launched a riot, shouting: "Princes and nobles, would you rather have your own kind?" Then they rushed into the garrison division headquarters and killed a number of senior division officials.
Due to the sudden incident, the military police responsible for maintaining military discipline did not play a role. The mutinous Japanese army led five to six thousand panicked soldiers towards Kobe.
Kobe City was not heavily guarded, so local officials hurriedly organized urban residents to defend the city, among which workers were the main force. Little did they know that the urban workers had been incited by Nobuo Yumoto.
As a result, this group of people received weapons and equipment legitimately, took the opportunity to start a rebellion, and detained a group of local officials. The two rebel armies successfully met in Kobe.
According to the activity program of the rebel army, Nobuo Yumoto controlled the troops to take over the city defense and maintain law and order, and then commanded the troops to search the assets of some unscrupulous businessmen and evil nobles in the city.
The next step is to send soldiers back to their hometowns, mobilize fellow villagers, hold a trial meeting, distribute the seized assets, and allocate the fields to farmers.
Although the methods implemented by Nobuo Yumoto were a little rough due to lack of experience, he quickly won the hearts of the people because he distributed the benefits.
The uprising spread throughout the Kansai region like a whirlwind, and people from all over the country followed suit. Uprisings broke out frequently, and workers, peasants, and soldiers became one, sweeping across large areas of Kansai.
After the top Japanese officials heard the news, they were extremely panicked. All the main divisions of the Japanese army were fighting outside, and soldiers were the main force of the rebel army. As a result, the Japanese government did not dare to easily mobilize garrison divisions in surrounding areas to quell the rebellion.
This also bought time for the rebels. Nobuo Yumoto immediately mobilized part of the rebels to go to Sekihara and other places in an attempt to cut off the connection between Kansai and Kanto.
The fire in the lair would obviously affect the morale of the Japanese army, so the Japanese government tried its best to block the news. It took half a month for the news to reach China.
"Ta Kung Pao" commented that this was the awakening of the working class in Japan and a major victory for the anti-fascist alliance.
At the beginning of the uprising, Terauchi Isamu got the news, but he did not expect that the more than 400 rebel soldiers sent back through him would actually make such a big noise.
However, the Japanese high-level officials issued an order strictly prohibiting soldiers from all divisions from communicating with the country, so at first the grassroots soldiers did not know that there was unrest in the country.
However, after all, paper cannot stop the fire. Both the Kuomintang and the Communist Party learned about the situation in Japan through lurkers, and then the countries in the Allied and Axis camps also learned about the news.
Countries in the Allied camp launched propaganda offensives one after another. The Nationalist Government directly ordered the air force to distribute leaflets to the Japanese-occupied areas. The originally stalemate war in Myanmar took a turn for the better, and the Japanese troops stationed in Myanmar began to shrink their strength.
For a time, it seemed that the Japanese army was defeated, and the Chinese people were rejoicing, as if victory was not far away.
