This year marks the 95th anniversary of the September 18th Incident. At 9:18 on September 18, Shenyang will sound the air defense alarm as scheduled. All motor vehicles in the city’s designated areas will stop and whistle. Citizens will stop and stand in silence to look back at the blood and tears of the mountains and rivers and remember the revolutionary martyrs in a solemn and solemn city ceremony.
Shenyang began to test air defense sirens and stop vehicles on September 18 in 1995. At 22:20 on the evening of September 18, 1995, the same time the September 18th Incident broke out, a shrill air-raid siren pierced the night sky of Shenyang. Vehicles driving on Shenyang Road 9 and 18 Street stopped and whistled. Pedestrians on the street stopped and stood in silence. Shenyang TV station stopped broadcasting and inserted the subtitles “Don’t forget the national humiliation, revitalize China”. It has a history of 31 years. Over the past 30 years, despite many changes, this tradition has never been interrupted.
This year’s vehicle stop and whistle range is still designated as 9 roads and 18 streets in the core urban area of Shenyang, specifically covering 9 roads including Chongshan West Road, Chongshan Middle Road, Chongshan East Road, and Shifu Avenue, as well as 18 streets including Nanjing North Street, Nanjing South Street, Heping North Street, Wanghua South Street, and Heilongjiang Street.
The streets are silent, but they have their own spring and autumn. These 9 roads and 18 streets contain heavy marks of the Anti-Japanese War, linking together a historical thread of Shenyang’s 14-year Anti-Japanese War.
Wanghua South Street is close to the Liutiaohu section of the Nanman-Manchuria Railway, the center of the September 18th Incident. On the night of September 18, 1931, the Japanese Kwantung Army blew up a section of the South Manchuria Railway near Liutiao Lake, falsely accusing the Chinese army of doing so, and then bombarded Beidaying, the headquarters of the Northeastern Army, launching the September 18th Incident that shocked China and the world, and starting the long-planned war of aggression against China.
At the moment of national crisis and national peril, the Communist Party of China took the lead in raising the banner of armed resistance against Japan. In Fu’anli, on the west side of Heping North Street in Shenyang, lies the former site of the Manchuria Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China. On September 19, 1931, the day after the September 18th Incident, the Manchuria Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China issued the “Declaration of the Manchuria Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China on the Armed Occupation of Manchuria for Japanese Imperialism” overnight. This declaration was the first anti-Japanese declaration of the Communist Party of China and the first combat statement of the world anti-fascist war. It was the first to sound the clarion call for the entire people to resist Japan and save the country from danger.
Starting from the former site of the Manchuria Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, not far south along Heping North Street is the former site of Fengtian British American Tobacco Company. After the September 18th Incident, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, the Shenyang working class actively organized resistance activities, and the workers of Fengtian British American Tobacco Company were one of the important forces. In early 1932, Zhao Yiman also went to Fengtian British American Tobacco Company as a reporter for Shenbao to organize a labor movement, publicized various atrocities of the Japanese invaders to progressive workers and their families, and called on workers to carry out various forms of anti-Japanese activities.
On the west side of the intersection of Nanjing Street and Zhonghua Road in Shenyang City, there is a revolutionary site that carries red memories. This is the former site of Zhicheng Bank. In 1935, Gong Tianmin, one of the first members of the Communist Party of China in Shenyang and a publicly identified banker, joined forces with five bank bosses to establish a Chinese-owned bank in order to resist the financial penetration of the Japanese invaders, and named it “Zhicheng Bank”, which means “united as one”. Zhicheng Bank is also an underground intelligence station of our party in Shenyang. Many key members of the Northeast Intelligence Station of the Communist Party of China worked in Zhicheng Bank, carried out secret intelligence work, collected a large amount of Japanese and puppet political, military, and economic intelligence, and also did a lot of cover and transfer work.
Zhicheng Bank can be said to be a legend in the history of the Northeast Anti-Japanese War, and its founder Gong Tianmin is even more legendary among legends. Gong Tianmin is one of the famous “Nine Gentlemen” of Shenyang. After the September 18th Incident, the League of Nations sent an investigation team to Northeast China to learn the truth about the September 18th Incident and the puppet Manchukuo. Gong Tianmin and other nine patriotic intellectuals in Shenyang risked their lives to collect irrefutable evidence of Japan’s invasion of China and handed it over to the League of Nations investigation team, which became the core basis for the international community to determine Japan’s invasion of China.
After the founding of New China, the Supreme People’s Court organized a special military court to try 45 Japanese war criminals in Shenyang and Taiyuan. The former site of the Shenyang Special Military Tribunal for the Trial of Japanese War Criminals is located at No. 77 Heilongjiang Street, Huanggu District, Shenyang City. It is the only existing site for the trial of Japanese war criminals in New China. 70 years ago in 1956, 36 Japanese war criminals who invaded China, including Suzuki Keihisa and Takebe Rokuzo, received justice here. Some of the Japanese war criminals on trial knelt down to plead guilty, some cried and repented, and all of them pleaded guilty and obeyed the law.
Starting from the Liutiaohu section of the Nanman-Manchuria Railway, where the September 18th Incident broke out, and driving west along Chongshan East Road, it only takes a few minutes to reach the former site of the Shenyang Special Military Tribunal for the Trial of Japanese War Criminals. But from the outbreak of the September 18th Incident to the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, the people of Northeast China walked this road for a full 14 years.
History is the best textbook and the best sobering agent.
Shenyang people have never forgotten September 18th. On September 18, 1991, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the September 18th Incident, the Shenyang Municipal Party Committee and the Municipal Government responded to the strong will of the people and built the Shenyang “September 18th” History Museum next to the original site of Liutiao Lake, where the September 18th Incident occurred. Its building is the iconic monument. As the only special museum at home and abroad that comprehensively displays the history of the September 18th Incident, it records the passionate past of Shenyang people’s spontaneous resistance to foreign aggression and courageous struggle. It systematically sorts out and completely presents the arduous and arduous anti-Japanese war in Northeast China over the past fourteen years. It is a national landmark commemorative site of the Anti-Japanese War.
Tomorrow, a bell-ringing ceremony to remember September 18th will be held here. The bell warns us not to forget our national humiliation and inspires us to move forward bravely.
