Tongzhou incident
The Tongzhou Incident ( Chinese 通州 事件 , Pinyin Tōngzhōu Shìjiàn , Japanese Tsūshū Jiken ), sometimes also called the Tongzhou Rebellion , took place on July 29, 1937 shortly after the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War and during the Battle of Peking-Tianjin in Tongzhou , an eastern part of Beijing . Soldiers from the Chinese East Hebei Army attacked their Japanese trainers and Chinese officers collaborating with the Japanese .
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At that time, Japanese troops were stationed in strategically important Tongzhou and a puppet administration for the Japanese, the East Hebei Autonomous Council, was established.
Two days earlier, the Imperial Japanese Army attempted to disarm around 800 Kuomintang (KMT) soldiers camped in Tongzhou. These resisted and around 500 of them were set up by the Japanese on the city wall for execution and executed. Shortly thereafter, surviving KMT soldiers managed to ally themselves with troops from the East Hebei garrison in the city. On July 29th, up to 5,000 men of the 1st and 2nd corps of the garrison and KMT members rose against their Japanese superiors and instructors at the training camp. 20 Japanese military personnel and around 250 Japanese civilians were killed. 60 civilians from the Japanese administration were able to save themselves and survived. The administration building was almost completely devastated and Yin Rugeng ( 殷汝耕 , Yīn Rúgēng ), the acting district administrator of the Hebei Demilitarized Zone, was arrested. Only the arrival of Japanese reinforcements was able to put down the uprising and liberate Yin.
The Japanese right ( uyoku ) accuses the Chinese to this day of having committed atrocities during the uprising. In return, the Chinese admit the incident, but accuse the Japanese of having used this to justify their “peaceful military campaign” against China or to distract from the Japanese massacre in Nanking by overrating the Japanese civilian victims.