Suzhou Railway Stop

The Suzhou railroad attack was a politically motivated train attack on November 29, 1940 near Suzhou , Jiangsu , in which 100 people died.

Starting position

In the Sino-Japanese War that had raged since 1937 , Japanese troops had occupied large parts of the east Chinese coast and, along large rivers, the hinterland. The railway line had been under Japanese military administration since December 14, 1937 . On November 30, 1940, the reorganized government of the Republic of China under Wang Jingwei , which was dependent on Japan , was to be installed in Nanjing in a state ceremony .

The target of the attack was a train from Shanghai to Nanjing.

the accident

Since the Japanese troops could mostly only control the area around larger cities and along important traffic routes, guerrilla-like units of both the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China fighting with them in the second united front were active in the hinterland . Such Kuomintang troops blew up the superstructure of a railway line near Suzhou, some 80 km west of Shanghai, with dynamite on November 29 when the train hit it. Five wagons were torn from the track .

consequences

100 people died and about 300 others were injured. The Japanese rushed to announce that the attack did not affect Japanese or Chinese representatives or foreign journalists on their way to the state act in Nanjing. The attack destroyed the superstructure of the railway line so badly that train traffic had to be interrupted.

Web links

NN: Train blown up in China; many killed . In: Reading Eagle v. November 29, 1940.