Lüshunkou
Lüshunkou ( Chinese 旅順 口 區 / 旅顺 口 区 , Pinyin Lǚshùnkǒu Qū ) is a district of the Chinese port city of Dalian on the Yellow Sea , in the Liaoning Province . The district has an area of 404.5 km² and a population of 204,000 (2010). It is a base for the Chinese Navy .
Lüshunkou, an independent town under the name Lüshun until 1950 , was initially a Russian lease area from 1898 to 1904 , then a Japanese lease area from 1905 to 1945, and was again under Soviet administration until 1955 after the Second World War . In the western world , the city is still known by the English colonial name of Port Arthur . This name is derived from the Royal Navy Lieutenant William C. Arthur , who secured the port with the gunboat HMS Algerine during the Second Opium War . At that time, Lüshunkou was an unpaved fishing settlement. Under Russian occupation the port was known as Port-Artur (Порт-Артур), later under Japanese as Ryojun ( 旅順 ).
Administrative structure
At the community level, Lüshunkou is made up of eight street districts and five large communities . These are:
- Dengfeng Street District (登峰 街道)
- Shichang Street District (市场 街道)
- Desheng Street District (得胜 街道)
- Guangrong Street District (光荣 街道)
- Shuishiying Street District (水师 营 街道)
- Longwangtang Street District (龙王 塘 街道)
- Tieshan Street District (铁山 街道)
- Jiangxi Street District (江西 街道)
- Shuangdaowan Township (双 岛 湾镇)
- Sanjianpu Parish (三 涧 堡镇)
- Changcheng Township (长 城镇)
- Large municipality of Longtou (龙头 镇)
- Beihai Parish (北海 镇).
history
First Sino-Japanese War
On November 21, 1894, Japan captured Lüshun Bay during the First Sino-Japanese War . From November 21 to 24, 1894, several thousand Chinese soldiers and civilians were killed in the Lüshun massacre. The 1st Division of the 2nd Japanese Army under the command of the one-eyed General Yamaji Motoharu (1841-1897) spared only 36 residents who were forced to bury the countless corpses. The Wanzhong Cemetery is a National Monument of the People's Republic of China.
As a result of massive pressure from the western powers ( intervention by Shimonoseki ), it was returned to China after the war. Shortly afterwards, on March 15th, July / March 27, 1898 greg. The Qing Empire leased the strategically located Lüshun settlement together with the Liaodong peninsula to Russia . The Russians renamed Lüshun Port Arthur, as the city is still called in the west. It was planned to build Port Arthur next to Vladivostok as the main base of the Russian Empire on the Pacific.
Russo-Japanese War
The first shots of the Russo-Japanese War fell off Port Arthur on the night of February 8th to 9th, 1904 , when Japanese warships under Admiral Tōgō fired torpedoes at Russian warships anchored in the bay. The battleships Retwisan and Zessarewitsch as well as a cruiser of the Russian Far Eastern navy were put aground in the shallow harbor. The remaining seaworthy ships later made two failed attempts to escape. The attack by the Japanese took place without a previous declaration of war (compare attack on Pearl Harbor ) and was therefore condemned by most European powers as contrary to international law. Only Great Britain , which was contractually bound with Japan at that time, celebrated the attack as a “great nautical act”.
During the war, General Nogi Maresuke besieged Port Arthur for months. In the course of the siege, the core of the Russian Far East fleet sank. The Japanese used howitzers with a caliber of 28 centimeters for the first time , which shot the fortifications ready for storm . The bombardment with the hitherto heaviest artillery lasted from October 4, 1904 until the fortress surrendered on January 2, 1905. In the Peace of Portsmouth , Russia ceded the fortress to Japan, which, according to the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese characters for Lüshun, referred to as Ryojun .
Second World War
From 1932 Port Arthur belonged to the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo . Towards the end of World War II, the 2nd Far Eastern Front of the Soviet Red Army occupied the city during the Manchurian Strategic Operation . It was under Soviet administration until 1955 when it was returned to China.
Current situation
For a long time, as a military port , Lüshunkou was a closed district inaccessible to foreigners. Only the monuments of the Russian and Japanese soldiers could be visited. Except for the purely military areas of the city (port, barracks ), Lüshunkou is now freely accessible.
Lüshunkou prison
To achieve his colonial goals, Tsar Nicholas II allowed the governor of Guandong Prefecture to build a prison in Yuanbaofang, Lüshun. After the city was taken over by Japanese troops on January 2, 1905, the prison, which had not yet been completed, fell under Japanese administration. The Japanese colonial administration expanded the prison from 1907 and converted it into one of the largest concentration camps in northeastern China. The prison extended over an area of 26,000 m² and was surrounded by a 725 m long and 4-5 m high wall. Of the 275 cells, 253 were ordinary prison cells for up to 10 inmates, 18 cells were for sick inmates, and 4 cells were used as a dungeon. The prison complex also had body search rooms , interrogation and torture rooms, and 15 workshops where inmates had to do hard work.
The infirmary consisted of a “clinic” with 18 cells for inmates who were no longer able to work in the workshops due to torture or illness. In fact, the purpose of the infirmary was to either get the prisoners delivered to work again as quickly as possible, or to kill them by injecting them or forcing them into a special leather corset.
The execution room was in the northeast corner of the camp. In 1934, for fear of rebellion, the Japanese prison authorities relocated the execution site, which was originally located in the center of the prison. Between 1942 and August 1945, over 700 people were secretly executed in the two-story building and pressed into wooden barrels with broken bones. These wooden barrels were buried on the slope of a nearby hill.
Tago Jirō , a Japanese war criminal, was the last director of the prison. Two days after the unconditional surrender of the Japanese , he ordered the execution of six communists and destroyed a large number of incriminating camp documents. He was captured by the Red Army in October but later pardoned by the Chinese government.
After a renovation in 1971, the prison was opened to the public. In 1988 the Chinese government placed it under state protection as a national cultural monument.
sons and daughters of the town
- Sergei Ivanovich Kovalenko (1947-2004), Soviet basketball player
See also
literature
- Hong Wencheng: An Unforgettable Scene - The Former Lushun Prison . 1st edition. People's Fine Arts Publishing House, Beijing 2002, ISBN 7-102-02421-5 .
Web links
- Wolfgang Zank: Japan's triumph, Russia's debacle. In: Zeitgeschichte auf Zeit Online . February 5, 2004 .
Individual evidence
-
↑ Wikisource: Convention For The Lease Of The Liaotung Peninsula - Sources and full texts(English)
- ↑ (English)
- ↑ Hong Wencheng: An Unforgettable Scene - The Former Lushun Prison . Chapter 1
- ↑ a b Hong Wencheng: An Unforgettable Scene - The Former Lushun Prison . Chapter 2
- ↑ Hong Wencheng: An Unforgettable Scene - The Former Lushun Prison . Chapter 4
Coordinates: 38 ° 48 ′ 45 ″ N , 121 ° 14 ′ 30 ″ E