Several Historical Facts Concerning Fenli Highway Ambush
In September 1938,Brigade 343 of the Eighth Route Army launched three consecutive ambushes against the Japanese invading army on Fenli Highway,repelling the Japanese invasion of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia border region.But different versions have long existed in historical details about those battles.According to the mutual verification of Chinese and Japanese documents,it can be confirmed that the ambushed Japanese troop was Brigade 118 of the 109th Infantry Division,and three battles occurred on September 14,17 and 20 respectively,killing 800 to 1,000 Japanese soldiers.However,in the battle of Wangjiachi on September 20,the Japanese brigade commander Major General Yamaguchi Saburo narrowly escaped death.He soon returned to West Shanxi and resumed his aggression in China.The Fenli Highway Ambush was not much no-ticed in later research in the resistance war history,but it played an important role in the defense of Huanghe River in north-ern Shaanxi and in the establishment of the base areas in southwest Shanxi.The War of Resistance against Japanese Aggres-sion covers not only well-known battles that have been recorded in history,but also those myth-like stories that have so far not attracted the attention of academic community.To have a faithful depiction of history,these stories should be regarded as frag-ments of historical facts for rigorous and meticulous research.
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