Kuanganmen Incident
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The "Kuanganmen Incident"
On July 26 1937 (the day after the yet-unsettled Langfang affair), a new incident flared up at Kuanganmen Incident (Japanese: Koanmon), the high western gate leading into Peiping's Old City. After obtaining the assent of the Chinese, the Japanese arranged to dispatch the 2d Battalion (minus one company) of the 2d Infantry Regiment from Fengtai back to Peiping, in order to protect some fifty Japanese nationals still remaining within the Walled City. Tokutaro Sakurai (then a LtCol serving with the China Garrison Army Headquarters, and simultaneously accredited to the Hopei-Chahar Political Committee and the Chinese Twenty-ninth Army) went atop the Kungan Gate, unarmed and accompanied only by a Japanese interpreter, in an effort to restrain the trigger-happy Chinese. After some confusion because of Chinese orders and countermands, Sakurai arranged to have the gate opened for the Japanese battalion, which arrived aboard its trucks before sunset. When the first vehicles had passed through the outer gate and were approaching the second, Chinese troops on the castle wall opened fire with light machine guns and buried grenades at the Japanese trucks. About half of the battalion got through the second gate (moving at high speed and under fire) before the portals were slammed by the Chinese. Sakurai and a Chinese staff officer, "amazed at the sudden incident," both strove to halt the firing which was aimed at the Japanese on both sides of the wall. Then ensued one of the most dramatic episodes in the modern annals of the Japanese Army. Sakurai describes his adventure in his own words:
Some Chinese, infuriated by a few casualties inflicted on them..., got close to me and Kawamura ,the interpreter,crying, `Kill the Japanese!' Holding Brigade Commander Wang, Itried to control the Chinese, but in vain. The Chinese of the 132d Division fired from a distance of ten meters. Then light machine guns ... north of ... the two-storied gate began to fire. Trying to prevent this action, Kawamura seemed to havebeen hit by several bullets. (N.B.: The interpreter was actually killed).From the same direction several Chinese rushed toward us with halberds and pistols. ... from the direction of the eastern two-storied gate, ten or more Chinese came forward, and one bullet hit my left leg. Now that there was no use to fight,I grappled with Brigade Commander Wang, knocked him down, and jumped down to the yard between the walls a drop of over ten meters, between the eastern and western two-storied gates.I fractured my right leg on the concrete ... and hit the ground on my right shoulder. ... I was being fired upon, and the Chinese on the wall were throwing hand grenades. ... I entered a barn, seeking dead angle . . . and prepared some sticks and bricks by way of precaution.... If I had remained on the wall,I would have been killed".
Sakurai, a kendo and track star, was 41 years old at the time of his celebrated leap.General Gun Hashimoto states that in the "Kungan Gate incident"(another synonimus of sucess), "a most malicious attack, we suffered seventeen casualties" (two of them killed, and, in addition,two journalists killed)It should be noted that the Japanese proceeded to drive the Chinese from Peiping and from the left bank of the Yungting River by 29 July 1937.