Word: tientsin
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...uncommanded-troops were hopelessly trapped in the Suchow area. At Hankow, China's temporary capital, Chinese commanders were more optimistic, said their best troops had withdrawn, claimed recapture of two towns, announced that they were engaged upon a little encircling themselves. The entire length of the 630-mile Tientsin-Pukow Railway is now nominally under Japanese control, although the Japanese will have to operate it against ceaseless Chinese guerilla attacks. For Japan's political administrators in China the victory means that Chinese puppets of Japanese-controlled Nanking and Peking can at last be united under one big puppet...
Died. General Tsao Kun, 76, onetime (1923-24) President of China; after long illness; in Tientsin. An oldtime war lord, he lost China's Presidency during a civil war, has since worked against his successors, was regarded as probable choice to head the new puppet state Japan hopes to establish in North China...
...crucial battle of the war was still being fought, however, around Suchow, the junction city of the Tientsin-Pukow and the Lunghai Railways in Central China. In that vicinity the Japanese Army, doubled to a strength of 200,000 men in the last two weeks, was getting perilously near to the vital railway, had almost encircled Suchow. While Chinese defenses North of the railway held fast, even Chinese communiqués admitted Japanese advances by mobile columns from the South. At week's end the Japanese claimed that one column had cut the railroad at Tangshan, 50 miles west...
Since the Chinese knew that powerful Japanese rescue forces were on the way from Tsingtao and Tientsin via Tsinan, beating their way down railways harassed by Chinese Communist guerillas, Yihsien had to be captured quickly if at all. Therefore some Chinese Christian soldiers formed on the spot "The Good Friday Battalion," vowed to take Yihsien before Easter Sunday or die in the attempt...
Capture of Tsinan would sever the link between Japan's front lines and her supply & troop landing base at Tientsin, 175 miles north. However, military observers thought that continued occupation of Tsinan by the Chinese would be a foolhardy proposition, for Japanese troops could easily land at Tsingtao, Japanese-held port. 200 miles away on the coast and connected with Tsinan by direct rail. However, the very fact that the Chinese forces dared strike in the heart of Japanese territory was evidence of the precarious position Japan's military machine has now reached in central China...