SDHF Newsletter No.452 The Road to the Greater East Asian War No. 51 Ch.13-2

THE ROAD TO THE GREATER EAST ASIAN WAR
Nakamura Akira, Dokkyo University Professor Emeritus
(English Translation: Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact)
Part 51, Chapter 13: What Transpired at Lugou Bridge – 2

February 3, 2026

Three theories have been posited in connection with the Lugou Bridge Incident: (1) the CCP conspiracy theory, (2) the Japanese military conspiracy theory, and (3) the accidental assault theory. The Chinese position, the Japanese military conspiracy theory, is totally ludicrous. “Recollections of Jin Zhenzhong” (commander of the Wanping Garrison), Jin’s account of the incident, appeared in Chūō Kōron, a Japanese literary monthly, in 1987. Though ostensibly a historical research resource, his “recollections” are, in actuality, an example of prodigious historical falsification.

Jin reports witnessing Japanese soldiers engaged in firing maneuvers at Lugou Bridge on July 6, a day before the incident. He claims to have heard the “rumbling of tanks approaching” from behind the soldiers, implying that Japanese tanks were already at the site of the incident and conducting offensive maneuvers on July 6! It is true that that one company in the China Garrison Army’s tank corps was stationed in Tianjin at the time. But there is absolutely no evidence corroborating the accusation that it was deployed to Lugou Bridge at the time of the incident, much less the day before. Jin’s report is worse than distortion of historical fact. It is fabrication and falsification of historical fact. Jin maintains that Japanese soldiers conducting maneuvers on a pitch-black, rainy night were planning to launch a surprise attack on Wanping Fortress. According to Captain Shimizu’ diary entry: “On that night there was absolutely no wind. There was no moon, but the sky was clear. The walls of the Wanping Fortress were faintly visible in the distance against the starry sky.” The “pitch-black, rainy night” was a pure fabrication.

Who fired the first shot, the Japanese or the Chinese? On this point, Jin’s “recollections” are truly astonishing: “At around 11:00 p.m. on July 7, a series of shots suddenly reverberated from the direction of the Japanese army’s training location. Shortly after thereafter, I received a telephone call from Section Chief Xu of the Hebei-Chahar Pacification Office. He said, ‘The Japanese are demanding entry into the fortress to search for a soldier. They are claiming that Chinese troops took him inside Wanping Fortress during the Japanese training exercises.’ The fact that the Japanese army was conducting training exercises within the security perimeter at Wanping Fortress on this pitch-dark rainy night proves that they were planning a surprise attack on Wanping … I told Section Chief Xu not to believe the Japanese lies. Just as I hung up the telephone, there was a burst of intense gunfire. Japanese shells flew over the walls of Wanping, destroying six rooms in our battalion headquarters, and killing two soldiers and wounding five.”

This is a shameless prevarication. The Japanese did not return fire, not even once, after first being fired at unlawfully by Chinese troops on the riverbank after 10:00 p.m., until 5:30 the next morning. Furthermore, since the Japanese artillery unit did not arrive on the scene until 3:20 a.m. on July 8, it could not possibly have fired on Wanping at 11:00 p.m. on July 7.

Since the men of the Shimizu Company were using blank cartridges, they bore no obligation to notify the Chinese of maneuvers. But they responded to a special request from the Chinese by reporting, on July 4, that maneuvers would take place at Lugou Bridge on July 7. Additionally, more than 200 Chinese soldiers who had begun working on the embarkment during the daylight hours were watching the Shimizu Company as it conducted those maneuvers. They could not possibly have mistaken those exercises for actual combat. Furthermore, the company’s men were not carrying steel helmets during the night maneuvers.

URL: 　https://www.sdh-fact.com/book-article/2425/
PDF: 　 https://www.sdh-fact.com/CL/Road51E.pdf

Moteki Hiromichi, Chairman
Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact