War·Natural Disaster·Plague

Guantao, a place where three provinces, Shandong, Hebei and Henan, meet, is a historic Chinese county known since its founding during the Western Han Dynasty 2000 years ago. The Japanese invasion of 1937 destroyed the social order there with the local Kaomintang governance broken. The consequent period witnessed a anarchist Guantao with rampant robbery and theft, and can be seen as a significant turning point in its history.After their aggression , the Japanese imperialists adopted the policy of "Chinese against Chinese" by having puppet governments established to repress the unceasing local resistance. Guantao was divided into parts governed with three different methods—"Order Maintenance", "Half Order Maintenance", and "Order Maintenance Free". Anyway, Guantao was not in the full control of the Japanese and their puppet authorities, as the Communist Party of China had their establishment there as well. The CPC had reshaped their original organizations into anti-Japanese forces and made Guantao a national base, so the county took on a complex and complicated situation with opposite powers located.The year of 1943 was the most difficult time for Guantao, because of the Japanese's tougher attacks in combination with unprecedented drought and plague of insects. The local populace suffered indescribable misery from famine , many dead and large numbers fleeing to other places. What was more, heavy rains struck southern Hebei and western Shandong for 7 consecutive days, and floods caused the Weihe River to rise sharply. The vicious imperialists broke the dyke and rendered Guantao flood-hit. However, the Guantao people, led by the CPC, lived through the hardest period through strenuous efforts.In 1943 cholera broke out in coincidence with the floods in the county, which was characterized with wide spread and quantities of deaths. The Japanese imperialists were to blame for the spreading disease, because they made it in two ways: spreading cholera bacteria by plane and in Weihe River. The bacterium war , coded as "Eighteenth Autumn Western Shandong Campaign ",was launched in such secret ways that now the locals don't know the truth about the plague.