Jidong Anti-Japanese War Memorial Hall

Jidong Anti-Japanese War Memorial Hall

The Jidong Anti-Japanese War Memorial Hall is built against a mountain and consists of a foyer and three exhibition rooms. These rooms house relics such as bullet pouches, grenades, bayonets, telephones, and military uniforms used by the Eighth Route Army over 60 years ago, as well as precious photos showcasing the perseverance of soldiers and civilians in the resistance, and paintings depicting scenes from that struggle. The memorial hall, covering an area of 140 square meters and constructed with an investment of over 800,000 yuan by the local government, became the first “Anti-Japanese War Memorial Hall” in the Jidong region.

The memorial hall has collected a significant amount of valuable photographic and physical materials related to the Jidong anti-Japanese armed forces and figures such as Li Yunchang and Zeng Kelin, and has exhibited them publicly for the first time. Murals depicting moving stories from the war period line the walls along the street, stretching through the mountain village. Not far north of the village lies a small reservoir, on the dam of which the words “Long Live the Motherland” are inlaid with red floor tiles, and the memorial hall is located just to its left.

Between 1943 and 1945, the Jidong Twelfth Regional Committee and the Special Administrative Office were headquartered here, directing frontline soldiers and civilians in their brave fight against the enemy. General Li Yunchang, Commander of the Jidong Military District, commanded operations from here for an extended period. Anti-Japanese generals such as Zeng Kelin, commander of the Jidong Military District Twelfth Regiment, and Ma Benzhai, a national hero, also lived, worked, and fought on this land. After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, the first batch of military and political personnel from the Chinese Communist Party and its army to venture into the Northeast set out from Liubei Mountain in the north, marching into the region and thus initiating the campaign to establish the liberated areas of the Northeast and liberate all of China.