From the summer of 1942 to the spring of 1943, henan, Shanxi, Hebei, Anhui, Shandong and other places occurred a large-scale famine event, because Henan region is the most serious, so it is also known as the "1942 Henan famine", the whole incident caused more than 12 million people to be affected, the number of deaths is conservatively estimated at about 3 million, due to the traffic blockage at that time, the information is not smooth, coupled with local concealment, and many people died on the way to escape, the accurate number can not be counted at all. The picture shows two elderly people in a village in Henan in the winter of 1942.
Before 1942, the Henan region suffered many floods: in 1933, the heavy rain in the Yellow River Basin caused the mainstream to burst the embankment, causing the Yellow River flood that had not been encountered in a hundred years, and the three provinces of Jilu and Henan were the most seriously affected; only two years later, only two years later, the Yellow River was again due to heavy rains, and about 22 million people in 241 counties across the country were affected, and Henan was still the hardest hit area; followed by the man-made Garden Mouth embankment breaking incident in 1938, which affected tens of millions of people in Henan's Anhui and other places, and more than 1,200 acres of good land were destroyed. The picture shows the victims of the famine of 1942.
After the Huayuankou embankment breaking incident, because billions of tons of sediment in the Yellow River were washed into the fields and cultivated land of 44 counties in the three places of Yuwan and Suzhou, these areas will flood the farmland every year during the flood season, which is the "Yellow Pan Area", all the fields covered by silt and sand in the Yellow Pan Area will be extremely dry in hot weather, as the saying goes, "there will be big locusts after the great drought", which is not only the law of the working people's perennial summary, but also related to the living habits of locusts. After entering the 1940s, a large-scale locust plague began in Henan, and crops that were difficult to grow became grainy and unharvested. The picture shows the victims of Henan disaster waiting for relief in 1942.
Beginning in 1942, people without food began to dig up wild vegetables and nibble on tree bark, but in this case, the warlords were still collecting grain according to the original plan, and the people in Henan could not survive. When grassroots. When the bark of the tree was eaten, people began to starve to death in some places, and from July 1942 onwards, the number of people starving to death gradually increased, and the phenomenon of "changing children and eating" was rare, but it did occur in extreme hunger. In 1942, a mother and son were grieving because their family was starving to death.
Some people say that they see that there are undigested grain particles in the goose feces, so people start to pick up the big goose droppings everywhere to eat; some people say that they use Guanyin soil flapjacks, after eating, they are not hungry, people start to dig up Guanyin soil, poor children eat Guanyin soil cakes, do not digest, many people die because of this; there are also people who eat poisonous weeds called "moldy flowers", at first the corners of the eyes and nostrils will turn black, and over time they will die of organ failure. There are countless people who have starved to death, who have been poisoned, who have died of diseases caused by hunger, and who have died of eating Guanyin soil. Pictured is a picture of children looking for wild grass and wild vegetables during the Great Famine of 1942.
In the late summer of 1942, people everywhere began selling wives and women, most of whom were sold by traffickers as wives, subordinates, and even prostitutes, and their families received less than four buckets of food. In order to save their parents, some girls marry strangers as daughters-in-law as long as a few pieces of bread. The road is full of discarded children, begging to be taken in by well-wishers, because they have nothing to eat with their parents who have nothing to eat. The picture shows children who were abandoned on the side of the road in 1942 during the escape from the wilderness.
People who could not survive began to flee their hometowns in droves, and the victims of central Henan and western Henan fled all the way to the west and fled in the direction of Shaanxi, because Sichuan, Gansu and other places further west of Shaanxi could be far away from the war zone, and the victims of northern Henan fled to the west of Shanxi, thinking that the Yellow River Bridge had been blown up at that time, and the ferry had been blocked by the Japanese army. Because the number of trains is limited, it is impossible to transport such a large number of people, so most of the people are on foot, dragging the whole family with the car to flee. Pictured here is a family on the way to escape, the man is hungry and tired, lying on the ground resting on the children.
The old man who experienced the escape by train recalled: When people rushed into the railway station in a rush, the railway police waved batons in the crowd in order to maintain order and control the number of people on the train, and the victims squeezed to the roof of the car, and after the train started, many people were squeezed out of the train, broke their arms and legs or fell to their deaths. The family members who were squeezed into the car and did not squeeze in were never separated, and the cries, howls, cries, and quarrels were endless. The picture shows the victims who are crowding a train in 1942 to prepare to flee.
The fleeing train is a veritable "death train", in the train travel, there are often trampled to death, squeezed to death, and when the train passes through the culvert, the roof of the car did not have time to dodge and was killed, not only that, the train will also be bombed by Japan, dodging various accidents but was killed by countless, so those who can survive on the way to escape are "hard". The picture shows a crowded escape train, and as soon as the train starts, everyone is dangerous. (Welcome to pay attention to the history of pigtails)