Feng Zhanhai

Who was Feng Zhanhai?

Feng Zhanhai or Feng Chan-hai, 冯占海, was one of the leaders of the volunteer armies resisting the Japanese and the puppet state of Manchukuo in Manchuria. Feng was born on November 6, 1899. At eighteen he joined the Dongbei Army, and later entered a military school graduating in 1921. After he graduated, he was successively a platoon leader, company commander, and battalion commander. At the time of the Mukden Incident and invasion of Manchuria he was a colonel commanding a regiment of the Kirin Guards Division.

After the Mukden Incident, he opposed the Northeast border defense headquarters surrender to the Japanese forces, and commanded his troops on September 19 to withdraw from the Kirin provincial capital, and sent his troops during October to oppose the Japanese, fighting near Binxian.

In at the end of January, 1932, Feng joined Ting Chao, Li Du, Xing Zhanqing, Zhao Yi to form the Jilin Self-Defence Army, and was chosen for assistant deputy commander and commanded troops in the defense of Harbin. After Ting's beaten forces retired from Harbin to the northeast down the Sungari River, to join the Lower Sungari garrison of Gen. Li Du.

Feng Zhanhai withdrew his forces to Shan-Ho-Tun, a village in the Wuchang District. He then called for volunteers, and the Public Safety Bureaus in the local districts turned over to them their police and militia, and established Feng as the General in command of a force, the Northeastern Loyal and Brave Army, of 15,000 men in the hills with the capital of Kirin City to his south and the metropolis of Harbin to his north. There he was able to wreak havoc on the Japanese rail communications on the Chinese Eastern Railway running through his area of control.