1946: Chen Gongbo, puppet president
June 3rd, 2018 Headsman
On this date in 1946, Chen Gongbo, president of China under the Japanese occupation, was shot for treason.
Briefly a Communist in his youth, Chen was Kuomintang state minister, then was pulled into the Japanese puppet government.
He served from 1940 as Mayor of Shanghai and speaker of the legislature, and late in 1944 became Acting President and soon actual President when ailing President Wang Jingwei traveled to Japan for medical treatment and died.
It was not long before Chen too had to relocate to Japan — in his case, as a fugitive. He was arrested and extradited back to China, where he defended himself from charges of collaboration arguing that he had acted only out of personal loyalty to his friend Wang. “Soon I will be reunited with Wang Jingwei in the next world,” was his tragic and filial sentiment upon learning his fate.
On this day..
- 1453: Loukas Notaras, Byzantine - 2020
- 1861: Melchor Ocampo, liberal statesman - 2019
- 1594: Michael Renichon, impoverished assassin - 2017
- 1898: James Fleming Parker - 2016
- 1691: William Fielding, scammer - 2015
- 1850: Five Cayuse, for the Whitman Massacre - 2014
- 1886: Twenty-two Uganda Martyrs - 2013
- 1918: Aloïs Walput, grenadier - 2012
- 1955: Barbara Graham, of "I Want to Live" fame - 2011
- 1395: Ivan Shishman, falling to the Turks - 2010
- 1098: Yaghi-Siyan, commander of Antioch - 2009
- 2004: Nam Cam, Vietnamese crime lord - 2008
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Capital Punishment,China,Death Penalty,Execution,Heads of State,History,Occupation and Colonialism,Politicians,Shot,Treason
Tags: 1940s, 1946, chen gongbo, june 3, wang jingwei, world war ii
