On this date in 1946, China executed Chu Minyi for serving as the Foreign Minister of the wartime Japanese puppet government.
Chu was a nationalist dating back to the Qing dynasty, though he spent most of the first decade after the revolution at European universities.
He returned to China as a Koumintang supporter in the 1920s.
The guy had the bad luck to be the brother-in-law of notorious quisling figure Wang Jingwei, who enjoyed the title of President of China under the Japanese aegis.
For what’s generally interpreted as reasons of personal more than political loyalty, Chu accordingly agreed to serve in Wang’s cabinet as Foreign Minister. “Chen Gongbo‘s mouth, Zhou Fuohai‘s pen and Chu Minyi’s legs” was the government’s tagline. (Chu was also a noted martial artist.)
But it was Hirohito’s guns they relied upon, and none of them would much outlive Japan’s surrender. Chu was tried as a traitor in April 1946.
On this day..
- 2012: Nine in Gambia
- 1712: Peter Dalton, "I think it is no Sin to take from such Misers"
- 1927: Madame Klepikoff, wife of the spy
- 1828: Annice, a slave
- 1672: Not Cornelius van Baerle, tulip-fancier
- 1925: The Egyptian assassins of British Gen. Lee Stack
- 1833: A 13-year-old slave girl
- 1849: Rebecca Smith, to save her children from want
- 1594: Ishikawa Goemon, bandit
- 1927: Sacco and Vanzetti (and Celestino Madeiros)
- 406: Radagaisus the Barbarian
- 1305: William Wallace, Braveheart