World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseHan Fuju was born into a peasant family in Pahsien, Hebei Province, China. He worked as a clerk in the county government, but, a habitual gambler, he accumulated so much gambling debt that he had to run away. To make a living, he enlisted in warlord Feng Yu-hsiang's army. By the 1920s, during his 30s, he had already become the commanding officer of Feng's 1st Army Group. In 1928, he was appointed by Feng as the Chairman of the Government of the Henan Province (with significant influence in Shandong Province) and in 1929 also the commanding officer of the 11th Division. When Feng rebelled in May 1930, starting the Central Plains War, Han broke away from Feng and declared his allegiance for Chiang Kaishek's central government. When the central government emerged victorious from the Central plains War, Han was rewarded with the position of the governor of Shandong Province. In 1932, he toppled the rival local warlord Liu Zhennian in eastern Shandong. In the early and mid-1930s, through trade of cotton and tobacco, he accumulated a great amount of wealth, and was generous in supporting schools, establishing hospitals, and funding campaigns against banditry. Beginning in the mid-1930s, he was courted by the Japanese but the talks did not result in any conclusion. In 1937, when the Second Sino-Japanese War began, he was the commanding officer of the 3rd Route Army. Later that year, he was made the commanding officer of the 3rd Army Group. In 1938, he was named the commander-in-chief of the 5th War Area. When the Japanese troops crossed the Yellow River, he immediately abandoned his base in the city of Jinan in Shandong Province. Coupled with the knowledge that Han had previously been in talks with the Japanese, Chiang immediately suspected that Han had been convinced by the Japanese to give up prematurely, but he had no evidence in proving so. On 6 Jan 1942, he fled to the city of Kaifeng, where he was arrested on 11 Jan. He was executed for disobeying direct orders in Wuchang (now Wuhan), Hubei Province, China.

Han Fuju Timeline