The fleet that emptied Yichang in 1938

Lu Zuofu founded the Minsheng Industrial Company in 1925 with money raised among friends, and went to Shanghai to order an iron-hulled ship of 70.6 tons. It was finished in May 1926, named Minsheng, and put straight onto the Jialing between Hechuan and Chongqing. By 1937 the company owned 46 ships of more than 10,000 tons in total with nearly 4,000 employees, and was the largest national shipping enterprise in China. Lu was also a school founder, a newspaper proprietor and a railway builder before the government called him to office.

In January 1938 Lu was appointed executive vice minister of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications. After Wuhan fell in October, people and cargo piled up at Yichang faster than they could be moved. He arrived there on 23 October and found that of the 24 ships able to run the Chongqing–Yichang reach, 22 belonged to Minsheng. He asked the ministry for 2,000 wooden boats from Chongqing and 800 more from Hubei. In the following two months more than 30,000 people and 100,000 tons of cargo reached the interior. The raids cost the company 16 ships and the lives of 116 employees.

By June 1940, before Yichang fell, Minsheng had moved more than 1.5 million people and over a million tons of cargo into Sichuan and had carried more than 2.7 million Sichuan troops out to fight. Among the evacuees were 64,000 people from agencies, schools, factories and hospitals, including Tao Xingzhi and the teachers and students of Fudan University and Wuhan University. The transport ministry reckoned that the machinery brought up could produce 300,000 grenades, 70,000 mortar shells and 6,000 aircraft bombs every month. Lu was given the Victory Medal in October 1945.