 Wang brought with him, two companions who had been with him for many years, Wu Yicheng and Kong Xianrong, each commanding a company.Still a battalion commander at the time of the Mukden Incident in 1931, Wang was stationed near Yanji, a small town in the east of Jilin province, where the Japanese were constructing a new, railway line.After Wang's troops fired on a party of Japanese surveyors, his commander attempted to persuade him to move his battalion with an offer of promotion.