In late November 1937, the Japanese soldiers invading China rushed to Nanjing in three ways! Nanjing, the ancient capital of the Six Dynasties and the seat of the Nationalist government, was soon exposed to the attack of the Japanese invaders!
On the evening of December 12, the Japanese Central China Dispatch Army Tani Shoufu Division and the Shanghai Army Commander Matsui Ishigen Division launched an attack on the city of Nanjing from zhonghuamen and Yuhuatai respectively, and a devastating disaster was about to fall on the heads of the soldiers and civilians in Nanjing.
On December 13, Higashi Shiro, who was then a senior soldier of the 20th Infantry Regiment of the 16th Division of the Japanese Army, marched into the city of Nanjing with his troops!
And it was from this day that they opened the prelude to the Holocaust. The brutal slaughter, which lasted for more than 6 weeks, left the most filthy and dark page in the history of human civilization.
300,000 innocent soldiers and civilians were killed, countless women were humiliated, and the ancient capital of the six dynasties, which was once prosperous, was reduced to rubble and ruins under the ravages of the Japanese invaders!
In fact, before entering the city, the DongShiros received orders from the command headquarters to destroy all the Chinese prisoners!
Figure | Mr. Higashi Shiro (first from the left)
The reason given was simple: there was no extra food for the captives, so they had to be executed.
Of course, the execution of prisoners not only solves the problem of food, but also eliminates the possibility of them uniting to retaliate, after all, the dead enemy will not form a guerrilla group.
Therefore, from the early morning of December 13, the 20th Company of Infantry of the 16th Division of Dong Shilang's Regiment occupied Zhongshan Gate, and the Chinese soldiers captured on the Yangtze River were fiercely strafed with machine guns and massacred en masse!
After the complete fall of Nanjing, the Sixteenth Division carried out a large-scale and cruel "sweep" of the eastern suburbs of Nanjing and outside the city according to the plan drawn up in advance. In the process of specific "sweeping", the Sixteenth Division captured many Chinese soldiers who laid down their weapons!
In terms of how to treat prisoners, the Japanese army completely did not implement the relevant prisoner policy in the Geneva Convention, and decided to adopt the policy of "total and complete elimination"!
However, it was very difficult to carry out this order, because they occupied a city with a population far greater than the number of their troops!
According to later historians, the number of soldiers and civilians trapped in Nanjing at that time was about 600,000, including nearly 100,000 Chinese troops, and the Japanese army that attacked Nanjing was only about 50,000 people.
So they knew very well that it would not be easy to slaughter tens of thousands of captives, that even disarming them would be very difficult, and that if they rose up against them, the consequences would be disastrous for the Japanese army!
So, how exactly do they do it?
Due to the limited strength of the Japanese army, they mainly relied on - deception! And to carry out such a large-scale massacre, they roughly formulated these steps!
First, the Japanese promised the Chinese troops trapped in the city that they would be treated fairly if they promised to stop resisting and surrender their weapons.
When the Chinese soldiers came to surrender, they were divided into squads of 100 to 200 people, and then they were tricked into killing them in different places. Because in this way, the strength of the Chinese soldiers is dispersed, and even if they resist, they can handle it well!
Such a despicable, ferocious and cruel means is simply appalling!
In the eyes of the Japanese, due to the defeat of the previous Shanghai War of Resistance, most of the Chinese troops had a negative attitude toward the war, so under such "cajoling", they would definitely give up resistance.
And the truth is that, as they expected, during the siege of Nanjing, the Japanese army encountered only sporadic resistance.
On December 8, the Japanese army, which had already occupied the first-line defensive positions on the outskirts of Nanjing, began to attack the outer positions of Nanjing. On the evening of the 11th, Chiang Kai-shek telegraphed Tang Shengzhi, who was then the "commander of the Nanjing Garrison Army" through Gu Zhutong:
"If the situation cannot be maintained for a long time, it can be retreated one after another, and the plan is sorted out and the counterattack is expected!"
This telegram from Chiang Kai-shek undoubtedly gave birth to Tang Shengzhi's idea of retreating!
On the 12th, the first part of the Japanese Sixth Division broke into the Zhonghua Gate, but did not penetrate deeply, and the rest of the city wall positions were still in the hands of the Chinese army, but Sun Yuanliang, the commander of the 88th Division responsible for guarding the Zhonghua Gate, led some troops to escape to Xiaguan without authorization.
On the afternoon of the same day, Tang Shengzhi hastily summoned the generals above the division and issued a retreat order! As a result, during the specific retreat, Tang Shengzhi issued a series of contradictory orders, resulting in the innocent and tragic death of some soldiers!
Most of the soldiers who failed to retreat in time had to wander the streets of Nanjing, and many of them dropped their weapons and changed into civilian clothes and hid in the safety zone of Nanjing. Another large proportion of the soldiers were forced to surrender to the Japanese, hoping to be treated well.
In his diary, Dong Shilang recorded in detail the scene of tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers surrendering after the fall of Nanjing!
Figure | The bodies of Chinese soldiers and civilians killed by the Japanese army are piled up on the riverside
Higashi Shiro's unit was stationed in a square after entering the city, and on December 18, they received orders to march in a hurry to take 20,000 prisoners.
Upon arriving at his destination, Toshiro saw about 7,000 captives disarmed and concentrated in a small place, some in rags, some in blue cotton uniforms, blue cotton coats, and hats; some wrapped in blankets and carrying coarse cloth bags; some leaning back against mattresses...
Subsequently, the Japanese distributed these prisoners to each squadron, each squadron led about two or three hundred people, and demanded that they be executed on their own!
"It is an indisputable fact that seven thousand lives disappeared from the earth in the blink of an eye", "but I think it is too inhumane and cruel", Toshiro wrote in his diary!
Although Higashi Shiro expressed some resentment against the brutal atrocities of the Japanese army at this time, there was also a question that bothered him, that is, why these Chinese soldiers were reluctant to fight back. Because when they found out that the number of captives far exceeded their numbers, they were shocked and frightened!
He once wrote in his diary: "There are so many people, more than two squadrons, I wonder how they can become prisoners." No resistance was even attempted. There must have been a lot of officers in this unit, but not a single one was left, and I think they must have all slipped away. Although we had two squadrons and the 7,000 captives had been disarmed, our forces would certainly be wiped out if they had resisted. ”
Toshiro thinks a lot about this, he feels sorry for the Chinese soldiers, but there is nothing he can do about it, because he will soon become a bloodthirsty executioner too!
Later, they took the captives to a nearby village and attempted to drive them into a large house in the village.
At first, Toshiro recalls, "they hesitated and refused to go in, as if they were using the place as a slaughterhouse, but then they gave in and went in one by one." It was only when the Japanese tried to take away the blankets and bedding of the Chinese captives that some of the captives competed with the Japanese. ”
The whole massacre was completely secret and carried out in stages!
According to yokota, a reporter for the Asahi Shimbun on December 16, 1937, "The Japanese captured 14,777 soldiers at artillery forts near Mt. Udon and Mount Shogunate, and the number of prisoners alone posed a problem, because they had captured so many prisoners for the first time and there were not enough personnel to deal with them." ”
And we all know that among the countless atrocities committed by the Japanese army in Nanjing, the largest mass massacre of prisoners of war occurred near Shogunate Hill.
Located directly north of Nanjing, between the city of Nanjing and the south bank of the Yangtze River, Shogun Hill is said to have been crossed by Sima Rui, the Emperor of the Jin Dynasty, and Wang Dao established the shogunate (that is, the general staff) here, hence the name. The mountains here are rolling and rolling, overlooking the sky in the distance, and the Yangtze River runs from the bottom of the mountain, the scenery is charming, and people will never forget it!
However, during the Nanjing Massacre, more than 57,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians were killed here, and the tragic degree can be imagined!
The 16th Division of the Japanese Army invading China, to which Higashi Shiro belonged, committed a lot of crimes, and the so-called "hundred-man beheading" that was hyped up by Newspapers such as the Tokyo Ilbo Shimbun at that time occurred in this division.
The so-called "hundred-man beheading" refers to the fact that before the Japanese army invaded Nanjing, Lieutenant Takeshi Noda, adjutant of the third brigade of the sixth infantry regiment of the division, and the captain of the squad, Lieutenant Toshiaki Xiangjing, met to see who would kill a hundred people with a saber when they arrived in Nanjing.
As a result, when he arrived at Tangshan, Xiang Jing only killed 89 people, while Noda Only killed 78 people, both of whom were less than a hundred, so this also meant that the competition was not over!
Naturally, the two executioners refused to give up, and under the Purple Mountain, they continued to start their so-called cruel "competition" again. In the end, Toshiaki Xiang killed 106 people and Noda Killed 105 people. Although both of them completed the task, there was no way to prove who killed a hundred people first!
However, this did not matter to Xiang Jing and Takeshi Noda, who even said that it was a "friendly competition" or "thing".
Therefore, this "competition" does not care about victory or defeat, and is ready to carry out the "competition" with 150 people as the standard, or with thousands of people, as for the specific implementation, it depends on the "interest"!
Such heartless, cruel and tyrannical means are simply breathtaking!
图 | Kote: Toshiaki Mukai Kazunoda Takeshi
However, they resolutely denied the various crimes committed by the Japanese army in Nanjing and tried to overturn the case!
For example, in 1972, Suzuki Akira published an article entitled "The Falseness of the Nanjing Massacre" in the monthly magazine "Zhujun". Later, Yamamoto Nanahira wrote a book "Our Japanese Army", openly declaring that "the Nanjing Massacre is nonsense";
In July 1982, japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology forcibly revised the history textbook, changing the original textbook from "When the Japanese army occupied Nanjing, a large number of non-combatants were massacred and criticized by the international community" to "Japan suffered heavy losses due to the strong resistance of the Chinese army." As a result, the Japanese army massacred a large number of Chinese soldiers and civilians during the attack on Nanjing, and was blamed internationally for this. ”
Such a tampering with history and the reversal of black and white are simply shameful and infuriating! However, justice may be late, but it will never be absent!
This act of Japan was immediately strongly criticized by the international community, and many "parties" began to speak up, including Toshiro, who was a participant in the "Nanjing Massacre".
During the "Nanjing Massacre", Higashi Shilang recorded all the atrocities committed by the Japanese army in Nanjing in his diary.
Since he returned to China alone due to illness in 1939, he was not searched by the gendarmes, so he was able to treasure the 5-volume and 370,000-word "Diary of the Formation" as a "witness" of his life experience!
On July 6, 1987, Higashi Shilang invited two of his comrades-in-arms to hold a press conference in Danhou and displayed his diary, describing a series of atrocities committed by the Japanese army invading China, including the Nanjing Massacre.
The reason why Higashi Shiro chose to stand up at this time to expose the atrocities of the Japanese army invading China was mainly because of the reversal of the Nanjing Massacre by the Japanese right-wing forces at that time!
Later, Dong ShiLang rushed to Nanjing to simulate the scene of The Chinese killed by Ximu recorded in his "Diary of the Battle"!
Although Higashi Shiro was once a member of the Japanese army invading China and committed crimes in the "Nanjing Massacre", he is fundamentally different from those who refuse to admit it and try to overturn the case!
Higashi Shiro not only had the courage to admit the war crimes he had committed in those years and reflect on them, but most importantly, he also persisted in fighting against the Japanese right-wing elements for a long time, and also left behind such valuable assets as "Higashi Shiro's Critique of Japanese Militarism" that is conducive to the cause of world peace!
A sentence that Higashi Shiro often hung on his lips during his lifetime was:
"The Nanjing Massacre is an ironclad fact of my personal experience, and Japan must face up to and acknowledge this period of history and sincerely apologize to the Chinese people in order to develop true Sino-Japanese friendly relations!"
At the end of the article, let us express our deep condolences to the compatriots who died in the "Nanjing Massacre"! Don't forget the national shame, my generation is self-reliant!