The heavens start from Changjin Lake

Chapter 748 Deception
Therefore, the government did not consider the life and death of these troops at all. At that time, all the focus was on the defense of Jinling.

Therefore, when these troops were about to arrive at Jinling, they were surrounded by the Japanese.

It is said that after listening to the report at Asaka Palace, his command issued a series of orders stamped with his personal seal and marked 'Confidential, destroy after reading', and these orders were to 'execute all prisoners'.

Even in the future, it is impossible to determine whether these orders were issued by Asaka Palace himself, after all, all orders have been destroyed.

This massacre of prisoners of war also paved the way for the future Jinling Massacre.

After the Japanese army entered Jinling, the order to eliminate all Chinese prisoners of war was no longer just a document, but was conveyed from top to bottom to every lower-level officer.

On December 1937, 12, the Japanese 13th Division received an order:

The division combat correspondent received an order from the division headquarters at 2 o'clock: By order of the brigade headquarters, all prisoners of war must be executed. Execution method: The prisoners of war were divided into groups of 12 and shot separately.

At three o'clock in the afternoon, the commanders of each company held a meeting to exchange opinions on how to execute prisoners of war. After discussion and decision, the prisoners of war were evenly distributed to each company, and they were sent out from the holding area for execution in groups of 50. The execution location of each company was marked, and even the execution time was marked in detail.

This order contained a cruel logic.

The Japanese army could not provide enough food to the prisoners of war, so they had to be eliminated. Killing the prisoners of war would not only solve the food problem, but also eliminate the possibility of revenge. After all, only dead enemies would not organize guerrillas and carry out attacks on their troops. Retaliation.

Executing orders, however, is another matter.

At dawn on December 12, when the Japanese army broke through Jinling City, they entered a city where the number of people far exceeded the number of their own troops.

There are approximately 50 civilians and more than 9 Chinese soldiers trapped in Jinling City. In comparison, there were only 5 Japanese soldiers who attacked Jinling.

Using 5 people to kill about 60 people meant that each Japanese soldier had to kill 12 Chinese.

At that time, it was extremely difficult to deal with 60, [-] or [-] prisoners, let alone dispose of them, even disarm them, let alone face [-] people in Jinling City.

Therefore, the Japanese army made great efforts to disarm these Chinese soldiers. They relied on deceptive policies to deal with the prisoners, and even formulated detailed steps.

This mass murder strategy first falsely promised the Chinese that as long as they stopped resisting, they would receive fair treatment, coaxed them into surrendering to the Japanese occupying forces, and then divided these coaxed Chinese soldiers into groups of 100-200 people, and finally divided them into groups. They were abducted and killed in different places near the outskirts of Jinling.

Nakajima believes that this plan is unlikely to be realized, because judging from the situation of the Songhu Battle at that time, the Chinese people are bloody and even have the spirit of living for death. They are backward, ignorant, poor, and have a huge population base, but they face Facing their heavy machine guns, these ignorant and backward Chinese people listened to their chests and charged forward against the hail of bullets.

He only hoped that most of the prisoners of war would hesitate to resist further and lose confidence because of the hopelessness of further resistance. They would distrust Japan's coaxing policy and be able to deceive the Chinese, and thus obey any command of the Japanese.

However, when the Japanese began to implement the policy of deception, the Japanese were surprised to find that the Chinese only carried out sporadic resistance. In fact, these resistances were almost negligible.

When the Japanese invaded Jinling, many Chinese soldiers dropped their weapons and tried to abandon the city. When they found that there was no hope of escape, they surrendered.

In just one day, the Japanese army captured more than 7000 Chinese soldiers and prisoners. Facing the guns of the Japanese, these people showed a negative attitude of letting others be slaughtered, just like facing the oppression and exploitation of feudal society, and like chopping boards. Pork on top.

The Chinese people in the old days seemed to be accustomed to oppression and exploitation. They gathered together and broke out into a noise like the croaking of frogs. Some Japanese officers saw countless cigarette butts in the dark before they saw the Chinese prisoners of war. Medium flashes.

Get closer and the scene is particularly spectacular.

In the same place, seven thousand prisoners of war gathered around two white flags. The white flag was made of pieces of white cloth. The white flag was hung on a dead branch, fluttering in the dark night with the howling cold wind.

The Chinese prisoners of war were ragged, wearing blue cotton military uniforms and coats, waiting for their hats. Whether they wore hats or not, they covered their heads with blankets, some carried straw mats, and some carried cotton mattresses on their backs.

The Japanese army arranged the prisoners of war to line up in four lines, with white flags erected in front of the lines. Thousands of Chinese prisoners of war waited patiently for the Japanese army to take them away and instruct them on what to do next.

The obedience of the Chinese prisoners of war surprised all the Japanese officers. When they attacked China, they were stubbornly blocked by these people. However, when they put down their guns, they behaved extremely obediently, like livestock in captivity. Even livestock Rather, some livestock still need whipping, but they don't need it at all.

In Japanese military culture, pilots wear daggers instead of parachutes and would rather commit suicide than be captured.

To someone from this cultural background, it is puzzling that the Chinese do not fight their enemies to the death.

Their contempt for the Chinese increased when it was discovered that the number of prisoners greatly outnumbered the number of conquerors.

Some Japanese officers even thought about how these Chinese prisoners of war collected all the white cloth they could find and hung them on dead branches. A group of people held up the dead branches to the imperial army. It felt really ridiculous and sad.

"I thought, how did they become prisoners of war? There were so many of them - more than two divisions, and they didn't even try any resistance. There must be a lot of officers in such a large army, but there is no one Stay, I think they all ran away, although we only have the convenience of two companies, and those 7000 prisoners of war have been disarmed, but if they rise up to resist, our troops will definitely be completely wiped out."

Shi Donglang, who accepted the surrender of Chinese prisoners of war, wrote this.

He had mixed feelings in his heart and felt sad for the fate of these Chinese soldiers. These Chinese prisoners of war may have longed for the Japanese to place them in a certain prisoner of war camp, but they did not know that the place they were taken to was a large pit that had already been dug and even massacred them.

These people were hungry, thirsty, and frightened. They kept asking for water and repeatedly asked the Japanese to promise that they would not kill them.

Shi Donglang was very disgusted with the cowardice of these prisoners of war. 7000 of them were taken away in batches under the command of two companies of Japanese troops.

He added: "They walked forward in groups, like ants crawling on the ground. They looked like a group of homeless vagrants, with an expression of ignorance on their faces."

"They are like a group of ignorant Mianyang people, whispering to each other in the dark and walking forward in an orderly manner."

"They are no more enemies than yesterday who were shooting at us and causing trouble for us. It's unbelievable that they were once soldiers of the enemy."

"It feels so silly to think that we have been fighting to the death against these ignorant slaves, some of whom are just boys of twelve or thirteen."

The Japanese army took the prisoners of war to a nearby village and imprisoned them in a large house. The prisoners of war felt that this place was like a big slaughterhouse and were hesitant to go in, but in the end they succumbed to the gunpoint of the Japanese army and obeyed. Queue to enter. Only when the Japanese wanted to take away the blankets and bedding of these prisoners of war did the prisoners fight for them.

Then, these prisoners of war were divided into two groups of 300 people in the middle of the night, and then massacred.

When the massacre came, these prisoners of war had no idea what was happening. It was late at night, the weather was cold, and the visibility was too low. They couldn't see what was around them. They only knew that these Japanese devils took them away, presumably to find them. New resettlement location.

Some older veterans in the team even said comfortingly: "The Japanese are afraid. They are worried about us being imprisoned together, so they have to separate us so that they can rest assured."

These words were also unanimously recognized by everyone.

Little did they know, in the invisible dark place around them, the muzzles of light and heavy machine guns and even rifles were already pointed at them.

When the execution began, intensive gunfire sounded, the sound of flesh-piercing, and accompanied by screams, these prisoners of war suddenly discovered that the Japanese did not want to resettle them at all, but wanted to kill them. The things they talked about about resettlement and fair treatment were all lies, and they were told only to deceive them.

However, it was too late.

The gunshots and desperate cries were intertwined. The surrendered Chinese people struggled and died in despair.

After an hour, the crowd fell silent.

The Japanese soldiers began to stab the corpses one by one with bayonets, which continued from night to dawn.

Subsequently, how to dispose of the corpses became a huge problem for the Japanese army.

In the massacre of the Shogunate Hanzo, the death toll only accounted for a small part of the number of people massacred by the Japanese army inside and outside Jinling City, but the work of cleaning up the corpses lasted for several days.

Burying the corpses is one way, but General Nakajima complained in his diary that it was difficult to find huge trenches that could bury 8000 corpses. Cremating the corpses was also a way, but the Japanese army usually lacked sufficient burning.

After the massacre at Shogunyama, the Japanese poured several large barrels of gasoline on the pile of corpses, but the gasoline ran out before the corpses were reduced to ashes, leaving only a pile of charred corpses.

As a result, many corpses were thrown into the Yangtze River.

Later, the Japanese army found a way to let the prisoners dig their own pits to bury themselves.

The Japanese army not only massacred Chinese soldiers, but also massacred them desperately.

Xia Yuan led the remaining soldiers of more than [-] people. They retreated late and moved relatively covertly, so what they encountered were scenes after the Japanese army massacred them.

There are schools, shops, and hospitals, and corpses are everywhere.

And sporadic gunshots were heard from all directions in the city. I don't know if there are still people in the city who are resisting, or if the Japanese are shooting at ordinary people in Jinling City who are escaping.

Xia Yuan was able to keep his composure. With these people, he searched for the lone defeated soldiers and arranged for the wounded to temporarily rest in ordinary people's homes.

But he also knew in his heart that this method would treat the symptoms but not the root cause. Sooner or later, the Japanese would launch a bloody massacre throughout Jinling City.

Within the Japanese army, the beginning of the massacre has always been a mystery.

Some people say that the Asaka Palace ordered it without authorization and then destroyed the documents.

Some people also say that the order was issued by Matsui Iwane in conjunction with the Asaka Palace: "This time our imperial army attacked Jinling, and the Chinese army resisted tenaciously. In order to thank the emperor for his kindness, he drank wine and smoke, and used force to intimidate Jinling, the enemy's capital, and killed all the prisoners."

The order also said: "Observing the battlefields in North China and Shanghai, many ordinary Chinese people, even if they are old people, women or children, are serving as spies for the enemy, either informing the Japanese army of its position, or luring the enemy to attack the Japanese army, or harming individual Japanese soldiers. Etc., so we cannot take it lightly and need special attention. If these behaviors are discovered, they will not be condoned and decisive measures should be taken to kill them."

In order to make the soldiers remember this order, the grassroots Japanese officers simplified the full text of the order to: kill all prisoners and kill all civilians.

12 month 13 day.

It was a disastrous day for the people of Jinling. The brutal and bloody massacre began as the national army gave up garrisoning in Jinling!

On this day, the Chinese army resisted with few gunfire. Tens of thousands of Japanese troops, with a revengeful mentality and explosive animal desires, were waiting at Zhonghua Gate, Hanzhong Gate, Shuixi Gate, Tongji Gate, and Zhongshan Gate like hungry wolves. Hunting for prey, they rushed towards the city crazily. They had lost their humanity and were like brutal beasts.

They burned houses when they saw them, killed unarmed people when they saw them, raped women when they saw them, and even cut their stomachs with bayonets, watching her die in pain and despair.

Japan's perversion is so deep in its bones that they even force old fathers and their daughters to do so, as well as little girls and [-]-year-olds.

They even cut off the man's head, put a cigarette in his mouth, and placed it in the open space for fun.

Mukai Squadron and Noda Squadron of the Japanese Matsuda Battalion had just entered the city from Shuiximen. They stared with blood-red eyes and waved their swords, looking for targets.

After running for a while, he didn't see anyone, so he complained to Squadron Leader Xiangjing and said to Noda: "Commander Matsui ordered us to kill all the Chinese soldiers and all the Jinling people. Why is there no one on the street? The Chinese officers and soldiers are all hiding in where?"

Noda showed a murderous look on his face and comforted him: "Don't worry, no one who deserves to be killed can escape."

When Mukai thought that Jinling City was so big, it would be impossible for him to be without people, so his bestiality grew stronger. He thought of an idea that would allow him to vent his bestiality, and suggested to Noda: "Noda-kun, do you dare to compete with me?"

"Compared to what?" Noda didn't understand his intention for a while, and even joked with a smile: "Compared to eating, sleeping, or running?"

"You idiot, if you want to charge into Jinling City, what are you comparing to others? Of course it's to kill people!"

(End of this chapter)