Chapter 21: Among the islands dyed red Japan, Kyoto Major General Tsuji Masanobu, with dull eyes, was wearing a dirty military uniform and staggeringly walking on the streets of Kyoto after the US military air raid.
At this moment, the entire urban area of Kyoto has completely changed: it is almost as different from Tokyo that suffered a nuclear explosion two months ago.
All around were the ruins of the fire, the air was filled with a pungent scorch smell, and there was a thick layer of ash on the ground.
Burnt trees and telephone poles lay scattered on the road like matchsticks.
Occasionally, there were several severely burned women, holding their children who had been gassed to death or burned to coke, staggering among the ruins, looking dull and numb, like zombies.
If we say that Kyoto a week ago was still so elegant, chic and elegant, with light clouds and mist, and glass mist, like a sleeping beauty covered in gauze, with a nostalgic ancient style.
So today's Kyoto has become a hideous and horrific charred corpse.
All the beautiful things no longer exist, leaving only the rotten and ugly wreckage and the gloomy haze of death and destruction.
Those checkerboard-shaped grid paths, antique cardboard houses, green pines and cypresses, the Heian Shrine commemorating Emperor Tsunemu, the "back stage" on the cliff of Kiyomizu-dera Temple, Ninwa Temple covered with cherry blossom trees, and women wearing elegant kimonos are all here.
Lost in the fire and poisonous gas As soon as he closed his eyes, that nightmarish night scene would appear in front of Major General Tsuji Masanobu's eyes involuntarily.
Just before he could see Yoshijiro Umezu, the commander of the Kwantung Army, when he failed to go to Hiroshima to ask for help, he was bombarded by American bombers and had to grab a military vehicle and escape.
Then he returned with no success in a tired and frustrated mood.
Just as he drove the car to the outskirts of Kyoto, another overwhelming wave of American bombers passed over the city at a low altitude at a speed of more than 300 miles per hour.
Japan's old capital.
In response, the Japanese in Kyoto did not organize any counterattack because they did not even have an anti-aircraft gun, let alone a night fighter.
In the planning of the wartime base camp, Tokyo is the imperial capital and needs to be given priority in ensuring air defense firepower.
The focus of air defense in the Kinki region is Osaka, where the essence of heavy industry in western Japan is gathered.
Kyoto, a famous historical and cultural city in Japan, was abandoned by the wartime base camp because the green mountains, clear waters and ancient monuments were of little use during the war years.
I don’t think Americans would come to a place like this to waste bombs and fuel.
However, this unexpected thing finally happened, and it was so bloody and cruel.
In the first wave of air strikes, the US military dropped tons of Soman gas bombs, a nerve gas with a faint fruity scent.
Just one gas bomb can poison or kill living people within a radius of one kilometer.
Moreover, it can penetrate directly into the human body through the skin and mucous membranes.
Even wearing old-fashioned gas masks is useless.
The unprepared Kyoto citizens were immediately overwhelmed by the smoke, and the firefighters who were waiting for the battle were the first batch to suffer.
After the first batch of bombers dropped dozens of tons of Soman gas bombs, more than an hour passed before the next batch of US bombers arrived and began to drop napalm bombs on Kyoto.
As a traditional Japanese-style ancient capital, Kyoto's houses are mainly made of paper and wood structures, which are excellent fuel.
Now the citizens were so poisoned by the poisonous gas that they could not put out the fire, so the wind soon helped the fire, causing the raging flames to spread quickly.
The tiles after the fire became very brittle and fell like black snow.
One house after another was like gas.
The furnace exploded like an explosion and burst into flames.
In an instant, the fire grew stronger and stronger, turning into a vast waterfall of flames.
The huge fireball jumped from one building to another with the force of a storm, forming a wave of white-hot fire.
The temperature reached thousands of degrees Celsius and burned as brightly as the sun.
Thick smoke billowed into the air, and the fire below turned orange.
Thousands of people huddled in crude air-raid shelters, their faces pale with fear, thinking that they would be roasted alive soon.
In this way, ancient Kyoto became a purgatory.
The glass was melted, the rivers were boiled, and the fire consumed all the oxygen.
Almost no one in the center of the fire zone could survive.
A large number of desperate Japanese civilians jumped into the fire all over the city of Kyoto.
In the small river, I thought the water could avoid the fire, but it only passed In a moment, the terrible flames boiled the river water instantly, and the people in the water turned into cooked dumplings.
The only benefit this fire brought to the citizens of Kyoto may be that it evaporated the originally permeating poisonous gas, but This makes no sense, as the smoke from a fire can be just as deadly.
When Major General Tsuji Masanobu braved the hot wind and flames and came to the edge of the Kyoto fire scene, he saw a fiery storm that was like erupting from a furnace, enveloping violently burning particles and sparks, quickly spreading along the streets.
Adults and children were running for their lives, scurrying like rats.
The flames chased them like living creatures, knocking them down, and then they died in hundreds in front of Major General Tsuji Masanobu. " It was not until dawn that Major General Tsuji Masanobu dared to lead people into the still smoldering urban area of Kyoto.
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He found that except for stone statues, cement pillars and walls, iron frames, and sparse telephone poles, the entire thousand-year-old building had been destroyed.
Burnt to a crisp.
Several telephone poles were still smoking like small candles.
Most of the small rivers were choked with corpses, and even the water itself had almost evaporated, choked with bloated corpses and household debris.
The ground on the riverbank was still radiating heat.
Dead bodies in painful postures can be seen everywhere: some are naked and completely black, some are praying with their hands clasped together, some are standing in strange shapes, as if they are about to run, and some are sitting there as if they are meditating.
One corpse's head had shrunk to the size of a grapefruit.
The mothers tried to protect their children, but they became charred together, and the couples melted together in the heat during their last embrace.
The people who were lucky enough to survive used coke to leave messages on the walls and sidewalks, trying to find their relatives.
Even the mountains and forests in the suburbs were raging at this time, and no one could organize the manpower to go there.
Fighting the fire, you can only watch the trees and the ancient temple burn to ashes.
The "anti-corruption army" brought to Kyoto from Nagoya by Major General Tsuji Masanobu and other radical officers to "defeat traitors" and "bring order to chaos" also suffered heavy casualties in the heavy bombing by the US military.
The entire army collapsed.
Lieutenant General Ishihara Kanji, the supreme leader, is also missing and is probably already buried in the flames.
Major General Tsuji Masanobu finally managed to gather more than a hundred people, and then retreated in despair to Kaohsiung Mountain in the southern suburbs of Kyoto.
Although the smell here is also smoky, there are still some complete houses that can be lived in.
After barely settling down and taking a breather, everyone looked at the burned-to-white Kyoto in the distance.
Everyone felt discouraged and felt that they were in a desperate situation with no bright future, so they soon collapsed completely.
Some people drank soju they got from nowhere and cursed the American devils.
Some people watch the radio all day long, but what they hear is one bad news after another.
Even as the backbone of this group of people, Major General Tsuji Masanobu was in a bad mood.
He knows very well that today's Japanese Empire is not without fighting strength.
The millions of imperial troops and the invincible combined fleet are still intact.
The ammunition accumulated in the country alone reaches millions of tons.
All the citizens are also They have all received military training since childhood, so they don't have to worry about not having qualified soldiers to fight in their homeland.
But the problem is that after losing its only operator, this huge war machine has been reduced to scrap metal in an instant and can no longer be started.
As we all know, the advantages of the Japanese are seriousness and diligence, but the disadvantages of the Japanese are rigidity and rigidity.
They often go all the way and turn themselves into perverts.
Why is this happening?
Because since ancient times, Japan has been a country with strict hierarchies.
The wealthy and powerful families dominate everything, while the common people are ignorant and humble for generations.
In order to maintain harmony and stability, the entire traditional Japanese society promotes the ideological principle of "everyone has his own place."
Simply put, it means that everyone is a small part of the big social machine and must work hard to do their part.
Everyone has his or her own place and performs his or her duties.
Only in this way can you be accepted by society and recognized by your own group.
This sounds a bit similar to the collectivist thinking of socialist countries, but the problem is that the Japanese principle of "everyone in their own place" also needs to be added with a key prefix: hereditary In other words, farmers should be farming for generations and thinking about how to grow crops better, rather than changing careers to work in the city.
Although there are still many such people, it is impossible to restrain them.
Samurai should have been thinking about how to kill people more efficiently for generations.
If they switch to business to make money, they will be devaluing themselves.
Although in fact, upon closer inspection, this so-called principle of "everyone is in his own place" has been broken and subverted more than once.
For example, Japan's Warring States Period in the Middle Ages was simply an era in which the inferior conquered the superior.
Also before and after the Meiji Restoration, the same group of middle- and lower-class samurai warriors usurped the power of feudal lords and generals.
But despite this, the modern Japanese ruling class after the Meiji Restoration still vigorously promoted this set of ideas, whitewashed the emperor who had had no practical effect for hundreds of years, and promoted him to a god, so that the Japanese people regarded the emperor as a living person.
God in the world, the most basic duty of citizens is to do their best for the emperor, and everyone lives for the emperor.
Everything done in the war, including war atrocities, was in the service of the emperor.
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This is really bad.
Is there such a way to leave Asia and join Europe?
Although there were various political systems from republics to monarchs in Europe at the end of the 19th century, absolutely no one praised the monarch as a god, and then Then make yourself all the people of the Kingdom of God.
Even the divine right of kings in the Middle Ages, even the caliphates and sultanates in the Arab world, Jesus or Mohammed only claimed to be prophets.
How could anyone claim to be a god?
However, it is not necessarily true that the heroes of the Mingzhi Restoration were all idiots.
The reason why they launched this gimmick that "Japan is the kingdom of God and the Emperor is a living god" was also a last resort move to unite people's hearts with the highest efficiency when Japan was completely backward at that time: the more a nation is in In adversity, the less confident you are, the more you need some kind of superstition as spiritual opium, so that you can produce enough self-paralyzing spiritual illusions to satisfy your own empty and inferior heart.
However, such a people will also become more sensitive and inferior, and equally arrogant.
If this gimmick can be played well, it will become a source of national cohesion and a great slogan to strive for strength and move toward empire, just like the "Manifest Destiny" of the United States of America and the "Jihad" of the Arabs.
But unfortunately, the modern Japanese have obviously lost their way.
After being brainwashed like this year after year, ordinary Japanese, except for a few rebels, have become fools who only know how to obey their superiors.
The current situation of no poor family in the upper class and no aristocratic family in the lower class can also be accepted in the concept: at least when class contradictions are not intensified.
And what is the state of the powerful family members?
They are basically similar to the gentry of the Wei and Jin Dynasties in China and the Eight Banners lords of the Manchu Qing Dynasty.
Because I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth, and people around me praise me all day long, I naturally don’t know that the world is difficult.
And because the family status is noble, generally speaking, they will be promoted, and their quality level is not important.
Naturally, these guys are too lazy to use their brains.
When things happen, they always talk nonsense on paper, and when problems arise, they find connections to shirk responsibility from each other.
Even if they want to get things done, because they have barely spent time at the grassroots level, they can only talk nonsense.
For example, Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, who launched the Pacific War, was ridiculed all day long from the beginning of taking office, calling him "Soldier Tojo."
The most famous achievement is to search the trash cans from house to house to see if the people have violated the government's call for diligence and frugality and secretly drank and eaten meat in private.
Then his personal moral character was also very corrupt.
He called on all citizens to die for the emperor, and women joined the comfort team to reward the imperial army.
When it was his turn, all three sons escaped from military service and none went to the battlefield.
Mrs.
Tojo also stayed at home and was not even willing to do voluntary labor.
So angry, many relatives of soldiers who died in the war called Hideki Tojo and scolded him and his son for why they didn't die for the emperor.
What's even more interesting is that many veterans called Mrs.
Tojo and asked her when she would join the comfort team.
These imperial warriors have been waiting for a long time.
In the end, even Tojo Hideki's daughter had to arrange bodyguards when she went to school to prevent her from being dragged into the bushes by frustrated disabled veterans on the way to school and turned around to engage in "self-service comfort".
But the question is, since Tojo Hideki is such an unreliable guy, why should he be made prime minister at a critical moment in history?
There are two reasons.
First, in the small circle of high-level officials, all old foxes can Seeing that the situation is difficult and dangerous, being the prime minister is like sitting in a pit of fire, each pushing others to top the pot.
Secondly, among the stupid young people other than the old fox, Tojo Hideki is relatively the most reliable one, and the others are not as good as him.
In short, although modern Japan has been covered with a Westernized shell, at its core it is still a feudal aristocratic society, and it can even be said to be an ignorant society ruled by theocracy.
It is even more ideologically inferior than the poor and weak modern China.
Rigid.
At that time, China faced an existential crisis of civilization and race.
At least everyone from top to bottom was thinking about a way out.
Regardless of whether they found the right way, at least no one could make all Chinese people stop thinking.
And because Japan has gone from victory to victory in modern times, the people think that the government's leadership is pretty good.
They just need to be obedient.
If they don't survive, they don't have to think about too many consequences.
When the country faces major decisions, At that time, the lower class Japanese were indifferent to national affairs and resigned themselves to the situation.
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The upper-class Japanese are dominated by children of aristocratic families.
They are arrogant, disconnected from society, and completely ignorant of the depths of society.
Although they can also come up with various strategic plans, if you take a closer look, they are more taken for granted and more ridiculous than the last.
That spiritual power is better than ten thousand tons of steel, and that the Chinese people welcome the liberation of the imperial army, it feels like a national policy formulated in a lunatic asylum.
In the eyes of Western observers, the upper echelons of the Japanese Empire were stupid to the point of being unbelievable, while the lower levels were ignorant and blindly obedient to the point of being unbelievable.
The whole process of the Japanese Empire falling into the pit of World War II was because a group of idiots below stopped thinking, and then aimlessly followed the funny guys above to seek death.
The entire upper class of Japan actually knew that declaring war on the United States was seeking death, and there was little hope of victory.
It's slim, and the result of failure is the destruction of the country and the species.
But no one can afford the consequences of giving in to the United States.
I thought, why should I take the blame?
Why don't we all commit suicide together?
If we are going to be unlucky, let's all be unlucky together.
In this way, under the leadership of a group of selfish fools who refused to take responsibility, the Japanese Empire embarked on a vigorous road to death.
Well, although the senior Japanese people who originally directed the war were all a bunch of idiots who could only shirk responsibility and commit suicide, there was still a strategic leadership that took charge of the overall situation.
But now that the two nuclear bombs in Tokyo have exploded, There's simply no more funny stuff left, just a bunch of idiots who haven't stopped thinking for years.
As a result, although all the hardware foundation, manpower and material resources to sustain the war are still available, the ideological software that guides the people on how to conduct the war is gone.
In the past, we fought for loyalty to the emperor.
Now that the emperor and the government are gone, what should we fight for?
What should we do if we don't fight?
Therefore, in a state of confusion, the Japanese could only stay in a daze on their own land while being slaughtered by the US military as if they were exterminating rats.
Major General Tsuji Masanobu was helpless in this regard.
He knew where there were ordnances, gold and silver, ammunition and food in the mainland, but no matter what kind of strategic materials they were, he couldn't get them.
Even the ragtag group around him was a temporary fan group that relied on the reputation of his mentor Ishihara Wanji.
Now that the mentor is dead, it is already good that this group of people can continue to follow him and not scatter immediately.
It’s really frustrating.
The great Japanese Empire, which has just conquered the largest territory in history, is about to suddenly and inexplicably perish.
I remember reading history books when I was a child and seeing the fall of the Edo shogunate and the last shogun Tokugawa celebrating the "bloodless opening of the city".
He once laughed at the Tokugawa family for not having many bloody men except the Shinsengumi.
But now, the collapse of the imperial government seems to be even more ridiculous than the Edo shogunate.
What can I do next?
Listening to the sounds of surrender from various prefectures and counties on the radio, I guess the decisive battle in the local area has been unable to be organized.
Is it possible to just take off the military uniform and go back to my hometown incognito, waiting to be arrested as a war criminal or put on trial?
Hoping that I would be lucky enough to slip through the net Major General Tsuji Masanobu felt very, very unwilling to face such an ending, but even if he was unwilling to do so, there was no better way.
After wandering like this for a few days, seeing that the food and grass he had collected was almost exhausted, he finally decided to disband the team and surrender himself to the US military or the Japanese provisional government.
Unexpectedly, before they started taking action, late one night, they suddenly saw flames and cannons rumbling in the direction of Osaka.
This confused Major General Tsuji Masanobu and his more than 100 followers: Haven't those cowardly traders in Osaka surrendered to the U.S. military?
Now who was setting fire in that direction?
So Tsuji Masanobu led a group of people down the mountain to find out.
The news was immediately seen on the highway and in the fields.
The place was crowded with people who were fleeing, and then they stopped a gray-faced policeman and learned a shocking news from him: "After the 25th Division of Osaka laid down its weapons, it was killed by those hateful white ghosts.
They were executed en masse and they are currently massacring the city in Osaka.”
On December 4, 1945, three days after Osaka Prefecture of Japan announced the surrender of Kaicheng, the Allied Anzac Corps landed and entered Osaka.
Previously, the Japanese Southern Army burned, killed, and looted on the Australian battlefield.
They committed all kinds of crimes and carried out bloody massacres of white Australian residents on many occasions.
Australia's Allied forces also retaliated with tooth and used various methods to brutally kill Japanese prisoners of war.
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The two sides competed with each other to reach the lowest limit.
Humanity has been forgotten.
Originally, when they were transferred to the battlefield of the Japanese archipelago, the US military also tried to restrain the military discipline of the Anzac soldiers.
Unexpectedly, on the way across the Pacific, they received the bad news that Melbourne and New Zealand were attacked by Japanese poison gas air raids, which made these soldiers even more sad.
The ANZAC lads were full of spite.
On the night when 40,000 officers and soldiers of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps came ashore one after another and entered the city of Osaka, a small group of Japanese radical veterans carried gasoline barrels and grenades in an attempt to sneak attack the "white-skinned ghost beast" military camp, and were arrested on the spot.
The Anzacs, who were already full of anger, immediately mobilized their entire army to conduct a sweeping search of Osaka's urban area.
During the period, they encountered spontaneous shooting by a number of unknown armed men, and the search quickly turned into a retaliatory massacre.
Amidst the chaos, Osaka, Japan's most prosperous trade and commercial center, completely turned into a bloody inferno.
White soldiers who were completely out of control were burning, killing and looting on the streets.
Citizens were frightened and fled frantically.
Some citizens who had hidden firearms resisted. , the Anzac soldiers even used artillery bombardment, igniting raging fires in the densely populated urban areas, which burned for three full days before being extinguished by a heavy rain.
The 25th Osaka Division, which had surrendered before, was also ordered to be executed collectively by the commander of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps on the charge of "suspected rebellion" during the chaos.
Their bodies were thrown into Osaka Bay.
Only a few clever people were able to get rid of the dogs.
Dong fled in panic and spread the bad news.
The most eerie and terrifying aspect of human war was finally revealed to the once confident Japanese.
After hearing the news, Major General Tsuji Masanobu couldn't help but feel cold for a moment.
He knew very well that the Japanese army had done nothing less than massacre of prisoners of war in mainland China and various parts of Southeast Asia.
In particular, the massacre in Nanjing set a new record for the number of prisoners of war massacred in modern history.
But now it was the Imperial Army's turn to be taken to the slaughterhouse and slaughtered en masse like animals.
How could one stand such a contrast?
Just when Major General Tsuji Masanobu felt that the world was spinning and he was at a loss, a non-commissioned officer next to him yelled bitterly: "The damn chaebols of the provisional government, this is the humanitarian treatment they guaranteed.
They clearly want us Yamato men.
Let's all die from the beginning It was they who were as greedy as vampires, forcing the common people to sell their sons and daughters, and tricking us into going to the battlefield.
Now they have turned into pacifists and worked for the Americans.
Instead, they kicked us away as trash and even sent us to the battlefield.
The crime of waging war is placed on us.”
Then, as if a long-standing chat box was suddenly opened, all kinds of opinions were shouted in the mouths of the Japanese officers and soldiers: "That's right, the previous nuclear explosion in Tokyo was probably caused by those traitors colluding with the US military to tip off and kill His Majesty the Emperor."
"Even if Japan is doomed to be defeated, we cannot give these traitors an advantage, otherwise they will only enjoy the spoils of war gained by our bloodshed and sacrifice, and continue to use the power of the US military to oppress the people, while pointing at our bones and pouring sewage on us, saying that we have been destroyed.
Sinners of the country” "We must continue to fight not for the emperor and corrupt officials, but for ourselves."
In front of the butcher knife of death, the Japanese, whose minds had been rusty for many years, finally had an enlightenment and tried to think about their own destiny.
Then, they no longer blindly obeyed their superiors, and began to break out one after another oshow7: