"Is this?" Maeda slowly lowered his glass, his hands in the sleeves of his kimono.

Here we must introduce this Major General Maeda Masashi, who graduated from the 25th Engineer Section of the Japanese Army Army, the honors of the 25th Higher Section of the Japanese Army Artillery School (the Japanese Army's specialized school for training artillery and engineer officers), and the 34th graduate of the Army University.

The army major general started as an engineer specialist, mixed up his qualifications in the staff headquarters for a while, and infiltrated the Philippines as a professional surveyor to carry out secret topographic mapping work (whether there is a sense of déjà vu). He served as a team member of the 1st Railroad Wing and also worked as a clerk in the Personnel Bureau of the Ministry of Military Affairs, but he was also favored by the Minister of War at the time, Admiral Sadao Araki, and served as the secretary of the Minister of Land for two years. Perhaps because of this experience, Maeda's promotion from engineer junior to engineer junior took only two years. After being promoted to engineer Daisa, he was sent by the Ministry of Military Affairs to the Kwantung Army for training, and at that time, senior officers wanted to go to the next level, and the service experience in the Kwantung Army would help a lot.

Maeda is still an old engineer in his profession, he served as the commander of the Kwantung Army, and his position was the squad leader of the Tsuki Department. Of course, the city construction department here is not the literal meaning in Chinese, the Japanese military's "city building" refers to the construction of various defensive fortresses and barracks buildings, so this department controls a large number of manpower, material resources and funds, and also controls the approval and accounting and subcontracting rights of various military projects, which can be said to be a big fat shortage within the Kwantung Army.

Historically, in order to prevent the Soviet Union from attacking, the Japanese built a large number of fortresses and permanent fortresses in the northeast, among which the most famous 17 large fortresses such as Dongning and Hutou were all built during Maeda's tenure, so it can be said that Maeda's hands were stained with the blood of Chinese laborers and prisoners of war.

In the 39th year, Maeda finally got his wish and was promoted to major general of the Japanese Army, thus becoming a member of the noble "Excellency". In March of the 40th year, he was transferred from the General Staff of the Third Army to the Thirteenth Army by his superiors, where he served as the head of the headquarters and the head of the secret service. As mentioned earlier, Major General Maeda has always been a technocrat and a complete layman in intelligence work, and God knows how the authorities would have sent him, a major general with a background in engineering, to serve as the head of this important secret service.

They felt that it would be more convenient for them to continue to control the secret services in Shanghai by sending a layman to Shanghai, because if they changed to a professional intelligence officer, such as a certain boss of the Intelligence Department of the Kwantung Army or the Intelligence Section of the Army General Staff Headquarters (the latter was obviously more dangerous than the former), the pile of shady business that the Tufeiyuan organ did in Shanghai might be in danger of being completely exposed.

They are not worried that the methods they use will be criticized by their superiors, as long as they do not poke out a big international basket, the top brass of the army will usually turn a blind eye, and they are worried that the pile of illegal business they are doing under the guise of "collecting intelligence funds" will definitely ask for a share of the real profits from these transactions once they are discovered by their superiors. What is more likely to happen is that a high-level official simply pries the entire stall over, and then replaces his henchmen in the position of the chief officer, and at the same time kicks the original owner out of the game. This kind of thing has not happened in the Japanese army, and the struggle for power and interests within the Japanese army is more wonderful than the struggle between the Japanese army and the navy, and at the same time it is even more cruel and dark.

Historically, Maeda also served in the position of chief of the secret service for ten months, then was promoted to lieutenant general, and after a few months as chief of staff of the 13th Army, he was finally transferred to the headquarters of the 14th Army as chief of staff. Frequent transfers like this are not very common in the Japanese army, and if it is not the superiors who deliberately want to cultivate someone, it is to prepare someone to fill the hole.

Lieutenant General Maeda could not tell which kind he belonged to until his death, he ushered in the outbreak of the Pacific War as chief of staff of the 14th Army, and in the battle of the Bataan Peninsula in the final stage of the Philippine Campaign, because the US army was stubbornly defending the defensive line, the 14th Army's combat progress was unfavorable, so Maeda was transferred from his post and was immediately transferred to the reserve. Transferred to the reserve at this point in time, the lieutenant general obviously carried a big pot for others, and his superiors should actually be very clear about Maeda's resume, he has always held a technical position since joining the army, and has never had the experience of commanding troops in actual combat.

I really don't know how to evaluate what happened to Lieutenant General Maeda in history, as a Japanese officer, his career was over, but at the same time, he also escaped the post-war liquidation of Japanese war criminals by the U.S. military. You must know that if he successfully conquered the Bataan Peninsula at that time, then the next person to command the famous "Bataan Death March" may be this Maeda Chief of Staff, that pot is much bigger than the one he is carrying now, and all the high-ranking Japanese generals who are involved in the side will be sentenced to ten years and eight years in prison for minor crimes, and if they are serious, they will have to play on the gallows of the Americans, such as his boss, Commander Masaharu Honma of the Japanese Fourteenth Army. Because Maeda was ordered to retire before the fall of Bataan, and as a result, even the responsibility for the Philippine campaign was thrown away.

Now let's turn the topic back to Shanghai, Kagesa Zhenzhao finally underestimated this technical officer, Maeda had mixed up in the Kwantung Army's fortification department, which was more like a bloody workplace with swords and arrows flying in the sky than an army department, because the interests of military engineering were too entangled. Some people say that there is no corruption in the Japanese army, but they have not read the black materials written by the Japanese veterans themselves, and at that time, the Japanese army made false financial accounts internally, and they were as good at falsely reporting the results of the war, and even as early as the First Sino-Japanese War, they did so, which can be called the consistent tradition of the imperial army.

Maeda clearly sensed that Kagesa's subordinates were hiding something from him, but he didn't pay much attention to it, he knew that he didn't know anything about intelligence work, as long as he could get through his tenure safely, then he wouldn't be interested in any conflict with this group of sneaky spies. Besides, the oil and water in Shanghai Beach are also very abundant, and Maeda is also a little happy to welcome the flowers and drinks every day.

But he never imagined that Ying Zuo and his lackeys would cause such a catastrophe for him, and if he couldn't make effective remedies in time before the military bosses came to their senses and remembered him, his personal future might end nine times out of ten.

What made Maeda even more angry was that just before his superiors launched an investigation, Kageza Zhenzhao secretly left Shanghai, it was said that there was a breakthrough in Chongqing's work, and he was going to Wuhan to check the pass, and the reason was so good that he couldn't find any reason to stop it.

PS: The first chapter is presented, thank you for your support, take a break and continue the second chapter, it may be a little later.