Speaking of the Fourth Division, everyone may know that the Fourth Division is also known as the Osaka Division, the "Merchant Division", and the place of formation: Osaka. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 INFO was one of the 17 standing divisions of the Japanese army before the outbreak of World War II.

The 4th Osaka Division was established in 1888 and consisted mainly of Osaka's vegetable vendors, making it one of the oldest divisions in the Japanese army. This unit has four wings under its jurisdiction, equipped with first-class weapons and equipment, and can be called the "elite" of the Japanese army. However, not long after it was founded, the reputation of "wreck" spread throughout the Japanese army. In particular, the 8th Wing, the core unit of the 4th Division, was nicknamed "the 8th Wing that was not afraid of defeat" because of its repeated defeats in the Russo-Japanese War.

Until the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, the Fourth Division had never been on the front line. However, this does not mean that it does not have the opportunity to show the spirit of "bravery". In 1933, Private Matsui of the Fourth Division ran a red light in the center of Osaka, and as a result, he clashed with the police.

In 1937, due to the shortage of Japanese troops stationed in China, the Japanese army base camp transferred the Fourth Division to Northeast China and assigned it to the Kwantung Army.

How can this force be rejuvenated with fighting spirit? The Japanese base camp really took a lot of effort, and came to the conclusion that the commander played a decisive role in the combat effectiveness of a unit, so the Japanese base camp successively transferred several famous generals to train the division, for example, Yamashita Fengwen, nicknamed the "Malay Tiger", had served as the division commander, but he also had no way to take the free and loose Fourth Division.

After two years of intensive training, the Fourth Division finally had the opportunity to show its face. In 1939, when the Soviet Union and Japan fought in the Nomenkan area on the Sino-Mongolian border, the Kwantung Army ordered the Osaka and Sendai divisions stationed in the northern part of the puppet state of Manchukuo to urgently mobilize to reinforce the front line. After receiving the order, the Sendai Division (i.e., the 2nd Division) forcibly marched from Hailar to Nomenkan for 4 days, and entered the battle on the day of arrival on the battlefield, but was soon defeated by the Soviet army.

On the contrary, the order for the dispatch of the 4th Division was issued, but it was delayed. The reason is that after the mobilization order was issued, there was a surge in the number of sick patients in the division and regiment, and as far as the eye could see, the battalion was full of officers and soldiers who asked to stay behind for various reasons.

The excited Japanese wing commander was furious and personally sat in the infirmary to participate in the diagnosis, and only then did he reluctantly organize the troops to march to the front line, and the joke that "the wing commander changed his career to become a doctor" also spread among the Japanese army. However, the matter was not over, and the soldiers of the Fourth Division played a new trick -- passive sabotage.

From Hailar to Nomenkan, the 2nd Division walked for 4 days, but the 4th Division walked for 8 days, and a large number of personnel were left behind. Coincidentally, on the day that the advance team of the 4th Division arrived at the front, the Soviet Union and Japan declared an armistice.

When the news came, the officers and men of the Fourth Division who had fallen behind quickly followed as if they had taken a strong pill, and even many of the officers and men who stayed behind rushed to the front line "sick," while complaining with great regret that they had no chance to fight a battle.

Ironically, on the way back, the 4th Division, which was fully manned and full of spirit, became the most formidable unit in the Japanese army, while the 2nd Division, which was the first to arrive at the battlefield, lost its armor and was full of wounded soldiers.

The officer in charge of news and propaganda of the Kwantung Army really couldn't look past it, so he picked up his pen and changed the headline of the news "My Invincible Imperial Army's Fourth Division Returns with Might" submitted for review by the Japanese army newspaper to "I Returned with Strength Without Injury to the Fourth Division of the Imperial Army," and ridiculed this "soft egg" unit in a roundabout way.

Although it was out of all its appearances, the Fourth Division was quite lucky, because at that time, the Japanese army invading Central China was in a tight situation and urgently needed reinforcements, so the Japanese military headquarters had no choice but to give up pursuing the Fourth Division and urgently transfer it to the south for reinforcements. The 4th Division was transformed into a member of the elite 11th Army of the Japanese army.

In fact, the reputation of the Fourth Division has long been heard of by the Chinese army, as early as during the Battle of Xuzhou, the Chinese army encountered a "strange Japanese army".

At that time, in the face of the encirclement of the Japanese army, Li Zongren commanded an army of 400,000 to skillfully jump out of the encirclement of the Japanese army. However, after the Chinese army broke through the siege, it was already sleepy and lacking in people, and it had lost a lot of heavy equipment, and its combat effectiveness had been sharply reduced.

While crossing a road on the border between Lusu-Anhui Province, the tired Chinese army suddenly found a well-equipped Japanese army on the road.

Exhausted, the Chinese army spotted the enemy in a panic and left the road in confusion and retreated to the nearby mountains.

Strangely, after a long time, no Japanese troops were chasing, and the commander of the Chinese army was surprised and sent people to investigate, but saw that the Japanese army had no intention of pursuing at all, on the contrary, the Japanese army was still cooking in a grand place on both sides of the road. This strange Japanese unit was none other than the southward detachment of the 4th Division.

Since they had just jumped out of the encirclement of the Japanese army, the situation was still very dangerous, and the Chinese army had no choice but to cross the road with one heart, and the result was that the road was safe.

Afterwards, the commander of the southward detachment explained to his superiors on the grounds of "strict observance of operational discipline": "I have not received an order to intercept the Chinese troops. ”

When the news that "with the Fourth Division participating in the war, the battle that could have been won would have been lost" reached the ears of the Chinese army, and the saying that "the Japanese soldiers in Osaka would not be able to fight" became popular. Every time they fought, when the Chinese army heard that the opponent was the "Osaka Division", their morale often increased greatly, and they rushed to engage the Fourth Division.

The Fourth Division, which had just arrived at the front line, was caught off guard and suffered several defeats one after another, and even implicated friendly troops, so much so that friendly and neighboring troops complained to the headquarters of the 11th Army: "With the Fourth Division participating in the battle, the battle that could have been won would have been lost, but because the morale of the enemy army was greatly boosted, it would have lost ......."

From then on, the commander of the 11th Army of the Japanese Army had no choice but to let the 4th Division concentrate on "standby" in the rear. On one occasion, the commander of the 11th Army, Anan Wei, did not believe in evil and sent the Fourth Division to attack the main attack in the Battle of Changsha, but as a result, the Fourth Division was driven out as soon as it entered Changsha and was defeated on all fronts. The GMD army guarding Changsha is the elite of Xue Yue's department, and only an elm head like Anan will use the Fourth Division as the main attack.

In view of its performance in the Battle of Changsha, the Fourth Division became the "mourning star" of the Japanese army, and no army wanted it, so the base camp had to change it to a directly subordinate unit. At this time, some of the soldiers of the Fourth Division blew: "Lao Tzu was a soldier in the A Division, and when the war started, it belonged to the Kwantung Army - the elite, and the battle was fought in the Eleventh Army - it was still the elite, and in the end the Eleventh Army could not be equipped with us, so we had to change the base camp directly under the jurisdiction of the ......."

Why is the Fourth Division so unique and "weak" among the Japanese army? As for the performance of the Fourth Division, the Japanese writer Ryotaro Sima believes that it is due to the unique culture of Osaka.

In various parts of ancient Japan, the basic social structure was that the peasants were attached to the land-owning princes (i.e., daimyos), who were subordinate to the shogun (who was then a puppet in the hands of the shogun). This long-term unchanged social structure led to the formation of a strict relationship between superiors and subordinates and a culture full of obedience in Japan, which was also the psychological basis for the Japanese army's fanatical "loyalty to the emperor" in World War II.

However, Osaka is a bit different, this place is a famous commercial city, and the residents are mostly business-related, and the respect for the princes is very limited. On the other hand, around the issue of excesses and miscellaneous taxes, the people of Osaka have been fighting wits and courage with the princes for hundreds of years, bargaining, and the so-called loyalty is not to mention.

As a result, like the shoguns and princes, the emperor's status in the minds of the people of Osaka was not quite the same as elsewhere.

Although soldiers born in Osaka were also seduced by militarism during World War II, the people of Osaka were not in a hurry to "die for the sake of the emperor and for the Japanese Empire". Officers and men from Osaka are also accustomed to "bargaining" and "calculating" orders from their superiors, and will not carry them out to the end with their eyes closed as other units do.

Even within the Fourth Division, the so-called "three don'ts" principle of "don't pay for unnecessary sacrifices," "don't take part in unreasonable battles," and "don't pursue enemy troops who are desperate."

Japanese historian Guan Xingfu made a short summary of the Fourth Division in the last part of "The First Abandoned Division of the Japanese Army", and said that it really makes some sense, "If the Japanese army were like the Fourth Division, probably there would be no war between China and Japan, right?" If that had happened, there would have been no defeat of Japan......

There is more of a group of life-saving "wretchedness", and there is also less of a group of war maniacs who exterminate humanity. In the unjust war, the Japanese Fourth Division, which chose the correct way to deal with it, saved its own life, and kept away from the evil deeds of the war, adding a different color to the cruel Second World War.