Volume III Chapter 50 The Makers of the Holocaust

But such a high-intensity training has also made the soldiers progress very quickly, although it is not up to the standard that Wang Lung said, but now it is much stronger than the individual combat power of the little devil, and even the sixth division, one of the strongest divisions of the devil, is not as strong as any one of the special regiments. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

Speaking of the Sixth Division, do you know? The 6th Division is a division of the Imperial Japanese Army, one of the 17 standing divisions of the Japanese army before the outbreak of World War II.

The 6th Division, also known as the Kumamoto Division, was one of the 17 standing divisions of the Japanese army before the outbreak of World War II, codenamed "Ming". Together with the Second Division (Sendai), they are known as the two strongest and most effective units in the Japanese Army: they participated in the Nanjing Massacre during the Japanese War of Aggression against China. Common name: Ming Dynasty Formation Period: May 12, 1888 Formation Place: Kumamoto

The Kumamoto 6th Division (Kumamoto) and the 2nd Division (Sendai) are known as the two strongest and most effective units in the Japanese Army.

Its predecessor was Kumamoto Towndai, which was established in 1873, and during the Southwest War, it was surrounded by the forces of the Satsuma clan led by Saigo Takamori in Kumamoto Castle, and it withstood Saigo's tidal attack with a strong will.

In 1888, with the reform of the army, Jintai was renamed as a division, and Kumamoto Jintai became the 6th Division.

The first infantry companies consisted of the 13th, 14th, 23rd, and 24th companies, but later they insisted on recruiting troops from southern Kyushu, such as Kumamoto, Oita, Miyazaki, and Kagoshima.

Minami-Kyushu (Satsuma) gives people a strong impression of "black skin, bright red blood". Like Choshu (present-day Yamaguchi Prefecture), it was the driving force behind the Meiji Restoration, and the 6th Division also inherited the tradition of enthusiasm, courage, and decisiveness.

Whether it was the Sino-Japanese War or the Russo-Japanese War, the 6th Division always played the vanguard. In the First Sino-Japanese War, under the leadership of Heimu Weizhen, he landed on the Jiaodong Peninsula and took Weihaiwei in one fell swoop. In 1894, the Sino-Japanese War broke out. On January 22 of the following year, the 6th Division fought all the way to Weihaiwei------, the base of the Beiyang Naval Division.

On 9 February, the Japanese captured the Motianling Fort, putting the Beiyang Naval Division in a desperate situation. Just when Yasumi Haysumun, commander of the 11th Infantry Brigade of the 6th Division, who led his troops to capture the fort, got carried away and shouted long live, our "Laiyuan" ship hit with a single shot, and Oji, who was extremely happy and sad, was shot through the abdomen by shrapnel and was killed on the spot. Became the first Japanese general to die in China.

In the Russo-Japanese War, it was attached to the 2nd Army in Obaogong. Participated in the Battle of Shahe and the Battle of Mukden. For three years, from 1923 to 1925, he was stationed in Manchuria.

During the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, the 6th Division once again trampled on Chinese land and successively participated in the battles of Liaoyang, Shahe, Heigoutai, and Fengtian.

From 1923 to 1925, the 6th Division invaded our country for the third time and was stationed in the northeast. In 1928, in order to prevent the Northern Expeditionary Army from going north to unify the whole country, the 6th Division of the Fourth Invasion of China once again invaded the Shandong Peninsula, forcibly occupied Jinan, and wantonly killed more than 50,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians.

After returning to China, he sent troops to Shandong for the second time in March 1928. In 1931, the 918 Deeds broke out. In December of the following year, the 6th Division of the Fifth Invasion of China was incorporated into the Kwantung Army, occupied Fengtian and Changchun, and occupied Rehe in February 1933, capturing Chifeng, Lengkou and other places. In June, he was stationed in Jinzhou and returned to China in September.

From the First Sino-Japanese War to the full-scale invasion of China, the iron hooves of the 6th Division set foot on Chinese soil five times and killed thousands of Chinese compatriots.

After the 918 Incident, it was reorganized at the end of 1932 to participate in the Rehe Operation, defeating Shang Zhen's 32nd Army at Lengkou of the Great Wall.

In 1937, the Lugou Bridge Incident broke out, and the 6th Division moved to Yongding River, Baoding and Shijiazhuang. On July 28, 1937, Japan issued an order for the 6th Division to invade China.

On 1 August, more than 25,000 officers and men of the 6th Division, which had been replenished to the fullest, embarked on the sixth invasion of China amid the hysterical noise of the citizens of Kumamoto City.

After arriving in China, he was immediately incorporated into the 1st Army of the "Northern Branch" Front. The division forcibly crossed the Yongding River on September 14, occupied Zhuozhou on the 18th, Baoding on the 24th, and Zhengding on October 8. Along the way, the officers and soldiers of the 6th Division, with the connivance of Gu Shoufu, burned and killed more than 9,000 civilians in Baoding and Zhengding alone.

On November 2, the 6th Division, which received a new mission, departed from Bapukou and arrived at Hangzhou Bay. Hangzhou Bay was originally fortified with four divisions and one brigade of the Chinese army, but later due to the tense fighting in Pudong, the troops were gradually withdrawn.

By 5 November, only two companies of the 62nd Division remained. On the same day, under the cover of naval artillery, more than 3,000 troops of the 6th and 18th Divisions landed west of Jinshanwei with almost no resistance.

Without waiting for the troops to land and finish landing, Gu Shoufu ordered a surprise attack to the north. Subsequently, the ferocious Japanese army relied on its firepower superiority to repel the counterattack of the 62nd and 79th divisions of the Chinese army.

On the 8th, the 6th Division cooperated with the main force of the 10th Army to cross the Huangpu River and captured Songjiang and cut off the Shanghai-Hangzhou Railway. The main force of the Chinese army in Shanghai began to retreat to avoid being encircled, and many of the troops were in great disorder during the retreat, which immediately turned into a rout.

The Japanese 6th Division took the opportunity to pursue frantically, and the imposing 6th Division became the "vanguard" of the pursuit. On the 15th, Kunshan fell, the 6th Division slaughtered the city, and the rich and beautiful Beijing-Shanghai-Hangzhou area was turned into a bloody hell on earth by the Japanese invaders.

On November 7, the Japanese General Staff Headquarters formed the Shanghai Dispatch Army and the 10th Army into the "Central Branch" Front Army, with Matsui Ishine as commander.

At that time, the Japanese cabinet was concerned about expanding the war against China, so the Japanese General Staff stipulated that the line from Suzhou to Jiaxing was a restricted line (i.e., the Sujia line), which the Japanese army was not allowed to cross.

In this way, Nanjing was also drawn out of the battle line. But for the upper generals of the 10th Army, including Tani Toshio, who were carried away by the victory, such restrictions could not be tolerated. In the Japanese Army, as early as the Russo-Japanese War, there was a culture of "subordination," and those generals who dared to disobey orders and make their own decisions were often regarded as rare talents.

The commanders of the 10th Army, Yanagawa Heisuke and Tani Toshio, conspired and decided to break free from the "reins". On November 15, this group of madmen carried the staff headquarters on their backs and pursued Nanjing alone.

On November 20, Deputy Chief of Staff Tada Jun learned of the 10th Army's plan after receiving a telegram and could not help but be surprised.

By this time, the 6th Division had already arrived in Huzhou, and the Sujia line had become a fictitious form. Faced with the fait accompli, the Japanese General Staff Headquarters abolished the Sujia Line on the 24th. On December 1, the Japanese High Command issued the "Continental Order No. 8": ordering the Japanese army to capture Nanjing.

On December 5, 1937, the vanguard of Gu Shoufu's 6th Division arrived at the outskirts of Nanjing after a forced march. On the 10th, it had already hit the Zhonghua Gate.

On the 12th, after a bloody battle, only one special service company of the brigade commander Zhu Chi remained in the 262nd Brigade of the 88th Division guarding Yuhuatai. The Japanese troops of the 6th Division swarmed forward with superior forces, and Zhu Chi led his troops to engage in fierce hand-to-hand battles with the enemy, killing and wounding a large number of Japanese soldiers, and finally all of them were martyred.

On December 12, 1937, the 47th Wing of the 6th Division occupied the front of Zhonghua Gate, and Nanjing fell on the evening of the 13th.

After entering the city, the brutal Japanese troops of the 6th Division became furious and created the Nanjing Massacre that shocked China and the rest of the world within eight days of occupying Nanjing, and the corpses of Chinese soldiers and civilians killed by the division in Xiaguan alone reached 2 kilometers long and 50 meters wide, and the blood stained the Yangtze River red.

Takashi Shouichi, the squad leader of the 6th Wing of the Division's Heavy Baggage, who invaded Nanjing, said in his diary that on December 14, 1937, he saw the Xiaguan River in Nanjing: "The corpse was washed over by the waves like drifting wood; On the shore, the bodies piled up on top of each other stretched as far as the eye could see. These corpses could be thousands, tens of thousands, a lot of them. ”

The 6th Division was the main culprit in the Nanjing Massacre. After that, he participated in the Battle of Xuzhou and in the Battle of Wuhan, under the leadership of the division commander Suye Shilang, a single division went north along the north bank of the Yangtze River, and attacked more than a dozen divisions of Li Pinxian and Li Yannian's two major armies, forcibly captured Banbi Mountain, Tianjiazhen Fortress, and smashed open the gate of Wuhan.

Finally, on April 26, 1947, he was executed at Yuhuatai.