Chapter 21: The Reddened Islands (Part II)

Kyoto, Japan

Wearing a dirty military uniform, Major General Masanobu Tsuji, with dull eyes, staggered through the streets of Kyoto after the American air raid. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

At this moment, the entire city of Kyoto has completely changed: it looks like Tokyo suffered a nuclear bomb two months ago!

Surrounded by the ruins of the fire, the air was filled with a pungent scorching stench, and a thick layer of ash had accumulated on the ground. Charred trees and telephone poles fell like matchsticks on the road. Occasionally, a few badly burned women, holding their gassed or charred children, staggered through the rubble, looking sluggish and numb, like walking dead.

If you say, a week ago, Kyoto was still so delicate, chic, and quaint, with light clouds and mist, and glass smoke waves, like a sleeping beauty shrouded in tulle, with a nostalgic ancient style. Kyoto is now a terrible charred corpse, where all good things no longer exist, only the rotten and ugly wreckage, and the haze of death and destruction.

The checkerboard-shaped lattice paths, the quaint cardboard houses, the verdant pines and cypresses, the Heian Jingu Shrine commemorating Emperor Hengmu, the "back stage" on the cliff of Kiyomizudera Temple, the cherry blossom forest of Ninnaji Temple, and women in elegant kimonos...... All of them were gone in the fire and poison gas!

As soon as you close your eyes, that nightmarish night scene will involuntarily appear in front of Major General Masanobu Tsuji.

Just when he went to Hiroshima to ask for help, he failed - before he could meet His Excellency Umezu Mijiro, commander of the Kwantung Army, he was bombed indiscriminately by American bombers, so he had to grab a military vehicle and escape. Then, with a feeling of exhaustion and frustration, he had just driven his car to the outskirts of Kyoto when another overwhelming wave of American bombers swept over the old capital of Japan at a low altitude at a speed of more than 300 miles per hour.

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 it is necessary to give priority to ensuring anti-aircraft firepower. The focus of the region's air defense is Osaka, which is home to the best of western Japan's heavy industry. Kyoto, a famous historical and cultural city in Japan, was abandoned by the wartime base camp, because the green mountains and clear waters and historical sites were of little use during the war years, and the Yankees would not have nothing to waste bombs and fuel in such a place, right?

However, this unexpected thing finally happened, and it was so bloody and cruel.

In the first wave of air raids, the U.S. military dropped tons of Soman gas bombs, a kind of nerve gas with a faint fruity scent, just one gas bomb can poison or kill a living person within a radius of one kilometer, and it can penetrate directly into the human body through the skin and mucous membranes, even if you wear an old-fashioned gas mask...... The unsuspecting citizens of Kyoto were immediately swept away, and the firefighters who were on standby were the first to suffer.

After the first batch of bombers had finished dropping dozens of tons of Soman gas bombs, more than an hour had passed, and the next group of US bombers that had arrived later began to drop napalm incendiary bombs on Kyoto one after another. As a traditional Japanese capital, Kyoto's houses are mainly made of paper and wood, which is an excellent fuel. Now the citizens were so smoked by the poisonous gas that they could not put out the fire, so soon the wind helped the fire, so that the raging flames spread rapidly, and the tiles after the fire became brittle, falling like black snow, and one house after another exploded like a gas stove, and the fire was raging.

In the blink of an eye, the fire burned more and more, and it became a vast waterfall of flames. A huge fireball jumped from one building to another in a stormy manner, creating a white-hot wave of fire with a temperature of thousands of degrees Celsius! Burning as hot as the sun. Puffs of smoke rolled into the air, and the light of the fire underneath turned orange. Thousands of people huddled in rudimentary bomb shelters, frightened and colorless, thinking they would soon be roasted alive.

In this way, old Kyoto became a purgatory, the glass was melted, the river was boiled, the fire consumed all the oxygen, and almost no one survived in the center of the fire area...... The only benefit of the fire to the citizens of Kyoto may have been to evaporate the poisonous gases, but this was meaningless, because the smoke from the flames was just as deadly.

When Major General Masanobu Tsuji braved the hot wind and flames to the edge of the Kyoto fire, he saw a blazing storm like a hearth, carrying violently burning particles and sparks, spreading rapidly along the streets. Adults and children alike are running for their lives, rushing around like rats. The flames chased them like living creatures, knocked them down, and then died in front of Major General Masanobu Tsuji. ”

It wasn't until dawn that Major General Masanobu Tsuji dared to lead people into the still-smoking city of Kyoto, where he found that the entire thousand-year-old capital had been burned to the ground, except for the stone statues, concrete pillars and walls, iron frames, and sparse telephone poles. A few telephone poles were still smoking like small candles. Most of the tiny rivers were clogged with corpses, and even the water itself had almost evaporated and dried up, stuffed with swollen corpses and household debris. The ground on the banks of the river is still steaming. Everywhere you look, you can see dead bodies in painful positions: some naked, all black, some praying with folded hands, some standing in strange shapes as if they want to run, some sitting there as if meditating on something. There was a corpse whose head had shrunk to the size of a grapefruit. Mothers try to protect their children, but they become charred together, and the couples are melted together by the scorching heat in their last hug. Those who survived used coke to leave messages on walls and sidewalks, trying to find their loved ones...... Even the mountains and forests on the outskirts were burning with fires at this time, and no one could organize manpower to fight them, so they could only watch the trees and the ancient temple burn to ashes together.

The "thief army" that was brought to Kyoto from Nagoya by Major General Masanobu Tsuji and other radical officers to "settle the country to fight against traitors" and "set things right" was also heavily killed and wounded in the bombing by the US military, and the entire army collapsed. Major General Masanobu Tsuji managed to gather more than 100 people, and then retreated to the Kaohsiung Mountains on the southern outskirts of Kyoto. It's just as smoky, but there are still some complete houses to live in. It's just that after barely settling down and taking a breather, looking at Kyoto that was burned to the ground, everyone was discouraged, and they felt that they were in a desperate situation and the future was bright, so they quickly collapsed completely.

Some people drank soju from nowhere, and cursed American devils. Some people stay on the radio all day, only to hear bad news after bad news. Even as the backbone of this gang, Major General Masanobu Tsuji's mood is just as bad. He knew very well that the Japanese Empire today was not without the strength to fight, that the millions of Imperial Army and the invincible Combined Fleet were still intact, that the ammunition hoarded on the territory alone was as high as one million tons, and that all the citizens had received military training since childhood, and that there was no need to worry about the lack of qualified soldiers to fight on the mainland.

But the problem is that after the loss of the only operator, this huge war machine has been reduced to scrap metal in an instant, and it can no longer be launched!

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As we all know, the advantages of the Japanese are serious and diligent, and the disadvantages are rigidity and rigidity, and they often run all the way to the black and make themselves perverted.

Why is this so? Because since ancient times, Japan has been a hierarchical country, with a family of gate lords who rule over everything, and the common people of Li are muddy and lowly for generations. In order to maintain harmony and stability, the entire traditional Japanese society is preaching the ideological principle of "each in his or her own place", which simply means that everyone is a small part of the social machine, and that they must strive to do their own work well, and each person must perform his or her own duties. Only in this way can you be accepted by society and recognized by the group to which you belong. This sounds a bit like the collectivist ideology of socialist countries, but the problem is that the Japanese have to add a key prefix to this principled concept of "each according to his place": hereditary!

In other words, farmers should be farming for generations, thinking about how to grow crops better, rather than switching to work in the cities – although there are still so many of them that they cannot be restrained at all. Samurai should have been thinking about how to cut people more efficiently for generations, and if they changed their careers to business and make money, they would be devaluing themselves

Although in fact, this so-called principle of "each in his own place" has been broken and subverted more than once. For example, the Warring States period in the Middle Ages in Japan was simply an era of the following grams. Throughout the Meiji Restoration, a group of samurai from the middle and lower ranks of the feudal kingdom usurped the power of the feudal lords and shoguns. However, in spite of this, the modern Japanese ruling class after the Meiji Restoration still vigorously propagated this set of ideas, and whitewashed the emperor, who had no practical role for hundreds of years, and put him on the throne of God, so that the Japanese people regarded the emperor as a god living on earth, and the most basic duty of the people was to do their best for the emperor, and everyone lived for the emperor. And everything that was done in the war, including the atrocities of the war, was also in the service of the emperor.

It's a real day poi! Is there such a way to break away from Asia and join Europe? Although there were various forms of government in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century, from republics to monarchs, there was absolutely no one that made the monarch a god and then made himself a citizen of the kingdom of God. Even if it was the divine right of kings in the Middle Ages, even if it was the caliphate and sultanate of the Arab world, but whether it was Jesus or Muhammad, they only claimed to be prophets, how could anyone claim to be gods?

However, it is not necessarily true to show that the heroes of the Restoration are stupid. The reason why they wanted to launch this gimmick of "Japan is a kingdom of God, and the emperor is a living god" was also a last resort in order to unite people's hearts with the highest efficiency under the situation of Japan's overall backwardness at that time: the more a nation is in adversity and the more unconfident it is, the more it needs some superstition as spiritual opium, so as to produce enough spiritual illusions of self-paralysis to satisfy its empty and inferior heart. However, such a people will also become more sensitive and inferior, as well as equally arrogant.

If this gimmick can be played well, it will become a source of national cohesion and a great slogan for striving for the road to empire, like the "manifest destiny" of the United States of America and the "holy war" of the Arabs. But unfortunately, the Japanese in modern times have clearly gotten away from it......

In this way, year after year, after being brainwashed, except for a few rebels, ordinary Japanese people have become fools who only know how to obey their superiors. The status quo of the upper class without the poor and the lower class without the world can also be accepted in the concept: at least when the class contradictions are not intensified.

And what is the state of the children of the gate valve who hold the power? It's basically the same as China's Wei Jin Shi clan and the Manchu Qing Dynasty's Eight Banners. Because he was born with a golden soup spoon in his mouth, the people around him touted it all day long, so he naturally didn't know that the world was difficult. And then because of the noble family, generally speaking, they will be able to rise, and the level of quality is not important, so these guys are naturally too lazy to use their brains. Even if you want to do things well, because you have basically not been at the grassroots level, you can only take it for granted nonsense.

For example, Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, who started the Pacific War, was ridiculed all day long from the beginning of his tenure, calling him a "senior soldier Tojo". The most famous political achievement is to go door-to-door to search garbage cans to see if the common people have violated the government's call for thrift and frugality, secretly drinking and eating meat in private. Then his personal character was also corrupted, and he called on all the people to die for the emperor, and women entered the comfort team to reward the imperial army. What about your turn? All three sons deserted military service, none of them went to war, and Mrs. Tojo stayed at home so well that she was not even willing to do voluntary labor. So angry, many bereaved families of soldiers killed 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 also called Mrs. Tojo and asked when she would join the comfort team? These Imperial Warriors have been waiting for a long time! In the end, even Hideki Tojo's daughter had to arrange bodyguards to go to school, in case she was dragged into the grass by the angry disabled veteran on the way to school, and it was her turn to engage in "self-help comfort".

But the question is, since Hideki Tojo is such an unreliable guy, why should he be the prime minister at a critical moment in history? There are two reasons, first, in the small circle at the top, all the old foxes can see that the situation is difficult, and being prime minister is to sit in the fire pit, and everyone pushes others to the top of the tank. Second, among the stunned young people outside the old fox, Hideki Tojo is already the most reliable one relatively speaking, and others are not as good as him!

In short, although modern Japan is covered with a layer of Westernization, it is still a feudal aristocratic society in its bones, and it can even be said to be a ignorant society under theocratic rule, and it is even more rigid ideologically than modern China, which is poor and weak. At that time, China was facing the existential crisis of civilization and race, at least from top to bottom, thinking about a way out, whether or not to find the right way for the time being, at least no one could make all Chinese stop thinking.

And because Japan has gone from one victory to another in modern times, the common people feel that the government is leading quite well, and they just need to be obedient, and they don't have to think too much until they can't live...... As a result, when the country was faced with a major choice, the lower-class Japanese were indifferent to national affairs and resigned themselves to it. The upper-class Japanese are the children of a family, arrogant, detached from society, and completely ignorant of the depths of the high and low.

Although they can also put forward a variety of different strategic plans, but if you look closely, one is more than a matter of course, and one is more comical than the other.

What spiritual power is better than 10,000 tons of steel, and what the people of China are happy to welcome the liberation of the imperial army, it feels like a national policy formulated by a madhouse.

In the eyes of Western observers, the upper echelons of the Japanese Empire were incredibly stupid and ridiculous, and the lower echelons were ignorant and blindly obedient.

And the whole process of the Japanese empire falling into the pit of World War II was also a group of fools below who stopped thinking, and then aimlessly followed the above jokes to die - the entire Japanese upper echelons actually knew that declaring war on the United States was death, and the hope of victory was very slim, and the end of defeat was the destruction of the country and the extinction of the species. But no one can afford the consequences of making concessions to the United States, and they wonder why do they want me to carry the black pot? It's better for everyone to die together, if you want to be unlucky, you should be unlucky together!

In this way, under the leadership of a group of selfish teases who refused to take responsibility, the Japanese Empire embarked on the road of a vigorous death.

Well, although the Japanese high-level who originally commanded the war were a bunch of teases who would only shirk responsibility and act indiscriminately, there was still a strategic leadership who would lead the overall situation, but now that the two nuclear bombs in Tokyo exploded, there was simply no comic comparison, and only a bunch of fools who had stopped thinking for many years remained.

As a result, although all the hardware, manpower, and material resources to sustain the war are still in place, the ideological software to guide the people in how to conduct the war is gone.

INTERVIEWER In the past, we fought for the sake of loyalty to the emperor, but if the emperor and the government are gone today, why should we fight? What should we do if we don't fight?

As a result, in the midst of the chaos, the Japanese could only stay in a daze on their own land, and at the same time were slaughtered by the US military like rats.

In this regard, Major General Masanobu Tsuji is also helpless, he knows where there are ordnance, where there is gold and silver, where there is ammunition and food, but no matter what kind of strategic materials, he can't get his hands. Even the rabble around him relied on the fame of his mentor Ishihara Waner to temporarily pull up a fan group. Now that the mentor is dead, it is already very good that these people can continue to follow them and not disperse immediately.

What a grievance! Is the majestic Japanese Empire, which has just laid the largest territory in history, about to suddenly and inexplicably fall into the country?

I remember reading history books when I was a child, and when I saw the fall of the Edo shogunate, and when the last shogun, Tokugawa, rejoiced in the "bloodless opening of the castle", he used to laugh at the Tokugawa family, except for the Shinsengumi, there were few bloody men. But now, it seems that the Imperial Government has fallen even more ridiculously than the Edo Shogunate!

What's next? Listening to the appearance of the surrender of various prefectures and counties on the radio, it is estimated that the decisive battle in the local area can no longer be organized, so can he just take off his military uniform, go back to his hometown incognito, and wait to be arrested as a war criminal and put on trial? Or are you hoping that you can get away with it?

For such an ending, Major General Masanobu Tsuji felt very, very unwilling, but even if he was unwilling, there was no better way.

After hesitating like this for a few days, seeing that the grain and grass he had collected was about to be eaten up, he finally decided to disband the team and go to the US military or the Japanese provisional government to surrender himself. Unexpectedly, before he could start moving, late one night, he suddenly saw flames and cannon rumbling in the direction of Osaka.

This puzzled Major General Masanobu Tsuji and his more than 100 followers: hadn't the cowardly traders in Osaka surrendered to the American army? And who is setting fire in that direction now? So, Masanobu Tsuji led a group of people down the mountain to inquire about the news, and immediately saw that the roads and fields were crowded with bustling fleeing citizens, and then stopped a disgraced policeman and learned a shocking news from him: "...... The 25th Division in Osaka, after laying down its arms, was executed en masse by those hateful white ghosts! Right now, they're slaughtering the city in Osaka! ”

- On December 4, 1945, three days after the surrender of Kaesong was announced by Osaka Prefecture, the Allied Anzac landed and entered Osaka. Previously, the Japanese Southern Army burned, killed, plundered, and did all kinds of evil on the battlefield in Australia, and carried out bloody massacres of white Australian residents many times, and the allies in Australia also retaliated with a tooth for a tooth, brutally abusing Japanese prisoners of war by various means.

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, but on the way across the Pacific Ocean, they received the bad news that Melbourne and New Zealand were hit by Japanese poison gas air raids, which made these Anzac boys full of anger.

On the night of the day when 40,000 officers and men of the Anzac Corps came ashore one after another and entered the city of Osaka, a small group of Japanese radical retired soldiers armed with gasoline barrels and grenades attempted to sneak attack the barracks of the "white-skinned ghost animals" and were arrested on the spot. The Anzac Corps, already full of anger, immediately launched a sweeping search of the city of Osaka, during which they encountered spontaneous shooting by a number of unknown militants, and the search quickly turned into a revenge massacre.

In the midst of the chaos, Osaka, Japan's most prosperous trading and commercial center, was completely transformed into a bloody purgatory, with white soldiers burning and looting in the streets, and citizens fleeing in frenzy...... Due to the stubborn resistance of some citizens who had hidden their guns, the Anzac soldiers even used artillery bombardment, and a raging fire ignited in the densely populated urban area, which burned for three days before being extinguished by a heavy rain.

The 25th Osaka Division, which had previously surrendered, was also ordered to be executed en masse by the commander of the Anzac Corps on the charge of "suspected rebellion" during the chaos, and its body was dumped in Osaka Bay...... Only a few clever people escaped through the dog hole, spreading the bad news.

-- The most eerie and terrifying side of human warfare has finally been completely revealed to the once confident Japanese!

Hearing this news, Major General Masanobu Tsuji couldn't help but feel cold for a while. He knew very well that the massacre of prisoners of war was not less done by the Japanese army in Chinese mainland and various parts of Nanyang, especially the massacre in Nanjing, which set a new record for the number of prisoners of war slaughtered in modern history. But now it is the turn of the imperial army to be taken to the slaughterhouse, slaughtered collectively like cattle, how can such a contrast be endured?

Just when Major General Masanobu Tsuji only felt that the world was spinning and at a loss, a non-commissioned officer beside him shouted and scolded hatefully: "...... The damned plutocracy of the Provisional Government! This is the humanitarian treatment they promise? They clearly want us Yamato men to die! In the first place, they were as insatiable as vampires, forcing the common people to sell their sons and daughters, and deceived us into going to the battlefield! Now they have turned into pacifists again, playing the role of the Yankees, kicking us away as garbage, and holding us on the charge of starting a war! ”

Then, as if a long-sealed chatterbox had been suddenly revealed, various opinions were shouted in the mouths of all the Japanese officers and soldiers:

“…… That's right, the previous Tokyo nuclear bombing, I'm afraid it was also those traitors who colluded with the U.S. military to report the news! Killed His Majesty the Emperor! ”

“…… Even if Japan is doomed to defeat, it can't cheapen these traitors! Otherwise, they will only enjoy the spoils of our blood and sacrifice, and continue to oppress the people with the help of the US military's obscenity, while pointing at our bones and pouring sewage, saying that we are sinners who have destroyed the country! ”

“…… We must keep fighting! Not for the emperor and those corrupt officials, but for ourselves! ……”

……

In front of the butcher's knife of death, the Japanese whose brains had been rusty for many years finally opened their mouths and tried to think about their fate.

Then, no longer blindly obeying their superiors, they began to erupt one after another......