Chapter 22: The Reddened Islands (Part II)

December 12, Sapporo, the capital of Hokkaido Island

In the light snow of early winter, the streets and alleys of Sapporo City are full of marching and shouting crowds, waving various banners and wafting various melodies and songs. The pen "Fun" Pavilion looks like a temple fair and festival www.biquge.info lively, but there is no trace of festivity, only sadness and misery like substance.

Many officers and men of the Japanese Army wearing khaki uniforms, as well as young students in black uniforms, sang the "Showa Restoration Song" with tears streaming down their eyes under the banners of slogans such as "Defend the country and fight against traitors," "Fill the bone marrow with loyalty and righteousness," and "Rather die than kneel," and under the command of Xiao Juncao, who was armed with a saber:

“…… The powerful only know the proud family, and there is really no one in the country; The wealthy man knows how to boast and accumulate wealth, and the society thinks about it!

…… Under the Showa Restoration, men are connected to justice! There are a million soldiers in the chest, and ten thousand cherry blossoms are scattered when they die!

The rotting corpses crossed over, and this body fluttered and floated together. The worried country stands forward, and the boy sings from now on!

The heavens shook in anger, and the roar roared loudly. The eternal sleeper can't sleep, and Japan is awakening today! ……”

And more workers and citizens have simply openly raised the red flag, hung up the sickle and hammer badge, and sang the "Internationale" in a loud voice: "...... Get up! Hungry and cold slaves! Get up! People all over the world who are suffering! The blood is already boiling, and we must fight for the truth! ……”

All of a sudden, "Showa Restoration Song" and "Internationale" came and went, and the red flag and the sun flag were one color. The Russo-Japanese War veterans with sabers and medals on their shoulders actually hooked up with the Japanese Communist Party propagandists waving the party emblem, one shouting to avenge the emperor and the other to bring down US imperialism.

-- At this moment when the country is facing extinction, Japan's most stubborn militarists and the most radical Bolsheviks have reached an unusually subtle consensus: The state system and other things can no longer be taken care of, and now is the critical moment for the survival of the nation, and the most important thing is to fight to the death against the ghosts and animals of the United States!

Well? The Bolsheviks had no father and no king, and they were rebellious? But where are the kings of Japan today? Fatherless and kingless is nothing, right?

If it had been normal times, when so many "non-nationals" had been seen indiscriminately taking to the streets to incite, the police and gendarmes would have rushed up with sticks to suppress them. But now, the police and gendarmes are all shrunk and hiding far away, and they dare not embarrass the processions in the streets. Even if occasionally a fool dared to go up and interfere, the opposite side immediately greeted him with sticks and fists, and shouted and scolded while beating back: "...... Darn! Now even the emperor and the empire are gone! What else are you talking about non-nationals? Do you bastard want to take refuge in the United States? ”

Despite being disgraced, these policemen and gendarmes had no choice but to flee in the face of the crowd. In the final analysis, the reason why they were able to be powerful and prosperous was because of the support of the state apparatus behind them. But now? The law is gone, the country is gone, the emperor is gone, and these seemingly majestic gendarmes and policemen are in fact like the "family elders", "Wakanyo", "shoguns" and "town executives" of the Tokugawa family after the fall of the shogunate.

Besides, after learning the news of the "Osaka Massacre" and discovering that even if they surrendered, they would be slaughtered, even the most stupid police and gendarmes were equally frightened: the so-called "Provisional Government of Japan" was trying to deceive the entire people into going to hell! Before, the military department asked everyone to die for the emperor, which is somewhat reasonable, but we want to die for the wealth of a few of you chaebols...... Why?

-- Strictly speaking, the burning, killing, and looting of the Anzac in the city of Osaka was not a planned massacre of the city, but a loss of control of military discipline caused by an unexpected incident. Although there are no clear statistics on the number of deaths caused by the front and back, it should not exceed 150,000 at most.

However, they couldn't stand the scattered and fleeing Osaka citizens all the way to spread false rumors, and the more exaggerated the matter became, coupled with the fact that some well-intentioned people took the opportunity to add fuel to the fire, referring to the "great achievements" of the Nanjing Massacre of the Imperial Japanese Army in the past, as well as the "human scientific research achievements" of Unit 731, they simply fabricated a lot of appalling and terrifying rumors, what slaughter of three million cities, the "Australia Cup" killing competition, charcoal roasting babies, skinning people alive, raping and killing female students, scalping to remember merits, and using living people as targets to practice guns. Poison gas and incendiary bombs were tested by citizens, pregnant women were disemboweled, Japanese prisoners and Japanese women who were tired of playing were beheaded by the river, and thousands of headless corpses blocked the Yodogawa River outside the city......

In order to increase the persuasiveness, Wang Qiu, as one of the masterminds behind the scenes, opened his mind again, collected a large number of small short videos and pictorials of modern Japanese bloody horror movies (later generations of Japanese were very good at shooting this kind of subject), selected part of the content and edited it, remade it into a black-and-white movie and black-and-white photos, and handed it over to Comrade Sophie, the ship's mother, and then she spread it widely through the way of the Japanese Republic and the Navy. And the purpose of the above selection of materials is how to hunt for curiosity, how to get nauseous, and try to make people vomit and not eat for three days, or have nightmares for a week......

As a result, under such an unprecedented wave of "ghost beasts screaming and killing impact", the Japanese who were caught off guard were suddenly stimulated to go crazy!

You must know that the Japanese at this time in 1945 were not fat and cute creatures in the "peaceful and dementia country" of the 21 st century, but ferocious jackals who had received militaristic education since childhood. Not to mention that since the outbreak of the Pacific War, the wartime base camp has constantly instilled in the people all kinds of concepts that "the United States and Britain are murderous, cruel and perverted, insidious and vicious, and extremely vicious", and have done everything possible to smear them. Now, first the two nuclear bombs in Tokyo, then the burning of Kyoto, and finally the massacre of Osaka, the demonization of the past and the bloody reality of the past are immediately in tune.

Many Japanese veterans themselves engaged in all kinds of burning, killing, and plundering in the battlefields of China and the South Seas, and now they feel that the American ghost animals may also be concocted in the Japanese archipelago. Therefore, these exaggerated propaganda are naturally all believed to be true. In particular, some retired veterans who participated in the "Nanjing Raiders" once laughed at these "inferior peoples" who were really insensitive, and the butcher's knife of the imperial army reached the side of the neck, and they didn't know how to resist, but they only knew that they were lining up to be killed in a daze, and they were really a bunch of garbage that did not deserve to live in the world. Who knew that feng shui took turns, but now it was their turn to be slaughtered in line with these imperial warriors! But why is that? Obviously, everyone didn't lose the battle, they had guns, cannons and planes in their hands, and the US army's poison gas bombs were the same! Why lay down your arms and let the United States and Britain kill and play? Or even kill out the ghost animal aesthetics and perverted art?

And it's not like I'm going to die alone, all the people in the family have to be tortured and killed by all kinds of tricks! How can you endure such a thing?

Well, I see, it's all the sins of the plutocracy of the Provisional Government! Before that, they colluded with the U.S. military to bomb Tokyo, killed the emperor, and overthrew the government! Now he is taking the bones of our imperial army and ordinary people to please the Yankees! What a madness, what a rebellion!

For example, the Osaka Fourth Division, which was awaiting reorganization and dismissal in Shanghai, learned of the news of the "Osaka Massacre" and looked at a bunch of highly realistic photographs of torture and killing.

When Chairman Chiang got the bad news, he had no choice but to send troops and dispatch troops in an attempt to encircle and suppress them, but unexpectedly, the troops that could be mobilized in the Jiangnan region at the moment were basically the puppet army that had just been recruited, and from top to bottom they belonged to the type of weak legs when they saw the Japanese Taijun. Although it is said that he already has the support of the invincible American father, after all, he has not seen even a single hair of American aid -- all of them have been intercepted by the Halsey fleet and Marshal MacArthur to fight.

On the contrary, in recent days, the "receiving officers" of the Chongqing government who have been parachuted in have been desperately fabricating accusations, extorting and extorting money, and scraping the ground against the puppet army, which has caused the puppet army to complain from top to bottom: Not only have the military salaries that had been in arrears for a long time not been distributed, but even the food rations have been cut off, and the puppet soldiers have been asked to find food to eat, and even most of the weapons and ammunition have been resold by the "receiving officers," and the morale has been extremely low for a while.

As a result, the 200,000 "former puppet army," who lacked guns and ammunition, were hungry and demoralized, and had eaten an unknown amount of empty salary, were crushed by the Fourth Division in a battle that broke out in the suburbs of Shanghai. Immediately, these Osaka soldiers, who had been beaten with chicken blood, continued to march forward with great triumph and smash Nanjing while mobilizing Japanese troops and expatriates scattered all over the country, and were invincible along the way. Poor Chairman Chiang had only "returned the capital to Nanjing" for more than a month, and in the face of the dying and struggling Japanese counterattack, he had to take the river wheel again and flee in the wilderness, announcing the urgent relocation of the Nationalist Government to Nanchang...... For a time, it became a big laughing stock of world public opinion.

To get back to the point, on the Chinese battlefield, how the Nationalist Government was beaten by the Japanese army that had surrendered and once again lost the absurd and ugly incident of the capital Nanjing, I will not mention it here for the time being. The empire itself in the Japanese archipelago is also turbulent, like a volcanic eruption. In particular, Hokkaido, which is far away from the main force of the US military, has been most subjected to all kinds of red propaganda, and has the largest number of troops stationed and stockpiled materials, and is unwilling to wait for death from top to bottom.

All of a sudden, no matter what military discipline or martial law order, no one took it seriously. Regardless of whether their political ideology is left or right, all "people with lofty ideals for the country" have rushed to the streets and shouted slogans, declaring that they want to "break the whole country's jade." Even if they stand and be beaten to death, it is better than kneeling down and being tortured and killed.

While marching and shouting slogans, the men gathered explosives and firearms, the old men began to hone their treasured katanas, and the women practiced bamboo guns and slingshots with unprecedented seriousness...... The Japanese, who had only known how to obey their superiors and had no ideas of their own, seemed to have changed from fools to madmen in an instant, and they wanted to play with the landed American ghost animals with red eyes, and the extent was much more intense than the "rebellion" trend at the end of the shogunate.

At least, Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, commander of the 7th Division, who was at the Sapporo City Headquarters, knew very well that as long as he issued an order to obey the provisional government and surrender unconditionally, a large group of red-eyed soldiers with rifles would rush into the headquarters with rifles on his back foot, and he would be "punished by heaven"!

What's more, in the heart of His Excellency General Kuribayashi Tadamichi, how could he be willing to lay down his arms and let others slaughter him?

-- During the Pacific War, because all the battlefields were far from the mainland, when the upheaval broke out, the essence of the Imperial Japanese Army was basically overseas, and the regular field army that remained on the mainland consisted of only four divisions in total. Among them, the most elite Guards Division was the Emperor's Imperial Army, stationed in Tokyo, but was first beaten up by a combination of sarin gas, incendiary bombs, and atomic bombs, and then listened to the deception of the Provisional Government of Japan, and then laid down his arms and surrendered to the American army, and now he is being sent as free coolies to build airfields and barracks for the American conquerors.

The 25th Division in Osaka was wiped out by the U.S. Army in the New Zealand battlefield last year, and now the 25th Division is a new unit that has just been conscripted this year, and it has not yet completed its training and grouping in Osaka, so it was ordered to disarm and surrender in a daze, and then was slaughtered by the Allied Anzac Corps in one go, leaving only a few fish that slipped through the net and scurried around the world, looking for people everywhere to cry about the tragic experience of these Osaka recruits, and deeply regretted that they surrendered to the enemy without firing a shot. As a result, it ended up in such an undignified end.

Then there was the 65th Division in Nagoya, which was now under a day and night siege by tens of thousands of American troops, although after learning of the Osaka tragedy, the morale of the whole army was extremely high, and it seemed that mourning soldiers were available. But looking at the isolated appearance of this army, it is estimated that it is not far from the annihilation of the whole army.

Therefore, with the exception of the Kwantung Army, the Korean Army, and the North China Front Army, which had just withdrawn to the country on the Hiroshima side, the only regular troops of the native army on the Japanese archipelago were the Tohoku Heavy Army Group, headed by the 7th Division of Hokkaido. The core of the group was the 7th Division, which was stationed in Asahikawa, Hokkaido, and then the Soya Fortress Garrison and Tsugaru Fortress Garrison stationed at the north and south ends of Hokkaido Island, which held the Soya Strait and Tsugaru Strait leading to the Sea of Japan, respectively, and a bunch of miscellaneous defense teams, garrisons, transport teams, etc., with a total strength of about 100,000 people, which is not a small force.

However, the problem is that these armies deployed in Hokkaido, like the Japanese Empire today, are in a state of fragmentation, and there was no commander-in-chief or military and political chief to control the overall situation, but they were directly subordinate to the wartime base camp in Tokyo, and now they are completely uncontrolled.

Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, the current commander of the 7th Division, who has the largest number of troops in Hokkaido, was previously the commander of the garrison of Iwo Jima, which belonged to the internal guard of the "absolute defense circle" of the Japanese Empire. Therefore, Kuribayashi Tadamichi, who originally belonged to the Kwantung Army, was ordered to lead his troops to Iwo Jima to build fortifications and deploy troops.

The situation in the Pacific War was still far better than the most optimistic expectations before the war, and the battlefields against the "US-British ghost animals" were far away from New Zealand and Australia on the other side of the world. So, in the summer of this year, the wartime base camp ordered the Iwo Jima garrison to be dismantled and transferred to the Australian battlefield in batches to replenish the field divisions on the front line with heavy losses.

Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, who had not fought for several years, was transferred to Hokkaido as commander of the Seventh Division, and his main tasks were to rectify military discipline, investigate the red ideology that had gradually spread in the army because he had not fought for many years, and investigate a series of underground smuggling cases that were said to have an army background.

Unexpectedly, on the day that Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi took over the military affairs of Iwo Jima and came to Hokkaido to take office, he was hit by the Tokyo nuclear bomb, and the entire wartime base camp was blown into radioactive dust. Then, before he could get his hands on the troops, the "Provisional Government of Japan" spread unconditional surrender notices everywhere, which completely confused the hearts of the military and the people...... Lieutenant General Kuribayashi Tadamichi is also ignorant now, the empire is gone, what kind of military discipline is there to rectify?

Next, the Soviet border guards crossed the border to the south, and the border garrison and the Soya fortress surrendered without a fight. The Soviet reconnaissance unit advanced all the way to Asahikawa in central Hokkaido, where it was stopped by the 7th Division under the personal command of Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi...... But then, the further development of the current situation in Japan, as well as the complete loss of control of the military and the people's will, made this professional soldier who lacked sufficient political acumen soon completely overwhelmed.

At this moment, he was sitting in his office, looking at the lobbyist on the sofa opposite, Lieutenant General Takayoshi Tanaka, the commander of Tsugaru Fortress, his face changed unpredictably for a while, "...... Tanaka-senpai, are you saying that the Red elements in Hokkaido and the Soviets on the other side are interested in being the Commander-in-Chief of the Hokkaido Soviet Republic? This...... How can this be done? If you count it according to your qualifications, you are obviously more suitable to be the director of the military affairs bureau! ”

“…… Alas, Kuribayashi-kun, don't excuse yourself. This position of the Great Commander is no longer yours in Hokkaido today! A person like me, who has just been released from a mental hospital, even if he sits in that position, who will be convinced? Takayoshi Tanaka explained with a wry smile.