Chapter 35: The Rise of War in East Asia (Part II)

Early January 1946, Naha Port, Okinawa Prefecture

While the Korean Peninsula is snowing, dripping with ice, and bitterly cold, Okinawa Prefecture on the Ryukyu Islands is still warm as spring. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

Under the clear blue sky, the rippling sea reflects the golden light of the sun, like an incomparably huge sapphire.

However, the island of Okinawa, just a stone's throw away, is full of gunsmoke and dilapidation, which is in stark contrast to the beauty of the sea and sky.

Naha Port, the largest city on the island, is now covered with rubble. Between the ruined alleys strewn with countless bomb craters, the ruins of dilapidated buildings, many of which are still smoking, are scattered in the east and west. The corpses and bullet casings strewn in the streets, the shattered shipwrecks in the harbor, and the sporadic charred Stars and Stripes and Sun Banners all show that this place has just been ravaged by the ravages of war.

To this day, sporadic gunfire and screaming can still be heard from time to time in the countryside far from the port.

-- It was the Japanese marines who had landed, and they were continuing to clear out the fleeing enemy troops.

The Okinawan islanders who were lucky enough to survive were not like walking corpses, wandering their homes burned to the ground, trying to find something to work out of the collapsed ruins and thick ashes. Other islanders, who still have houses for the time being, blocked their doors and windows with wooden bars and furniture, and watched through the narrow cracks in the doors as the rising sun flag on the pier was once again raised......

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Three months ago, when the news of the atomic bombing of Tokyo, the extermination of the imperial family, and the collapse of the empire came one after another, the people of Okinawa Prefecture, like other prefectures in Japan, were plunged into great confusion and confusion. Then, when the "Provisional Government of Japan," which had appeared out of nowhere, issued a proclamation to the outside world, declaring that it would endure humiliation, negotiate an armistice and make peace, and would not hesitate to surrender unconditionally to the US military for this purpose, the vast majority of the people of Okinawa Prefecture, who had been hesitant and uneasy, responded to this announcement enthusiastically and enthusiastically almost without thinking, and had no intention of avenging the emperor at all.

-- Unlike the prefectures of the Japanese archipelago, Okinawa and the Ryukyu Islands were to the Japanese Empire more closely related to Ireland to Britain. It is not so much the mainland as the colonies that were annexed earlier. The indigenous people of this island are not part of the Yamato people, they have their own language and civilization. Between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Okinawa saw the emergence of three primitive tribal states that practiced aristocratic feudal divisions: the Kitayama Kingdom, the Nakayama Kingdom, and the Nanzan Kingdom. Then, as the saying goes, there can be a storm in the teacup, and a series of wars have taken place between these three mini-small countries. Eventually, the Nakayama Kingdom, ruled by the Shang family, completed the great cause of unification and established the Ryukyu Kingdom, which lasted for 500 years.

However, despite the name of a "kingdom" in the cowhide, Ryukyu is a small land with barren land and a small population. If you want to measure the strength of the ancient country of the Ryukyus, I am afraid that it is not easy to compare with the example of China, but in the case of Japan, the Owari Province started by Oda Nobunaga, the overlord of the Warring States period, the annual production of rice was 570,000 koku. And what is the height of the stone in the Ryukyu Kingdom? It's only 120,000 stones!

In other words, the so-called Ryukyu Kingdom was only one-fifth of the strength of Oda Nobunaga, the daimyo of Owari Province at the time of the Battle of Barrel Sama. The country has basically no mines worth mentioning, nor does it have any lucrative specialties, and even iron tools are largely imported. There was not enough food to eat, and before the introduction of sweet potatoes, the common people of the Ryukyus had been feeding on grains and even cycad fruit flour, which was called "cycad hell".

Fortunately, the geographical location of the Ryukyu Kingdom itself is a very valuable bargaining chip. At the beginning of the Age of Discovery, Ryukyu Island was an important transit trading port in the Far East. Relying on the lucrative income from multilateral trade between China, Korea, Japan, Malaya and the Spice Islands, the tiny Ryukyu Kingdom once enjoyed a golden age of prosperity for more than a century, with tall shrines, pagodas, and stone tortoiseshell tombs erected.

However, this also aroused the covetousness of the evil neighbors in the north - at the beginning of the 17th century, the Satsuma Domain, located at the southernmost tip of Kyushu Island, sent 3,000 troops to cross the sea to the Ryukyus, and easily conquered the island, which had almost no standing army, with only a few miscellaneous soldiers.

However, after all, Ryukyu and Satsuma are far apart, the language and race are very different, and with the size and heritage of the Satsuma domain, it is difficult to swallow such a self-contained island country for a while. In addition, if the shell of the Ryukyu Kingdom was retained, the merchants of the Satsuma Domain could also use it to bypass the shogunate's lockdown and the Qing Dynasty's ban on the sea, and continue to trade with China under the banner of "Ryukyu tribute envoys", thus making huge profits and making up for the feudal deficit.

Therefore, although the subsequent Ryukyu Kingdom had to pay taxes and tribute to Satsuma and allowed a Satsuma samurai to be stationed in the country, it basically maintained its internal and cultural independence ♂, and even the language was not assimilated, and its relationship was probably similar to that between the U.S. military stationed in Korea and the Korean government in later generations.

After the Meiji Restoration, the unified Japanese government could no longer tolerate the continued existence of the semi-independent ♂ Ryukyu Kingdom, and in 1879 it formally annexed the Ryukyus, turning it into Okinawa Prefecture, and began to Japaneseize the islanders...... In this way, the Japanese Empire's inclusion of Okinawa was more than a decade earlier than the annexation of Taiwan, and it was not enough for the remnants of the Ryukyu Kingdom to regard themselves as Japanese.

-- Both the feelings for Japan as a country and loyalty to His Majesty the Emperor are very weak in the hearts of the people of Okinawa Prefecture. Whether it was the Satsuma Domain or the later Meiji government, Okinawa was mainly looted and pressed. Therefore, at this time, except for a few Japanese immigrants who later moved in, most of the native-born locals, or remnants of the Ryukyu Kingdom, had no sense of belonging to Japan as a country.

Therefore, when the news of the collapse of the Japanese Empire reached the Ryukyu Islands, except for a small number of "ball traitors" who were deeply educated by the imperial people, and the Japanese expatriates who later moved in, the vast majority of the people of Okinawa Prefecture, who had already been tortured to death by forced conscription, conscription of marching troops, war taxes, and national defense debts, were relieved and relieved, and then they could not wait to rush to the prefectural office together to petition the prefectural governor collectively, asking him to send a telegram as soon as possible to recognize the "Provisional Government of Japan" that had surrendered unconditionally to the Allies, and to stay away from the war from now on. So as not to attract poison gas bombs and atomic bombs from the U.S. military to Okinawa.

However, Governor Shimada, who is in charge of Okinawa Prefecture as an official loyal to His Majesty the Emperor, did not want to express his position so quickly. On the one hand, it is that it is not possible to pass the hurdle in his heart for the time being, and on the other hand, the US military is still far away after all, and it seems that there is no need to jump out too quickly. Besides, although the palace and wartime base camp in Tokyo are all over, the empire's million-strong army is still there, and the invincible combined fleet is still there, who knows what will happen in the future?

However, the public opinion was difficult to disobey: the people of Okinawa Prefecture, who saw that Governor Shimada was always procrastinating and sloppy, and had little affection for the Japanese Empire, but were afraid of being bombed by the US nuclear bombs, suddenly became anxious, and they did not know who instigated them, and actually broke out a riot, and even the police, who were born locally, sided with them. Moreover, since it was a rear island far from the battlefield, Okinawa Prefecture at this time did not have any garrisons at all. There were two divisions stationed on the nearby island of Taiwan, and the problem was that the Taiwanese governor was the first to accept the surrender announcement...... Where does this leave the Governor to ask for help?

Mr. Shimada, the governor of Okinawa Prefecture, who had nothing to do about it, hung up the seal in a fit of anger and went home and closed his door. After a few days of trouble at the Okinawa Prefectural Office, the "revolutionary masses" finally elected a "highly respected" elementary school principal, who was said to be an old man descended from the Ryukyu royal family of the Shang clan, to serve as the "regent of Okinawa", and at the same time issued a telegram to surrender unconditionally to the Allies.

At this point, the unrest in Okinawa Prefecture seemed to have come to an end, and the situation calmed down for the time being. Although the relationship between the Japanese immigrants and the indigenous people of the Ryukyus became extremely tense during this turmoil, after all, both sides were in a panic and waited for the judgment of fate, and neither was in the mood to fight.

In late November, however, two destroyers, a gunboat, and two merchant ships, carrying hundreds of officers and men of the Japanese Navy and Army, as well as expatriates, arrived at the port of Naha in Okinawa. They were all Japanese officers and soldiers and expatriates who had fled from the island of Taiwan, and because they refused to surrender to the Allied forces, they preferred to return to China on their own. I thought that when I arrived in Okinawa Prefecture, I would have stepped on the mainland with half of my feet, but I didn't want to take a look here, but I found that there was a group of "non-nationals" entrenched in the Okinawa Prefectural Office: in order to welcome the Allied occupation and takeover, the islanders even hung all kinds of handmade Star-Spangled Banners on the streets of Naha!

Seeing this, the warriors of the imperial army were furious, and they were fooled by several radical staff officers, and immediately opened their knives to kill people and punish heaven. After some of the dead people, the local islanders of Okinawa also took out their weapons stockpiles and began to fight against the resurging Imperial Army -- even the remnants of the Ryukyu Kingdom in Okinawa Prefecture had received sufficient militaristic education and training during this era, and regardless of whether they had the loyalty to die for the emperor for the time being, at least the basic combat capability of the militia level was still possessed...... The scale of the battle soon became bigger and bigger, and in the face of the swarming "armed mob", the destroyers of the Japanese Navy had to use naval guns to bombard the docks, and for a time the flesh and blood flew everywhere. Many Japanese immigrants, who have settled on the island for generations, are also drawn into this bloody dispute, helplessly embroiled in an ever-expanding vendetta. For a time, the whole county was full of gunsmoke, like pirates attacking the city......

Then, before the Japanese Imperial Army, which was "defending the country with iron and blood", had a result with the people of the Ryukyus, who had "lived up to the emperor's grace", the Americans also came here.

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-- Almost at the same time as the Battle of Nagoya was going on, MacArthur, who was in command of the operation, sent a number of small troops to take over the surrendered local powers of the Japanese Empire. Later, although MacArthur became a prisoner and was put in an iron cage to parade through the streets, the surrender continued.

Among them, because Okinawa is a transportation hub between Japan, Chinese mainland, and the island of Taiwan, and its geographical location is relatively critical, the US military mobilized an escort aircraft carrier, a heavy cruiser, a tank landing ship, four destroyers, and several merchant ships to form a small detachment, carrying a regiment of the Anzac Corps, plus a battalion of the 1st Marine Division, all the way from Tokyo to take charge of the surrender of Okinawa Prefecture.

As a result, the "diehard Japanese fascists" who had been committing murder on Okinawa a moment ago were immediately subjected to the brutal suppression of the US military in all directions, from aircraft bombing to cruiser shelling to tank crushing. The two destroyers, a gunboat, and two merchant ships parked in the harbor were all blown up or captured before they could react, and the Japanese soldiers who had already landed were quickly driven out of the city and scattered in the countryside.

Next, the Japanese immigrants who had moved to Okinawa for several generations in the city of Naha Port were also taken out of their homes one by one by the red-eyed Ryukyuan people and executed en masse by the red-eyed American troops in broad daylight...... The island is full of corpses and a sea of blood, and its scene is like purgatory.

But the problem was that after killing a few groups of Japanese immigrants who could be found, the American soldiers, who had been completely out of control in the slaughter, began to turn their guns on the natives of the Ryukyus, who saw the damn yellow-skinned monkeys no different. In particular, those Anzac soldiers burned and looted everywhere on the island, doing all kinds of evil, which soon aroused the resistance of the Ryukyuan people, and for a time the guns in the streets and alleys broke out again, and the corpses were in shambles.

Then, the so-called praying mantis catches cicadas, and yellow finches follow. Just when the island was filled with gunsmoke and endless fighting, bombers and torpedo groups of Japanese naval aviation suddenly appeared on the skyline above Okinawa, and countless steel battleships also appeared on the distant horizon!

-- After receiving a distress telegram from the Japanese troops trapped in Okinawa, especially the naval officers and men on the two destroyers, Admiral Horiyoshi, who commanded the Combined Fleet's aircraft carrier mobile fleet and transport ship regiment to go north from the Truk anchorage and was about to go to Hainan Island to join the battleship formation, hastily ordered a temporary diversion to Okinawa to save his comrades-in-arms and compatriots from the butcher's knife of the "American and British white animals...... At this time, although he did not have the most formidable battleship in his hands, he concentrated the essence of the naval aviation of the United Fleet, as well as a large number of escorted cruisers and destroyers......

As a result, on the battlefield of Okinawa, the positions of hunters and prey fell one by one again...... The vagaries of the world are truly dizzying.

In this way, in less than a week, Naha Port, the capital of Okinawa Prefecture, was plowed three times by naval guns and bombs, and completely turned into a pile of rubble, and the population of Naha Port, the capital of Okinawa, was evaporated by almost one-third of the world......