Chapter 26 Toshiro Diary (24)

March twenty-fourth. It was a sunny day with a blue sky.We sing for the spring of the recovery of all things. Defense work has been completed.At the end of the project, these sixteen coolies who have been working obediently will go to heaven. The team leader, Second Lieutenant Murashita, called us to discuss whether to kill them.I don't think this group of poor old people should be killed, of course there are also middle-aged men among them.They are all farmers, not enemies.They have been working very tamely, without the slightest intention of resistance, and regard our will as their own will. I advocate that these people should be released.

"However, Dongjun," the team leader paused, and continued, "What if they go to the enemy to inform you? They built our position!" "Then there is only a decisive battle to the end. I won't retreat. I don't think it's a big deal. Just relying on their group of remnants and defeated generals, they won't be able to make a big deal." "I can't do this. I'm the captain. I have to keep everyone alive and not let any of my subordinates get hurt." "They were good farmers, they worked hard, they were obedient, and they didn't fight back. I don't think it's okay to kill these people. It's inhumane."

"Is there any humanity in war?" "Is there really no humanity in war?" "With humanity in mind, can you still go to war?" "I think even during war there are times when you have to be humane, but not always." "What you mean by humanity is compassion?" "No, being humane is not just compassion. I only know the definition written in the dictionary is: the morality that people should follow. I don't understand other philosophical meanings. I tried to think about the issue of humanity through wars, but I couldn't find it. I don’t understand. I’m struggling with the two definitions of brutality and humanity. I think I can still distinguish between humanity and the way soldiers should follow during war. When I swing a knife to kill the enemy, I don’t There is a slight hesitation. But when killing these farmers, these people who work in peace, you should still consider it. I can't explain the issue of humanity from a philosophical point of view, but I don't think they should be killed."

"Can you prove that they are good farmers?" "They must be peasants. If they were enemy soldiers, they would not have been in the village that morning." "That's too arbitrary. I don't think they are all crippled enemies. But if there is an enemy mixed in here, the situation will be serious.And we couldn't find this enemy, no one in our team could speak Chinese.Freeing them means the arrival of the enemy.Still want to kill!Maybe you sympathize with them.I really don't understand how you can sympathize with them.I didn't expect you to have this side in your nature.But kill anyway. "

"but……" "Nothing but, we don't love the enemy. To love the enemy is to hate one's unit. As a squad leader, I can't let anyone under my command get hurt." I disagree very much in my heart, and even dislike the actions of the squad leader.I sincerely hope they will be released and have interceded for them several times.What a tragedy it would be if I were one of them! Innocent family members were tortured and killed, and their own houses were also destroyed. Now they are forced to do hard labor, and they will still be beheaded in the end. I have nothing to do with your enemies and your armies.I'm just a farmer who wields a shovel and lives off the land all his life.I have nothing to do with the war, rely on the sky, and have always dealt with the land.Why do I have to face this kind of divorce.

The disaster of family ruin and death, but also own old life?This is too cruel, isn't this a sin? I am just a farmer with no education and know nothing.This land has graciously raised me.But people from the same land are now taking my old life as well.I haven't done anything bad.My wife, son, and grandson are also innocent.Why should we suffer this misfortune?This is really inhumane, and there will always be retribution! They must be saying this silently in their hearts. When I think of this, I feel a kind of heartfelt sympathy. Sixteen people were brought out of the basement with a rope around their necks.As the ropes were tied around their necks, the barren hill soldiers kicked and beat them viciously.

"Hey! People who are going to die, don't treat them so roughly!" I said. "They're dishonest!" he said, playing harder.He seemed to think it would be braver to take such a move in public. Except for two or three strong men in their forties, almost all of these coolies are elderly people over fifty.The last one brought out was a short old man who seemed to be over seventy years old, and his steps were awkward. I couldn't help thinking, why must they be killed?What about them looks like an enemy soldier? "Captain, can we just kill the young ones and leave these old men behind?" I said.But the team leader replied: "These Chinese people killed our soldiers, there is no need to save them."

I looked at the faces of the Chinese people lined up.Their faces were full of tension and pain.They didn't snort or say a word, they just held their necks high and their eyes were as sharp as the fangs of a beast.They never expected to be beheaded, and it was not until a rope was put around their necks that they realized that death was not far from them. For some reason, the fourth old man from the left always reminds me of my father. His cheeks are sunken, he is a little bald, and several wrinkles extend long to the left and right. The mouth is not big, the chin is a little upturned, and it is covered with beard.With protruding cheekbones and a thin face, his features resembled my elderly father's.Thinking about it this way makes him feel even more pitiful.Two days ago, I gave the old man two packs of cigarettes.Today I wanted to give him another cigarette before he died, but he took out the cigarette I gave him a few days ago from his arms.I struck a match and wanted to light it for him, but he threw the cigarette out with an angry face.As long as it was offered by the Japanese soldiers, he would not accept even a single cigarette.

I looked at the extinguished matchstick in my hand, and at his face, but didn't make a sound.I can understand what he's feeling at the moment, and I don't hate him for taking that attitude.Although he is usually enslaved to do hard work, but because he is so similar to my father, I can't hate him.I suddenly had an urge to save the old man from the knife. I yelled, "Don't kill the old man!" At this moment, Chuan Tu, Kinoshita, Takema, and Barayama, these bastards—in my opinion, they are a bunch of bastards—opposed in unison. In desperation, I returned to the room in frustration, but when I saw sixteen people slowly moving forward like lambs being pulled to the slaughterhouse from the window, I felt an irresistible urge to rush out. The room followed.Soldiers like Chuantu, Zhujian, Kinoshita, and Huangshan were like wolves chasing lambs, proud of themselves.They are like wolves who can't bear the hunger and will lick the lamb's legs from time to time. Sometimes they whip their whips, sometimes they pick up sticks and hit their backs hard, sometimes they kick them with their feet, and sometimes they are like training them. Scolded loudly like a dog.

Those poor old people were sometimes kicked and rolled on the ground, sometimes bent down, and sometimes pushed to the ground.The four soldiers seemed to be showing off who was more vicious and vicious.I have no sympathy for them.They felt that it was only natural for the wolf to pounce on the lamb, and there was no trace of guilt or conscience condemnation in their attitude. In what form should conscience and morality appear on a cruel battlefield? After crossing the railway, the old people who were tied together with ropes knelt down on the ground, wept in grief, and kowtowed repeatedly to beg for mercy.

I thought to myself: That's right, begging them to spare their lives, as long as I can arouse a little compassion from them. Unexpectedly, Huangshan kicked these people kneeling on the ground with the hard toe of his shoes, and even raised the stick, like hitting a dog and swung it over. Their faces were swollen from the beating, and blood oozed out; their clothes were torn, and their legs were also bleeding from the torn clothes.Even so, they still shouted desperately: "My lord! My lord!" They begged and knelt down. They were kicked and rolled on the ground, then stood up by their necks, and staggered forward. I roared angrily: "Barenshan!" I started to untie the rope around the neck of the old man who looked exactly like my father.Takejian sternly stopped me, but I still managed to untie the rope. At this moment, Barren Mountain, Chuantu, and Kinoshita all shouted loudly: "Dongjun! Stop it! Stop it!" I was not to be outdone: "You can't kill such people, they are too pitiful." "This is pitiful, and that is pitiful, so let's not kill any of them." The four of them shouted. "Then let them all go, isn't it over! I think you are afraid of the enemy's night attack! Bastards!" I replied. But I didn't insist and went back to my room.In the end, no one could be saved.I was surrounded by a feeling of loneliness.I began to try to reflect: "Is someone like me a coward?" I revisited my combat experience, and I think I can state uprightly that I have never been timid, flinched, and have never done anything against my conscience. No matter what the battle is, I have never sneaked up on someone from behind,? I have never sneaked from the battlefield, I am not afraid of fighting.I think I can say without exaggeration that when the enemy comes to attack, I will never feel timid.This is not blind self-confidence, nor is it bragging. Look at those four soldiers again! Kinoshita is a coward who stays behind as soon as he hears that there is a battle. He has not fought a battle until now.One night, when he was on guard in Nanlouxia Village, he heard the sound of a horse scratching the ground with its front hooves, and he shouted: "The enemy is attacking!" When they were on the front line, they didn't see how brave Kawakami and Takema were.Among the four of them, only Lieutenant Huang Shan was brave.His bravery is well-known to everyone.He fought tenaciously in any battle.He is a self-absorbed man, but at the same time a brave and brutal soldier. After a while, all sixteen coolies were executed.Noguchi, who witnessed the whole process, said: "They were taken halfway up the mountain. There was a small path with a slight slope. They were killed on the side of the road.They already understood what was going to happen, and all of them were very calm.They sat down calmly, stretching their necks forward, with an admirable poise.It is often said that the samurai in ancient Japan regarded death as home, and their calm attitude was no less than that of Japanese samurai.Only two of them tried to escape for their lives. "The lieutenant who was the captain of the chariot team beheaded four people. His movements were skillful and neat, and everyone admired him. When the lieutenant cut off the head of the fifth man, he said that he should leave a little flesh. His knife skills are really good. The severed head hangs down, only a little bit of flesh is connected to the body. "Those people watched their companions being killed one by one, without showing a trace of resistance or fear, and when it was their turn, they took a step forward, not like someone about to be beheaded, but like going to heaven. "Huangshan picked out one, two, and three with a bayonet. When he was about to pick the fourth, he saw the tall man in his early forties standing up all of a sudden, with his chest open for you to stab." His imposing manner. His eyes stared fiercely at the barren mountain. Huang Shan stabbed him with a knife.He fell down in response, but suddenly made a noise as if remembering something, opened his eyes wide, and stood up again.Despite the blood gurgling out of his chest, he called a private in Japanese, then stood firmly with his legs apart, raised his right hand and smiled, as if he was waiting for the second cut. He looked very heroic, and we were all stunned. Huang Shan yelled "Damn it" and went up and stabbed him again.The man finally died. "Chuan Tu and Take Jian, who kicked and beat the coolies along the way, didn't kill anyone. Kinoshita used a bayonet to bluff the corpses killed by others, only stabbing them an inch or two deep. They were ridiculed by everyone. Our squad leader didn't kill anyone." After listening to what he said, I felt that my thinking might be wrong.It seems that there is indeed a remnant enemy among them, and it is that middle-aged man. After the team leader came back, he said, "Dong Jun, there are really enemies in here! The guy from Barren Mountain may be the leader of the enemy army!" I began to reflect on my actions and feelings in my mind. The man who was presumed to be the leader of the enemy army was very courageous, he knew the ranks of Japanese soldiers, and he actually knew the Japanese expression for first class soldiers.If we let him go, although we are not afraid of enemy attacks, the losses will be huge.As a small leader, in order to minimize the damage of his subordinates and minimize unnecessary sacrifices, even though I sympathized with other farmers from my personal feelings, I still decided to kill them all from the overall situation. Now I finally understand the small leader’s point of view. Meaning. War is the unrestricted exercise of violence.There is nothing more terrifying on the battlefield than Song Xianggong's benevolence. My shallow view of humanity is just like Song Xianggong's benevolence. A zoomed-in shot was fixed in my mind, that is, the man crossed his legs, straightened his chest, raised his right hand, and was covered in blood.I think he seems to be laughing at my Song Xianggong Zhiren. It is true that a bloody struggle is going on now, and our task is not to stroke the heads of the Chinese people, our hands should beat their heads hard, smash their bones, mercilessly... But this is what we want do everything?This war, this undeclared war, on the other hand, doesn't it also need to do appeasement work? ! Wars are fought to win, and in order to win, any weapon must be used.So must morality be exchanged for bullets?Should morality also be a victim of victory?If victories can be won by trampling on morality, must we also sacrifice morality without hesitation? No matter what will be dangerous to us, or has been harmful to us, and everything that may be harmful or may not be harmful, we must not be condemned by human feelings and moral conscience, and kill immediately without hesitation, is it right for us? Is the only requirement to turn us into cold, inhuman machines? In order to win, as long as there is a little obstacle in our way to victory, including everyone who may be an obstacle in the past, present, and future, we have to be like killing machines without thought, morality, and humanity , with ruthless precision to get the job done? But no matter what theory we follow, we are still human beings who cry when we see sad things and clap our hands when we see happy things. In order to complete the task accurately, we must combine cold judgment, strong will and courage to go forward.This requires us to correctly judge whether our emotions are the benevolence of Duke Xiang of the Song Dynasty, or the shrine of jidingbu (this is one of the treasures hidden in Horyuji Temple, an ancient famous temple in Japan, and it is named after the wings of jidingbug embedded.) The Sasa painted on the base Beat the foolishness of the prince who sacrificed his life to feed the tiger, so as to take the right action. The sympathy I have for the peasants today, which is quite natural to a common man, is a mistake in me, for I am a soldier fighting to win. So why do human beings keep repeating the history of tragedy and bloody struggle?I really don't understand, I have no clue. Will human beings finally start a struggle to allocate the land of the moon? During the dozens of days of marching, I didn't see a stone or a mountain.What I see is that the land in the east is connected with the clouds in the distance, and the land in the west is connected with the sky in the distance.The sun rises from the earth and falls into the earth again. The boundless land contains all races. When we are exhausted by marches and wars, or when we stand on guard at night, we sigh and look up at the sky, and we can only see the earth on which we live, the earth on which we march and fight day and night, and the hundreds of millions of twinkling stars in the sky. The moon hangs coldly over my head, but she is also shining on the heads of people in my hometown thousands of miles away.For dozens of days, we marched sweating and exhausted. We thought we were far away from our hometown, but the moon illuminated the two places at the same time. How majestic and magnificent the universe is! Compared with the universe, what human beings think is the greatest and most magnificent cause - war, should appear so small! The world is boundless, and we regard war as great, but it is nothing compared to the world. I sometimes get lost in it, thinking hard about such absurd comparisons and never-ending questions. Why do wars happen?Someone cited the reasons why war was inevitable. (1) Personality Every being is called a personality.The universe is made up of all personalities, especially creatures and human beings are made up of the personalities and traditions on which they depend.If people want to maintain their individuality, there must be war in a broad sense. If you don't have the desire to fight people, you lose your individuality.A nation must maintain its individuality if it is to continue to exist.The so-called powerful personality refers to the power to fight.The best shortcut to peace is to eliminate one's individuality.The peace thus obtained, however, can only be a peace which entails its own fate of slavery and national decay.This is the peace pictured by an intellect accustomed to abandoning individuality.If you want to adapt to reality, you have to sink into this peace. (2) The development of history History is development.In this development process, merely preserving oneself means only destroying oneself in the end.In order not only to preserve oneself, but also to develop oneself, all this must be fought.If you don't love fighting, why not retreat by yourself.Self-retreat can only be known in the process of destroying oneself. The so-called survival is progress.The so-called progress is hard work for oneself, and when it comes to this, it must be a battle against others.Many dynasties in history perished. They did not perish naturally, but had to fight for their own demise.The development of history endowed this ironic fate. (3) The morality of the universe According to the oriental thinking since ancient times, morality is not only the value of human beings formed by related contracts between individuals, but human relations are based on the deep and wide way of heaven. To embrace as individuality; to cover nothing up, but to let them all have their place, the mandala of the universe.It is benevolence, compassion, and morality.However, actual existence has this nature in its essence, and reality is far from it.To lead the reality, unless there is a real order and both people are pure, it must go through war.What hinders this true order is evil, and the effort to eliminate this evil and realize reality is good and justice. The just must wage war.This kind of war is the moral war that comes from the morality of the universe.All nations and all nations can see that our war of siege is a holy war. Our war is neither a simple war of ideas nor a war of annexation in vain.The so-called "taking Bafu as one character" does not mean grabbing other ethnic groups and putting them in a pigsty; "Wei Yining" is not simply equivalent to a family, but turned into a cosmic world. Broadly recognize the individuality of all societies and nations, establish order, and realize the true meaning of the universe in the new order.In order to achieve this cosmic morality, there must indeed be a truly holy war. ——Excerpt from "War and Intellect" by Tetsuji Nakayoshi Some people say that war is an inevitable process of biological survival.Should we not cherish this inevitability?If war is an inevitability, then we have no choice but to cast aside pity, harden our hearts to pursue strength, gain strength, and advance in battle.As a reality, having power is justice, and justice is power. I was lost in thought, smoking a cigarette. Every day is a cloudless and sunny day.But this evening, the storm suddenly came.Looking from the window, strange dark clouds cover the sky.Before long, big raindrops "ba da da da" poured down like a waterfall, and after a while, hailstones like shrapnel also fell.The sound of tempered hail and the sound of cascading rain filled the earth.Compared with the bright and beautiful spring scenery in recent days, compared with the brilliant sun just now, it is a different land. Sixteen corpses killed before this rain were drenched by the rain.I looked at the mountains in the distance and smoked a cigarette. Suddenly, "Bah! Bah! Bah!" Gunshots rang out, and the station staff ran in, shouting, "Sneak attack!" I snorted and still lay there smoking.It's raining so much, how can I go outside?Alas, no big deal.I'm still lying there. The gunshots of about ten bullets stopped, Xiao Dao waited for the soldiers to come in, shook his wet clothes, and said, "Sixteen people were killed today. The two coolies who remained were trying to escape by taking advantage of the storm, so they will see you soon." Hades." I sarcastically said: "You've become a drowned chicken, thank you for your hard work." He took the credit and went straight to report to the team leader, and I smoked cigarettes again. Kojima is a man who is very flattering and shows great enthusiasm for his boss.He was a sophomore who had been our recruit's administrator.He wants us to talk about the spirit of the soldiers, deliberately making things difficult for us, and I don't know how many times I have been scolded by him about smoking.At night, I went to the place where the spittoon was placed behind the squadron to hide from smoking, and I was repeatedly reprimanded maliciously by him.