Chapter 133 7. The tragic "three lights" battle

The May 1st "mopping up" by the Japanese army in Central Hebei was the largest in the inhuman "Sanguang" campaign carried out by Ningji Okamura as the commander of the "Central China Expeditionary Force" in North China. On July 7, 1937, Japan launched the "July 7 Incident" and the war of aggression against China began.Neiji Okamura was appointed as the commander of the "Central China Dispatch Army" of the Japanese invading army, and became one of the biggest executioners of the Japanese invaders who massacred the Chinese people.Because of his meritorious service in China, he was promoted to the highest rank of the Japanese army in 1941 and appointed as the supreme commander of Japan's "North China Dispatch Army".

In order to deal with the Communist Eighth Route Army, the anti-Japanese armed forces and the people in North China, Neiji Okamura really racked his brains. He recalled: "The Communist Army is really good at espionage and resourceful, and often our small troops are wiped out. For this reason , I ordered the General Staff to compile a booklet called "Guidelines for Suppressing the Communists", which listed examples in this regard to prevent disasters, and described the essentials of crusade against the Communist Army based on experience. The booklet was handed over to each unit for reference in combat. The book has played a great role, and even the Kuomintang army, which can be regarded as our ancestors in combating the Communist army, immediately translated this book into Chinese and used it after the armistice.”

Neiji Okamura hated the elusive anti-Japanese guerrilla warfare carried out by the residents behind the enemy lines led by the Communist Party's Eighth Route Army, and because this anti-Japanese guerrilla warfare was a people's war mobilized by tens of thousands of people, it won the support of Chinese peasants. Absolute support and support.Therefore, Neiji Okamura tried every means to cut off the fish-water connection between our anti-Japanese soldiers and civilians.The scheming Neiji Okamura finally came up with a cruel method of rectification, which he called the "Public Security and Rectification" movement.That is to say, the occupied areas in North China were divided into three types: one was the "public security area" (that is, the enemy-occupied area), the other was the "quasi-public security area" (that is, the guerrilla area contested by the enemy and ourselves), and the third was the non-public security area (that is, the area occupied by the Eighth Route Army and the Anti-Japanese Armed Forces). Liberated areas where the regime behind enemy lines was established).The Japanese army implemented different cruel policies for these three types of areas.

Focus on "clearing townships" for "security areas", strengthen the Baojia system, implement large-scale compilation of townships by enclosing forests, strengthen traitor spy activities, and implement deceptive and soft policies to enslave the people. For the "quasi-law and order areas", "cannibalization" is the main focus, and the policy of terror is combined with the policy of softness, and the so-called "insulation policy" is implemented to drive the people in the guerrilla areas into the enemy-occupied areas, destroy the original villages, and cruelly create "insurgents". "inhabited area" in an attempt to sever the connection between the Eighth Route Army of the Communist Party and the people.

For "non-public security areas", Okamura Ningji adopted "mopping up" as the main method and implemented "combustible operations". Okamura Ningji's "Jinniu Operation" is the "Sanguang" operation.It is to suddenly attack the villages that cooperate with the Eighth Route Army, kill their residents, seize their food, and burn their houses.The Japanese army called this kind of operation a crusade, and its troops were called a crusade.The crusade team wanted to kill every single resident of the "unsafe zone", burn down every room without leaving anything behind, and loot everything without leaving anything. In 1941 and 1942, 75% and 63% of the invasion force against China were used to carry out continuous and brutal "mopping up" of the base areas of the Eighth Route Army. Among them, there were 174 times with more than 1,000 soldiers, and a total of nearly one million troops were used.

On May 1, 1942, Ning Okamura once again carried out a large-scale "sweep" in the central Hebei region of North China.In order to win this big "mopping up", Okamura Ningji commanded the Japanese and puppet troops to build 1,500 strongholds and 10,000 miles of network roads in 8,000 villages and 60,000 square kilometers of land in the Jizhong Plain. .Neiji Okamura created tactics such as "vertical and horizontal attack", "diagonal suppression", and "fishing with nets". During this sweep, Okamura Neji personally went to the stronghold of Sicha Town, Zaonan County, southern Hebei to oversee the battle. Because the party and government organs of the Central Hebei Military Region had been transferred, Okamura Neji rushed to nothing, so he commanded the troops to use planes to straf and fight. The rapid ground troops chased and intercepted, and drove a large number of young and middle-aged men from dozens of villages in the east of Zaonan to Wangjun Village, where they carried out a tragic massacre. They set up 4 killing fields in the village for 6 days.A large number of innocent people were tied up in a row, or connected in a row with iron wire through their collarbone, and imprisoned under the threat of bayonets, and then used various cruel methods to kill them in batches.

In the first killing field, they tied the people with their feet bound behind the horses, galloped the horses, dragged the people all over their bodies with blood and mud, and dismembered their limbs until they died tragically. The second killing field was next to a water hole. They asked the people who were driven here about the whereabouts of the Eighth Route Army. After surfacing, the Japanese army shot and killed him. The third killing field was next to a pigsty. The pen was full of excrement and water, and the stench was overwhelming. The Japanese army threw several people into the pigsty and beat them with bricks. Some people's heads were bloody. Directly, the pain was unbearable, and there were screams, and some people were crushed to death.The Japanese army grinned grinningly.Seeing this, other people ran around desperately. The Japanese army immediately shot them to death, threw their bodies into a pigsty, piled them with firewood, and set them on fire.

The fourth killing field is on a threshing floor. First, they spread the grain and haystacks to form a big circle, set off a big fire, and pushed the people tied with ropes and wires into the fire one by one, alive. burn to death.Then set up a few guillotines, press the masses under the guillotines one by one, and cut off their heads. One of the guillotines killed more than 20 people in one breath.Immediately, the corpse was lying horizontally and vertically, the head rolled down, and blood flowed into a river. After that, they brought many purlins and wooden furniture, knocked down the people they caught one by one, and built them up layer by layer of wood and layer by layer.The victims fought with the Japanese soldiers, but in the end, due to the large number of Japanese soldiers and the confrontation with knives and guns, these people who were tied up with ropes and wrapped around their collarbones with wires could not break free. It was still big, as tall as a person, and more than 100 people entered at a time.The Japanese army poured kerosene on it and set it ablaze. The threshing floor was filled with flames and thick smoke.

After the massacre, Neiji Okamura’s troops set fire to houses and raped women. All women who did not escape, ranging from old women in their 60s to young girls as young as 11, were all raped and gang-raped by the Japanese army. , All the livestock were robbed and eaten by the Japanese army, and the property was either robbed or burned. In this tragedy, the Japanese army killed more than 200 innocent people.After the Japanese army retreated, a village full of life suddenly turned into a tragic cemetery.