Chapter 54 5. Eliminate "Japanese police officers who eat foreign bread"

On February 4, 1937, the Third Army and the Sixth Army of the Northeast Anti-Japanese Allied Army joined forces to attack Luobei, severely damaged the 37th Regiment of the Japanese Army, and once invaded the county.The Anti-Japanese League’s records of this battle are detailed and impressive, including the number of Japanese soldiers killed, which are all in line with the Japanese records. The only problem is that the “Japanese Instructor Iwasaki of the Luobei Police Department” is included in the killed personnel. list.According to the records of the Japanese army, the other Japanese soldiers who were killed belonged to the 37th Regiment, not including this Iwasaki.

That being the case, what is going on with this Iwasaki?misremembered? In Japan, there are a batch of police files sorted out in the late 1940s, and Iwasaki was indeed found in them, and he was indeed killed by the Anti-Japanese Alliance. It can be seen from the records that this "Japanese Instructor Iwasaki" daimyo Iwasaki Tetsugoro, with the title of police lieutenant, died in the battle on February 4, about ten kilometers away from Luobei County at that time. Head road forest.Iwasaki, a native of Niigata, was killed when he commanded the pseudo-police to participate in the battle because the "leader command" exposed the target. He did not die in Luobei County or Shangjieji, where the fighting was most intense.It is speculated that this was a battle that occurred when the Japanese army urgently recruited the surrounding Japanese and puppet military and police forces for reinforcements when the county was in an emergency, but was blocked by the Anti-Japanese Alliance.

On April 6, the Japanese side also sent a letter to the puppet Manchukuo Sanjiang for him, Suzuki Masaaki (from Ibaraki, police officer) and Nobuo Inoue (Kochi, police officer), the instructor of the Fujin County Police Bureau. The provincial police department applied for pensions, and the three Japanese police instructors all "died in the line of duty" in early 1938. It seems that the Anti-Union side confused the results of these two battles. It is worth noting that the Japanese file recording Iwasaki's death shows that he is not a Japanese member of the police department of the Puppet Manchukuo, but the police force of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan.

The police force of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan is a Japanese armed force that has rampant activities in the Northeast, but is rarely recorded by our side.According to Japanese sources, the original purpose of this police force is similar to that of the US Marine Corps stationed in embassies around the world.They learn Western etiquette and have a relatively high level of education. Their main responsibility is to protect the safety of embassies and consulates abroad.Because they are paid well and even their clothes are Western-style, they are called "police officers who eat foreign bread".

The time when this Japanese armed force engaged in military activities in China can be traced back to the Gengzi Incident, when it participated in the battle of the Yihe Regiment in Beijing.As Japan's infiltration and aggression in the Northeast continued to intensify, they entered the hinterland of the three Northeast provinces with the increase of consulates in various places in the Northeast.At this time, this force was no longer just a guard force. Most of its members had received training in espionage, assault, and anti-guerrilla warfare, and became effective accomplices of the Japanese army's aggression in China.After the founding of the Puppet Manchukuo, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs dispatched well-equipped foreign ministry police to the Puppet Manchukuo police force to act as "instructors" in various places, actually supervise the actions of the Puppet Manchukuo police, and urge them to fight against the resistance forces such as the Anti-Japanese Alliance. and prevent it from coming into contact with resistance forces.

The police officers dispatched by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are very powerful, and they are called the "overlords" of the puppet Manchukuo police stations.It was not until 1942 that this force under the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs gradually faded out as the control of Manchukuo became more direct. Because of their well-trained, well-equipped, and understanding of anti-guerrilla warfare tactics, combatants such as the instructors of the Police Force of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, as the backbone of the pseudo-police, have caused great losses to the Anti-Japanese Alliance in combat, but they have also become the mainstay of the Anti-Japanese Army. Focus on the target.

According to the death of Iwasaki, if you continue to dig, you will find another surprising thing-in 1938, Luobei County changed four police officers from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, all of whom were killed by the Anti-Japanese League.The first was Tetsugoro Iwasaki, and he was replaced by a Nagano native, police lieutenant Nishizawa Ryuzo, who "died in the line of duty" on April 25. Before sending a replacement, the Sanjiang Provincial Police Department sent a sergeant and a Shizuoka native. Eiichi Suzuki was acting as a temporary agent (because his rank was relatively high, so he was only an agent). As a result, this unlucky Suzuki was shot dead on April 27 on the way to take office.Afterwards, the Japanese army sent people from Aomori Prefecture, and Sergeant Takeuchi Keikichi took over. Takeuchi worked for a long time. As a result, on November 27, he died in battle again. The police lieutenant Sado Tokutaro (Hokkaido) took office together, which means to have a double insurance, and finally worked safely until 1939.

In just one year, in the small county town of Luobei, the Anti-Japanese Army had beaten the Japanese army four times and changed their commanders. I don't know if the mention of this place in the Japanese army would be a little timid. In fact, Tsuboi and Sado were not leaders either. On October 9, 1939, one was shot dead in the battle against the Anti-Japanese Alliance, and the other was tied up by his policemen. According to statistics from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Police History, in 1938 alone, there were 1,047 police casualties from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, most of which were caused by the Anti-Union armed forces.For this reason, in 1939, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan erected a monument in Tianjin for the policemen of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who died in battle, and many shrines were built in various places in Northeast China.It can be seen from this that the resistance of the Anti-Japanese Federation against this enemy.

When studying the history of the Anti-Japanese War, because this unit was not affiliated to the Kwantung Army or the Puppet Manchukuo Police, the Japanese side often ignored it when counting casualties, and many researchers on our side did not know its existence.When counting the results of the Northeast Anti-Japanese Allied Forces, some of the phenomena where the numbers of the two sides are difficult to match stem from whether the losses of this army are included. In 1996, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs declassified the relevant files in its hands and published the 53-volume "History of the Police of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs" (interpreted by Fujio Diye), which contained many records of the activities and losses of this armed force in the Northeast.Perhaps, the future research on this Japanese and puppet armed forces can bring us more surprises in the research on the combat activities of the Anti-Japanese War.