Chapter 23 21. Inhumane arrest of laborers

It was the season of autumn harvest, the sorghum stalks were already ten feet high, and the mature tassels were hanging down. From late August to early September 1941, the Japanese 13th Army, entrenched on the Jinpu Line, began a campaign to capture laborers in the area west of Boshan. The independent and mixed 10th Brigade under the 13th Army was commanded by the brigade commander, Major General Kawada Tsuchitaro, and the headquarters was entrenched in Laiwu City.At that time, as long as they were Chinese men, no matter how old or young they were, they were all arrested. I was in the 3rd Company of the 44th Battalion under the 10th Brigade.Our battalion, under the command of First Commander Eiji Kuni, centered on Tusikou Town, and frantically "grabbed laborers" there.

At 12 o'clock in the middle of the night, we were woken up, only to hear the company commander, Lieutenant Ikeda, shouting: "Today's combat operation is to arrest all the civilians!" We dragged our heavy feet and finally walked to dawn.There was no wind in the fields, and the morning smoke rose straight up.The troops stopped next to a peaceful, quiet village of about 200 families. After a while, the squad leader Matsushita came back from the platoon leader and said, "Hey! Let's go right away! After entering the village, arrest all the ordinary people! Do you understand?" As soon as he finished speaking, we ran across the sorghum field to the village.

As soon as we entered the village, the originally quiet village suddenly uttered various chaotic sounds such as dong dong, bada, bada, hua la, etc., as if a sudden gust of wind blew up and turned into a storm in an instant.The whole class was divided into several three-person groups. I was in a group with a recruit who joined the army at the same time, and a third-year soldier Xiao Chuan.The three of us ran towards the village with our eyes wide open. "Open the door!" Xiao Chuan yelled.I grabbed a wooden stick beside me, pried open the latch, and kicked the door down with one kick.We stepped through the door panel with half a piece of red paper left, and broke into the house like wild dogs.On the half-collapsed kang, lay a skinny and very weak old man, his lips were one by one.Sitting next to her was a woman in her thirties, holding a baby in her arms, staring at the old man's face.I used the point of the bayonet on the gun to pry open the old man's quilt, and saw his body as thin as a dead man's skeleton.

"Damn it, old guy!" Seeing that such a person could no longer be arrested, I muttered, spit, and ran back to the door. "Hey, is there no one inside?" Xiao Chuan ran in from outside with a bottle of liquor in his hand, and asked me a little dissatisfied. "Ah, just a sick old man and a woman" "What? There's a girl?" Xiaochuan's bloodshot eyes immediately showed a lewd smile. "Hey, you guys go to the house next door first, and do a thorough search! Don't dawdle, let the Chinese fool you! I'll be there in a while. Okay, let's go!"

As soon as I left, Xiao Chuan ran into the door of this house.The recruit Abe and I broke into the neighbor's house and turned his house upside down, but there was only a woman in her 40s and a 7-8-year-old boy curled up in a corner.The two of us turned impatiently and went back to the yard, and searched the yard too.When I poked the sorghum stalks that were neatly stacked in the corner halfway with the bayonet, my hand felt as if the tip of the knife had touched something strange. "Hey, ah! There seems to be someone here!" I took half a step back, and tremblingly pushed aside the sorghum stalks with my hands, one bundle, two bundles, three bundles, "Ah!"

I took a step back with Abe.It turned out that a tanned man in his 40s was hidden inside.He squatted there with his lips tightly closed, as if he had made up his mind.Seeing that he was an unarmed peasant, I straightened myself up and said, "This guy surprised me! Hey, Abe, this guy might be a militiaman!" I quickly tied him up with a rope. The woman who had been terrifiedly watching us flip everything we saw, now saw that we were kicking, beating, shouting and scolding us to take her man away, so she hurried over and kowtowed and begged us for mercy, saying, "My lord, My lord, he is a common man, a common man!" she said, and wept.The child forgot the fear of the bayonet and hugged the man's leg all at once.Even I, who don't understand Chinese, can roughly understand what the mother and son are talking about.

"This bastard is still hiding here, he is hopeless!" I kicked the woman's shoulders and neck twice with my muddy foot, but she still kowtowed and cried begging with.Later, maybe seeing that there was no hope, he got up and went back to the house, holding a bag of pancakes wrapped in rags in both hands, and hugged the man tightly as if to tie it around the man's waist. When I saw it, I cursed: "This bitch! Humph, you're still flirting in front of outsiders!" As I spoke, I took the cloth bag from her hand and threw it on the ground, cursing, "These are like leaves. Can the same thing taste good?" After speaking, he stomped on it with his muddy feet, and the pancake made with leaves was crushed immediately.The woman fell to the ground with both hands and picked up the crushed pancake like holding a child, with big tears streaming from her eyes.Tears pattered onto the pancakes.

When the woman saw what the man who had been clenching his teeth and staring at the child said, she burst into tears. At this time, Xiao Chuan, who had just raped the woman next door, walked over slowly with a wine bottle in his hand. "What's going on?" He looked around and asked. "Ah, we're trying to take this guy, but they're dead!" I replied, beating the kid. "Bastard! What's the use of you two big men! Let the girls bully you? Take this little brat away together and it's over! Can you still carry luggage!" I grabbed the boy by the collar and dragged him to the door.

"My lord, my lord, the child is a common people!" The woman cried out in despair as if she was going crazy, and she hugged the child's leg and refused to let go. "Hey, disgusting bitch!" Abe and I hit her in the waist with the butt of a gun. In this way, we searched every corner of the village, even the fields, and gathered at the head of the village at around 12 noon.Here, in the circle surrounded by our guns and live ammunition, there are more than 150 ordinary people, from bent-over old people to young and ignorant children.The platoon leader, Second Lieutenant Nakamura, who came on horseback, had a face covered in dust with a mustache. He glanced at the crowd and said, "Just a few people?" Then he ordered, "Hey! Let's go! Let those Strong-bodied fellows with ammo and patient packs on their backs!"

These ordinary people surrounded by bayonets have not eaten a sip of food or drank a sip of water since morning, but Nakamura is indifferent to this.At one o'clock in the afternoon when even the leaves and weeds were wilted, the sun was shining hotly in the sky, and there was no wind at all.Walking on the ground in such weather, even wearing leather shoes, will feel hot to the feet.The road was as hot as a hot iron plate. The people who were carrying heavy ammunition almost broke their spines. Walking forward like a flock of sheep, even the shoes on the feet fell off, and there was no time to put them on again.

Walking on the desert-like road in this hot weather, the hot sand is so thick that even the back of the foot will be buried.The common people dragged their feet heavily and were beaten and scolded from time to time. Their bodies and faces were covered with dust, and even the original color of their skin could not be seen.People's sweat is also hot, and some people are so dry that they can't even sweat because they haven't drank a sip of water since the morning.When passing through the village, they asked for some water to drink, but they were ignored, so they had to keep their heads down.I have walked 6 kilometers without a break, and I have not rested in this village.At this moment, the buckets for the long-platooned horses were thrown to the side of the road.A commoner in the team immediately ran over and hugged the bucket with both hands. "This bastard!" Ogawa furiously kicked the bucket and the wrists of ordinary people with his riding boots.The bucket hoop was kicked out, and the sewage spilled on the hot sand.Five or six ordinary people immediately lay down on the ground, sucked the water-soaked sand into their mouths, and pressed their faces to the ground, as if they could moisten their dry throats. "Hey, what are you doing! This area is not safe, go away!" the squad leader roared. A few soldiers ran over from all directions, kicked, beat, cursed, grabbed the necks of the common people who were licking the wet sand, pulled them up, and forced them to continue on their way.A young man with two backpacks grabbed a handful of wet sand and put his mouth between his fingers to suck the oozing muddy water. "You bastard! You are grabbing the sand, are you going to resist!" His arm was immediately twisted behind him, and he was forced to let go of his fist and threw the sand on the ground. Another half hour passed. "Hey, Omu! Take off the backpack and let that old man hold it!" The squad leader, Matsushita, saw a commoner in the line walking forward with no hands and bent over, so he asked me to give the backpack to the old man. people. "What's the matter with you? Why don't you hurry up?" Matsushita was a little angry, and without further ado, I hurriedly put the backpack on the shoulders of the old man who was barely walking.The old man suddenly bent his legs and knelt down on the ground, grabbed the kettle on my waist, touched the water seeping from the spout with his hand, wiped his face, and begged: "My lord, give me some water." His throat was dry and cracked. , his mouth was full of sand, and he could no longer make a sound, but just moved his mouth up and down with his hands. I suddenly thought that the kettle was dirty by him, so I twisted my waist all of a sudden, the moment the old man’s hand was about to be thrown off by me, the lid of the kettle opened, and warm water gushed out, spilling onto the backpack of the old man who fell on the ground On the ground, a lot of mercury burst out in all directions. The surrounding people immediately went into chaos. "Water, water, water!" They scrambled to open their mouths to lick the remaining water droplets on the old man's backpack.The old man fell to the ground and stroked the water poured on his neck with trembling hands and sent it to his mouth. More than a dozen ordinary people sat beside the old man staggeringly. "Hey, what's going on?" Lieutenant Nakamura suddenly came riding from the front. "Ah, the old man fell down, and others sat down too." After Nakamura heard this, he gave the common people a hard look and said, "Fight them up! These tricksters!" We hit them with rifle butts, kicked them with leather boots, and roughly grabbed them by the neck and dragged them up.However, the old man was still lying down. "This guy is really annoying! Hey! Get him down the mountain in front of those guys!" The platoon leader pointed to the cliff more than 3 meters away beside the road and said.We pushed the old man off the cliff like a log. "How? Who doesn't want to leave, and some of them will die like this!" the platoon leader said in half-understandable Chinese. "Why are you still dawdling? Hurry up and set off according to the order, go to the battalion headquarters!" We drove the common people on the road again. 150 ordinary people wrung out the sweat-soaked armpits to moisten their lips, and walked forward again. When we arrived at Longmojiao, where the battalion headquarters is located, it was already past 5 o'clock in the afternoon. Lieutenant Xiaoxi, the battalion adjutant, blushed and yelled drunkenly: "Hey! The 3rd company is too late! The brigade headquarters' car is about to arrive, transport the common people to the brigade headquarters!" There were more than 500 ordinary people captured by each company. With their backs facing the setting sun, they lay on the ground like dead people, with only the Adam's apple gurgling up and down. After a while, 5 trucks came. "Hey! If it's dark, you'll be in danger! Load the truck!" Under the order of the adjutant, the soldiers of the battalion headquartered waved their horsewhips to drive away the common people.When a commoner climbed onto the car by holding on to the side of the carriage with both hands, the foot that was stepping on the pedal slipped all of a sudden, and his feet were suspended in the air.At this time, he was suddenly hit by a whip on his hand, and with a bang, his whole body fell to the ground. "My lord, my lord, mine is sick," he explained hastily. "What? Are you sick? You bastard! The sick man, I have to show you!" As he spoke, a soldier slapped his pale, sweaty face twice.Then he cursed: "Okay! If you are sick, we can help you!" After speaking, two soldiers grabbed his hands and feet and threw him onto the truck. In this way, 5 trucks loaded nearly 200 ordinary people. "Ready!" The captain of the police squad reported slowly to the adjutant.The adjutant came over and looked into the truck and said, "Oh, I haven't even filled half of it yet! Reload it!" On each truck, another 10 ordinary people were forced into it. "Ouch!", "Well——" a commoner under the pressure groaned, he couldn't bear it, and stretched out a hand to grab the clothes of the person on top of him.The clothes that were stained with white salt layer by sweat immediately left a few traces. The military truck started whining, and the reaction force caused the vehicle body to sway from side to side. "Oops!" A commoner with half of his body exposed outside the car fender was thrown out of the car at once. "Ugh—" he cried, looking at his trembling right hand. At this time, the adjutant frowned and said to the marshal: "I said, if anyone escapes, he will be killed!" The truck creaked and swayed from left to right, and the dust from behind the truck swirled above the heads of the densely packed people. In this way, 2,000 civilians were taken to the brigade headquarters in Laiwu.From there, he was transferred to Tai'an.In Tai'an, they were loaded on covered trucks and transported to Northeast China and Japan along the Jinpu Line.They were sent to forced labor. Author bio: Originally from No. 566, Kamijuku, Kanzaki Town, Katori County, Chiba Prefecture, born as a farmer, entered the Iwakura Railway School after graduating from high school, dropped out of school after 8 months, became a lathe worker, and then enlisted in the army. The 5th Company of the Independent Battalion served as a sergeant. He was arrested in Xingnam, North Korea on August 23, 1945.