Chapter 38 37. The more you kill, the more praise you get

"The advantage of being a soldier is that you will be praised for killing people." This is a saying among soldiers on the battlefield.The soldier may have been mocking himself when he said this.But in any case, in the eyes of the superiors, the task of the soldiers going to the battlefield is mainly to kill people.When soldiers go to the battlefield, they kill indirectly, if not directly, in some way.However, as mentioned earlier, what is generally called a soldier is conscripted through a conscription check.Although the name and appearance are soldiers, they are human beings just like ordinary citizens.Even if such a person puts on a military uniform and takes up a weapon, he cannot immediately become a soldier who can kill directly... But when he is on the battlefield, he must eliminate this hesitation as soon as possible.

For this reason, once new recruits are added to the troops dedicated to front-line combat, in order to make them become soldiers on the battlefield as soon as possible, living people will be used as targets to let them try bayonets.Surrendered Chinese soldiers were used as living targets, and local residents were sometimes captured as well.Just let the soldiers stab the body of the living, and use it as a shortcut to become a soldier on the battlefield.Cruel to the target, of course, and a severe test to the recruit who stabs. Those of us who landed in Wusong have been engaged in actual combat since the day we landed, and have no time to try to assassinate living people, but the recruits recruited from China after the Battle of Shanghai have used this method to experience killing.During my travels to and from the battlefield, I have seen several scenes of recruits trying to stab living people.I remember the first time I saw this scene was on the way to Nanjing, on the way from Wuxi to Changzhou.

The unit I belonged to was always on the front line in the Battle of Shanghai, and lost more than half of its soldiers, and its weapons were also greatly depleted, so it advanced as the second line in the attack on Nanjing.However, the second line is not leisurely, and always keeps a certain distance and distance from the first-line troops, and must be able to participate in the first-line as needed. Departing from Wuxi in the morning, on the way to the next destination, I entered a village in order to have a good rest, and found a group of soldiers who did not know which army had arrived first.The group of soldiers seemed to be very busy doing something.At a glance, they erected wooden stakes in the square and tied a dozen people who looked like local residents side by side.Seeing this, I knew that the recruits were going to try to assassinate living people.The people who were targeted looked like villagers who hadn't escaped in time, including the elderly, women, and children aged fourteen or fifteen.It doesn't look like a criminal who needs to be caught and executed.Even if you don't ask, you know that this is a live target for recruits trying to assassinate.Next to the live target is a group of young soldiers standing by.Although it looks the same as other soldiers, upon closer inspection, it is a newly hatched baby soldier.No matter how you look at it, they are all supplementary soldiers who came to the front line not long after enlisting in the army.It seems that they have never been on the battlefield, and the military uniforms worn from China are as good as new ones.In the same way, the heart is the same as that of ordinary people.Judging from that appearance, I judged that these recruits followed their troops to Nanking as soon as they arrived at the front.Units that take in recruits who are half soldier, half commoner are trying to stab the living in order to make them soldiers on the battlefield.After a few minutes, things kicked off as I expected.

Under the command of the corporal, the recruits mounted bayonets and stood facing the stabbed.Although they had learned assassination skills when they were educated in China, and stabbed scarecrows in order to adapt to actual combat, the situation was different when facing real people.Although he was face to face with the live target and had the bayonet ready, he had no intention of stabbing it down.The body appears stiff with tension.Looking at their faces, they seemed to be paler than those who were stabbed. After the senior soldier in charge ordered "stab!", the recruits had no choice but to muster up their spirits and yelled "Ah!", but their bodies did not move in accordance with the sound.As if they were approaching something terrible, they ran up timidly, and held out the points of their bayonets tremblingly.

This kind of action can't directly stab the heart, and it's fatal in one blow.Don't say it was fatal, it just hurt the flesh.For those who were stabbed, it was no different from being tortured to death.Every time he was stabbed, he cried out in pain and pain.Blood flowed from the stabbed place, and the whole body was dyed dark red, which made him look like a blood man.In this way, the stabbing recruits looked a little shaken.They were frightened by the cries of the stabbed and the redness of the blood, and the strength of the bayonets began to weaken.So the senior soldier shouted angrily: "Hey! What are you doing so soft? You will be laughed at by the slaves of the Qing Dynasty. Hurry up and kill them!" They had no choice but to show their courage and stab them randomly with bayonets.If one were to speculate on the mentality of the recruits at this time, it seemed that they were not only afraid of being scolded by the upper class soldiers, but also wanted to end up as soon as possible in order to avoid the screams and blood red.The recruits stabbed at the live target indiscriminately, and when they saw the opponent's body suddenly slumped powerlessly, they showed expressions of relief.Only then did they finally have blood on their faces.

The above is the first time I saw the recruits trying to stab the human body on the way to Nanjing.Among the recruits, there were also those who stabbed with calm movements as they learned in the assassination technique, but this was only a very small number, and most of them were inappropriate.However, through this killing experience, they quickly grew into qualified soldiers.Although it is cruel, it is because the mission of soldiers on the battlefield is to kill people, so they did this kind of thing.Therefore, once a soldier goes to the battlefield, the first thing he must keep in mind is to learn to kill.After being able to kill, other soldiers will recognize that you are qualified, and you can hold your head high.

There are many reasons why soldiers who go to the battlefield begin to kill, but another point is that soldiers who kill in battle will be appreciated as meritorious service, which will also affect the award of honor, which is a very honorable thing.The "benefits of being a soldier" mentioned earlier refers to this point. This is how soldiers grow into soldiers on the battlefield.When they first arrived at the front line, most soldiers were afraid of the sound of bullets, and they were all people who were afraid of blood red.As the number of battles increases and he has experienced killing, he becomes able to kill as if nothing had happened.Soldiers called this situation "having the guts of the field."

Once you have the guts of the battlefield, you become interested in killing people.In this way, the battlefield becomes a good place for soldiers, without troublesome things such as human relations and morality, and it is a special area that cannot be controlled by the laws of the country.Even if you stabbed someone who had lost their fighting spirit and surrendered, even if you shot innocent people to death with bullets, no one would have a problem.The murderer earns, the murdered loses, that's all.This made the normal psychology numb, and he lost the sense of guilt about killing people. Instead, he was proud and began to brag about "killing two or three slaves of the Qing Dynasty."

Those who carried out the massacre in Nanjing were officers and soldiers who had just changed from ordinary people to soldiers on the battlefield.The recruits I met on the way to Nanking must have also gained the courage of the battlefield by testing live targets, and when they occupied Nanking a few days later, they carried out the same massacres as the veterans. The Nanjing Massacre was a massacre of Chinese people when the Japanese army occupied Nanjing in December of the 12th year of Showa (1937). We, who were soldiers there at that time, called this incident the "Nanjing Atrocity Incident".This is not an official name, but a name given by some soldiers.The reason for such a name is not only because of the massacre in Nanjing, but also because of the atrocities such as looting the property of local residents, setting fire to houses, and raping women on the way from near Shanghai to Nanjing.

... Next I want to talk about the massacre.As mentioned earlier, the troops I belonged to advanced as the second line. After crossing the Mopan Mountains, they entered the first line and joined the battle ranks. However, Nanjing fell without any major battles.Then we wandered around the chaotic Nanjing, and finally settled down in a small town outside Nanjing.Because of this situation, I did not directly participate in the massacre, but I saw the scene of the massacre by officers and soldiers of other troops.To say that there was no apparent massacre where we were, one might think that we were the only exceptionally good soldiers.But far from it.We also killed people, robbed things, burned houses, and raped women on the way to Nanjing.We were on par with other troops in terms of what the soldiers said was atrocious incidents.The reason why there was no massacre in Nanjing is because the residents in the places we visited had been killed by other troops when they attacked Nanjing, and there was not a single person.Because of the terrain, there are no remnants of soldiers, even if you want to massacre, there is no one to kill.At the time, I was bored and felt like something was missing, but I thought it was a blessing later on.

The massacre in and around Nanking lasted, if not counted, more than ten days after the occupation.The troops I belonged to moved to Jiangyin on December 20, and the massacre must have been going on up to that time.When I walked around, I could see traces of mass murder everywhere I went.Many corpses were piled there layer upon layer.Sometimes there are scenes where countless corpses are piled up like a mountain. Since I landed in Wusong, because I have been fighting fiercely in Shanghai, I have seen a lot of corpses, so I don’t feel much about 50 or 100 corpses, but I am surprised by the dead bodies after the massacre near Nanjing.There are no words to express it, what I really want to say is "it is possible to kill such a large number of people".I have also seen the scene of the massacre several times, and I only want to talk about one of them—— That was a few days after we settled down outside Nanjing.I saw this scene on the way back to the station after a business trip to Shimonoseki. If there is hell in the world, then "this is hell".Now I can't remember exactly where I saw it, but I still remember that it was a square about four or five kilometers east of Xiaguan, and the north end of the square was the flowing Yangtze River.A mass massacre was carried out in the Jiang'an square, presenting the hell in this world. I don't know which division the officers and soldiers who killed belonged to and their unit names, but the soldiers' words contained a dialect that seemed to be from the Tohoku region (referring to the Northeast region of Japan).Now that's all I remember.However, only the hell in this world is still clearly in my memory. I did not see the start, but according to soldiers who had been watching from the beginning, the massacre started around 9 am.Machine guns were set up in several places in the square, and after they were ready to shoot, they brought about 100 Chinese from nowhere and asked them to line up with their backs facing the Yangtze River.The Chinese looked like a mix of soldiers and civilians, with different clothing and ages.There are also great differences between young and old, ranging from fifteen to sixty years old.After those people lined up in the square, following the command of the commander, the machine guns on standby roared and fired.The sound of machine gun shooting and the shouting and wailing of the Chinese made the square noisy for a while, but it quieted down in less than 5 minutes.Even if the Chinese want to escape, behind them is the Yangtze River with stormy waves crashing on the shore.In the unsheltered square, they were shot at close range by machine guns, and there might not be a one in ten thousand chance of surviving.They all became corpses, lying down layer upon layer.After this batch was over, almost the same number of Chinese people were brought over.After these people entered the square, they were commanded by Japanese soldiers to carry the fallen bodies and throw them into the Yangtze River.After the job was over, another shot was fired and they were all killed.Such a long chain of repetitions has killed a large number of Chinese. These are the words of the soldiers who watched from the beginning.What I saw was the scene after it was basically over. The blood of the Chinese people in the square was piling up like a pool of blood.Looking at the current of the Yangtze River, you can see thousands of dead bodies drifting away. Although I don't know how many people were killed in this square, but based on the method of killing and the time it took, I estimate that there are nearly 10,000 people.In addition to such a large-scale killing, it is generally believed that in the vast Japanese-occupied area centered on Nanjing, there were countless killings in units of hundreds or thousands of people everywhere. It took 103 days for the troops I belonged to from the Wusong landing to the occupation of Nanjing.During this time I learned several horrors of war.I didn't think much of it during the war, but after the war I look back on what I've been through with chills. When people who have lived through war speak of the horrors of the battlefield, the first thing that seems to cite is the battle where cannons, machine guns, and rifles, etc., shoot at each other.I often hear people say that when they see the soldiers around them being wounded and dying one after another during a battle, they think "I will be killed soon", and feel anxious because of fear. I know that fear too.Since I landed in Wusong, I went to the front line to fight, and I don't know how many tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of bullets and shells I have passed through.It made me feel incredible, "it didn't hit me".Dozens of my partners who set off from China with me died.After arriving at the front line quickly, he died in battle in just two or three days.If there were no wars, many young lives would not be lost.They can enjoy their lives and die.Because the soldier died young, the survivors sighed with sorrow.This, of course, is also the horror of war.Before considering these, the first thing that comes to my mind is the psychological horror of war, which twists normal people and commits atrocities. That is to say, people who were good citizens before entering the army became murderous demon kings after only about 100 days on the front line, and became able to carry out large-scale killings like the Nanjing Massacre.Except for some key soldiers, most of the officers and soldiers who carried out the massacre in Nanjing were conscripts who were ordinary citizens before being conscripted.Among them are the police who stand as guardians of the law, educators who guide young citizens in the right direction, monks who preach Buddhism, shrine staff who serve the gods, and many others who serve as role models in the local area. people. People like this, who were originally good citizens in the local area, did the most brutal things in the world on the battlefield.First of all, killing people, and secondly... massacring those who surrendered and begging for their lives, looting the property of the residents, killing innocent people, and burning down their houses.Raping young women on sight is a serious crime that cannot be committed in ordinary society. The reason for doing such atrocious things can be said to be caused by the madness of war.For the victimized Chinese side, this is of course a hateful thing, and for the Japanese officers and soldiers who were the perpetrators, it is also something that has always left regret and sadness. Among modern people who do not know war, some people think that the Nanking Massacre is the only special event, but it is by no means the case.On the Chinese battlefield, after the massacre at Nanking, there were too many incidents of the same nature to enumerate, notwithstanding their differences in scale. As the offensive moved deeper into the interior, the atrocities intensified.It is said that the battle called "Sanguang" was carried out in some Japanese troops who went to the Chinese battlefield.The so-called "Three Lights" means killing, looting, and burning.In this kind of battle, not only the opponent's army, but also the civilians are all killed without distinction.They also robbed the treasured property of the people and the food they had stored, and finally set fire to the houses of the people.After the Japanese army left after the battle, the residents who originally lived in the combat area were wiped out, and the houses were burned out, making it impossible to live. I also heard that extermination operations were carried out in certain areas.According to soldiers who participated in this kind of battle, it seems to be the same as "Sanguang".The common people living in the combat area are regarded as an act of benefiting the enemy and must be completely killed.It is said that after the Japanese army's operation, even the elderly and babies were killed, and not even a live dog or cat could be found. Even if the officers and soldiers who conduct this kind of combat are usually very honest people, they can kill without changing their faces.This has nothing to do with character or upbringing. There is a good example that can be used to understand soldiers on the battlefield.It was a diary written by a former Miyazaki soldier who belonged to the 23rd Metropolitan Infantry Regiment and participated in the Nanjing Raiders as a private (excerpted from the Asahi Shimbun on August 5, 1984): "Recently, I have nothing to do. I often capture innocent Chinese people and bury them alive or push them into the fire or beat them to death with wooden sticks. I am very happy about such killings. Even the Chinese soldiers are willing to bow down.  …Today again Pushed and beat up a bunch of innocent Chinese people, blew them half to death, then threw them in a ditch, set fire to their heads, and tortured them to death. Since everyone was so bored, it was fun to do that, but This would be a very serious case in China. It's like killing a dog or a cat..." Such a "diary" cannot be fabricated. It is the original soldier who wrote down what he experienced, saw, and thought, so it cannot be a lie.At that time, I did really cruel things, and I was no exception.I stayed in the Chinese battlefield for more than three years and participated in many large and small battles, during which I committed cruel acts that are not allowed in human society.Killed, looted, set fire, raped.Thinking about it later, I felt that "I was able to do such a cruel and inhumane thing", and I couldn't help but feel very afraid of the hidden demon psychology in my heart... ... The troop mobilization group I belonged to was established in mid-August of Showa 12.The junior officers and soldiers who accounted for most of the troops were recruited at this time.After the mobilization ended, we drove to the front line in late August, and the Nanjing Raiders began about three months later in December.That is to say, people who lived an ordinary life in ordinary society before enlisting in the army, went to the battlefield for more than three months and carried out appalling massacres.I'm trying to figure out why. When I first arrived in Shanghai, I didn’t do anything particularly cruel. This is related to the narrow range of operations in Shanghai, but it is mainly because the purpose of the battle is to protect the expatriates, safeguard their rights and interests, and have a post-mission incident. Just end hope. This hope turned to despair with the start of the Raid of Nanking.Nanjing is the base camp of Chiang Kai-shek, so it is expected that the defense will be very strong, and there will be a fierce battle when encountering stubborn resistance, and he may die in battle.Even if you don't die, you can't predict when you will leave the battlefield.Precisely because I had great expectations for an early resolution of the incident, I felt a strong sense of despair. One of the motives for the cruelty was to unleash these combined resentments on the Chinese.The purpose of occupying Nanjing, where Chiang Kai-shek's government is located, is to make Chiang Kai-shek say the word "surrender", so the fighting spirit of the mid-level officers who lead the army is very high. A Shao Zuo I know who is the captain of the brigade instigated the officers and soldiers under his command: "To make Chiang Kai-shek surrender, it is not enough to just capture Nanjing. We must use all means to make the Qing slaves fall into terror. If you see the Qing slaves, kill them. It’s the common people. You can also plunder, rape women, and set fire to them.” A friend of mine once stayed in North China, and was later transferred to the 10th Army and landed in Hangzhou Bay.According to him, the officers of the 10th Corps seemed to do the same.It is said that when marching towards Nanjing, the higher-ups ordered: "The Chinese people are not allowed to be tyrannical. Needless to say, farmers and workers among the Chinese people, even women and children should be killed." He said: "Because the boss issued such an order, once the slaves of the Qing Dynasty are found, no matter whether he is a soldier or a commoner, he will kill each one he sees. As long as he sees a woman, no matter whether it is a girl or a married woman, he will rape them all. Killing. It’s not as simple as stabbing to death with a bayonet, but using a stick. When you hit the stick with a click, the blood gurgles out, and the person is dead. Because the Chinese people are wearing cotton clothes, they are tied with wire. Fire can burn for a long time." As such, the Raiders of Nanking was a little crazy from the get-go, which I think is one of the main reasons for the connection to the massacre.This alone is enough reason for the cruel behavior, and the food collection is also added. I'll repeat the requisition later, so here's a brief explanation of the reasons for the massacre.Once you rob things in the name of expropriation, you are like bandits.As a result, lower-level officers and soldiers lost their ethics and morality, and their minds became like bandits. This is one of the reasons for the atrocities.There are several other minor reasons. Before the start of the Battle of Shanghai, we naively thought that "they are just slaves of the Qing Dynasty and they can be easily dealt with", but contrary to our expectations, we encountered stubborn resistance and fell into a bitter battle.It took more than 70 days to capture the small area near Shanghai, and there were at least 40,000 casualties.Therefore, "it's just a slave of the Qing Dynasty" becomes "the slaves of the Qing Dynasty". In the Japanese army, low-level soldiers often had dissatisfaction.One is that the gap between the upper and lower ranks in the army is too large, and the difference in status is like an officer is a nobleman, while a soldier is a slave.No matter how unreasonable the order and how unreasonable the request, the soldiers can only obey silently.Previously, he had endured oppression at the bottom. After arriving on the battlefield, he found someone weaker than himself, and that was the Chinese.So he vented the injustice and dissatisfaction accumulated in his heart to the Chinese. The battlefield is the same everywhere, and the life and death of the officers and soldiers engaged in the battle at the forefront are only separated by a piece of paper.I don't know what will happen tomorrow after today.Don't say tomorrow, the person who was talking and laughing just now died a few minutes later, it's not surprising to hear this news.The lower-ranking officers and soldiers living in that environment adopted the method of living when they are drunk now.The wishes of officers and soldiers are to sleep well, to eat delicious food, and to have sex with women. Men on any battlefield presumably have such desires, but in some places they can and in others they don't.On the Chinese battlefield, because of the idea that "you can do anything to the Chinese people", so putting aside An Mian for the time being, stealing food and raping women are all right.The local residents did not dare to complain when they were robbed of their livestock, and even if a woman was raped, she felt that there was nothing she could do about it.This fueled our arrogance and made us do more cruel things.Although this is not the case for all frontline officers and soldiers, on the whole, there are many acts of violence to subdue the Chinese. When I was at the front, a local interpreter once complained to me: "The Japanese tried to use violence to make us obey, and we hated it. So the more violence the Japanese used, the more we hated it. If it continues like this If you don't, the war will never end, which is really sad." As the locals say, the Japanese army used violence as a means to bring the Chinese into submission. I feel that this has something in common with the way superior officers in the army get their subordinates to obey.The massacre in Nanjing may also have such a reason, I think so.I, who said these words, also did cruel things. Thinking about it now, when I did those things, I almost never made judgments about right and wrong, good and evil, but acted impulsively.But if I go further, the reason why I can do cruel things is because I despise the Chinese in my heart, and I have the idea of ​​"doing anything to the Chinese people". At the beginning, I was a little hesitant about doing cruel things, but after living on the battlefield for a period of time, I don’t know when this feeling disappeared. Instead, I said, “The slaves of the Qing Dynasty are no big deal, don’t worry about them, just do it.” thoughts become stronger.At that time, no matter what you do, it is not considered a sin.That's what I thought when I was cruel to the Chinese. If you want to investigate the reasons for the cruel behavior of Japanese officers and soldiers on the Chinese battlefield, in the final analysis, the Japanese have contempt for the Chinese.This did not happen suddenly during this war. It can be said that the contempt for the Chinese cultivated in the hearts of the Japanese since the Meiji period made us do this.Kazuo Sone, as an ordinary veteran of the Japanese invasion of China, wrote the above words in his sixtieth years after the war, to a large extent, he was true and confessed.He made a relatively profound and sober analysis from some basic understandings of the Japanese nation to the Chinese nation, and from the aspects of how an ordinary Japanese became a war lunatic, a murderer, and a rapist. His memories are worthy of today's Japanese people. Use as a mirror for self-examination.In fact, there are quite a few Japanese veterans like him who can truly understand the war and themselves.In particular, some officers and soldiers of the Japanese army who invaded China participated in the atrocities committed in the Nanjing Massacre. After the war ended, after living a peaceful life for many years, their humanity gradually recovered. However, under the influence of the Japanese country's evil culture that dare not face up to its crimes, many people dare not stand up and tell the truth.The conflict between animal nature and human nature in their inner world became more and more intense and serious in their later years, so there will finally be people who stand up bravely like Kazuo Sone and tell the truth and tell the truth to the world in various forms.The contradiction between animal nature and human nature displayed by the officers and soldiers of the Japanese invaders in the Nanjing Massacre just proves that the Nanjing Massacre by the Japanese invaders is a historical fact and a war crime, and it is more profound and persuasive. Kazuo Sone has a very incisive insight: "I dare to assert that the 'Nanjing Massacre' is a fact. Because as a soldier, I have participated in the invasion of Nanjing, and in fact committed violent acts. I have witnessed and heard this Incident. Except for me, there are still many soldiers who participated in the invasion of Nanjing. They all know the inside story of the 'Nanjing Massacre', but in order to avoid painful memories, they do not want to prove it. I presume that the denial of the "Nanjing Massacre" by people with a heart is to obliterate the stain in Japan's war history, so they deliberately distort the facts. The "Nanjing Massacre" is indeed a big stain in Japan's war history, but it cannot be easily And I think that not only should we not distort the facts, we should admit our mistakes, humbly reflect on them, and let future generations learn from them. Therefore, I plan to describe this matter based on my own experience. What I want to describe is As a soldier, I will make a faithful account of the "Nanjing Massacre" based on the conscience of mankind and the mood of atonement from the standpoint of having witnessed and heard about the "Nanjing Massacre" when I participated in the invasion of Nanjing. Junji Ide, who was the military officer of the Japanese Army Aviation Corps at that time, also pointed out sharply: "The "truth" that millions of people in Japan and China have seen with their own eyes is still saying "yes" or "no". (Nanjing Massacre) Some people say that it is thousands of people, some people say, no, it is hundreds of thousands. This kind of number game is left to those who are responsible for historical records (research). ) Right! I think the main thing is to face up to the duality that human beings can become gods and demons. In particular, we should know that only war is the culprit that leads human beings to become demons. In this sense, for several years The turmoil caused by the 'Nanjing Massacre' is an excellent teaching material. Moreover, it should exist as a living lesson and reflection in the future, and it should become a topic for continued discussion." Japanese soldier Kenzo Okamoto said more bluntly: "Some people say that the Nanjing Massacre never happened, that is nonsense. I have witnessed the massacre." He talked about the massacre of Chinese at Nanjing Airport: "If In battle, we are ordered to kill. If we don’t kill the opponent, we are in danger of being killed by the opponent. But in that situation, if there is a bit of humanity, we will not shoot. The task of shooting is performed by the machine gun team, and our troops are stationed Surveillance was carried out in all directions." "The victims were not only men, but also women and children, even children under the age of 10. This is an out-and-out massacre!" Based on their own experiences and feelings, the veterans of the Japanese army analyzed and exposed the heinous and shameless crimes of many "comrades in arms" during the Nanjing Massacre. Kazuo Sone also said something like this later: The Battle of Shanghai and Shanghai was a very fierce battle, so everyone thought that the next battle to attack Nanjing, "maybe there is no hope of coming back alive. So after a war with a purpose, everyone will It’s more exciting, now I don’t know why to fight, it’s like going into a dark maze.” "Although the number of casualties is unpredictable, everyone thinks that they have already suffered casualties, so they appear to be self-defeating." "If the location of the expedition does not go beyond Nanjing, and the purpose of the war is clear, everyone will not be so violent. Like In this way, before the battle of Nanking began, the lower-level officers were very irritable, and the order of "expropriating self-living" added fuel to the fire. Even if there was no order of "expropriating self-living", they would act as they wished, But after being ordered by their superiors to rob food to make a living, their sense of guilt completely disappeared, and they behaved like robbers, insulting women when they saw them, and using force to deal with those who resisted, becoming like bandits. Unparalleled soldier." Another Japanese veteran, Yukio Komata, said: "Just because the head of the army has the idea that 'Chinese are pigs', he will order 'whether women or children, all Chinese people will be killed, and all houses will be burned down'" (Ping Songying History "Fighting Struggles of the Rural Army"), the formation of the ethos of 'raping, plundering, and misbehavior' among lower-level soldiers is also an inevitable result. Since killing people don't care, plundering is even more commonplace. Everything in the invaded place belongs to the invader 'Boots'..." Nakano Tadanoshou, who was once the commander of the 23rd Infantry Regiment of the 6th Division of the Japanese Army, said when reflecting on his crimes: "The thought that dominated me at the time was: In Nanjing, the capital of China, there will be no Chinese people left who are anti-Japanese and patriotic. Only then can the "divine power of the emperor" be announced to the world; it is the greatest benefit of the Japanese people, and it is also to show the superiority of the Japanese nation to the world; this is the highest honor of being a soldier, and it is also for Japan. The people are role models.” “During the process of this heinous crime, on the other hand, my mind still mainly has the following problem: after the invasion of Nanjing, the capital of China, we must deal a decisive blow to the anti-Japanese and patriotic Chinese people around Nanjing.” , so that Chiang Kai-shek must surrender to the Japanese invaders, then Japan can rule China arbitrarily. Even considered a 'sacred' and 'just' act." There was a Japanese veteran who became a painter after the war. His left arm was injured in a fierce battle with the Chinese army. This Japanese veteran was called Guan Laiping, with the rank of warrant officer. He was considered a "hero" on the battlefield—— In the eyes of the Chinese side, he is a standard executioner, and his saber was rolled on the battlefield, "short by nearly 16 centimeters."After the war, the Japanese veteran replaced the hand that held the bloody knife with a paintbrush.Guan Laiping has his own views on war. He said: "War is tragic. Whether you like it or not, you must choose between being killed or killing the other party. I have also killed people, because if I don't kill the other party, I They will also be killed by the opponent." However, Guan Laiping has his own views on his military career: "I hate the hierarchical society. In my life, for more than twenty years, I was tightly bound. In a hierarchical organization like the military. Because of this, I am now fully enjoying the precious freedom. In a long-term war, good people will definitely be killed in large numbers, and this is the fate of war.” After analyzing the inner world of the Japanese "devils" who participated in the massacre, we will come to a conclusion: the reason why people become "ghosts" is that the country's aggressive will and the characteristics of national expansion always play a special role.The culprits are those ruling classes who have trained ordinary people to be invaders, who have turned ordinary people into barbarians. The Japanese nation was born on a small island, and they have never been reconciled to self-enjoyment and benefit only on a small island country. They look forward to going out of their own territory time and time again, to seek greater and more enjoyment and well-being, and to invade other countries It became their "nature". Why can't this nation, especially after it becomes strong, never walk out of such a "beastly" way? The famous American writer John Toland said when talking about the national character of Japan: "The Yamato nation is different from any other nation in the world. Everything it does is contrary to the norm. Ordinary people like cooked food, while The Japanese like to eat raw; ordinary people lie down or sit, but the Japanese like to kneel. Therefore, the way the Japanese "show love" is also very different from ordinary people. For example, in Nanjing, Matsui wanted to show his "love and sympathy" for the people of Nanjing '，就放纵他的兽兵，烧杀淫掠，无恶不作。” 我想，约翰·托兰的话说得非常有道理。从本质上认识日本这个民族是全体中国人今天要认真补上的一课。而我同样认为，中国人自己对自己的认识也应当迅速地补上。