Therefore, the government did not consider the life or death of these troops at all. At that time, all the focus was on the defense of Jinling.
Therefore, when these troops were about to arrive at Jinling, they were surrounded by the Japanese.
It is said that after listening to the report at Chaoxiang Palace, his headquarters issued a series of orders stamped with his personal seal and marked 'confidential, destroyed after reading', and these orders were to 'execute all prisoners'.
Even in the future, it will be impossible to determine whether these orders were issued by Asaka Palace himself, after all, all orders have been destroyed.
This massacre of prisoners of war also paved the way for the future Jinling Massacre.
After the Japanese army entered Jinling, the order to eliminate all Chinese prisoners of war was no longer just a document, but was conveyed from top to bottom to every lower-level officer.
On December 13, 1937, the Japanese 66th Division received an order:
The division combat correspondent received an order from the division headquarters at 2 o'clock: By order of the brigade headquarters, all prisoners of war must be executed. Execution method: Divide the prisoners of war into groups of 12 and shoot them separately.
At three o'clock in the afternoon, the commanders of each company held a meeting to exchange opinions on how to execute prisoners of war. After discussion and decision, the prisoners of war were evenly distributed to each company, and they were divided into groups of 50 people from the detention area for execution.
The location is marked, and even the execution time is marked in detail.
This order contains a cruel logic.
The Japanese army could not provide enough food to the prisoners of war, so they had to be eliminated. Killing the prisoners of war would not only solve the food problem, but also eliminate the possibility of revenge. After all, only dead enemies would not organize guerrillas and carry out attacks on their troops.
Retaliation.
However, executing the order is another matter.
At dawn on December 13, when the Japanese army broke through Jinling City, they entered a city where the number of people far exceeded the number of their own troops.
There are approximately 500,000 civilians and more than 90,000 Chinese soldiers trapped in Jinling City. In contrast, there were only 50,000 Japanese soldiers who attacked Jinling.
Using 50,000 people to kill about 600,000 people meant that each Japanese soldier had to kill 12 Chinese.
At that time, it was extremely difficult to deal with one thousand, five thousand or ten thousand prisoners, let alone dispose of them, even to disarm them, let alone the 600,000 people facing Jinling City.
Therefore, the Japanese army made great efforts on how to disarm these Chinese soldiers. They relied on deceptive policies to deal with the prisoners, and even formulated detailed steps.
This mass murder strategy first falsely promised the Chinese that as long as they stopped resisting, they would receive fair treatment, coaxing them to surrender to the Japanese occupying forces, and then divided these coaxed Chinese soldiers into groups of 100-200 people, and finally divided them
They were abducted and killed in different places near the outskirts of Jinling.
Nakajima believes that this plan is unlikely to be realized, because judging from the situation of the Songhu Battle at that time, the Chinese people are bloody and even have the spirit of living for death. They are backward, ignorant, poor, and have a huge population base, but they face
Facing their heavy machine guns, these ignorant and backward Chinese people held their chests open and charged forward against the hail of bullets.
He only hoped that most of the prisoners of war would hesitate to resist further and lose confidence, distrusting Japan's coaxing policy and being able to deceive the Chinese, and thus obey any command of the Japanese.
However, when the Japanese began to implement the policy of deception, the Japanese were surprised to find that the Chinese only carried out sporadic resistance. In fact, these resistances were almost negligible.
When the Japanese invaded Jinling, many Chinese soldiers dropped their weapons and tried to abandon the city. When they found that there was no hope of escape, they surrendered.
In just one day, the Japanese army captured more than 7,000 Chinese soldiers and prisoners. Facing the guns of the Japanese devils, these people showed a negative attitude of letting others be slaughtered. It was like facing the oppression and exploitation of feudal society.
Pork on the chopping board.
The Chinese people in the old days seemed to be accustomed to oppression and exploitation. They gathered together and made a noise like the croaking of frogs. Before some Japanese officers saw the Chinese prisoners of war, they saw countless cigarette butts in the dark.
Medium flashing.
Get closer and the scene becomes even more spectacular.
In the same place, seven thousand prisoners of war gathered around two white flags. The white flag was made up of pieces of white cloth. The white flag was hung on a dead branch, fluttering in the dark night with the howling cold wind.
The Chinese prisoners of war were in ragged clothes, wearing blue cotton military uniforms and coats, waiting for their hats. Whether they wore hats or not, they covered their heads with blankets, some carried straw mats, and some carried cotton mattresses on their backs.
The Japanese army arranged the prisoners of war to line up in four lines, with white flags erected in front of the lines. Thousands of Chinese prisoners of war patiently waited for the Japanese army to take them away and instruct them on what to do next.
The obedience of the Chinese prisoners of war surprised all the Japanese officers. When they attacked China, they were stubbornly blocked by these people. However, when they put down their guns, they behaved extremely obediently, like livestock in captivity. Even livestock
Rather, some animals still need whipping, but they don't need it at all.
In Japanese military culture, pilots wear daggers instead of parachutes, and they would rather commit suicide than be captured.
For people from this cultural background, the Chinese people's behavior of not fighting their enemies to the end is really puzzling.
When they found that the number of prisoners of war far exceeded the number of conquerors, they became even more contemptuous of the Chinese.
Some Japanese officers even thought about how these Chinese prisoners of war collected all the white cloths they could find and hung them on dead branches. A group of people held up the dead branches to pose to the imperial army. It felt really ridiculous and sad.
"I thought, how did they become prisoners of war? There were so many of them - more than two divisions, but they didn't even try any resistance. There must be a lot of officers in such a large army, but not one
Stay, I think they all ran away, although we only have the convenience of two companies, and those 7,000 prisoners of war have been disarmed, but if they rise up to resist, our troops will definitely be completely wiped out."
Shi Donglang, who accepted the surrender of Chinese prisoners of war, wrote this.
He had mixed feelings in his heart, and felt sad for the fate of these Chinese soldiers. These Chinese prisoners of war may be longing for the Japanese to place them in a certain prisoner of war camp, but they do not know that the place they are taking them to is
A big pit has been dug long ago to even massacre them.
These people were hungry, thirsty, and frightened. They kept asking for water and repeatedly asked the Japanese to promise that they would not kill them.
Shi Donglang was very disgusted with the cowardice of these prisoners of war, and 7,000 of them were taken away in batches under the command of two companies of Japanese troops.
He also wrote: "They walked forward in groups, like ants crawling on the ground. They looked like a group of homeless vagrants, with an expression of ignorance on their faces."
"They are like a group of ignorant Mianyang people, whispering to each other in the dark and walking forward in an orderly manner."
"They are no more enemies than yesterday who were shooting at us and causing us trouble. It's unbelievable that they were once soldiers of the enemy."
"It feels so silly to think that we have been fighting to the death against these ignorant slaves, some of whom are just little boys of twelve or thirteen years old."
The Japanese army took the prisoners of war to a nearby village and imprisoned them in a large house. The prisoners of war felt that this place was like a large slaughterhouse and were hesitant to enter, but in the end they succumbed to the gunpoint of the Japanese army and obeyed.
Queue to enter.
Only when the Japanese wanted to take away the blankets and bedding of these prisoners of war did the prisoners fight for them.
Then, these prisoners of war were divided into groups of two to three hundred people late at night, and then massacred.
When the massacre came, these prisoners of war had no idea what was happening. It was late at night, the weather was cold, and the visibility was too low to see what was around them. They only knew that these Japanese devils took them away, presumably to find them.
New resettlement location.
Some older veterans in the team even said consolingly: "The Japanese are afraid. With so many of us locked up together, they don't feel at ease, so they have to separate us so that they can feel at ease."
These words were unanimously recognized by everyone.
Little did they know that in the invisible dark place around them, the muzzles of light and heavy machine guns and even rifles were already pointed at them.
When the execution began, intensive gunfire sounded, the sound of flesh-piercing, and accompanied by screams, these prisoners of war suddenly discovered that the Japanese did not want to resettle them at all, but wanted to kill them.
The talk of being resettled and being treated fairly are all lies, and they are only made to deceive them.
However, it was too late.
The gunshots and desperate cries were intertwined. The surrendered Chinese people struggled and died in despair.
An hour later, the crowd fell silent.
The Japanese soldiers began to stab the corpses one by one with bayonets, which continued from night to dawn.
Subsequently, how to dispose of the corpses became a huge problem for the Japanese army.
In the massacre of the Shogunate Hanzo, the death toll only accounted for a small part of the number of people massacred by the Japanese army inside and outside Jinling City, but the work of cleaning up the corpses lasted for several days.
Burying the corpses is one way, but General Nakajima complained in his diary that it was difficult to find huge trenches that could bury the bodies of seven or eight thousand people. Cremating the corpses was also a way, but the Japanese army usually lacked sufficient combustion.
After the massacre at Shogunate Mountain, the Japanese army poured several large barrels of gasoline on the pile of corpses, but the gasoline ran out before the corpses were reduced to ashes, leaving only a pile of burnt corpses.
As a result, many corpses were thrown into the Yangtze River.
Later, the Japanese army found a way to let the prisoners dig their own pits to bury themselves.
The Japanese army not only massacred Chinese soldiers, but also massacred them desperately.
Xia Yuan led the remaining soldiers of more than 30 people. They retreated late and moved relatively covertly, so what they encountered were scenes after the Japanese massacre.
There are schools, shops, and hospitals, and corpses are everywhere.
And sporadic gunshots were heard from all directions in the city. I don't know if there are still people in the city who are resisting, or if the Japanese are shooting ordinary people in Jinling City who are escaping.
Xia Yuan was able to keep his composure. He took these people with him, while searching for the lone defeated soldiers, and at the same time arranged for the wounded to temporarily rest in ordinary people's homes.
But he also knew in his heart that if this method treated the symptoms but not the root cause, sooner or later the Japanese would launch a bloody massacre throughout Jinling City.
Within the Japanese army, the beginning of the massacre has always been a mystery.
Some people say that Chaoxiang Palace ordered it without authorization and then destroyed the documents.
Some people also say that the order was issued by Iwane Matsui and the Asaka Palace: "This time our imperial army attacked Jinling, and the Chinese army resisted tenaciously. In order to thank the emperor for his kindness, he drank wine and smoke, and used force to intimidate Jinling, the enemy's capital, and killed all the prisoners."
The order also said: "Observe the battlefields in North China and Shanghai. Many ordinary Chinese people, even if they are old people, women or children, are serving as spies for the enemy, either informing the Japanese army of its position, or luring the enemy to attack the Japanese army, or harming individual Japanese soldiers.
Etc., so we cannot take it lightly and need special attention. If these behaviors are discovered, they will not be condoned and decisive measures should be taken to kill them."
In order to make the soldiers remember this order, the grassroots Japanese officers simplified the full text of the order to: kill all prisoners and kill all civilians.
December 13th.
It was a disastrous day for the people of Jinling. The brutal and bloody massacre began as the national army gave up its garrison in Jinling!
On this day, the gunfire of the Chinese army's resistance was sparse. Tens of thousands of Japanese troops, with a revengeful mentality and explosive animal desires, were waiting at Zhonghua Gate, Hanzhong Gate, Shuixi Gate, Tongji Gate, and Zhongshan Gate, like hungry wolves.
Hunting for prey, they rushed towards the city crazily. They had lost their humanity and were like cruel beasts.
They burned houses when they saw them, killed unarmed people when they saw them, raped women when they saw them, and even cut their stomachs with bayonets, watching her die in pain and despair.
The perversion of Japan is so deep in their bones that they even force old fathers and their daughters, even little girls and 80-year-olds to do so.
They even cut off the man's head, put a cigarette in his mouth, and placed it in the open space for fun.
Mukai Squadron and Noda Squadron of the Japanese Matsuda Battalion had just entered the city from Shuiximen. They stared with blood-red eyes, brandished their swords, and looked for targets.
After running for a while and not seeing anyone, he complained to Squadron Leader Xiangjing and said to Noda: "Commander Matsui ordered us to kill all the Chinese soldiers and all the Jinling people. Why is there no one on the street? The Chinese officers and soldiers are all hiding in
where?"
Noda showed a murderous look on his face and comforted him and said: "Don't worry, no one who deserves to be killed can escape."
When Mukai thought that Jinling City was so big, it would be impossible for him to be without people, so his bestiality grew stronger. He thought of an idea that would allow him to vent his bestiality, and suggested to Noda: "Noda-kun, do you dare to compete with me?"
"Compared to what?" Noda didn't understand his intention for a while, and even joked with a smile: "Compared to eating, sleeping, or running?"
"You idiot, if you want to charge into Jinling City, what are you comparing to others? Of course it's to kill people!"