On August 15, 1945, the Emperor of Japan broadcast to all of Japan accepting the Potsdam Proclamation and imposing an unconditional surrender. Japanese troops invading China and Southeast Asian countries were immediately plunged into chaos. Most of the Japanese troops were waiting for the instructions of their superiors, and some Japanese troops were suspicious of the news of Japan's surrender, or even resolutely disbelieving, so there were those who "could not fail to obey the emperor's edict" and those who "entered the mountains to fight until the last soldiers."
Onoda was the last Japanese devil to surrender in World War II. He hid in the jungle for 30 years, and it was not until 29 years after the end of the war, when his boss Yoshimi Taniguchi gave him the order to "disengage", that Onoda Hiroshi came out of the jungle and laid down his weapons.
There was such a Japanese army, which was very different from other "one-string" Japanese troops, who happily accepted the order to surrender and could not wait to return to Japan from Thailand.
When the officers and men of this unit appeared in the Japanese port with a rosy face, full of spirits, and even a little proud and excited, everyone on the docks was stunned, compared with the malnourished and described withered Japanese soldiers who had recently returned home, the officers and men of this unit did not look like they had been escorted back to China by American soldiers, but rather like returning from a "vacation" in Thailand.
They were soldiers of the Osaka Fourth Division, which was the least killed and most well-equipped of the Confederate Army.
Supposedly, they would not have had a good life in the later stages of the war, but why could they be in such a "proud" state? There is a rumor that before being repatriated to Japan, several officers of the Fourth Division made a deal, bribing the US army, using warships to sell a large amount of Thai rice to Japan, and fiercely earning money. Even if they are escorted back, they do not delay in doing business, can you say that the officers of the Fourth Division can not be "happy and cheerful"?
If you are an official, you are not bad as a soldier. The day after the Japanese soldiers returned home, the front of the US military barracks was neatly lined with vending stalls, selling war souvenirs and other kinds of goods. They were the soldiers of the Fourth Division, who had just returned from a "vacation" in Thailand the previous day.
The U.S. military in charge of escorting them commented that they were "serious and peace-loving."
Many people have the impression that the Japanese army in World War II was an outlaw. However, few people know that one unit in the Japanese army is known for its poor combat effectiveness: the Osaka Fourth Division.
Osaka 4th Division, code-named "Yodo". This code name can be described as ingenious, very different from other Japanese Army divisions containing the spirit of shangwu, such as the second division is "yong", the ninth division is "wu", etc., only this fourth division regiment this "Yodo" word, its source is taken from the name of a river: Yodogawa River, this river across Osaka's most prosperous Umeda business district, so this "Yodo" character may carry wealth, take the treasure of the auspicious bar. At the end of the day, this code name is more suitable for use in shops.
In 1888, the Osaka Fourth Division was established, its soldiers were mostly Osaka's vegetable vendors, and the unit had four squadrons equipped with first-class weapons and equipment, which could be called the "elite" of the Japanese army. However, it had a nickname called "The Eighth Wing Of Not Afraid of Defeat", which was the core unit of the Fourth Division, and was awarded this "honor" because of its repeated defeats in the Russo-Japanese War. After that, until the outbreak of the war of aggression against China, the Fourth Division never went to the front again.
However, this does not affect its chances of showing "elite" strength. In 1933, a second-class soldier of the Fourth Division had an accident, he ran a red light in the center of Osaka, disobeyed the police, and clashed with the police, and finally the matter became big, and the division commander Terauchi Shouichi intervened decisively, in order to "maintain the dignity of the Imperial Japanese Army", resolutely led the troops to smash the police station, which is known in history as the "Osaka Go-Stop Incident".
In 1937, the 4th Division was transferred to the Kwantung Army. The base camp knew the details of the Fourth Division, and the base camp also took some thought on how to use this unit. They transferred Yamashita Bongwen, nicknamed "Tiger of Malays", to the Fourth Division as the commander of the division, and began to train carefully for two years. However, two years later, in the major war in the northeast, the Battle of Surinomenkan, he still had a lot of foreign appearances.
At that time, the Kwantung Army and the Soviet-Mongolian Coalition army were engaged in a war, and the battle situation was unfavorable, and the military headquarters ordered two divisions in Osaka and Sendai to provide emergency reinforcements. The Sendai Division (code name "Yong") was indeed "brave", and its advance team set out from Hailar and marched on foot for four days to Nomonkan, where it immediately went into battle. However, the results were not ideal, and they were beaten by the Soviet army and suffered numerous casualties.
At the same time, the Fourth Division, which received the order, could not send troops, because a large number of sick numbers appeared in the entire division at once, and the symptoms stated by the soldiers were various and strange. Fortunately, the wing commander was a doctor before joining the army, and in anger, he personally sat in the infirmary, which cleaned up the soldiers who were not sick and pretended to be sick, and the soldiers who were not sick and were seriously ill, and reluctantly organized the troops to open to nomenkan.
The Fourth Division dragged its feet for eight days from Hailar to Nomonkan, leaving a large number of people left behind along the way. At the same distance, the Second Division had only walked for four days.
Maybe God favored the Fourth Division, and as soon as they arrived at the front, the Soviet Union announced an armistice... Upon hearing the news of the armistice, a large number of men and horses of the Fourth Division who had fallen behind changed their previous "bear-like" appearance and quickly followed, and even some officers and men who remained in the camp rushed to the front line "with illness" and "wounds."
The Fourth Division returned home in triumph without firing a single shot; they were fully loaded, full of spirits, and the army was majestic; some reporters interviewed them, and the officers got cheap and sold well, complaining to the reporters one by one: Elite units like ours actually did not have the opportunity to fight a battle. In contrast, the Second Division regiment with the "courage" character lost its armor and armor, and the wounded soldiers were full of troops, and the military appearance and military prestige could not be compared with the Fourth Division.
When the newspaper presented the Kwantung Army Headquarters with a press release entitled "The Return of the Fourth Division of the Imperial Army's Invincible Imperial Army," the top brass of the military department really couldn't stand it anymore, changed the "invincible" in the headline to "harmless," and mocked this "soft egg" unit in a roundabout way, which can also be regarded as a bad breath for the Second Division.
Because of the "mixed water" of the Fourth Division, the unfortunate Yamashita Fengwen became a model of "a nest of bears" in the Japanese army, and the joke of "the wing commander changed his profession to become a doctor" was also circulated in the Japanese army for a long time. The fourth division was still very lucky, because the invasion of China was tight, and the army was forced to give up the responsibility of the fourth division and urgently order it to go south to reinforce, thus transforming the fourth division into a member of the elite Eleventh Army of the Japanese army.
The Fourth Division is not small in Japan, and it is also "like thunder" in the Chinese army, and it is quite "favored" by the Nationalist army.
During the Battle of Xuzhou, Li Zongren's 400,000-strong army unknowingly jumped out of the Japanese encirclement and the breakthrough was successful, but when passing through a road at the junction of Sulu and Anhui, he suddenly encountered a well-equipped Japanese army on a road, which had at least one brigade of troops.
The nationalist troops had just broken out of the battlefield, a lot of heavy equipment had been lost, the number of people was sleepy, the combat effectiveness was sharply reduced, and they suddenly encountered a strong enemy, the situation was very dangerous, and the commander of the nationalist army had no choice but to cross a heart and take the troops across the road to quickly leave.
According to the Japanese military's combat habits, they will definitely chase and fight fiercely, if so, then this exhausted nationalist army unit will be miserable. But the strange thing is that the Nationalist army ran for a long time and did not see any Japanese soldiers chasing after them.
The commander of the Nationalist army was worried about what the Japanese army was doing, and sent people to inquire about the news, only to learn that the Japanese army had already camped in the area where the two armies met, and a group of soldiers were cooking on the fire on both sides of the road. Looking around, the Japanese army set up a number of guard posts around the camp, and also set up machine guns in the temporary positions, monitoring the direction of possible attacks like a big enemy, but there was no intention of pursuing.
This Japanese army was the southward detachment of the Fourth Division. Afterwards, some people wanted to hold the Southward Detachment accountable, and the commander of the unit had a word: We did not get an order to intercept the large chinese troops.
The story of the Fourth Division was soon widely known, many people in the Chinese army knew that "the Japanese Osaka soldiers will not fight", every time they fought against the Japanese army, if they knew that the Japanese army against the battle was the famous "Osaka Division", everyone would rush to the battle to pinch this "soft persimmon", just like this, the Fourth Division and regiment fought several nest battles in succession, their own troops were defeated and not to mention, and even implicated other friendly neighbor Japanese troops, so that the friendly neighbor troops complained to the headquarters of the Eleventh Army: Don't let the Fourth Division participate in the battle, they come, Any battle that could have been won can be lost...
The commander of the Eleventh Army, Anan, was only a "tendon", he did not believe in this evil, during the Battle of Changsha, he sent the Fourth Division to fight the main attack, the result was that the Fourth Division was really not contentious, and just after entering Changsha City on the front foot, he was driven out by Xue Yue's soldiers and completely defeated. Guan Anan only knew that the guards of Changsha were the elite troops of xue Yue, the "tiger boy", and he was either a light enemy or an elm head, otherwise how could he let the Fourth Division take the lead in attacking.
After the Battle of Changsha, the Fourth Division became a "mourning star" that no one dared to ask for, but they did not expect that the good fortune of the Fourth Division began, and they were transferred to Shanghai and became a direct subordinate unit. At this point, the Fourth Division regiment, which was "liked" by the specially recruited Nationalist Army, hid in the rear, and it was impossible to reach it if it wanted to fight it.
The Fourth Division arrived in Shanghai, but it still did not let the base camp worry. Soon after the troops were stationed in Shanghai, several "major incidents" occurred. Shanghai is the largest commodity trading center in China, and as soon as the Osaka officers and soldiers of the Fourth Division with the genes of the merchants flowing in their blood arrive in Shanghai, they are like "dragons entering the sea", many people return to their old business and start business, they sell what they have, no matter who the buyer is, as a result, a few officers even sell medicines to the New Fourth Army.
Although the Fourth Division regiment was not conscious, after all, it was a division of the first type, with many veterans and many experienced junior officers. Since the Fourth Division and Regiment as a whole were ineffective in combat, the base camp began to transfer people to other divisions and regiments from time to time, and it is difficult to say what will happen to these personnel when they reach the new division.
As everyone knows about the "Battle of Wanjialing", Xue Yue beat up the 106th Division, and the headquarters of the 106th Division was also in Osaka, and among its officers and men were a large number of officers and men from the Fourth Division.
The veterans of the 106th Division found it interesting that this group of officers and men transferred from the Fourth Division was a bit special, and the farewell speeches between them were also different.
For example, when the officers and men of the Second Division said goodbye to each other, if the war situation was better at that time, they would say "long-term martial arts", and if the situation was not good, they would say "Kudan Sakami" (Yasukuni Shrine in Kudansaka, Tokyo). No matter what the situation of the battle, the farewell speech of the officers and men of the Fourth Division was always the same: take care of the noble body (called "Imperial Body Great Cut" in Japanese, which can also be translated as "Body First", which means "the most important thing to save life"), which made the officers of the 106th Division laugh.
Although officers and men were successively transferred from the Fourth Division, the Fourth Division was scattered and the "gods" did not disperse. Some of the soldiers of the Fourth Division were transferred to the 68th And 34th Divisions. The Japanese forces of these two divisions encountered stubborn resistance from the Chinese army when they attacked Hengyang and Zhijiang.
At the beginning of the battle, the veterans from the Fourth Division repeated the same trick, from officers to non-commissioned officers fell ill and were hospitalized. When the wounded soldiers were sent to the hospital, the veterans of the Fourth Division who were hospitalized to "treat the disease" still had to enlighten them: Why are they desperate?
Because of the reputation of the Fourth Division, it was not very popular in various theaters, so until the end of the war, this unit was constantly transferred and rested in various places in the rear, and never participated in major battles again. When Japan surrendered, the Fourth Division was resting in Thailand.
Why is the Osaka unit of the Fourth Division so different? The reason for this has to do with Osaka's history and particularly strong business atmosphere. Most of the inhabitants of Osaka are related to commerce, and since ancient times, respect for the princes has been very limited.
On the contrary, around the problem of harsh taxes and miscellaneous taxes, Osaka people have been fighting with the princes for hundreds of years, bargaining, let alone loyalty. The status of the emperor was not much the same in their minds as it was elsewhere. Although they did not deny that they would die for the "Empire of Japan" or for the Emperor, the people of Osaka would not be in a hurry to "find death", so...
In terms of attitude towards the orders of the superiors, Osaka people are different from other people, they will not obey orders, regardless of whether they are dead or alive to carry out the orders to the end, they treat orders like business, habitually have to "bargain" with the counterparty, "bargain", "calculate", pay attention to win-win, so that both sides of the transaction can benefit.
They also applied these habits to the army, which was the "three noes principle" of the Fourth Division, that is, do not pay for useless sacrifices, do not participate in unreasonable battles, and do not chase the enemy troops in poor ways.
Maybe this is the "way of doing business" of Osaka people, but it has evolved into a "way of joining the military", which is always a bit strange. However, they did do a good job of fighting and doing business without delay.
If the Japanese army had followed the "way of joining the army" like the Fourth Division, there probably would have been no war of aggression against China, which was unfavorable between China and Japan.