We often say that the Japanese army invading China never received a real reckoning after World War II. At the International Military Tribunal for the Far East after the war, a total of 28 Japanese war criminals were indicted, but only 7 were hanged in the end.
At the same time, war criminals like Ninji Okamura have not even been sent to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. He simply went through a formality at the military tribunal in Shanghai and fled back to Japan. And infuriatingly, he also spent the rest of his life in peace.
The reason why Okamura Ningji was eventually able to exonerate himself and escape back to Japan was because of the intervention of the Kuomintang reactionaries, but he also had a great relationship with a Chinese lawyer named Jiang Yiping.
Jiang Yiping was originally a prominent figure in Shanghai's legal circles, a trustee of Fudan University and a Chinese director of the Shanghai Public Concession. Coming from a family of lawyers, he became famous in his youth by helping free lawsuits against students arrested during the May Thirtieth Movement.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Jiang Yiping also took the lead in collecting donations for refugees, and also rejected Houlu, a high-ranking official of the Wang puppet government, and ventured to defect to the then National Government of Chongqing. But why did he choose to help Okamura Ninji get rid of his crime in the end?
In order to be able to exonerate Okamura Ningji, a Japanese war criminal, Jiang Yiping even did not hesitate to turn against his father and betrayed his professional ethics, openly fabricating facts in court, reversing black and white, and saying that Okamura Ningji had merit in "building North China."
Therefore, after Okamura Ningji is exonerated, he will regard Jiang Yiping as his great benefactor and lifelong best friend. Jiang Yiping, who thought he had made a great contribution to the Kuomintang reactionaries, thought that he would be able to make a smooth start from now on, but he was wrong.
In the end, Jiang Yiping only ended up with a stinking reputation as a traitor, as well as the divorce of husband and wife, the opposite of father and son, and the end of loneliness. He deserved such an end, because he should not have defended a Japanese war criminal who had committed countless crimes.
First, from a small lawyer to a "rich" son-in-law
Jiang Yiping, a native of Yuhang, Zhejiang Province, was born in 1898 to a family of lawyers, and at the age of 24, he received double degrees in literature and law from Fudan University and Soochow University. After graduation, his son inherited his father's business and became active in the legal profession of the Republic of China.
In 1925, after the outbreak of the May Thirtieth Movement, British patrols killed and injured many Chinese, and arrested more than 150 Chinese students. At this time, Jiang Yiping stood up and became famous by fighting lawsuits for free for patriotic students.
Jiang Yiping, who became famous as a teenager, was extremely popular on Shanghai Beach. At that time, there was a "super tycoon" in Shanghai Beach called Yu Qiaqing, the leader of the Ningbo Gang, who was the best at smuggling business, transporting duty-free materials from abroad to China to make money.
Everyone also knows that Yu Qiaqing's business needs to deal with those foreigners from time to time, and sometimes it will inevitably involve some legal issues. So one after the other, Jiang Yiping took Yu Qiaqing.
After Yu Qiaqing knew Jiang Yiping, he found that Jiang Yiping was a young man with high talent and also helped his business a lot. For such a talent, he definitely wanted to keep it, so he introduced his daughter to Jiang Yiping.
Although Yu Qiaqing's daughter was ten years older than Jiang Yiping, Jiang Yiping did not mind. After the two married, Jiang Yiping continued to work as a lawyer, but also intervened in the business world, and later became a Chinese director of the public concession.
It was very comfortable to see such a day, but Japan launched a war of aggression against China. But Yu Qiaqing found a new way to make a fortune, and he transformed into the president of the Shanghai Refugee Relief Society, relying on smuggling rice to make a fortune.
At that time, Wang Jingwei's traitorous government was short of money, and after hearing about the reputations of Yu Qiaqing and Weng's son-in-law, he immediately extended an olive branch to them and invited Jiang Yiping to serve as the so-called "Minister of Justice of the National Government."
Did the Wang puppet government take a fancy to Jiang Yiping's "talent" in law? Bullshit! Is there still a law in the eyes of people like Wang Jingwei? Obviously, the Wang puppet government was interested in Yu Qiaqing's family's money, so it thought of using an official position to win them over.
However, this invitation from the Wang puppet government was rejected by Jiang Yiping. So many people will wonder why Jiang Yiping was so "backbone" at that time and dared to refuse the invitation of the Wang puppet government, but in the end he still went to be a traitor?
In fact, Jiang Yiping did not have a "backbone," he just knew very well what kind of "abacus" the Wang puppet government was playing. Due to the compelling situation, Jiang Yiping and his father-in-law Yu Qiaqing had to turn around and flee to Chongqing.
After Yu Qiaqing and Jiang Yiping came to Chongqing, they opened several transportation companies of trading companies, continued to hoard and live in qi, and made a lot of money in the country. It was not until the surrender of Japan in 1945 that Yu Qiaqing died of illness.
II. The "Shoe Shine Cloth" of the Kuomintang Reactionaries
After Yu Qiaqing's death, Jiang Yiping's reliable backers basically fell. At this time, he began to think that in a chaotic world, a businessman had money in his hands, but without power, his financial interests were still not guaranteed.
Only by "leaning against a big tree" can we cool off, so Jiang Yiping felt that he had to curry favor with the Kuomintang reactionaries. Originally, he was eating the bowl of lawyers, and if he had not established good relations with the officials of the Kuomintang reactionaries, he would have been unable to accomplish anything.
At that time, the Kuomintang reactionaries did not want to hand over Okamura Ningji to the International Military Tribunal for trial in the Far East, so they planned to set up a small courtroom in Shanghai, find a few people to pretend, go through a formality, and deceive the world.
Initially, the Kuomintang reactionaries found several lawyers, but no one wanted to go. At that time, Jiang Yiping was the so-called "congress deputy" of the Kuomintang and a legislator of the Shanghai Lawyers Association, so the court found him and two other people as defenders.
Among the three defenders, the most famous is Jiang Yiping. Of course, he was the one who didn't have the most face. When others were very resistant to this task, only he felt that he was willing to eat.
Because Jiang Yiping probably felt that the opportunity had come, he had to behave well in front of the Kuomintang reactionaries. Moreover, he believes that people who are lawyers defend suspects are also the embodiment of legal fairness and impartiality, and there is no moral problem.
A citizen cannot be called a criminal without trial. However, Okamura Ningji was obviously different, not only was he not an ordinary criminal, he was also a war criminal who committed the most heinous crimes in the Japanese army invading China.
As early as November 1945, in the list of Japanese war criminals published by Yan'an, Okamura Ningji was listed as the chief war criminal. Between 1940 and 1942, Okamura's "Great Purge" in Northern China massacred nearly a million ordinary Chinese.
The court hears the case and supposedly the defendant must have a defender. But when the International Military Tribunal for the Far East went to trial in 1946, all of the 28 Japanese war criminals were American lawyers.
In the face of Japanese war criminals, Chinese certainly will not be a defender. However, Jiang Yiping, as a Chinese, insisted on running out to defend a Japanese war criminal, and his behavior of forgetting his ancestors was not acceptable to Chinese.
Jiang Yiping's father, with a keen sense of politics and a Chinese conscience, strongly opposed Jiang Yiping's actions, and he also bitterly advised Jiang Yiping. But all this that Jiang Yiping's father did was ultimately in vain.
Because Jiang Yiping not only did not listen, but even made a so-called "innocent defense" for Okamura Ningji, and also openly fabricated facts in court, reversed black and white, and sensationalized the public. As a result, Okamura Ningji was successfully exonerated, but Jiang Yiping did not gain any benefits.
In the end, the people of the whole country knew that there was such a shameless person as Okamura Ningji who had forgotten his ancestors. Because of this incident, Jiang Yiping's wife also divorced him, and his father directly reported that he had severed relations with him.
The Kuomintang reactionaries naturally blamed Jiang Yiping for all their faults. Because the Kuomintang reactionaries believed that Okamura Hadhi had been court-martialed, why was he not guilty in the end? They all blamed the traitor Jiang Yiping, and it had nothing to do with the Kuomintang reactionaries.
At the same time, this incident also aroused great public indignation, and in order to calm the people's anger, the Kuomintang reactionaries removed Jiang Yiping from all his posts. So in this way, Jiang Yiping was the last person to run to Taiwan in a gray and slippery way.
Okamura Ninji, a war criminal who escaped sanctions under Jiang Yiping's defense, personally visited Jiang Yiping's home in Taiwan in 1961 and verbally expressed his "gratitude" to Jiang Yiping. But in fact, he couldn't do anything for this rebellious man.
Five years later, war criminal Ninji Okamura died of a heart attack. In 1971, after spending 23 years alone in Taiwan, Jiang Yiping also died of depression and no children behind him.
epilogue
Jiang Yiping, who was eager for success and quick profits, for the sake of his so-called future, did not hesitate to engage in political opportunism, did not hesitate to violate his own professional ethics, and even more did not hesitate to violate the conscience of a Chinese, and ran to defend a war criminal who committed the most heinous crimes.
Therefore, Jiang Yiping's final retribution is not to be unclothed, nor is it to be hungry, but to be perpetual torture in the soul. The Kuomintang reactionaries put all the responsibility for Okamura's exonerating on him, directly cutting off his political career.
Jiang Yiping did whatever he wanted to get, but in the end he didn't get all of them. At the same time, he also lost what he had. Because his wife left him, his father also chose to break off relations with him, and no one dared to go near him anymore.
At the same time, people like Jiang Yiping have been isolated forever. Even after a thousand years after death, he can only be a lone ghost who can never return to his hometown and enter the grave of his ancestors. This is the end of betraying one's personality and conscience for the sake of profit.