On December 22, 1948, Itagaki Seishiro, a Japanese Class-A war criminal who had committed a blood debt during the invasion of China and the Pacific War, was finally sent to the gallows representing a just trial to pay the blood debt he had deliberately created.
On the Chinese battlefield, Itagaki Seishiro was a very difficult and cunning opponent, who co-planned the "918" incident with Ishihara Guan'er, and later forced Puyi to take power in the "puppet state of Manchukuo" by means of coercion and inducement. After the outbreak of the all-out war of aggression against China, itagaki Seishiro led the Fifth Division, which is known as one of the most elite divisions in Japan, from Hiroshima to the Chinese battlefield to cooperate with the Japanese North China Front.
The Fifth Division was one of the first seven main divisions in Japan, and its soldiers were mainly from Hiroshima, Shimane, and Yamaguchi in the western part of Honshu, Japan. As early as the Sino-Japanese War, the Fifth Division had fought with the Qing army and attacked Pyongyang all the way to Pyongyang, Korea, and then participated in the Battle of the Yalu River Crossing, the Battle of Niuzhuang, and the Russo-Japanese War. After the outbreak of the July 7 Incident, the Fifth Division was ordered to be transferred to fight in northern China, and under the leadership of the division commander Itagaki Seishiro, it was marched all the way to north China.
After the Battle of Songhu began, the Fifth Division, in accordance with the orders of the Japanese base camp, dispatched the 9th Brigade under its command to Shanghai to participate in the landing of Jinshanwei, resulting in hundreds of thousands of Nationalist soldiers being forced to withdraw from Shanghai. On December 13, 1937, after the fall of Nanjing, the beastly Japanese army carried out an organized, planned, and premeditated massacre and bloody atrocities such as rape, arson, and robbery in the city for six weeks, and the 9th Infantry Brigade under the 5th Division was also one of the perpetrators. At the beginning of 1938, because Han Fuqu retreated without a fight and voluntarily abandoned the natural danger of Mount Taishan on the Yellow River, Itagaki Seishiro personally led the remaining "half of the division" to land in Shandong, and joined the Ninth Brigade regiment that had been returned from Nanjing to declare the occupation of all of Shandong.
In May 1938, Riki Ando succeeded Itagaki Seishiro as the commander of the Japanese Fifth Division, led his troops to participate in the Battle of Xuzhou, and later played the old routine of the Battle of Songhu - surprise attack on the rear (Guangzhou Campaign). As the saying goes: madness will be a disaster, in the Battle of Kunlun Pass, the Fifth Division was hit hard by the Chinese army, not only suffered heavy casualties, but even the commander of the 21st Brigade under his command, Masao Nakamura, also put his life on the battlefield. After the outbreak of the Pacific War, the Fifth Division was assigned to Yamashita's 25th Army, which took part in the attack on Malaysia and captured Singapore, the largest British military stronghold in the Far East.
After a crushing defeat at port Moresby, the 5th Division was forced to return to Pyongyang for recuperation, and in early 1945 the division was assigned to Imamura's 8th Front in a vain attempt to salvage Japan's defeat in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. On August 15, 1945, the desperate Japanese announced their unconditional surrender, and the Fifth Division, stationed on the island of Celan, after receiving a telegram from the emperor announcing its surrender, except for the division commander Kiyoichi Yamada, who committed suicide in grief, the rest of the officers and men chose to surrender to the Australian army.