How many people came and died when Japan invaded China?
Ever since China was opened by British foreign guns and shells in 1840, China's modernization process has been through war. The two Opium Wars, the Sino-French War, the Sino-Japanese War, and the invasion of China by the Eight-Power Alliance、...... These important wars have had different degrees of impact on China. But if you want to talk about the most memorable battle in history, you must mention the War of Resistance Against Japan. After the Meiji Restoration, Japan embarked on industrialization before China, and got a share of the frenzy of the Western powers dividing up China. Militarism and ambitions at home, Japan decided to dominate Asia and made the occupation of China the first step in its plan.
The War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression lasted for 14 years and was the most painful disaster in the history of the Chinese nation. While Japan ignited the war, it also paid a huge price and eventually failed. So, when Japan invaded China, how many Japanese troops came and how many people died?
There is a theory that the Japanese army dispatched a total of 105 divisions, including 97 infantry regiments, 5 flying regiments, and 3 tank regiments. Until the japanese surrender in 1945, there were still 58 corps deployed in China, which were scattered in northeast China, north China, central China and south China, accounting for 32% of the total number of Japanese troops.
The Japanese naval fleet also has 30,000 troops, so japan's total strength is about 1.09 million. In fact, this is an incomplete statistic, because at that time there were still independent garrisons, independent mixed brigades, and direct subordinate units of various armies.
It was very difficult to fully count the Japanese soldiers who had come to China to fight. First, the deployment of Japanese troops in the Chinese battlefield will constantly change according to the situation of the war, and it is unlikely that the war will be counted at that time; second, it is too old to find many materials. It can only be calculated based on the available data that more than 3.5 million Japanese soldiers were put into the Chinese battlefield before and after.
So, how many troops did Japan lose on the Chinese battlefield? This data is also difficult to verify, because the answers given by the two sides of the statistics are not the same. According to information released by the Japanese side, the Japanese army lost 2.13 million people during World War II, about 540,000 people died in the Chinese battlefield, and 1.2 million people died in the Pacific theater. The credibility of this figure is questionable internationally, as the U.S. statistics on Japanese casualties in the Pacific Theater are around 1.5 million.
From books and materials on the Japanese and Chinese sides that were gradually declassified later, experts obtained more information on casualties. In the end, it was more reasonable to conclude that the number of Japanese soldiers killed in China was about 700,000.
The statistics of casualties in war have always been controversial, because one of the warring parties may exaggerate the false data of the warring states, and the other side may deliberately conceal the real casualties, so there is a certain error in the final result, which is normal.
The cruelty of war is not one-sided, and the confrontation between the two sides ultimately reaps the lessons of blood. The Japanese side is still unwilling to face history head-on and admit the fact that they invaded China. But now that China has developed and become strong, while pursuing an independent foreign policy of peace, it must also resolutely defend its sovereignty and guard against the restoration of Japanese militarism.