Japanese 4th Division
The 4th Division, also known as the Osaka Division and the "Merchant Division", was organized in Osaka. It was one of the 17 standing divisions of the Japanese Army before the outbreak of World War II, and was a division of the Japanese Army
When mentioning the Japanese army, the first thing that comes to mind is "killing people without blinking an eye", "extremely vicious", "full of evil", and "exterminating humanity", and then what comes to mind is their super combat effectiveness in the spirit of not killing people in combat, as if they are all outlaws. But in the Japanese army, there was such a unit that few people knew about, this unit was known for its extremely poor combat effectiveness, this unit was later known as the peace-loving and most pit teammate of the Strange Division, within the Japanese army, he was known as the first "soft egg" Osaka Fourth Division.
Founded in 1888, the Osaka Fourth Division was made up mainly of Osaka greengrocers and traders, making it one of the most senior divisions in the Japanese army. This unit has four squadrons under its jurisdiction, equipped with first-class weapons and equipment, and can be called the "elite" of the Japanese army. However, not long after its establishment, the reputation of "nest waste" spread throughout the Japanese army.
Before the war, officers and men collectively pretended to be ill
In 1937, due to the shortage of Japanese troops in China, the Japanese army headquarters sent the Fourth Division to northeast China, which belonged to the Kwantung Army. The Base Camp of the Japanese Army has successively transferred several famous generals to reorganize the division, but there is no way to take the free and scattered Fourth Division.
After two years of intensive training in the Northeast, in 1939, when war broke out between the Soviet Union and Japan in the Nomonkan area on the Border between China and Mongolia, the Kwantung Army ordered the Osaka and Sendai Divisions stationed in the northeast to mobilize urgently to reinforce the front. The Sendai Division (i.e., the Second Division) was ordered to enter the battle immediately, but was soon beaten by the Red Army.
However, in stark contrast to the Second Division, although the combat orders of the Fourth Division had already been issued, the troops were slow to move. The reason was that after the mobilization order was issued, the number of sick patients in the division and regiment surged, and as far as the eye could see, the entire unit was a variety of officers and soldiers who asked to stay behind for various reasons. Under the fury of rage, the Japanese wing commander had to personally sit in the infirmary to participate in the diagnosis, which barely organized the troops to march to the front line, and the joke of "the wing commander changed his profession to become a doctor" also spread in the Japanese army from then on.
From Hailar to Nomonkan, the Second Division walked for 4 days, while the Fourth Division walked for a full 8 days, and a large number of troops were left behind and slipped away. On the day that the advance team of the lucky Fourth Division arrived at the front, Japan and the Soviet Union declared an armistice. After receiving this news, the officers and men of the Fourth Division who had fallen behind quickly caught up as if they had taken stimulants, and even many of the officers and men who remained behind rushed to the front line "with illness," while complaining with great chagrin that they had not had the opportunity to fight a battle.
On the way back, the fully loaded and energetic Fourth Division became the most powerful unit in the Japanese army, while the Second Division, which was the first to rush to the battlefield to participate in the battle, was full of wounded troops. The officer in charge of news propaganda in the Kwantung Army really couldn't look past it, so he lifted his pen and put up the Japanese newspaper for review, and changed the headline of the news "The Return of the Fourth Division of the Imperial Army's Invincible Army" to "I Have Returned from the Prestige of the Fourth Division of the Imperial Army Without Injury," which mocked this "soft egg" unit in a roundabout way.
Despite all the foreign appearances, the fourth division was surprisingly lucky, because at that time, the Japanese army in central China was in a tight situation and was in urgent need of reinforcements, so the Japanese military department had to give up pursuing the fourth division and urgently dispatch the fourth division to the south for reinforcements. The Fourth Division was transformed into a member of the elite Eleventh Army of the Japanese Army.
With the Participation of the Fourth Division, the battles that could have been won would have been lost...
During the Battle of Xuzhou, when faced with the encirclement of the Japanese army, Li Zongren commanded 400,000 troops to skillfully escape the encirclement of the Japanese army. After the breakthrough, the Chinese army was already trapped and lacking, and many heavy equipment were lost, and its combat effectiveness was sharply reduced. While crossing a road on the border of Lusuwan, the exhausted Chinese army suddenly noticed a well-equipped Japanese army on the road.
Because the troops were very tired, the Chinese army panicked when they found the enemy troops, and left the road in confusion and retreated to the nearby mountains. Strangely, after a long time, no Japanese army came after them, and the commander of the Chinese army sent people to inquire after being surprised, but saw that the Japanese army had no intention of pursuing, on the contrary, the Japanese army was still cooking on both sides of the road. This strange Japanese unit was the southward detachment of the Fourth Division.
Since they had just jumped out of the Japanese encirclement, the situation was still very dangerous, and the Chinese army had no choice but to cross the road with a straight face, and the result was that the road was safe. Afterwards, the commander of the Southward Detachment explained to his superiors on the grounds of "strictly observing operational discipline": "No order was given to intercept the Chinese troops. ”
Later, the news reached the ears of the Chinese army, and the saying that "Japanese soldiers in Osaka will not fight" became popular. In each battle, when the Chinese army heard that the opponent was the "Osaka Division", its morale was greatly increased, and it rushed to engage the Fourth Division. The Fourth Division, which had just arrived at the front, was caught off guard, and suffered several defeats in succession, and even implicated friendly troops, so that the friendly neighboring troops complained to the headquarters of the Eleventh Army: "With the Fourth Division participating in the battle, the battle that could have been won would have been lost because the enemy's morale was greatly boosted..."
From then on, the commander of the Japanese Eleventh Army had to let the Fourth Division concentrate on standby in the rear. Once, the commander of the Eleventh Army, Anan, was only a little unconvinced, and sent the Fourth Division to fight the main attack in the Battle of Changsha, and as a result, the Fourth Division was driven out as soon as it entered Changsha, and the whole line was defeated. The Nationalist army guarding Changsha was the elite of Xue Yue's troops, and only an elm head like Anan would use the Fourth Division as the main attack.
In view of its performance in the Battle of Changsha, the Fourth Division became the "broom star" of the Japanese army, and no front wanted it, so the base camp had to change it into a directly administered unit. At this time, some of the soldiers of the Fourth Division regiment blew: "Lao Tzu was a soldier in the First Division, and when the war began, it belonged to the Kwantung Army - elite, and the battle was fought in the Eleventh Army - or elite, and finally the Eleventh Army could not contain us, so we had to change to the base camp under the direct jurisdiction ..."
Saving your life is the most important thing
Although the Fourth Division is a nest, it is a first-class division after all, and there are many veterans. Because the Japanese army suffered heavy combat losses and urgently needed to replenish veterans, the officers and men of the Fourth Division were transferred from time to time to supplement other divisions. At that time, the parting speeches of each unit of the Japanese army had their own characteristics, such as the Second Division, which said "martial arts for a long time" when the battle situation was better; and "Kudan Sakami" when the situation was not good (Yasukuni Shrine in Kudansaka, Tokyo). However, when the officers and men of the Fourth Division bid farewell, they often said "the royal body is cut", that is, "take care of your precious body", or simply said that "saving your life is the most important".
Later, when the Japanese army attacked Hengyang and Zhijiang, it encountered stubborn resistance from the Chinese army. At the beginning of the battle, the veterans from the Fourth Division repeated the same trick, from officers, non-commissioned officers to veterans, and passively but reasonably refused to fight. When the wounded Japanese soldiers arrived at the hospital, the "seniors" of the Fourth Division who were "recuperating" had to ask, "Why are you playing with your life like this?" ”
"Peace-loving"
After the outbreak of the Pacific War, all the units of the Japanese army were engaged in the Pacific Theater against the Allies, and the Fourth Division finally waited for the opportunity to make meritorious achievements. The base camp assigned the Fourth Division to the Southern Army, but the Southern Army only reluctantly included the Fourth Division in the reserve and stationed it in Shanghai. It was not until April 1942 that the Fourth Division was transferred to the Philippines due to the tight war, along with the Fifth, Eighteenth, and Twenty-first Divisions, to participate in the final attack on the Fortress of Corregidor.
In this battle, the Fourth Division went uncharacteristically smoothly, successfully completed its mission, and finally surrendered all the U.S.-Philippines troops on the Bataan Peninsula. Later, I learned that this was not how brave the Fourth Division was in combat, but that the US-Philippine coalition army had long been cut off from supplies for many days, and it had been living on "salt and vegetables" for many months, and it was not new at all to collapse at the touch.
However, this victory brought great glory to the Fourth Division, and in its hometown of Osaka, it flew out of the sky, with the pride of "fortunately sending the Fourth Division to defeat the Bataan enemy". The only regret was that the merchants in Osaka were found to have used the opportunity to celebrate the victory and to sell wartime rations and take advantage of the opportunity to do a lot of business
When Japan surrendered in August 1945, the 4th Division was resting near Bangkok, Thailand. Unlike other Japanese units that refused to accept defeat, the surrender and return of the Fourth Division went exceptionally smoothly. When all the officers and men of the Ruddy and Healthy Fourth Division appeared at the Japanese port, the malnourished and withered Japanese on the mainland were very surprised. Statistically, the Fourth Division was the unit with the fewest casualties and the most complete equipment and materials in the Japanese Southern Army.
The U.S. military's evaluation of this division is "peace-loving." The day after returning home, officers and men ran to the front of the US military barracks, neatly set up stalls, and sold war souvenirs.
Contempt for imperial power, unwilling to be cannon fodder
Why is the Fourth Division so unique in the Japanese army? Writer Sima Liaotaro believes that this is due to Osaka's unique culture. Across ancient Japan, the basic social structure was that peasants were attached to the princes who owned the land, and the princes were subordinate to the emperor. This long-term unchanging social structure led to the formation of a cultural characteristic of strict superior-subordinate relations and obedience in Japan, and it was also the psychological basis for the general fanaticism of the Japanese army in World War II to "allegiance to the emperor".
However, Osaka is a bit different, this place is a famous commercial city, the residents are mostly related to business, and the respect for the daimyo is very limited. On the other hand, around the issue of harsh taxes and miscellaneous taxes, Osaka people have been fighting with daimyo for hundreds of years, bargaining, and the so-called loyalty is even more difficult to talk about. As a result, the emperor's position in the minds of Osaka people is not much the same as in other places. Although soldiers from Osaka were also seduced by militarism during World War II, Osaka people were not in a hurry to "die for the emperor and die for the Empire of Japan", whether they would die or not. Looking at the orders of their superiors, officers and men from Osaka are also accustomed to "bargaining" and "calculating", and will not carry them out with their eyes closed like other units. Even within the Fourth Division, the so-called "three noes" principles of "do not pay for useless sacrifices," "do not participate in unreasonable battles," and "do not pursue the enemy troops in poor ways" have been formulated.
Until Japan's surrender in 1945, the Osaka Division was the unit with the fewest kills and the best preservation of equipment and materials of all japanese divisions. When Japan announced its surrender, the Japanese soldiers were all saddened as losers. Only the soldiers of the Fourth Division had happy smiles on their faces. Interestingly, this famous "weak brigade" retained its own name after the war, and to this day the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force still has the Fourth Division as a unit.
The Japanese historian Seki Yukisuke made a short summary of the Fourth Division in the last part of "The First Nest of the Japanese Army", which really made some sense, "If the Japanese army were like the Fourth Division, probably there would be no war between China and Japan, right?" If so, there would be no defeat for Japan..."