During the Japanese invasion of China, there was a branch called "cooperative force", according to wartime data, in August 1943, the Japanese army divisions and regiments due to the reduction of the number of troops and the phenomenon of lack of labor, so the Japanese military department issued an order, can use prisoners to make up for the shortage of labor, and domesticated, in order to maintain the ability to guard combat, named "cooperative force".
The first group of "co-workers" consisted of 150 people, all officers and men of the Nationalist Army captured during the Jiangnan Operation in Jiangbei, who were originally imprisoned in the Hankou concentration camp, engaged in super-manual labor, and after becoming "co-workers", they were handed over to various companies together with the "Regulations on the Management of Cooperative Forces" and let them carry out miscellaneous work such as farming fields, transporting grain, cutting down timber, and so on instead of livestock. During the Changde campaign, these collaborators were responsible for transporting ammunition and medical equipment for the Japanese troops, and were instructed by the Japanese army to plunder the people in the Changde area.
Most of these co-workers were not willing to fight for the Japanese army, and they were even more unwilling to rob the common people's belongings, for example, the Anteng Brigade, whose troops were assigned to 30 co-workers, because they could not bear the torture, 13 people fled in groups when the battle was chaotic, and the remaining 17 people, although they promised not to flee, still became the pumps of the Japanese army, and after being beaten inhumane, they were roped and sent to the all-out management camp of the allied forces in Dangyang for re-domestication.
About 300 meters east along the stone path of Dangyang Ziyi Gate, there is an area surrounded by 2 meters high barbed wire, which is a place dedicated to domesticating allied troops, which is also known as the "location of the Park Troops", and the Japanese refer to the "Allied Forces" as the "Park Troops", which is a deliberate satire on the prisoners.
The outside of the barbed wire was dug a trench two meters deep and five meters wide, and the inside of the trench was littered with broken glass, and its purpose was to prevent the co-workers from escaping. Inside, there were several brick houses that served as dormitories and offices for Japanese soldiers, and two large huts with grass roofs and earthen walls, where captives known as co-workers lived.
The two large houses are separated by a mud wall, leaving only a door as an entrance, no windows or other ventilation holes, and the damp floor has no superfluous furnishings except for a row of straw mats. Due to the lack of ventilation, the house was filled with a foul smell, and the captives who were co-workers had to sleep on their sides every day, and it was difficult to turn over, in addition to coping with the humid and sweltering heat in the summer, they had to endure the bites of mosquitoes, and in the winter they had to endure the biting cold.
On the east side of the two large houses, there is a windowless hut with an iron gate named "Isolation Room", and this small hut is called "Ghost Gate Gate" by the captives, which is used to hold prisoners who have been extremely abused and have fallen due to physical exhaustion and waiting for death.
After Japan's surrender, the Nationalist forces in charge of taking over here found some archives and personal notes that had not been destroyed, and from a pamphlet, found a paragraph written in Japanese, which was translated as follows:
More than 100 captives tasked with repairing the airfield today were brought back early, each carrying an empty canned box in his hand, lined up in a long line, braving the light rain, anxiously waiting for a quick distribution of food.
In front of them were two oversized iron pots, which boiled the grains swept out of the warehouse, mixed with hair, bird droppings, rat droppings, gravel, grass clippings and rotten leaves, and so on, and the person in charge of cooking the rice threw it into boiling water without cleaning it into porridge to feed these poor guys.
They were all yellow-skinned because of long-term malnutrition, wearing torn clothes thrown away by the Japanese soldiers, the holes were not repaired by needles and threads, and their hair and beards could not be cleaned. Most of them have developed scabies because of the long-term exposure of their skin to damp environments, scratching with their fingers from time to time until they scratch, and the wound oozing yellow-green pus attracts flies, and they don't even bother to drive them away.
"Assemble, assemble, hurry up!" Suddenly the Jinshan Cobia shouted loudly, and the guys who were called the Co-Workers didn't know what was happening, and could only assemble again on an empty stomach. Lieutenant Ugino came out of the house to give a lecture, holding a piece of paper in his hand, and read aloud: "Recently, the labor of the co-workers has been obviously slack, and as such, it is impossible to complete the work within the prescribed date, and this situation has occurred due to the insufficient number of Japanese soldiers monitoring the scene... From today onwards, you will be responsible for its duty of mutual supervision..."
It turned out that they only wanted to supervise each other, Lieutenant Ugino seemed to have drunk too much rice wine, how could these cunning guys supervise each other? This lecture is really ridiculous.
But after the ridiculousness, it is time for something unsmiling to happen. A few days earlier, a young captive with a broken arm at the construction site had been dragged out of the isolation room, and Cobia Kanayama had loudly ordered the other captives to dig a pit near the barbed wire, and then Lieutenant Ugino, in front of all the captives, beheaded the young captive in front of the newly dug pit, in order to threaten the captives who dared not obey the orders to supervise each other, and this was the end.
This summer, due to injuries and malnutrition, more than a dozen sick co-workers have been beheaded, and one co-worker with a rotten thigh has been picked up by the medic for medical experiments as "rats".
Although it is stated in the Regulations governing the Co-operative Forces that "the treatment and subsistence of the Co-Opus shall be carried out in accordance with the standards of the Japanese soldiers", this is an empty phrase, no one has carried out it at all, and if the captives are overeaten, who knows what they will do against the Japanese soldiers. Therefore, it is still good to starve them.
The expansion of the airfield was carried out under the hard work of the co-workers and local residents, and this phenomenon occurred not only in Dangyang, but also in Jingmen, Tumenya and other places, people hit concrete, transported stones, dug pits, filled soil, paved roads under the supervision of Japanese soldiers and Korean soldiers during the day, and continued to carry out super-intense work under the dazzling searchlights at night, not only whips and sticks beat them severely, but also often killed on the spot because they were injured and could not work, and often attacked by anti-Japanese army aircraft.
When air raids came, Japanese soldiers would hide in bomb shelters and bunkers, while co-workers and residents would lie like small ants on the wide ground of the airfield. After the plane flew away, the Japanese soldiers immediately became magical, dragging up the people who had not been killed by the plane, not allowing them to manage the dead or injured people, but forcing them to continue to work.
Due to the serious shortage of labor, not only young adults were arrested to serve as coolies, but even the elderly, women and children were also arrested, and at least 7 pregnant women were arrested to work for young adults at the "knife-throwing stone" airport alone, one of whom gave birth on the construction site, and one died in miscarriage, and in November 1944 alone, more than 60 local people were killed here.
In December 1944, because the airport could still be used, more than 1,000 appeasement troops of Wang Jingwei were requisitioned into the cooperative force, and finally in February 1945, the airport expansion project was completed by rushing to work day and night. When the commander of the Sasaki Division came to inspect the progress of the project, the cold wind blew the bones of the collaborators in the dry grass on the edge of the barbed wire fence outside the two broken houses covered with straw mats.
Commander Sasaki ordered the bones to be buried again, so that outsiders could not see this uncoordinated picture, and said in a lecture to the Japanese officers and soldiers: "Everything that happened here is aimed at achieving Japan's goal of winning the war, sacrificing the lives of more prisoners, and establishing His Majesty the Emperor's desire for 'common prosperity in Greater East Asia.'" ”
After the lecture, the commander of the Sasaki Division wrote down four big characters of "Hachiho Ichiyu", which are derived from the ancient saying "Kanehaku kaido, cover up hachihiro and become a yu." The commander of the Sasaki Division used this to encourage all Japanese officers and men to fight bravely and realize the wish of His Majesty the Emperor a day earlier.
(The above content refers to the old archives of the Japanese invasion of China preserved by the Chinese Min public security university, and the pictures are old photos during the war of aggression against China.) ）