On July 28, 2010, a plane carrying a delegation of Japanese PLA veterans slowly landed at Beijing's capital airport. The greeters of the Mainland Ministry of Foreign Affairs immediately went up to greet them and extended a warm welcome to these Japanese soldiers who had contributed to China in the anti-fascist and liberation wars.
In this delegation, there was a relatively special person, who was the secretary general of the delegation, and he, as a Japanese, greeted the greeter with a smile in fluent Tohoku dialect: "I am not a guest, I am a Chinese, my name is Zhang Rongqing, and today I am going home again." ”
The greeters were surprised, because on the delegation roster, it was clear that this person's name was Kei Sahara, and he should be a native Japanese, so why did he call himself Chinese?
Special Japanese People's Liberation Army
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression on the mainland, many Japanese prisoners were captured by our army, and under the inspiration of our army's anti-fascist education, many people voluntarily joined us and became a glorious soldier of the Eighth Route Army or the New Fourth Army.
These Japanese People's Liberation Army were very important to our troops at that time, because these people were different from our ordinary soldiers, their cultural quality was relatively high, and they were able to perform some highly specialized technical branches in our troops, such as doctors, artillery, and aviation.
According to incomplete statistics, before and after the founding of the People's Republic of China, there were more than 30,000 Japanese people in the People's Liberation Army, who made outstanding contributions to the cause of the liberation of the mainland. Unlike these more than 30,000 Japanese People's Liberation Army members, this Sarahara Hui was not inspired to join our army after being captured, but joined the Chinese People's Liberation Army as a Chinese. How could he, a Japanese, join us as a Chinese?
Kei Sahara, who died on June 24, 2021, was born in 1933 in an ordinary family in Fukuoka Prefecture, Kyushu Island, Japan, his parents are standard Japanese, and his ancestors have no Chinese ancestry, so in terms of blood, Sahara is 100% Japanese.
At the time of Sahara's birth, Japan had occupied the three eastern provinces of the mainland, in order to alleviate the domestic crisis and increase control of the occupied areas, the Sahara Kei family was immigrated to the northeast by the Japanese government and became a member of the reclamation group, when Sahara was just 5 years old.
As ordinary Japanese people in that big era, we can't use a simple "good guy and bad guy" to draw conclusions for the Sahara Kei family, but from the perspective of personal character, Sahara Kei's father is just a hard-working and kind Japanese ordinary worker, unlike other brutal Japanese militarists, Sahara Kei's father never subjectively deliberately bullied and Chinese, and also sympathized with the suffering of the low-level people in China.
In the northeast at that time, although it was already a Japanese occupation area, but the most life was still Chinese, especially at the bottom, Sino-Japanese mixed living was the norm at that time, in the memory of Sahara Hui, his earliest contact with Chinese was an apprentice of his father, and he was often taken by this person when he was a child, playing with other Chinese children, in the eyes of ignorant children, there is no national hatred, there is no position, the relationship between them is just "playmates".
At that time, Sahara's father was a team leader in charge of technology, and his family was better off than ordinary people, but as the Japanese army was gradually defeated on the battlefield, Japan's defeat was decided, and Sahara's father, who was more sensitive to the current situation, decided to send him to Dalian School to study, because it was close to the sea, and he could take a boat back to the motherland at the first time after Japan's defeat.
In July 1945, when his father became seriously ill, Sahara immediately left his school in Dalian and went to Fuxin, Liaoning, where they lived, to visit his father, who was seriously ill. In the end, his father died permanently on the 14th of that month, and did not return to Japan until his death. A month later, when the news of Japan's surrender came, the Japanese living in the northeast panicked, they knew that they were going to face the fate of being repatriated, so they sold their property one after another, hoping to return to their hometown as soon as possible.
But in the chaotic situation at that time, how easy was it to go home? At that time, Kei Sahara was only 12 years old, and with the death of his father and the loss of the top pillar of the family, it was more tragic than other Japanese, at this time, Kei Sahara's father's early years of kindness played a role, and his apprentice promised to escort the family to Huludao, which was the port of return of Japanese overseas Chinese at that time.
However, when this group of people arrived in the area of The Gangzi in Beizhengou, Liaoning Province, there was a problem, and the people who led the way ran away with them and disappeared, which also caused them to return to China to become a bubble.
Yin and Yang mistakenly became the Japanese of the People's Liberation Army
In order to make a living, the Sahara family chose to settle down in the local area, at that time, in addition to his mother, Sahara Hui also had two young sisters, they sold all their father's savings and found a place to live in the local area, the mother did some sewing and repairing needlework for others, and Sahara Hui went to the landlord's house to herd cattle and pigs, and the family struggled to maintain their livelihood.
During this period, While working for the landlord's family, Sahara learned Chinese, and as the days went on, the people around him gradually forgot their family's Identity as a Japanese.
If things had gone on like this, Sahara would have been living in China as an ordinary person, but an incident that happened in 1948 completely changed Sahara's life. At that time, our Northeast Democratic United Army came to this ordinary village to carry out land reform, because he was oppressed by the landlords for a long time, and under the propaganda of our army, Sahara resolutely and resolutely joined the Chinese People's Liberation Army, and his name at that time was "Zhang Rongqing".
This is the difference between Sahara Hui and ordinary Japanese People's Liberation Army, he joined the army as a Chinese, and since then, as Zhang Rongqing, he has successively participated in the Liaoshen Campaign and the Pingjin Campaign with the troops in the north and south, and can be described as a repeated battle achievement on the liberation battlefield, whether his unit leaders or the comrades around him do not know, he is actually an authentic Japanese.
After his identity was revealed, he returned to Japan but thought of China
In 1950, the Korean Peninsula was again at war, and the Japanese legions in the four fields had been allowed to participate in the war, but when they reached the Yalu River, they were urgently stopped, because the international situation at that time did not want to cause international disputes, so the Japanese People's Liberation Army was not allowed to enter the Korean battlefield.
Now that this matter is mentioned, Sahara still feels very proud, because he is the only Japanese in the volunteer army that went to resist the United States and aid Korea, so without the knowledge of the top level of our army, Sahara Hui became the only Japanese PLA soldier participating in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea.
In 1953, when Kei Sahara's mother suffered from a serious lung disease due to overwork and homesickness, her life was dying, because they belonged to the military family, and the local government immediately sent people to comfort them after learning of this situation.
When Sahara's mother was dying, she kept calling for "going home" in Japanese, and the condolence personnel immediately reported the situation to their superiors and then to the troops, at which time the identity of Sahara Kei was revealed.
The troops deliberately talked to Kei Sahara and expressed sympathy for the suffering of his family, and the comrades around him, after knowing the identity of his Japanese, in addition to feeling surprised, they were still as they were, so Sahara Kei restored his Japanese identity, and his superiors also arranged him to work at the old aviation school in Tohoku, where there were more Japanese people, according to his situation.
During this work, a more interesting thing happened, at that time, because the mainland was still relatively poor, materials were relatively scarce, most of the Chinese working at the old Northeast Aviation School ate coarse grains, and the Japanese technicians at that time, because their professions were more special, but ate fine grains, which caused the dissatisfaction of Sahara Kei, who believed that the Japanese soldiers who surrendered should not be treated preferentially, and went on hunger strike for several days.
Some of our political workers cried and laughed, but in order to appease Kei Sahara, they continued to do work for him, and explained that this was not unfair, because of the technical work, everything was rationed according to the regulations, not because the other party was given preferential treatment by Japanese talents, which made the work of Sahara Kei.
At that time, Sahara Hadhi had been using Zhang Rongqing's name, and he had already regarded himself inside and out as a Chinese. Later, according to the organizational arrangement, Sahara picked up the stumbling Japanese language again, and returned to his long-lost Hometown of Japan in 1955, but both of his sisters stayed in China and married, living as Chinese.
Returning to Japan, Kei Sahara quickly adapted to local life and has been committed to sino-Japanese friendly exchanges for many years, although she has restored her japanese identity, Kei Sahara has always demanded herself by the standards of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, and is proud of this status.
Therefore, returning to China again is more like going home for Sahara Hui than as a guest to make a friendly visit, and seeing the rapid development of China's economy in recent years, people's living standards have long exceeded that of when he left, Andahara hui felt extremely happy about it.
Before Kei Sahara's death, whenever someone asked him, was he Japanese or Chinese? He replied, "I am a native Japanese by blood, but emotionally I prefer to be a Chinese, and I am proud to have been a glorious Chinese people's liberation army." Sahara also made it clear that he hoped that after his death, he could bury half of his ashes in his hometown and the other half in his hometown, China.
On June 24, 2021, Japanese People's Liberation Army soldier Kei Sahara (Zhang Rongqing) died suddenly at the age of 88. Finally, I wish the elderly a good journey and pay tribute to China