On December 14, 1947, a shocking escape occurred at the Nationalist government's prison of the Ministry of National Defense in Shanghai. The protagonist of the escape is Nakano Hisamu, the chief of the special high school of the Chongming Gendarmerie of the Japanese Army.
This Ministry of National Defense prison, also known as Jiangwan Prison, houses Japanese war criminals transferred from all over the country. Japanese war criminals have committed numerous crimes against Chinese people, and it is reasonable to say that they should be strictly detained and await a just trial.
First, let's talk about who this Nakano Hisashi is.
This person has been stationed in Chongming, Shanghai for a long time, and his position is different from that of the ordinary Japanese army. The gendarmerie is specially responsible for public security, and its main job is to search for and arrest anti-Japanese elements and sabotage the anti-Japanese underground organizations in Shanghai. Nakano's methods were quite vicious, and the anti-Japanese soldiers were either tortured or brutally killed, and many of them were tied to stones and thrown into the sea.
The people along the river often found the corpses tied to the stones at low tide, and the common people hated the demon captain to the bone. Immediately after Japan's surrender, the man was arrested by the Chinese government and imprisoned in Jiangwan Prison.
After they were arrested, they were not immediately tried and sentenced, because Jiangwan Prison was held many Japanese war criminals who were much heavier than Nakano Kuyo, such as Gu Shoufu, the first criminal of the Nanjing Massacre and commander of the 6th Division of the Japanese Army invading China, Lieutenant General Nikko Nara, commander of the 11th Army Group Army of the Japanese Army invading China, Lieutenant General Tanaka Kei, commander of the 60th Division, lieutenant general Funayuki Masashi, commander of the 64th Division, and so on.
On April 26, 1947, that Gu Shoufu was sentenced to death and shot at Yuhuatai in Nanjing.
Nakano Hisahiro was just a minions who never had his turn to be judged. So this person was imprisoned until December 1947, and he was still alive and happy.
But Nakano Hadong knew in his heart that the crime he had committed Chinese gritted his teeth fiercely, and if he waited like this, it would not be much better than Tani Shoufu, and in the end it would definitely be a death. So Nakano has been thinking about whether he can escape from prison.
Being a war criminal in a foreign country and paying attention to all parties, who gave Nakano the courage? Anyway, it was definitely not Liang Jingru who gave it to him. His courage comes from the poor management of Jiangwan Prison.
At that time, the attention of the Nationalist government had already shifted to the fight against the civil war, and many people thought that the Japanese were no longer worried, and even if they ran out, they would not be able to set off any storms.
The management of Jiangwan Prison is filled with such a lax atmosphere.
To what extent is it slack?
It is reasonable to say that prisons should have a unified system, uniform prison uniforms, and a unified order of life in charge of prisoners. But in this prison, war criminals wear a variety of clothes, some in prison uniforms, some in Japanese military uniforms when they were imprisoned, and some wearing their own suits. At first glance, it was thought to be a refugee camp.
In addition to this, the facilities of the prison are not very complete. The prison's cells are bungalows, and it is customary to have high walls outside the bungalows to prevent escape. But Jiangwan Prison did not build a high wall, only a ring of vigilance power grids around the perimeter of the bungalow.
A high wall tops a hundred people. Without high walls, a hundred people could not fill the holes.
Although some sentries were set up in the four corners of the barbed wire, and the sentries came to change the guards at regular intervals, over time, the sentries standing guard felt that the War of Resistance Against Japan had been victorious, and they relaxed their vigilance ideologically, and there was a phenomenon that they were not in place
This state of affairs gives war criminals an opportunity to take advantage of it.
On July 22, 1947, detained war criminals Chi Qi Michi and Sugiyama Sagoro escaped from prison by sneaking across the vigilance power grid and escaping from prison, and a week later, on the night of July 29, they were captured in Hongkou.
The incident still failed to arouse the vigilance of the prison management, and Nakano planned for a long time, finally waiting for a good opportunity.
On the night of December 14, 1947, the moon was dark and windy, the weather was cold, and the sentries were huddled in the house and did not want to come out.
Nakano said to the caretaker with a bitter face that he had a stomachache and wanted to go out to the toilet. The caretaker didn't think much of it and agreed to let him go.
Taking advantage of the lack of attention, Nakano sneaked to the unlocked manager's office, ran out through the window, and used the tools prepared in advance to cut the barbed wire and successfully escaped.
It was a very cold day, and the guards standing guard were lazy, hiding in the shelter, and their vision was just blocked, and no one noticed that someone ran out.
By the time the administrator found out that Nakano Hadashi had not returned for a long time, he hurried to find it, and it was already too late. Zou Renzhi, then warden and major general of the Nationalist Army, looked at the cracked barbed wire hole, turned pale with anger, and fired at the derelict administrators and sentries.
Soon the matter was reported to the top level of the Nationalist government, and Chiang Kai-shek was furious and ordered Zou Renzhi to be arrested and brought back to Nanjing for legal action. He also sent Sun Jiejun as the warden to strengthen management. At the same time, the Ministry of Defence was ordered to pursue the war criminal as soon as possible.
Where did Nakano go after he ran out?
At that time, The Japanese expatriates were repatriated to Japan in large numbers, and if Nakano seized the opportunity to apply for repatriation, he would be immediately put under control, and his identity could not be concealed in any case, so he did not dare to appear as a Japanese at all.
If you are not Japanese, you have to pretend to be Chinese. Fortunately, he has certain advantages in this regard.
He has been stationed in Shanghai for a long time, and his task is to walk the streets and alleys and deal with the people of Shanghai, and after a long time, he actually learned the Shanghai dialect. Therefore, he was confident that as long as he did not have contact with the police, with his ability, it should not be a problem to mix out of Shanghai.
He had planned to go to Jiading to join a friend, but the suit on his body was too eye-catching, so he ran to a thrift store in the center of Nanjing Road and sold the suit. I went to Jiujiang Road and bought a long shirt and put it on my body, like an ordinary Chinese.
With a little money left, he had a full meal in a nearby small restaurant, soaked in a bath for an hour after drinking and eating, and let the Yangzhou master rub his back and feet, and slept peacefully in the small hotel at night.
In this way, there was not much change left on him, and Nakano ended his day's "small opening" life and became a "deflated three": half hungry and half full during the day, and staying overnight on a bench in the waiting room of Shanghai North Railway Station at night.
Because the weather was still very cold, Nakano had a bit of a cold, so he went to the pharmacy to buy a few packs of powdered aspirin, and after eating the medicine powder, the cold was much better. On December 16, he walked to Jiading, northwest of Shanghai.
Who knows, it was this bag of medicine powder that almost exposed his identity.
After Nakano came to Jiading, when he passed through the Jiading City Gate, he was interrogated by the police at the city gate. It is also Nakano who deserves this fate.
In a small county town in Jiading, the police have always been rough and leafy, turning a blind eye. At that time, war refugees were everywhere, who had the patience to look it up carefully. When Nakano was investigated, the police admitted the truth and asked where Nakano was from and whether he had any identity documents.
Of course, Nakano couldn't come up with it, so he lied, saying that his name was Wang Shouzhang, a Guangdong native, who had come to Shanghai to do business, because the soldiers and their families were lost, and their documents were also lost.
The police, in disbelief, searched Nakano and found two packets of white powder. At that time, drug abuse and drug trafficking were rampant in society, and the government was cracking down on tobacco dealers, and the police suspected that he was a drug dealer. Nakano did not hesitate to say that this was just ordinary aspirin powder, not a drug, and he would know it as soon as he was tested on the spot.
The police could not recognize it on the spot, and in line with the principle of preferring to believe that he had no credibility, he took Nakano to the police station in Jiading County and detained him.
It didn't matter, it was locked up for 18 days. Nakano cried bitterly and asked the police for testing several times, but Jiading County did not have the instruments for testing, so he was later transferred to the Shanghai Police Headquarters Detention Center and asked the higher-level police station for testing.
Nakano was sent to prison in fear of being transferred back to Gangwan Prison, which would not only ruin his previous achievements, but also speed up the process of being tried and executed.
Fortunately, instead of sending it over, it went to the security headquarters. Neither the gendarmes nor the police there knew him, except that he was an ordinary drug suspect. Nakano was held there for more than 20 days, until the powder was turned into aspirin, and he was acquitted.
Such a storm simply scared Nakano back a layer of skin. After his release, he was penniless and did not dare to go to Jiading again, so he slept on the streets of Shanghai, under the eaves and at the mouth of the bridge. Winter in Shanghai was wet and cold, and Nakano almost froze to death.
He thought left and right, and with nowhere to go, he begged in the streets. He took advantage of the New Year festival to beg in the street, and because of the good luck, he got a lot of change, accumulating a lot, and Nakano used this money to stay in a small hotel, eat small stir-fry in a restaurant, and enjoy a leisurely time. When the money ran out, he went to the streets to beg during the day and slept under the eaves at night.
He was a man with a brain, and he felt that it was not always a way to go down, so he went to the bridge of the Zhapu Road Bridge on the suzhou river and pushed the drivers of the uphill rickshaws, tricycles, collapsed cars, and yellow fish carts, and took some pitiful tips from them.
In the old Shanghai and the early liberation of Shanghai, some people specialized in this profession, commonly known as "pushing the bridgehead". In this way, Nakano can maintain his daily life, with good luck and sometimes a slight surplus.
One day, he spent a little money to buy a set of old clothes and an old "borscht hat", which looked very much like an ordinary Chinese vendor. There are thousands of such people on the streets of Shanghai, and they will not attract the attention of the police at all.
Nakano was very self-aware at first, he could understand the Shanghai dialect, although it was not difficult, but also fluent in Chinese, but the authentic tone of the Shanghai dialect, he could not fully skillfully say it, as long as he had more contact, he could naturally hear that he was a bit unusual.
Therefore, he tried his best to avoid talking to people, but he really couldn't avoid it, so he said one or two short sentences. After a long time, no one noticed anything. He later recalled that the coolies who pushed the bridge with him listened to him talk strangely, and thought that he was a red guy from northern Jiangsu, with a smell of foreignness.
Nakano became more and more confident and dared to talk to others more.
Who knows, it is because of his strange Japanese Shanghainese dialect that he exposes his horse's feet.
Back to the Ministry of Defense's pursuit.
Chiang Kai-shek initially suspected that someone had paid a bribe to the warden in order to escape, and ordered that it must be investigated to the end. The Ministry of National Defense has been under great pressure and has repeatedly urged the Shanghai police to pursue them.
After the Shanghai media learned about this incident, they also made a lot of reports. This Nakano's hands were stained with the blood of Chinese people, and the means were so cruel, after people heard about it, the streets and alleys were talking about it, and the people were extremely indignant.
The Shanghai police did not dare to be sloppy, and after receiving the order, they immediately sent personnel to patrol the major traffic intersections such as major stations, wharves, and airports in Shanghai.
The Ministry of National Defense continued to send people to supervise and urge, and the Shanghai Police Department was reprimanded one after another.
Regarding the direction of Nakano's escape, there are also many opinions within the police station, some say that he went to the north, some analyze him mixed with Japanese expatriates and returned to Japan, and even some people speculate that he ran to the liberated areas of northern Jiangsu, but some people think that Nakano Hisayo did not go anywhere, and settled in Shanghai, adopting the strategy of "the most dangerous place is the safest place".
After discussion, everyone thought that Nakano might be lurking in Shanghai.
If you have a pair of directions, you will do more with less. The Ministry of National Defense felt that this proposal was very correct, so it ordered the forces of the Shanghai police system and the secret service system of the Secret Service to jointly operate and send spies to brothels, casinos, nightclubs and other places where dirt and grime were hidden to investigate.
Who knows, there is no news about the comings and goings. The police department reflected on whether it was a mistake, Nakano's bastard was not in Shanghai at all.
Later, I thought, no, these places are all spent to go, Nakano an outlaw prisoner, where does the money go? So he changed the direction of the investigation and searched for the poor people in the places where they lived.
As a result, the workload has increased, but the efficiency has increased. A few days later, a wire reporter came to report that there was a coolie pushing the bridge on Zhapu Road, which was a bit strange, as if he were a fugitive war criminal Nakano.
The Shanghai Police Department immediately sent two senior "cadre detectives" to see the photograph of Nakano, memorized his face, and one of them dressed as a businessman and one disguised as a coachman, using a tricycle to cooperate tacitly, from the Zhapu Road Bridge from the south of the bridge to the north of the bridge, and then from the north of the bridge to the south of the bridge, taking the opportunity to contact and observe various cart people on the bridge, using the method of "fishing", setting up a "fish bait" special "fish" to be hooked.
On the afternoon of February 28, 1948, they crossed the north side of the bridge from the south of the bridge, and at the side of the bridge, a man in his 30s wearing a "borscht hat" came forward to push a cart for them, and his face was very similar to that of Nakano Hisashi in the photo. When the car reached the bridge, a disguised detective deliberately took out a 5,000 yuan (equivalent to 5 cents later) to ask the cart driver to retrieve 3,000 yuan, but the man was only willing to retrieve 2,000 yuan.
He also replied in Shanghainese: "Sir, now the price is soaring, the banknotes are worthless, and a flatbread will be sold for 3,000 yuan." ”
It was this snake-like sentence that exposed him.
His words, normally sounding, are similar to the Shanghai dialect. But the "big" character of the big cake is very unpleasant, a little weird, the mouth is open, and the pronunciation is continuously long, as if foreigners are learning Chinese.
The two agents immediately realized that this person must be Nakano Hisayasa, so they invariably took advantage of the opportunity to receive the banknotes, holding Nakano down and handcuffing him with a pair of polished handcuffs.
In this way, the Japanese war criminal Nakano Hisamu, who had escaped for more than two months, finally fell into the net of justice and was arrested and arrested.
In order to prevent a second escape, this time he was strictly guarded and transferred to the well-equipped Tilanqiao Prison.
Nakano's escape from prison hastened his trial and execution.
On the day of his arrest, the Shanghai Military Tribunal interrogated Nakano Forashi. Before the arraignment, Nakano knew that he would not be lucky, so he tried everything to delay time.
He told the interrogators that the prison food was too poor to eat at all, and asked him to be given five large cakes, and he would first fill his stomach and then say, otherwise he would not be able to confess in court.
The prison administrator smiled bitterly and bought five large cakes for him to enjoy.
After the trial, in the face of a just trial, Nakano Denied everything, but the court ignored him and presented hundreds of copies of evidence that he killed the Chinese resistance fighters. Faced with the ironclad facts, Nakano had to confess his guilt. The Shanghai Military Tribunal sentenced him to death in court.
More than a month later, on April 8, 1948, the time of Nakano's death had arrived, and at 11:00 a.m., Wang Jiayi, chief procurator of the Shanghai Military Tribunal, led a group of interpreters, clerks, and gendarmes of the Fifth Company of the Second Battalion of the Independent Ninth Regiment of gendarmes to the Tilanqiao Prison where Nakano Kuyong was being held. On the same day, the Shanghai Military Tribunal will detain two Japanese war criminals, Nakano Hisayo and his immediate superior, Hayashi Otoji, and set up temporary courts in the open space of building 3 of the present-day Shanghai Prison Administration and the cross building of Tilanqiao Prison.
In the cell, Hayashi Ōtoshi and Hisahiro Nakano suddenly received a notice from the guards to get dressed, pay attention to their neat clothing, and be taken into custody by the bailiff. Nakano saw that there were a few more strange faces of the policemen in the prison building than usual, and intuitively realized that their death date might be up, so he asked the bailiff to let him take a bath. With the bailiff's permission, Nakano quickly flushed himself under the tap and put on his clothes. Escorted to the execution ground.
At first, Nakano Kuyasa and Ōtaka Satoshi hummed the Japanese national anthem while walking in order to strengthen their courage, but before anyone had reached the execution ground, Ōtsuya Hayashi was already frightened and scattered, so he had to be supported by two bailiffs, and Nakano Kuyo walked on his own as usual.
I couldn't find the original picture, so I had to use this instead
Before the execution, the prisoners, out of humanity, asked them what their last words were, and Dating Zhaozhi cried inhumanely and begged the Chinese military to go to Chongming to investigate, he did not kill many Chinese. Before his death, Nakano became clear-headed and said, "I am guiltless and guilty, and I hope that with my sacrifice, China and Japan will always be friendly." ”
Naturally, no one believes such nonsense.
Two Japanese war criminals stained with Chinese blood came to the execution area of the execution ground, and under the order of the procurator, gendarmes Xu Xiji and Li Gonghao raised their pistols, aimed at the back of their heads and pulled the trigger, only to hear two gunshots of "bang", and the two Japanese war criminals were shot in the head and fell to the ground. Ōtō Hayashita was killed with one shot, Nakano Hisayō was still squirming, and the executioners were afraid that he was not dead, so they made up another shot, and Nakano Kuyo was finally killed.