How many Japanese troops were captured by the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army? The numbers are surprising
According to incomplete statistics, during the eight-year War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army captured a total of 7,118 Japanese officers and men, of which the Eighth Route Army captured 5,096 and the New Fourth Army took 2,022 prisoners. In addition, there were also some Japanese prisoners on the frontal battlefield. It can be seen that although the Japanese army is stubborn, it still has a capture rate of three to seven percent.
The early Japanese army was more tenacious and difficult to capture. By the end of the war, there were relatively more Japanese troops who surrendered or even surrendered. For example, in the Battle of Cheqiao in 1944, the New Fourth Army captured 22 Japanese soldiers in the first battle. In 1944, there was even a platoon of Japanese troops who planned to shoot Japanese officers to surrender to the New Fourth Army, but unfortunately it was discovered.
Before 1939, the Eighth Route Army did not have its own prisoner of war management agency, and the captured Japanese troops were transferred to the Kuomintang Baoji Prisoner of War Management Center, and according to statistics, more than 300 prisoners were transferred.
After the Battle of the Hundred Regiments in 1940, the number of Japanese prisoners captured by the Eighth Route Army began to increase. In order to educate and inspire them, the Eighth Route Army set up a Japanese workers' and peasants' school in Yan'an. The school officially opened on 15 May 1941, and the first 11 prisoners of war were admitted. After that, some of the officers and men of the Japanese army captured by the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army in the front were successively sent to Yan'an for education and management.
It is said that when these prisoners of war first arrived, they were very resistant, believing that the Eighth Route Army would torture them. However, the Eighth Route Army had prisoners of war to be killed, and there was no abuse of prisoners of war. On the way to Yan'an, the soldiers of the Eighth Route Army would even carry wounded Japanese soldiers on their backs.
It is said that at that time, the Eighth Route Army gave preferential treatment to the cadets of the Japanese Workers' and Peasants' School according to the treatment of cadres at or above the regimental level, and the standard of food was 36 kilograms of fine grain and 3 kilograms of meat per person per month. In Yan'an, where materials were tight during the war, the treatment was evident.
The school was abolished after the victory of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression in 1945, and the Japanese Workers' and Peasants' School has educated about 500 Japanese prisoners of war, and more than 100 cadets have successively engaged in united front work behind enemy lines, or fought side by side with the Eighth Route Army, transforming from war elements to anti-fascist fighters.
