On August 14, 1945, the Japanese government formally submitted a note to China, the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union, and accepted the Potsdam Declaration unconditionally.
On August 16, the headquarters of the Japanese Kwantung Army received a telegram No. 1382 from the Tokyo Base Camp, and quickly issued an order to the combat departments to surrender the whole army.
The Japanese troops stationed at the Dongning Fortress did not receive a telegram from the Japanese side (the communication equipment had long been destroyed), completely ignored the surrender notice from the Soviet army, and remained stubborn.
So, what is the end of this group of Japanese troops stationed in the underground fortress?
Dongning Fortress is located in Dongning Town, Heilongjiang. According to the book "Japanese Kwantung Army", "Dongning fortification area is the largest in the country. (The Japanese call the fortress a fortification.
In 1931, the Japanese army launched the "9.18" incident, invaded the northeast of the mainland, established the puppet state of Manchukuo, and regarded "Manchukuo" as the "first line of imperial defense" in the war against the Soviet Union.
In the same year, Suzuki, the chief of the Operations Department of the Japanese General Staff Headquarters, led the way together with the staff of the Army Province to inspect the "Manchurian" Soviet border and decided to build a fortress group.
In June 1933, the Japanese War Ministry began to carry out secret surveys and build a huge border offensive and defensive system.
Work began in 1934 and was not officially completed until 1941. The Japanese army successively forcibly recruited 170,000 Chinese laborers and built fortresses in Suifenhe, Dongning, Banduhe, Hutou, Holmojin, Yaohun, Heihe, Hailar, Wujiazi, Lumingtai, Guanyuetai, Miaoling, and Fabiela.
Dongning Fortress is one of them, and it is also the most important one of the fortifications. Its area is second only to the Hailar Fortress, with a frontage of more than 110 kilometers wide and a depth of more than 50 kilometers, covering an area of more than 15,000 square meters. There are 7 permanent positions, 45 concrete structure positions, and 3 other positions, forming permanent fortress positions with each other.
At the same time, Dongning Fortress has extremely developed underground facilities and passages, including power generation rooms, storage tanks, vents, bathrooms, cooking rooms and other equipment, and it is not a problem to live for a long time. The concrete thickness of the ground fortress is up to 3 meters, which can withstand the attack of shells of more than 30 centimeters caliber or 1 ton aerial bomb.
As a strategic location, the Japanese army deployed a large number of troops here. According to the "Chronicle of Dongning County", in 1941, the Japanese Kwantung Army stationed 3 divisions, 1 independent brigade, and 1 border garrison in Dongning County, with a total strength of 130,000 people.
When the Pacific War broke out, the Japanese army transferred the main force of the Kwantung Army to the southern and Southeast Asian theaters. By 1945, the First Border Garrison stationed at Dongning Fortress was reorganized into four regional teams, which were later incorporated into the 128th Independent Mixed Brigade.
The first area: stationed in Katsuchoyama, with jurisdiction over Katsuhiro-san, Mt. Asahi, Mt. Demaru, Mt. Sunset Hill, Mount Xun, Mount Sakae, and other positions, with wing number 570 (the actual area under its jurisdiction is even larger);
The second area: stationed in Wolf Cave Ditch, with jurisdiction over the South Tianshan, North Tianshan, Glasses Mountain, Jianjun Mountain, Yaoshan and other positions, the wing number 299;
Third region: stationed in Dongsui, with jurisdiction over the positions of Dongsui and Gao'an, and the number 396 of the wing;
The fourth area: stationed in Guo Liang's boat mouth, under the jurisdiction of Guo Liang's ship mouth, Triangle Mountain, Consistent Mountain, Mada Mountain (Gou Yu), Dong Dachuan and other positions, the joint number 777.
The soviets were in great trouble with the 783rd Independent Infantry Brigade of the Japanese 132nd Brigade, which was responsible for guarding the Fortress of Katsudoyama, headed by Lieutenant Shunji Saito.
The 783rd Brigade consisted of 4 squadrons, and the 1st Squadron Leader, Lieutenant Toshito Akira, garrisoned the Dongshengduo position; Lieutenant Shingo Nakamura, captain of the 2nd Squadron, garrisoned the Nishikatsu position; 3rd Squadron Leader Lieutenant Takashi Inoue; Garrison of rongshan positions; The 4th Squadron Leader, Lieutenant Kwang Anwon, garrisoned the positions of Mount Asahi and Mount Xun.
It also included 1 heavy artillery squadron, equipped with 2 240 mm fortress guns, 1 75 mm Type 41 mountain gun, 1 92 infantry gun, plus the families of the army, a total of more than 1300 people.
Among the families of the military, in addition to girls under the age of 12 and boys under the age of 15, both men and women were organized into temporary combat teams, responsible for cooking, hauling ammunition, inspecting the internal wires of underground passages, telephone lines and other logistical work.
Shunji Saito, the leader of the 783rd Brigade, was born in 1886, and when the Kwantung Army was urgently expanded to 250,000 people in July 1945, the 60-year-old Saito Shunji joined the army from the Pioneer Regiment due to the lack of junior officers.
On August 8, 1945, the Soviet Union tore up the Japan-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact and declared war on Japan, which was on the verge of extinction.
At about 11:00 p.m. that night, the Soviet Army broke into northeast China in three ways with 11 composite army groups, 2 campaign clusters, 1 tank army, 3 aviation army groups and 3 air defense army groups, 4 independent air force corps, 26137 artillery, 5556 tanks and 3446 aircraft, and a total strength of 1.57 million troops.
This is the famous "August Storm" operation in modern history.
The Japanese relied on strong fortresses and remained on the outside to contain the retarded Soviets; The main force of the Kwantung Army took the opportunity to assemble in Jilin to prepare to cut off the Soviet logistics line and fight a final decisive battle with the main Soviet army in the Jilin area.
The war was about to break out, the Soviet army did not want to fight the remaining Japanese troops head-on, and Big Brother used his firepower superiority to indiscriminately bomb the Japanese fortresses through heavy artillery.
After three days of fire bombardment, many of the marked targets in the Japanese fortress area had long been destroyed.
At dawn on August 11, 1945, the Soviets launched an attack on the Japanese fortress.
Some of the old, sick and disabled Japanese troops were bundled with explosives, and by reducing them to pieces, they died at close range with the Soviets. The charge line included Shunji Saito's 783 Brigade.
In the face of such a "suicide attack" of the Japanese army, the Soviet army also panicked for a while, and there was no good solution at all.
On 14 August, the Government of Japan unconditionally accepted the Potsdam Declaration. In view of the fact that Japan had surrendered, the Allies issued an order to reduce their sacrifices: from the 14th, the participating countries would stop military operations against Japanese troops in the Pacific Theater.
At the same time, most of the Japanese troops in Hailar, Zhangjiakou, Dongning, Yaohun and other fortresses moved to underground fortifications because of continuous combat.
Due to poor communications, the Japanese commanders in most of the fortresses did not know that Japan had surrendered, and still resisted desperately.
On August 16, the headquarters of the Japanese Kwantung Army received a telegram No. 1382 from the Tokyo Base Camp, demanding that the entire Japanese Kwantung Army surrender to the armistice.
The main force of the Kwantung Army, which had been transferred to the major central cities in the northeast region and was assembling to prepare for a decisive battle, received orders and began to find ways to prepare for the return fee.
However, the garrison of those fortresses could not receive the latest news, and still stuck to the fortress. The Soviets, out of desperation, passed on the news of Japan's surrender to the "ground rats."
On August 20, 1945, Major General Hamada, commander of the Fortress of Akira, upon learning of Japan's surrender, immediately led his troops to surrender. On August 22, the Soviets accepted the surrender of tens of thousands of Japanese fortress troops across the northeast.
However, the last Dongning Fortress still had no intention of surrendering, and they successfully repelled multiple attacks by 3 fully manned Soviet infantry divisions.
Previously, the Soviets dispatched Il bombers to bomb the Fortress of Katsudoyama without dead ends, destroying the only radio station of the Japanese army and making the Katsuchoyama Fortress lose contact with the outside world. In addition, the main forces of the Japanese Kwantung Army have surrendered, and no one will convey a message to Shunji Saito.
And Saito Shunji is a tough personality, although he has a little culture, he is not good at communicating with people, and his temper is like an eccentric old man, who only agrees with the ideas in his heart.
As a result, the Soviets repeatedly persuaded him to surrender, but was rejected by Saito Shunji. He did not believe that Emperor Hirohito, who had sworn his allegiance to the death, would accept surrender.
Later, the Soviet army used aircraft to transport the logistics staff officer of the Japanese Third Army, Masao Kono, from Mudanjiang, entered the Dongning Fortress under a white flag, and conveyed the emperor's surrender edict to the Japanese army, and the Japanese army completely gave up resistance.
On August 28, 1945, 901 men, led by Captain Toshiharu Saito, took off their military insignia and epaulettes, carried the bodies of 105 of the dead, and walked out of the bunker in a row of five people to surrender to the Soviet army.
Before the surrender, a total of more than 60 Japanese women in the fortress committed suicide by taking poison, and the bodies were burned in a concentrated manner.
When the Japanese army finally resisted at The Dongning Fortress, it burned the corpses twice. In addition to the incineration of the bodies of the families of the suicide victims at the Fortress of Shengdaoshan, the bodies of more than 50 slain prisoners of war were burned in a abandoned position near the Xunshan Fortress, and more than 200 women accompanying the army were lost.
In 1975, when a group of intellectuals from Beijing, Shanghai, and Harbin went to this area on the orders of the commune to open up the wasteland, they found an underground passage that had been destroyed and sealed at both the north and south ends, and the cave was full of human bones.
It seems that the more than 200 missing women accompanying the army have long been dead. After the surrender of the "old stubborn" Saito Shunji, he was sent by the Soviet army to cut wood on the left bank of the lower reaches of the Amu River (Heilongjiang). Because of his old age and lack of physical support after being captured, Saito Shunji later died in a Soviet logging camp.
The above is the ins and outs of the surrender of the Japanese troops guarding the Dongning Fortress, and it can be seen that even the Soviet Guards with strong combat effectiveness have no way to deal with these Japanese troops hiding in the underground fortresses.
As a remnant of imperialism, Saito Shunji did not heed the advice, not only slaughtered his compatriots, but also vainly tried to turn defeat into victory, which was simply ridiculous.
Of course, the plot part that appears in the TV series is artificially fabricated, and even the main forces of the Soviet army can't do anything with these ground rats, not to mention the special operations squad.