In January 1948, Tanaka Junji, Toshiaki Xiangjing, and Takeshi Noda were tried at the Nanjing Military Tribunal. At the time of the fall of Nanjing, the three men extended their butcher knives to the unarmed people, creating a horrific "hundred people beheading" incident.
According to statistics, Tanaka Junji killed more than 300 innocent people; while Xiang Toshiaki and Noda Actually competed to see who killed more, and finally Killed 106 people to Toshiaki Andi, and Noda killed 105 people.
Afterwards, the three of them were interviewed by the Japanese media and showed off what they had done in the newspaper. Tanaka, Xiangjing, and Noda massacred innocent people with solid evidence, and after trial by the Nanjing Military Tribunal, all three of them were shot.
I thought that the demons of Nanjing's "hundred people beheading" had all been ambushed, but 47 years later, the appearance of a Japanese saber in Taiwan directly indicated that there was a fourth person in the murderer.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="8" > First, Taiwan suddenly appeared the fourth murderous knife</h1>
Fast forward to May 1995, in order to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Nanjing Television decided to plan a documentary about the Nanjing Massacre.
The reporter in charge of the interview was named Wu Jianning, and in view of the fact that some people who witnessed the Nanjing Massacre went to Taiwan at that time, in order to obtain more information, Wu Jianning also decided to go to Taiwan to interview.
Before leaving, the members of the filming team consulted relevant materials in the library of Nanjing University and accidentally found that a magazine in Hong Kong had published a message: the Taichung County Military History Museum displayed a Japanese command knife, which was likely to be the knife of the "hundred people beheading" that year.
After seeing this news, Wu Jianning decided to go to Taichung County first. This murderous knife is the most direct "witness" of the Massacre that year, and it is also the most powerful evidence to expose the atrocities of the Japanese army.
When he arrived in Taichung County, Wu Jianning found that there was no saber in the military history museum, and he inquired about it before learning that this saber was currently in the collection of the National Army Historical Relics Museum in Taipei.
In the end, Wu Jianning saw this saber in the National Army Historical Relics Museum, and its collection level was very high. The saber is displayed in the special exhibition cabinet of the "Nanjing Massacre", the length of the knife is about 70 centimeters, and it is a Type 94 officer's sabre.
Just as the film crew was taking pictures of the saber, they suddenly found an inscription engraved on the handle of the knife: Nanjing の役殺107 people (that is, 107 killed in the Battle of Nanjing).
Tanaka killed more than 300 people, XiangJing killed 106 people, and Noda killed 105 people. How come there are suddenly 107 people? Wasn't the owner of this knife one of the three of them? Could there be a fourth murderer in the "Hundred Man Chop"?
Thinking of this, Wu Jianning's scalp tingled, if it is true, this murderer has been hiding for decades, and may still be alive in the world. The real murderer did not have a law, how could these 107 innocent people who died in vain be blind?!
Wu Jianning knew that the stakes were high, and he immediately confirmed with the relevant personnel of the Cultural Relics Museum to find the provenance of the saber. According to the museum's donation records, the saber came to the museum in 1985 and was donated by relatives of Wei Bingwen, former deputy commander of the 16th Army of the Nationalist Army.
The donor made the donation in the name of "Wei Bingwen" and did not leave his name and address, and Wei Bingwen died in 1971. Knowing that Wei Bingwen was a first-term student of Huangpu, Wu Jianning decided to try his luck at the Whampoa Military Academy in Taipei.
However, the Tongxinhui also did not have information about Wei Bingwen's relatives, only that he was from Xi'an. In this unfamiliar place, trying to find someone is like finding a needle in a haystack. Seeing that the deadline for staying in Taiwan was approaching, Wu Jianning could only return to the mainland with full heart.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="65" > the origin of the second and fourth sabers</h1>
Back in Nanjing, Wu Jianning could not let go, this is 107 bloody human lives! If the real culprit is not found for them, Wu Jianning himself will not forgive himself. So he immediately contacted Gao Xingzu, the president of the Nanjing Massacre Research Association, hoping to make a breakthrough from him.
After hearing about this knife, Xingzu vaguely remembered that he seemed to have seen it somewhere. So he rummaged through the boxes and cabinets, and opened all the old materials to check them one by one. Eventually, he saw an article in the People's Political Consultative Conference Daily about the saber.
The article was published in 1985, the author's name is Yu Hongcheng, then vice chairman of the Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese in Dazhu County, Sichuan Province, and the saber described in the article is exactly the same as what Wu Jianning saw at the Taipei Museum of History and Cultural Relics!
Ten years have passed, and I don't know if Yu Hongcheng is still alive? But as long as there is a little hope, Wu Jianning will not give up. After several inquiries, he finally learned that the elderly Yu Hongcheng was still alive.
At Wu Jianning's request, the elderly Yu Hongcheng recounted the confiscation of the saber 50 years ago.
After Japan announced its surrender, the Japanese troops scattered throughout China were asked to stop where they were and wait for the Chinese army to come and surrender.
Yu Hongcheng, who was then the commander of the 22nd Division of the Nationalist Army's 16th Army, was ordered by his superiors to come to Dingxian County, Hebei Province in January 1946 to accept the surrender of the Japanese Independent Mixed Brigade Regiment.
At that time, the Japanese army handed over a total of 10 command knives, and Yu Hongcheng pulled them out one by one to take a look. When he saw the command knife engraved with the words "Nanjing の役殺 107 people", Yu Hongcheng had an unspeakable taste in his heart.
Although Yu Hongcheng usually has a hobby of collecting sabers, this saber is stained with too much blood, which makes him daunted, so he handed the knife to the military department. Later, the knife fell into the hands of Wei Bingwen, deputy commander of the 16th Army, and he brought it to Taiwan.
After learning about the incident, Wu Jianning felt a heartache. If the people who handled it at that time could find out in time that this saber was not used by the three criminals in the "Hundred People Beheading", it would have been much easier to track down the murderer at that time, so why let the real murderer go unpunished for decades?
But after all, the facts can no longer be changed, and what can be done now is to continue to dig up the murderer and make him accept the punishment of the law.
The clues that Yu Hongcheng could provide were here, and the key breakthrough was still in Wei Bingwen's family. Wu Jianning also learned from the Shaanxi Huangpu Military Academy Alumni Association that Wei Bingwen had two nephews in Xi'an, and they left addresses in the alumni association.
Therefore, Wu Jianning went to Xi'an to find Wei Bingwen's two nephews. They also did not know Wei Bingwen's address in Taiwan, but their other uncle, Wei Bingchao, had left them the address. It turned out that when Wei Bingwen went to Taiwan, his younger brother Wei Bingchao also followed.
Since we are also in Taiwan, as long as We find Wei Bingchao, Wei Bingwen's family should also be able to find it. Wu Jianning had a vague feeling that he was getting closer and closer to the real murderer. So he immediately packed his bags and prepared to go to Taiwan for the second time.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="66" > third, the murderer is out of reach</h1>
In November 1997, Wu Jianning found Wei Bingchao in Taiwan based on the information he had before. Wei Bingchao was over seventy years old and was very enthusiastic to see reporters from the mainland. He told Wu Jianning that the saber was kept by his brother's younger son, Wei Liang, and said Wei Liang's address.
Wu Jianning found Wei Liang according to the address, and at first, Wei Liang was very repulsive to him. Wei Liang, a native of Taiwan, is cautious about mainland interviews. Wu Jianning asked Wei Liang to tell the truth with the great national righteousness, and only then did he let go of his hesitation and accept an interview with Wu Jianning.
Wei Liang said that he had been playing with this saber since he could remember, and when he was young, he did not know the origin of this knife, only that it was his father's booty.
When Wei Liang was a child, he often used this knife to cut down trees, and this knife was very sharp and left a lot of marks on the trees. Sometimes with a little more force, some red blood scumbags would come out of the handle of the knife, staining his hands.
In the 1950s, his father, Wei Bingwen, lent the saber to a Taiwanese film studio as a prop and shot a film called "Yangtze River Storm", which also included a close-up of the saber. Later, the film spread to Japan.
Soon, a Japanese man approached the Wei family and offered to buy the saber at a high price. Although wei Bingwen's family had a very difficult life after coming to Taiwan, he knew that this knife was a witness to the Nanjing Massacre of the Japanese army, so he said that he would not sell it to the Japanese.
The Japanese came several times, and Wei Bingwen was afraid of provoking him and causing trouble, so he moved away with his family. Wei Bingwen moved his home 3 times, and each time the Japanese could follow him, until the 4th time, he completely evaded his pursuit.
Now it seems that this Japanese person is most likely the owner or relative of the knife and wants to recover the evidence of the destruction of the knife. It's just that so many years have passed, and it's probably harder to find this Japanese than to ascend to heaven.
After Wei Bingwen's death, the knife was left to his beloved youngest son, Wei Liang. At this time, Wei Liang already knew about the Nanjing Massacre, and he also knew that this knife had been stained with the blood of countless people. He thought that the knife was a fierce thing and unlucky to put it in his home, so he took the knife to an auction company to evaluate it and prepared to sell it.
When he learned that the knife was worth $1 million, Wei Liang was shocked. He rushed home to tell his mother, but her mother warned him with a serious face: "You can't sell how much money you give!" What a wronged man to be hacked to death by this knife! We can't make this bloody money! ”
At the insistence of his mother, the knife remained in the Wei family.
In 1985, Wei Liang's mother was dying, and before she died, she asked Wei Liang to donate the knife. After his mother's death, Wei Liang obeyed his will and donated the knife to the National Army Historical Museum in Taipei.
At this point, the ins and outs of this knife have been clearly understood, but it has only been twice rubbed shoulders with the murderer: the first time was that When Yu Hongcheng confiscated the knife, if he could ask who he belonged to, the murderer would have already been ambushed; the second time was the Japanese who came to Wei Bingwen's house to buy the knife, and it was very likely that he could find the murderer through him.
These two misses made the pursuit of the murderer difficult, and was it really necessary to let this demon who killed 107 innocent people go unpunished? Wu Jianning was not reconciled.
After returning to Nanjing, he consulted many records about the Nanjing Massacre and visited many experts, but in the end there was no progress.
However, since the broadcast of Wu Jianning's documentary "The Search Across the Strait", many people in the society have joined Wu Jianning's ranks, using their own channels to track down the murderer who slipped through the net, and strive to make him punish him as soon as possible.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="67" >4</h1>
In August 2017, the young scholar Wu Jingpeng accidentally obtained a list of all the officers who surrendered to the 1st Brigade of the Japanese Army in 1946, and combined with the list of Japanese officers who participated in the Battle of Nanjing, he found that there was only one person overlapping the two - Ma Mi Tsuka Hachizo!
Mamitsuka Yazo was a fanatical militarist who published an article in the Japanese magazine Aoon, calling on young Japanese officers to completely transform Japan into a militaristic country.
In August 1937, Ma Mizuka Set Foot on Chinese Soil, his first battle was in Northern China. At that time, the 23rd Wing of the 6th Division regiment he belonged to was met with desperate resistance from Wei Lihuang's troops. The Japanese suffered heavy casualties in this battle, and Mamitsuka Yazo was also wounded in the battle and was sent to the rear hospital for recuperation.
After Mamitazuka's recovery, he returned to the battlefield and took part in the Battle of Nanjing. After the fall of Nanjing, the Japanese army began a 6-week massacre of Chinese soldiers and civilians.
Unlike Junji Tanaka, Toshiaki Xiangjing, and Takeshi Noda, the massacre of Mamizuka Yazo was not publicly shown to the media, which is why few people know about him.
In early 1938, Mamitsuka Yazo was transferred out of the 6th Division. In 1944 he served as the commander of the 72nd Independent Infantry Brigade of the 1st Independent Mixed Brigade. In January 1946, Mamitsuka Yazo's brigade surrendered to China. Subsequently, he returned to Japan with his troops and was able to survive.
Although it is not certain that Mamitsuka Hachizo was the culprit in the killing of these 107 people, he was the only Japanese officer who participated in the Battle of Nanjing and formed the 1st Brigade Regiment independently, so he could basically be locked in.
However, so much time has passed, and it has become more and more difficult to examine. It is a pity that the owner of this saber, the demon who killed 107 innocent people, has never been justly judged.
All we can do today is to remember this history. When we learn of these atrocities committed by the Japanese army in China, what right do we have to forgive Japan on behalf of the 300,000 compatriots who were killed?