"I came to China to atone for my sins, to pay off the debts of the Japanese, and the Japanese owe you too much."
The 89-year-old Ikuko Ito has lived in China for 71 years, where she has worked, settled down and had children, and China has long since become her true home. This land not only carries her guilt and love, but also witnesses her legendary life.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > ruptured militarism</h1>
On the Mudanjiang River in August 1945, blood flowed like a pillar and corpses were everywhere. The Axis powers are gone, and the Japanese army has reached the end of its rope.
At this time, the Soviet Union began to join the war situation in northeast China, and in the face of the menacing Soviet army, Japan was gradually defeated, and Ito Ikuko's regiment also received orders to retreat. But the Japanese generals, who were deeply brainwashed by militaristic ideas, could not accept the fact that Japan was about to be defeated. Faced with a collapsed army, he made a cruel decision in front of Mudanjiang.
The Japanese general directly ordered the wounded to be injected with air and alcohol, let the children take poison, and ordered the nurses to jump into the river to die. He wanted to make a grand sacrifice for the emperor here by killing himself.
Looking at the rushing mudanjiang river, 20-year-old Ito Yuko seemed to remember the bloodied wounded on the battlefield, and she deeply questioned Japan's militaristic ideas.
Ikuko Ito was born in 1925 on the outskirts of Iwate Prefecture in Hokkaido, Japan. Her father was a commissioner of the county's Agriculture and Forestry Bureau, and her mother was a housewife.
This was an ordinary traditional family, but like thousands of ordinary families in Japan at that time, it was deeply influenced by militaristic ideas, and in order to ensure the timely supply of soldiers and materials on the front line, the family had many children, and Ikuko ranked third among them.
Also in response to the country's call for national readiness for war, in 1945, Yuzi, who had just graduated from nursing school, was sent to the army in northeast China and became a nurse accompanying the army.
In the months since she was here, she has seen the brutal Japanese compatriots kill innocent Chinese people, and as a medical worker whose mission is to treat the wounded and sick, she has struggled with the military education she has received for many years in her heart countless times. And now he is being forced into the Mudanjiang River in this way.
More than a thousand medical staff plunged into the river, but Ito Yuko, who was heartbroken, luckily grabbed a driftwood, and after drifting on the river for more than three hours, she saw the hope of life.
At this time, she seems to have gained a new life" I was thinking, I am only 20 years old, the Japanese army has killed so many Chinese, I can't die, I want to atone for my sins and pay off the debt." ”
At that time, the Japanese army was gone, and she was taken in by a passing PLA medical rescue team.
Here in the Chinese People's Liberation Army unit, she started her old business, but the difference is that from this moment on, she really saved lives and injured with a clear conscience.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Japanese female middle school haojie</h1>
In the People's Liberation Army medical rescue team, Ito cared for a young soldier whose feet were amputated, but the soldier was not rescued from his injuries, and before he died, he gave Ito the only apple on his body to thank her for her care.
But in Ito's heart, this apple evoked her deep guilt: "My tears fell, it was not an ordinary apple, it was a hot Chinese heart." ”
In that turbulent China, Japan's aggression made the Chinese people miserable, and even in such a land, they were still such simple and kind people. The last line of defense in Ito's heart was also broken.
Soon after, with the official declaration of defeat in Japan, the War of Resistance Against Japan was completely over. Faced with the option of returning to Japan to reunite with his family, Ito resolutely chose to stay in China. "I think I'll just stay and pay off the debt!"
Ito Ikuko chose to face up to Japan's mistakes and bravely take responsibility for her past, which is more like a hero than the Japanese soldiers who chose to kill themselves to martyr the evil beliefs in their hearts. Not to mention the Japanese government, which is still distorting history.
After that, Ito Ikuko, who remained in China, became a medical worker at the People's Liberation Army Mudanjiang Field Hospital.
In the hospital, she quickly became a backbone nurse with qualified medical skills and kindness to patients. And donated blood 107 times, using her own type O blood to save the lives of 17 Chinese soldiers, and the hospital praised her a lot.
Therefore, Zhou Baoping, deputy commander of the Northeast Military Region, received Ito while visiting the wounded in the hospital and praised her as "Japan's female middle school hero!" ”
After the founding of New China, China finally came out of the chaos of war. The whole country rejoiced, and this hard-won peace Chinese people waited for half a century.
Ito Ikuko, 25, also left the field hospital and was transferred to the Shanxi Rehabilitation Hospital of the People's Liberation Army.
"Met my love here." Ikuko Ito recalled.
She fell in love with the young and handsome officer Zong Xuding at first sight. The injured Munakata was quickly restored to health under Ito's careful care, and the two made a lifelong commitment to each other.
A year later, Ito Ikuko and Munakata were successfully married, and she officially became a Chinese citizen. Become a Chinese.
There are countless choices in a person's life, and each choice determines the rest of your life. Ito Ikuko was reborn as a Chinese in this land, which was a rare redemption in her heart.
After marriage, the couple soon embraced a lovely daughter.
In 1954, Zong Xuding and his family returned to their hometown of Rugao County to settle down, and Ito went to the county people's hospital as a surgical nurse, and since then, she has been living here, she speaks the Rugao dialect, and becomes an authentic Rugao person.
In the new China after liberation, everything was in ruins and waiting to be rebuilt, and it seemed very powerless in the face of natural disasters. The easy-going and kind Ito Yuko, seeing patients tormented by hunger and illness, she often can't bear it, and takes out her own salary to buy food for patients, but she once weighed as low as 60 pounds because of overwork.
When the prefectural magistrate learned of this, he brought food to Ito's house and instructed her to eat all the food within a week and not to distribute it to others.
Ito's spirit of selfless dedication to patients is in response to the call of the state to serve the people, and the hospital leaders take her as an example, calling on everyone to "learn from Bethune from afar, and learn from Ito Ikuko nearby." ”
Ikuko Ito's professionalism and kindness have been well received by colleagues and patients in the hospital, and she has also been protected by everyone. When someone tried to get it out in the name of "enemy agent", the hospital guarded her from top to bottom, "Ito is a meritorious man, if you want to pinch me, you can beat me." ”
The brutal Japanese army in front of Mudanjiang pushed Ito Ikuko to the brink of death, and in this land, Chinese gave her hope for life again and again.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > China is the only home</h1>
In 1972, with the visit of Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, Sino-Japanese relations began to return to normal. In November of the same year, Ito Ikuko went through the formalities for returning to Japan to visit her relatives, and the Japanese female soldiers who were stranded in China during World War II re-embarked on their homeland after 27 years of absence.
When she left, the county leaders and the medical staff of the Rugao County People's Hospital came to see her off, and she recalled that "there was no laughter, many colleagues were secretly in tears, they all thought that I would not come back again..." In fact, her husband was so worried at the time.
After all, having her parents and friends in that country was her real roots. After the defeat of the war, Japan vigorously developed industry with the assistance of the United States, the economy recovered, and living in Japan was obviously better than in China at that time.
At that time, the whole world was watching the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, and naturally it received a lot of attention in Japan, and many media reported on it.
Seeing her mother, who has been separated for many years, Yuko can't cry. After the clouds parted, the water flowed for ten years. The children who left home at that time were also more than half a hundred years old. Crossing the time gap of decades, no amount of tears can fill it.
The 84-year-old mother, faced with her lost and regained daughter, did not want her to leave again.
Japanese Foreign Minister Masayoshi Ohira received Ikuko Ito at the Prime Minister's Office and told her that the Japanese government would welcome her as long as she was willing to return to Japan to settle down. The Japanese government immediately offered generous conditions to keep Ito Ikuko, but in the face of such treatment and the reluctance of her family, Ikuko still chose to leave and continue to live in the China he loved.
After living in China for many years, remembering the atrocities committed by the Japanese army in China, Ito Ikuko was sad and deeply reflected.
"What have I brought to Chinese?" She recalled that "the sins of Japanese militarism have caused too much harm to the Chinese people. Ito Felt Sherlock had not done enough.
Moreover, after more than twenty years of life, China has her friends, family, and blood relatives, and in Ito Ikuko's heart, this place has long become her only home. The land of China has witnessed her bumpy half life and pinned all her enthusiasm.
After retiring, Ito Ikuko still shines where she can. She promotes peace, acts as an out-of-school tutor in schools, and educates children patriotically.
Ito Said: "Whenever children tie me a red scarf and sit around me and listen to me tell revolutionary stories, I am the happiest." In her twilight years, she still does not forget to tell the children about the hard-won peace.
In 1998, the Red Cross Society of Japan sent a consolation payment to Ikuko Ito and informed her to return to Japan with her children and to arrange housing and provide care services. By this time, her husband had passed away and her children had grown up. But for Ito Ikuko, China has become her home.
She rejected the offer and replied, "I love my mother, who raised me, and I love Japan, where the cherry blossoms are blooming, but I love socialist China even more!" My heart is always in China! ”
She hopes that she can return to her roots in the land of China, bury the past with dirt, and let her friendship moisten all things and turn into spring mud to protect flowers.
Such a Japanese woman used her life to make up for the harm that the Japanese army had done to China. She is a true warrior, a man of right and wrong. Looking at the Japanese government, blindly distorting the facts in the face of war history, when the witnesses of history leave one by one, whether it is a false appearance will become the truth in the post-population.
War is an eternal issue in the world. None of them are peaceful times, but we are glad that we now live in a peaceful country. War has brought parting and endless pain to ordinary people, and the interests should be insignificant in the face of life, but in the face of evil ideas and trampled dignity, people can only moth fire again and again.
The sword has fallen and the cannon has been destroyed. With that comes the devastating weapons. Now, when war is about to end, we have more confidence. But hopefully, our peace will no longer be bought in exchange for confrontation, and that the anti-war aspirations of the peoples of the world will bring real hope.