September 3 marks the 74th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the Victory of the World Anti-Fascist War. But a few days ago, on August 15, in your circle of friends and news, did you seem to have set off a wave of commemoration of the victory of the War of Resistance?
Yes, that's because on August 15, 1945, Emperor Hirohito read the Armistice Edict in Tokyo and accepted the Potsdam Proclamation, which represented the end of Japan's formal acceptance of defeat and surrender, and the end of World War II and the War of Resistance Against Japan.
But in fact, although the Allies announced their acceptance of Japan's surrender on August 15, Japan formally signed and submitted a surrender instrument with actual legal effect to the representatives of the United States, China, Britain, the Soviet Union, Australia, Canada, France, the Netherlands, and New Zealand on September 2, 1945, on the US battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
Therefore, this day marked Japan's formal surrender to all the Allies. September 3 every year is the official anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the victory day of the World Anti-Fascist War.
But at this time, another familiar picture must come to mind - the scene in Chen Jian's classic oil painting masterpiece "Nanjing, September 9, 1945 AD" at 9:00 a.m.
However, from the name of the painting, it can be seen that the scene depicted in the picture is neither the edict of the final battle on August 15, nor the signing ceremony on the battleship Missouri on September 2, but the surrender ceremony of the Chinese Theater of World War II held in the auditorium of the Central Army Officer School in Nanjing on September 9, 1945: Okamura Ningji, commander-in-chief of the Japanese army invading China, officially presented the instrument of surrender to He Yingqin, commander-in-chief of the army of the Republic of China government.
Although there are many different dates and ceremonies for the victory of the War of Resistance, the fact that the World Anti-Fascist War and the Great Victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in China will never change, whether it is August 15, September 3 or September 9. The cruel and bitter lessons of war also remind us that we should remember history and cherish peace.
During World War II, not only did it commit countless crimes in China, but the notorious Japanese army committed murderous and inhumane acts in various battlefields of aggression. In addition to the heroic and indomitable 8-year War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression Chinese, other Asian countries invaded by the Japanese army also have their own history of anti-Japanese blood and tears. Even the United States, the big brother of Japan today, did not escape the clutches of the mad Japanese army.
Today I want to introduce the movie "The Great Sneak Attack", which is a US anti-Japanese film based on real events. The film focuses on the story of the rescue of the Kabanatu prisoner-of-war camp on Philippine soil before the victory of World War II. In this rescue operation, the US military penetrated deep behind the enemy with a 120-person assault team, and at the instigation of the Philippine guerrillas, successfully rescued all 513 prisoners of war from a prisoner-of-war camp guarded by nearly a thousand Japanese troops, which was a miracle.
▲ "Big Sneak Attack" Phoenix Satellite TV Movie Station was broadcast at 21:15 on September 29
The film opens with documentary-style black-and-white photography to show the historical context of this real event.
Pacific War
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese Navy and Air Force suddenly attacked Pearl Harbor, causing heavy losses to the U.S. Pacific Fleet. This was the starting point of the Outbreak of the Pacific War, and the raid on Pearl Harbor was only a cut in the war launched by the Japanese army, outside of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese Army, commanded by General Terauchi Shouichi, more than 400,000 people of the Japanese Southern Army, attacked Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia and Burma in several ways.
Like the Nazi raids on Poland, the Japanese made significant progress throughout the Pacific Theater early in the war. On 15 February 1942, The British commander of Singapore, Percival, signed a letter of surrender, and Singapore abandoned it. On March 9, 1942, the Dutch army in the Indonesian archipelago surrendered. On May 6, 1942, more than 70,000 U.S.-Philippines troops surrendered in Bataan and the Philippines fell. On May 8, 1942, Burma also fell into the hands of the Japanese army.
Battle of the Philippines
The Purpose of the Philippine Campaign launched by the Japanese Army was to crush the U.S.-Philippine Coalition and the U.S. Asian Fleet, seize the resource-rich U.S. colonies, and create favorable conditions for future attacks on Dutch Indonesia and Australia.
At the beginning of the campaign on December 8, 1941, Japanese Army and Navy aviation carried out a surprise attack on the U.S. airfield and the Krabidi Naval Base, destroying half of the U.S. heavy bombers and more than one-third of the fighters on land, creating the conditions for the landing operation. After that, the Japanese troops who landed from different locations took the opportunity to form a favorable situation of attacking Manila from the north and south and encircling the main force of the US-Philippine army.
On January 2, 1942, the Japanese occupied Manila and the U.S.-Philippines forces on Luzon were forced to withdraw to the Bataan Peninsula.
On January 9, the Japanese army began to attack the Bataan Peninsula, but was stubbornly resisted. The U.S.-Philippines combined forces engaged the Japanese in fierce mountain warfare, jungle warfare, and trench warfare. In the end, the Japanese army was seriously deprived of attack due to casualties, and was forced to turn to the defense, and the battle situation was once in a state of stalemate.
In mid-March, MacArthur moved to Australia, remaining in the U.S.-Philippines under the command of Major General Wainwright. After receiving reinforcements from the 4th Division, the Japanese army strengthened its strength, and on April 3, the main Japanese army launched another general offensive on the Bataan Peninsula, and the two sides fought a deadly battle in the jungle, and the U.S.-Philippines coalition army had no reinforcements and lacked supplies, and was forced to surrender on April 9 under the fierce attack of the Japanese army.
Bataan Death March
After the surrender, U.S.-Philippine prisoners of war were taken to San Fernando in Pampanga Province, where thousands of people died of starvation, disease, or murder on the way, known as the Bataan Death March.
The "Bataan Death March", along with the Nanjing Massacre and the Singapore Massacre, was one of the three most inhumane atrocities committed by the Japanese army during World War II. The Kabanato prisoner-of-war camp that the Allies were to rescue in The Great Sneak attack was one of the POW camps established after the Bataan Death March.
After capturing the Bataan Peninsula, the Japanese were busy mobilizing their forces to occupy all of the Philippines in one fell swoop, so they demanded that the captured 78,000 defenders (including about 9,300 American troops) leave the battlefield as soon as possible so as not to affect the progress of the war. As a result, these 78,000 prisoners of war were forcibly escorted by the Japanese army to a prisoner of war camp about 100 kilometers away, the journey was mainly on foot, the entire march process except for the initial food, the prisoners were not allowed to have any food along the way, and anyone who tried to find drinking water and food was executed by the Japanese army with bayonets or shots.
After such a forced march without eating or drinking, although it finally arrived at the target camp, it died of hunger and thirst along the road and was stabbed to death by the Japanese army, shooting and killing as many as 15,000 people, which is the famous "Bataan Death March" in history. Even the prisoners of war who were lucky enough to arrive at the camp died about 26,000 more than two months after arriving at the camp due to the inhumane acts of the Japanese army, such as mistreatment, torture, torture, forcing coolies, and deliberately starving them.
At the beginning of the forced expulsion of allied soldiers who surrendered on the Bataan Peninsula from the battlefield, the Japanese assumed that the officers and men of the United States and the Philippines should be well nourished and healthy, and able to force troops without food and water. But the truth is just the opposite, these fighters who have stayed in Bataan, in the past 45 days of fierce fighting, due to lack of supplies, consume less than 800 calories a day. Sometimes, soldiers had to fortify with snakes, monkeys, and even iguanas. Hunger led to scurvy, pellagra, beriberi, malaria and other infectious diseases also took advantage of the weakness, making the soldiers' already weak bodies even weaker.
Moreover, the Japanese army, influenced by the spirit of traditional Bushido, believed that surrendering on the battlefield was shameful and that the defeated should commit suicide as a matter of course. So in their eyes, the captured soldiers were not treated as adults, they could be abused at any time, even arbitrarily executed. The Japanese top brass even ordered that any American prisoner of war who could not walk to the concentration camp must be executed two hundred meters away from the road during the march.
As a result, this prisoner-of-war escort operation has become a tragic "death march" in history.
While driving prisoners of war out of the battlefield, the Japanese continued to devote themselves to the follow-up forces and launched a fierce encirclement and suppression of the few remaining U.S. military positions in the Philippines, until the American troops stationed on Pannai Island stopped resisting on May 18, 1942, and the Japanese occupied and controlled all of the Philippines.
MacArthur: "I'm back"
After the United States won and gained the initiative in the Battle of Midway in June 1942, the Japanese army began to retreat throughout the Pacific Theater, and after several battles for Saipan, Guam and Tinian, the Japanese navy and army suffered heavy casualties and it was difficult to launch an effective resistance.
After nearly three years, the balance of forces between the Allied and Japanese forces in the Philippines has also undergone tremendous changes.
In July 1944, MacArthur proposed a war plan to attack the Philippines first and then Okinawa, Japan. In September 1944, the Philippine Campaign, launched again by the U.S. army, began. From September to October, the U.S. military dispatched a large number of air forces to carry out large-scale air raids on Japanese airfields in the Ryukyu Islands, Luzon, Taiwan and other places, making the Japanese lose their air counterattack power before the battle began.
On October 20, U.S. troops landed on Leyte Island, and on the afternoon of the same day, MacArthur, accompanied by Philippine President Austina, came ashore with knee-length waters. On the beach, MacArthur delivered the famous "I'm Back" speech to the world via high-power radio.
This was also a promise made by MacArthur when he withdrew from the Philippines that year, representing that the US military did not abandon the Philippines and did not give up the prisoners of war who remained there.
After macArthur's landing on Leyte Island, the Japanese defenders felt that their time was running out, so they began to massacre the prisoner-of-war camp: at the end of 1944, the First American PRISONERs of War on Palawan Were Unfortunately Massacred.
In order to prevent the recurrence of Japanese atrocities, MacArthur personally ordered the dispatch of commandos to rescue prisoners of war in other camps. So Lieutenant Colonel Henry, on MacArthur's orders, launched the rescue of 513 soldiers in the Kabanato prisoner-of-war camp as shown in "The Great Sneak Attack".
Big sneak attack
Against this backdrop, the film "The Great Sneak Attack" depicts the rescue operation in the Kabanato prisoner of war camp.
The American PRISONERS of War in the Kabanato camp have been imprisoned for three years under the brutal labor and torture of the Japanese army. Most of them are seriously ill and weak. Although he knew that the time was not far from the "humane destruction" of the Japanese army against themselves, Major Gibson, who was suffering from malaria, still boosted the morale of his soldiers.
On January 28, 1945, despite the hundreds of Japanese guards stationed in the camp and thousands of Japanese troops less than two miles from the camp, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Musi and Captain Robert Prince led the Sixth Assault Battalion, at the instigation of the Philippine guerrillas, boldly penetrated behind enemy lines and launched a secret rescue operation as planned.
In the end, the U.S. commando team miraculously rescued all 513 American soldiers from the Japanese prisoner of war camp at the cost of only one soldier and one medic, completing one of the most successful rescue operations in U.S. military history. This victory played a huge role in inspiring the morale of its own soldiers and domestic sentiments, as well as in fighting the last trace of arrogance before the defeat of the Japanese army.
In showing this great rescue operation, "The Great Sneak Attack" from Hollywood rarely restrains the routine of personal heroism and grand narrative, without too many fancy and fiery gun battles, the rhythm is concise and bright, closer to reality, so that we can more intuitively feel the coldness of war and the value of life.
The first half of the film uses a large number of chapters to depict the situation in the Philippine city, underground organization and Japanese prisoner-of-war camp during the Japanese occupation period, profoundly depicting the daily life under the oppression of the Japanese army, excellent details, so that the audience fully feels that everyone is living in fear.
The film tries to recreate the real scenes in the prisoner of war camp at that time with extremely realistic shots, from the costumes of Japanese soldiers and large-scale cold-blooded massacres, these cruel scenes are reproduced one by one, and the real situation is used to make the viewer deeply feel the fear and helplessness of those left behind prisoners of war.
This extremely patient step-by-step and meticulous narrative paved the way, so that the three aspects of the causes, preparations, contradictions, obstacles, the efforts of the Philippine underground organization, and the situation of the prisoners of war and the Japanese army in the prisoner-of-war camps were clearly and completely presented to the audience, which made people feel the urgency of time and the cruelty of the war more deeply than the fierce battle scenes.
Although all this makes the final rescue operation really fight and confrontation for a short time, occupying a small proportion of the film, and becoming a criticism in the eyes of many people, it has to be admitted that it is this multi-faceted preparation and delicate depiction that is the characteristic of this film from the general war film.
Although the grand and spectacular and thrilling war scenes can achieve a strong and shocking audiovisual enjoyment, it is too hasty to blindly pursue the scene effect of "tearing the devils by hand" and ignoring the deep substance that the film wants to convey. And this point is also worth learning from our domestic anti-Japanese dramas.
Moreover, compared with this vigorous sneak attack by the US military, the history of the blood and tears of the Chinese soldiers and civilians who bravely resisted Japan on the Battlefield of China is undoubtedly more tragic and tragic.
In a total of nearly 200,000 battles fought by the Chinese army during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Chinese military and civilians annihilated more than 1.5 million Japanese troops and more than 1.18 million puppet troops at the cost of more than 35 million casualties. At the end of the War of Resistance, more than 1.28 million Japanese troops accepted the surrender.
Don't forget the past, the teacher of the future. On the occasion of the 74th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the victory of the World Anti-Fascist War, we remember this history not to perpetuate hatred, but to learn from history and face the future. Chinese people, who have been devastated by aggression and war, understand the preciousness of peace even more.
Remembering history is not about remembering hatred, but for the sake of peace in the future.
Film Forecast
Movie Big Sneak Attack
29 September, 21:15
Remember history and cherish peace
Text: Focus
Editors: Focus, Xiaojing