In the Nanjing Massacre massacre, it was the Japanese 16th Division that committed a heavy crime, because the division killed more than 240,000 prisoners of war and civilians, accounting for about 80% of the total number of nanjing massacres, and the culprit was lieutenant general Nakajima Imashi and his 2 brigade commanders, namely Major General Tatsumi Kusaba, commander of the 19th Infantry Brigade, and Major General Sasaki, commander of the 30th Infantry Brigade This was the main culprit of the Nanjing Massacre, which had long been overlooked or omitted, and Noda Takeshi and Toshiaki Xiangjing, who carried out the "Hundred Beheadings", came from the 19th Brigade commanded by Tatsumi Kusaba.
Tatsumi in the meadow
Tatsumi Kusaba (1888-1946) was a native of Shiga Prefecture, Japan, born into a military family, and was influenced by his family to join the military, attending the Osaka Army Local Infant School and the CSO Army Kindergarten School, graduating from the 20th Infantry Section of the Army Non-Commissioned Officer School in May 1908, and entering the 27th class of the Army University in December 1912, and was classmates with Hideki Tojo, Naosaburo Okabe, Jun Imamura, Masaharu Honma, Isamu Yokoyama, Ryosuke Isotani, Shojiro Iida, Shozo Kawabe, and Tokushige Numata. Did not qualify for the "Sabre Group" in this issue.
Upon graduation in December 1915, Tatsumi Kusaba was awarded the rank of Lieutenant commander of the Army, and served successively in the First Railway Line District Headquarters, the General Staff Headquarters, and the Headquarters of the Korean Army, and served as a captain in the 4th Infantry Regiment of the Guards Division, and from December 1925 served as a military instructor at the Army University.
Tatsumi Kusaba was promoted to Army Daisaku on August 1, 1931, and was assigned to serve as the chief of the Transportation Division in the Third Department of the General Staff Headquarters, which is a very important rank node, although it lasted for 16 years, it was already a very rare historical opportunity to serve as the chief of the General Staff Headquarters, after all, the General Staff Headquarters is one of the three major institutions of the Japanese Army, and the supreme military command organ of the Japanese Army is the center responsible for directing the Operations of the Japanese Army.
Former site of the Japanese Army General Staff Headquarters
On August 1, 1933, Tatsumi Kusaba was transferred to the 11th Infantry Regiment of the 9th Infantry Brigade of the Fifth Division, which was one of the elite divisions of Japan, and the officers and men of the 11th Infantry Regiment were almost all from Hiroshima, and their combat effectiveness was very strong.
On March 15, 1935, Tatsumi Kusaba was transferred to "Manchukuo" as an adviser to the Ministry of Communications of Manchukuo, one of the "Eight Ministries of Puppet Manchuria", whose main function was to manage railways, highways, postal services, and telecommunications in Puppet Manchuria. In matters of telephone, aviation, and inland shipping, Tatsumi Kusaba was actually Japan's agent in the field of transportation in "Manchukuo", and was promoted to major general of the army on August 1, 1936.
Pseudo-Manchuria Ministry of Transport building
On March 1, 1937, during the routine personnel adjustment of the Japanese army, Tatsumi Kusaba was transferred to the 19th Infantry Brigade of the 16th Division, and a few months later, the "July 7 Incident" broke out, and the Japanese base camp began to continuously increase troops to North China, and the 16th Division, under the leadership of Lieutenant General Nakajima Imago, landed at Tanggu, Tianjin on September 11, and was incorporated into the combat sequence of the 2nd Army of the North China Front, Nishio Shouzo, while the 19th Infantry Brigade of Kusaba Tatsumi's infantry regiment had two infantry companies under its command. Kirito's 9th Infantry Wing and Ohno's 20th Infantry Wing were, respectively, the two squadron leaders who also took office on August 2.
The Japanese 16th Division successively fought along the western section of the northern section of Jinpu Road, and was soon transferred to the port of Dalian to be on standby, boarded the ship again on October 30, was urgently transferred to the Songhu Battlefield, landed at The Baimaokou in Changshu in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and was incorporated into the combat sequence of the Central China Front in Matsui Ishigen.
The Japanese 16th Division moved west along the mouth of the Yangtze River, captured Changshu, Wuxi, Danyang and other places, intercepted the Chinese troops retreating from the Songhu battlefield, and then participated in the attack on the city of Nanjing, and occupied Purple Mountain on December 12, and Nanjing fell on the evening of December 13.
Nakajima Imago (中) and Sasaki to Ichi in the city of Nanjing
After the Japanese occupation of Nanjing, the commander of the 16th Division, Nakajima Imago, was appointed commander of the Nanjing garrison, and the 19th Infantry Brigade of Tatsumi Kusaba and the 30th Infantry Brigade of Sasaki became the garrison of Nanjing, responsible for maintaining social order in Nanjing, and their means were to carry out inhumane killings, creating the tragic Nanjing Massacre, killing more than 240,000 prisoners of war and civilians, and was the biggest culprit in the Nanjing Massacre.
The creepy "100-man chop- and-slash" killing contest was carried out by Tatsumi's 19th Infantry Brigade regiment under The Grass Field, and was carried out by Lieutenant Takeshi Noda, adjutant of the 3rd Brigade Headquarters of the 9th Wing, and Lieutenant Toshiaki Izumi, the former killing 105 people, while the latter beheaded 106 people, committing heinous crimes, and japan's "Tokyo Daily News" also made a big report on it, but inadvertently left evidence of the crime.
The Japanese newspaper "Hundred People Cut" reported
On January 22, 1938, the Japanese 16th Division was transferred out of Nanjing, returned to Dalian by sea, was re-incorporated into the combat sequence of the Second Army of the North China Front, and served as the Siege of North Road and the Battle of Eastern Henan in the Battle of Xuzhou. On October 30, Tatsumi Kusba was transferred to the 2nd Field Railway Commander of the North China Front.
On March 9, 1939, Tatsumi Kusaba was promoted to lieutenant general of the Army, and was transferred to the commander of the field railway of the Kwantung Army, maintaining the security tasks along the South Manchuria Railway and the North Manchuria Railway, recruiting anti-Japanese elements who destroyed the railway to ensure the smooth flow of railway lines, transporting the looted materials to the port of Dalian, and then loading ships back to Japan, during which he was awarded the Order of Ruibao of the First Class.
On October 1, 1940, Tatsumi Kusaba was transferred to the commander of the 52nd Division of the Kwantung Army, which had transported bacteriological weapons to Ishii Shiro's 731st unit, including 70 kilograms of typhoid bacteria, 50 kilograms of cholera bacteria, and 5 kilograms of plague-infected fleas, which were thrown into the "Battle of Zhejiang Gan" and spread in Ningbo, Yushan, Jinhua, and Pujiang, causing a large-scale plague epidemic, assessing the personnel, equipment, bacterial species used and the area of attack. This is the largest in human history, with more than 250,000 people killed.
Japanese Unit 731
On November 6, 1941, Tatsumi Kusaba succeeded Yamashita As commander of the Defense Army of the Kwantung Army, which at the beginning of its establishment was also only under the jurisdiction of the Fifty-first Division and five independent garrisons, which was obviously a temporary patchwork of military first-level structures, and in the first two months of Kusaba Tatsumi's appointment, the Fifty-first Division was incorporated into the combat sequence of the Twenty-third Army of the Chinese Dispatch Army, so That Kusaba Tatsumi almost became an empty commander with no troops to unify.
On December 21, 1942, Tatsumi Kusaba succeeded his old classmate Isamu Yokoyama as the commander of the Japanese Fourth Army, which was stationed in the first line of Qiqihar and was subordinate to the combat sequence of the Kwantung Army, under the command of the 1st Division regiment stationed in Sun Wu and the 5th Border Garrison, the 6th Border Garrison stationed in Xigangzi, the 7th Border Garrison stationed in Heihe, the 8th Border Garrison in Hailar, the 13th Border Garrison in Heihe Fabiela, and some tank and artillery units, which had carried out large-scale and long-term crusades against the Northeast Anti-Japanese Democratic Coalition Army.
On February 7, 1944, Tatsumi Kusaba was transferred to the General Staff Headquarters, and on December 1 of the same year, he was put into the reserve, but only half a month later, he was re-recruited and sent to northeast China, and on December 16, he became the commander of the mainland railway of the Kwantung Army, whose predecessor was the commander of the field railways of the Kwantung Army, but had been renamed, and Tatsumi Kusaba was a general who had twice served in this position.
The chief of staff of the Kwantung Army signed the surrender document
After Japan's unconditional surrender, Yamada, in the name of the commander-in-chief of the Japanese Kwantung Army, sent a telegram to Marshal Vasilevsky, supreme commander of the Soviet Far East Command, saying, "The Kwantung Army has ceased military operations on the orders of the Emperor and surrendered its weapons to the Soviet Army." On the afternoon of August 18, the Kwantung Army General Command issued an order to surrender to its subordinate troops, and on September 5, the Kwantung Army General Headquarters was disarmed and disbanded by the Soviet Army, thus ending its death in the Kwantung Army, which had been running rampant in northeast China for many years, and Tatsumi Grassland, like other senior Kwantung Army generals, was escorted to Khabarovsk (i.e., Boli City) in the Soviet Union on September 6.
Prisoners of war captured by the Soviets
In September 1946, Tatsumi Kusaba and Major General Toshikatsu Matsumura, deputy chief of staff of the Kwantung Army, and Ryuzo Satoshi Sejima, the operational staff officer, were summoned by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, who flew from Vladivostok, Soviet Union, to Tokyo, Japan, on September 17 to testify as witnesses to the prosecution, but Tatsumi Kusaba committed suicide on the eve of his appearance, in such a way as to evade the court and end his criminal life, perhaps believing that being able to die in Japan was both a relief and a perfect destination.