freenovelworld Chapter 1006 "Work Relief"
Chapter 1006 "Work Relief"
In the previous battle, the Central China Expeditionary Army was scattered, and many soldiers were unwilling to admit defeat and went into hiding.
The main task of the military police now is to search for and eliminate the scattered soldiers of the Central China Expeditionary Army.
"Search carefully! Don't miss a single rat hole!" Sergeant Kobayashi ordered in a low voice, his eyes as sharp as a hunting dog's.
In their eyes, these defeated soldiers were more despicable than the Chinese resistance fighters; they were a disgrace to the empire, a potential destabilizing factor, and an object for them to gain merit and "generate revenue."
A new recruit used his bayonet to pry open a pile of tattered cotton wadding that reeked of foul odor, and a weak groan suddenly came from below.
Several military police officers immediately became alert, pointing their guns at each other.
"Come out! Or we'll shoot!" Kobayashi shouted sternly.
After the rustling sound, a figure crawled out, trembling.
This is a Japanese soldier, his uniform is tattered and covered in filth.
He was sallow and thin, with sunken eyes and cracked lips. When he saw that Kobayashi and the others were military police, he showed no fear, but instead revealed a pleading expression that was almost one of relief.
"Sir... I'm a supply soldier from the 9th Division... Do you have any food? Please give me some..." He stretched out his dirty hand, like a beggar.
Sergeant Kobayashi frowned in disgust, stepped forward, and kicked him to the ground: "Baka! You've disgraced the Empire! Where are your weapons? Why did you desert the army?"
The routed soldiers huddled on the ground, incoherently recounting the chaos of the city's fall, the deaths of their comrades, and their days of hiding and surviving on snow and scraps of food scavenged from the dead.
His mental state had clearly collapsed.
"Search him!" Kobayashi ordered.
The military police found only a few rusty rifle bullets and a blurry family photo on him; nothing of value. Kobayashi curled his lip and waved his hand: "Take him away! Send him to the depot for safekeeping! Useless!"
Similar scenes are playing out in many corners of the city.
In a half-collapsed cellar near Zhonghua Gate, military police found five or six rout soldiers from the 6th Division huddled together for warmth.
When the military police smashed away the debris blocking the door, these once-fierce Kumamoto soldiers, now like frightened rabbits, raised their hands, their eyes filled with fear.
They were roughly dragged out and lined up, and any hesitation would result in a brutal beating with a rifle butt.
Occasionally, there would be sporadic resistance.
Inside a dilapidated house on one side of Yuhuatai, a desperate 16th Division officer fired his pistol at the military police who entered, wounding one before being riddled with bullets.
His body was dragged out arbitrarily and thrown on the roadside as punishment for defying "military law".
During the search and raid, innocent bystanders were inevitably caught in the crossfire. In the basement of what appeared to be an abandoned house near the Confucius Temple, the military police discovered a hidden compartment in the wall, where more than a dozen Chinese civilians, men and women, young and old, were hiding.
When they were discovered, they were so frightened that they were trembling and incontinent.
The military police didn't care about any of that; they dragged out anyone who was considered "suspicious."
Men were brutally conscripted into labor teams, while women and the elderly were driven together, their fates uncertain.
Cries and pleas echoed among the ruins, but were quickly dispersed by the cold wind or drowned out by the harsher rebukes of the military police.
This cleanup operation, targeting "our own people," was efficient and ruthless, aiming to completely eradicate any uncontrolled armed forces and individuals within the city.
More military police units rushed to the relatively "intact" areas, the international security zones mainly established by Western missionaries and charitable organizations.
Chaos erupted at the entrance of Ginling College.
A squad of military police, led by a second lieutenant, violently pounded on the tightly closed iron gate with the butts of their rifles.
Inside the gate, several foreign teachers and staff members tried to negotiate in broken Japanese, their voices trembling with fear and anger: "This is a safe zone! Protected by international law! You cannot come in!"
"Baka!" the second lieutenant in charge roared impatiently. "By order of the Imperial Japanese Army Military Police Headquarters! All able-bodied men must come out and participate in the reconstruction of Nanjing! This is for your own good! 'Work relief,' understand?"
You're hiding here, outside the protection zone of our military police. If you're attacked by the "rebels," you'll all be dead! Open the door now and submit to the military police!
"If you don't open the door, we're going to storm in!"
With a loud crash, the iron gate was finally forced open.
Like wolves and tigers, the military police rushed in, their bayonets flashing in the terrified crowd.
They searched each room, driving out all men who appeared to be between fifteen and sixty years old, regardless of their physical condition, from their hiding places.
Cries, shouts, and pleas filled the air.
"Dad! Don't arrest my dad!" A boy of about ten years old grabbed a military policeman's leg, only to be kicked away: "If your father doesn't work, where will you get food to eat! Let go right now, or you'll have to work with him!"
"Sir, my son is sick and can't work!" an old woman cried and begged, kneeling on the ground.
"Baka! We have military doctors. If your son is sick, we'll take care of his treatment! Everyone needs to work to earn food!! No one is an exception!!" This earned him a resounding slap.
"I'm a doctor! I need to stay and take care of the wounded!" A bespectacled man tried to explain, but a gun was pressed against his chest.
"We have doctors for the wounded, we don't need you! Your job now is to go out and do hard labor!"
The slogans are grand and impressive...
"The Imperial Army is benevolent, providing jobs and using work relief to rebuild homes."
Tens of thousands of citizens were driven into the streets like livestock under the threat of bayonets.
They were forced to pick up makeshift tools—shovels, picks, and even their bare hands—to begin clearing the mountains of rubble, moving the highly decomposed bodies of their compatriots or Japanese soldiers that reeked of a nauseating stench, filling in huge bomb craters, and sweeping away the rubble that blocked the streets.
If you're even a little slow, curses and slaps will follow.
If someone fainted due to hunger and weakness, the supervising military police would splash cold water on them to wake them up, bring over large buckets of rice porridge, and force them to eat several bowls, regardless of whether they could finish it or not, before they immediately got up and started working.
A bizarre and terrifying "busy" scene has appeared on the streets of Nanjing.
On one side is a hellish scene of ruins and corpses, and on the other side is a desperate picture of countless numb figures mechanically toiling under bayonets.
The so-called "rebuilding of homes" has become a fig leaf to cover up systemic enslavement.
At the same time, the gates of several large prisoner-of-war camps in the suburbs, such as the temporary camps in Mufu Mountain and Wulong Mountain, were officially opened.
But this is not liberation; rather, it is the beginning of a deeper form of enslavement.
Under the close surveillance of the military police, countless ragged Chinese prisoners of war were driven out of the dirty and crowded barracks.
They formed a long, silent line, and, under the guns of the military police, they trudged toward the city of Nanjing.