The Courtyard House: The Little Red Devil Returning from the Peninsula

After the battle at the old river network, Okamura did not disappear into thin air from the southeastern outskirts of Beiping.

The second batch of guards retreated towards Tianjin, dismantling their unit numbers as they went. Some infiltrated the wounded, some changed into civilian clothes, and some burned their documents before splitting up. The five cities were under lockdown for nearly two months, with checks conducted on license plates, medicines, passes, and wound certificates. Okamura, who had a shrapnel wound in his right waist, developed a fever again and was eventually placed in the wounded transport team.

Early July 1945, northwest of Tianjin.

The first vehicle to arrive at the assembly point was a truck without military license plates.

The monk led a special operations team of 96 men to inspect the convoy of wounded soldiers. The convoy consisted of 37 trucks and 12 mule carts, with four temporary medical stations set up along the way. The takeover efforts in Beiping, Tianjin, Baoding, Shijiazhuang, and Zhangjiakou continued; railways were being repaired, minefields were being cleared, and warehouses were being sealed. Capturing Okamura meant they couldn't bring all those people back.

When the nineteenth vehicle stopped, the monk first saw four officers.

One person held water, another shielded them from the rain, and two others stood at the front and back of the carriage. The plainclothes wounded man leaned against the middle, his right waist wrapped in a thick bandage, his forehead burning hot. There were empty seats next to the carriage, but the four people were crammed together, their shoulders moving first whenever someone got close.

The monk did not climb onto the car.

He deliberately pointed at the officer fetching water and asked, "Is the wounded one one of your men?"

The man was about to nod when the officer shielding him from the rain quickly replied, "Colleague."

The plainclothes wounded soldier opened his eyes and glanced at the person who had interrupted him. With just one glance, the officer swallowed the rest of his sentence.

The monk asked again, "What's your name?"

"Ichiro Okamoto."

Which unit?

"A staff officer in the Beiping government."

The monk took the injury certificate. The stamp was genuine, but the transfer number was a day late. The same number belonged to another ordinary staff officer on the handover form at the medical station; the injury was listed as the left abdomen, while the person in the vehicle was injured in the right waist.

"Did the South District health clinic collect it?"

The escort handed over the transfer slip, his fingers gripping the corner of the paper tightly, refusing to let go.

The monks didn't grab anything; they called for the medics first.

After the bandages were removed, the wound on his right waist had scabbed over, with an old surgical scar nearby. The date on the injury certificate didn't match the extent of the wound's healing. The plainclothes wounded soldier remained silent, but the four officers began urging him on, saying the convoy couldn't stay indefinitely.

"What's the rush?" The monk folded the transfer slip back. "I'll treat the wounded, and I'll watch over the person."

The special operations team blocked off the convoy from both ends. Sixty men remained on site to guard the vehicles and evidence, along with four accompanying personnel, while thirty-six men were deployed to the outer intersections. The guard battalion of 1,800 men then blocked off the village entrance, two bridges, and the forest road. No heavy artillery was deployed, nor was the overall reserve mobilized.

The communications soldier found a shortwave radio under the nineteenth vehicle.

The radio had been disassembled, and only half a sheet of paper remained of the call sign record. The three words were in the order of North China, Joint Defense, and Tianjin. Inside the file box was also a partially burned copy of the North China Joint Defense order, its edges charred black, with railways and bridges marked on the map in red and blue pencil.

Zhao Gang sent old archives from Beiping.

In his various orders to North China, Okamura habitually circled supply nodes in red and changed the positions of reserve troops in blue; if a bridge was not strong enough to bear the weight, he would draw three circles around it. This method was used in all three locations on the newly discovered map.

The archivist then unfolded the railway defense map from two years ago. The old map had a zigzag line in the lower right corner caused by ink bleeding, and the new map had the same line in the same spot, even down to the short hook left when the pen ended. That wasn't the cartographer's habit. Cartographers simply copied according to orders; they wouldn't repeatedly revise an abandoned branch line three times.

The four attendants were taken away separately. The officer who brought water said the wounded boarded the vehicle at the South District Hospital, while the officer who sheltered them from the rain said they were picked up at the East Station Clinic; the former reported 10:00 AM, while the latter remembered it as afternoon. The third person insisted the convoy hadn't stopped the entire way, but the fourth person's shoes had white dust from the Second Clinic's courtyard on them. The recorder lined up the four statements, circling the errors with a pencil, without pointing them out in person.

Verification should be done separately.

The three prisoners, who were strangers to each other, examined each other individually. The Japanese officer listened to their accents, and the archivist checked the orders and signatures. No one could look at the records of the others. The first prisoner didn't dare to recognize anyone, the second said he had seen their profile, and the third only recognized two of the four attendants.

After the first prisoner was sent back, he was asked separately which hand the man in the nineteenth vehicle used to turn the map. The man answered his right hand. The second prisoner said that Okamura often used his left hand to hold down the corner of the paper when reading documents. The third prisoner did not see these two testimonies, but only said that one of the four attendants was specifically there to hold the map for Okamura so that he wouldn't strain his right waist.

The answers weren't neatly arranged, but when pieced together, they were mutually contradictory. The monk pressed the injury warrant, transfer number, and four statements from his entourage onto the radio log and had someone read them aloud one by one. The number was off by a day, the location of the injury was on the wrong side, there were two versions of the receiving location, and the radio call sign fell on a frequency band previously used by the highest authorities in North China. Any one of these points could be argued against on its own, but put together, it was difficult for the people in the car to function as ordinary staff officers.

The evidence is insufficient.

The plainclothes wounded man was carried to a makeshift map table. Zhao Weiguo didn't ask his name, but first asked which of the three bridges in southeast Beiping was off-limits to heavy vehicles.

After the Japanese-speaking officer translated, the other party said that he was only an advisor and had no involvement in bridge construction.

Zhao Weiguo laid out the diagrams of the three bridges side by side.

"Then just pick one."

The other person looked at the picture on the right and told him the name of the bridge and the location of the damaged wooden beam. Zhao Gang paused for a moment before writing his answer into the record.

The second question is: in which warehouse were the documents of the people whose files were burned in the southern district of Beiping stored?

He answered Xiku.

The archivist immediately retrieved the takeover records. Only training sheets were burned in the West Warehouse; the original personnel rosters were originally in the East Warehouse. The transfer order was issued by the highest command authority in North China. Ordinary staff officers might not have known the locations before and after the transfer.

Before he could finish translating the third question, his gaze had already fallen on the railway area.

Zhao Weiguo asked, "Who has the authority to give the final order regarding the remaining refusing-to-surrender troops, the minefield, the warehouse, and the hospital?"

The plainclothes wounded man shut his mouth.

Silence is also recorded in the notes.

Just as the identity verification was completed, a shot rang out from the edge of the woods to the north.

About sixty guards attempted to support the convoy. They approached from two ditches, first attacking the road junction, then rushing towards the nineteenth vehicle. Two machine guns from the guard battalion blocked the hard road, while a flank company circled around from behind the village wall. The firefight lasted twenty-seven minutes.

The first volley of bullets shattered the windshield at the front of the convoy. Startled, the mules dragged a wounded wagon towards the ditch, and two medics rushed to pull on the reins. The monk didn't reverse the nineteenth wagon. The enemy was watching their rear; if the wagon moved, his four attendants might seize the opportunity to pounce. He ordered the wooden wedges removed from the outside of the wheels and placed two empty wagons across the front and rear.

Enemy guards lifted a light machine gun from the ditch, and just as the muzzle turned towards the convoy, the flank company behind the village wall opened fire. A corner of the earthen wall was knocked off, and bits of dirt fell into the soldiers' collars. Someone lay prone beside the axle, counting off, calling out the distance to the edge of the forest each time a magazine was changed. The monk heard shouts in Japanese coming from the nineteenth vehicle and peeked out from behind the curtain. Okamura was leaning against a stretcher; his four attendants were bound hand and foot, none of them able to reach the vehicle door.

In the seventeenth minute, the firepower at the edge of the woods weakened. The guard battalion did not pursue into the woods, but instead sealed off the entrances to the gullies on both sides. Zhao Weiguo's previous orders were clear: capture people, secure the stronghold, and guard the roads; do not abandon the prisoners in a hail of bullets just to chase a few more people. In the last ten minutes, the gunfire changed from continuous bursts to scattered short bursts, until someone in the gully raised a white cloth.

A special operations soldier, wounded, was still clutching the seal on the nineteenth vehicle. The medic tried to pry it off, but his fingers were stiff; he could only cut the paper off along with the seal. The names, affiliations, wounds, and last known locations of the three fallen soldiers were recorded separately, while the eleven wounded were first sent to the second medical station.

The monk squatted beside the soldier, taking the torn seal from between his fingers. The paper was stained with blood, but the serial number was still legible. He didn't throw the paper away; instead, he told the recorder to put it in another envelope, writing the location and the person who handled it on the cover. The ammunition, identification, and family letters from the fallen soldier were also put into separate bags; no one dismissed the three men with a simple "battlefield losses."

Of the eleven wounded, two had leg injuries, and one had lost a significant amount of blood. The medical vehicle went first, with the guards at the intersection making way for it. The remaining men recounted the guns, the personnel, and the vehicles, making sure to trace who had taken a missing rifle to the guards. The battle was won quickly, but the accounts were kept until nightfall.

Nineteen enemy guards were killed, twenty-eight were captured, and the remaining thirteen retreated into the woods.

Okamura sustained no new serious injuries. His existing wound on his right lower back was re-bandaged, and although his fever persisted, he was able to be transported by car.

The escort team consisted of six vehicles.

The first vehicle was used for guard duty, the second for medical support, the third for escorting Okamura, the fourth and fifth for carrying four attendants and files, and the sixth for accomplices with malfunctioning equipment and spare supplies. The monk left sixty men to escort the evidence and the convoy, while he led thirty-six men back to the outer perimeter to deal with another group of about one hundred and twenty who refused to surrender. Seventy-odd men laid down their weapons, the rest retreated into the woods, and the front line remained blocked.

The distance from northwest of Tianjin to the prisoner-of-war camp in Beiping is about 45 kilometers.

Both bridges were first inspected by engineers, the medical vehicle scouted the route first, and the escort vehicle followed in the middle. At each checkpoint, the receiving party verified the seals, the number of vehicles, and the personnel. Okamura's vehicle did not display any special markings, and there were no crowds parading it along the roadside.

The first bridge was only wide enough for one vehicle at a time. The escort vehicle crossed first, setting up guns on the other side, followed by five vehicles spaced fifty paces apart. Near the second bridge, there was a recently filled-in shell crater; the rear wheel of the malfunctioning recovery vehicle got stuck. The convoy didn't remove anyone from Okamura's vehicle, but instead called engineers from the bridgehead to place wooden planks. The convoy was thus stopped for twenty-three minutes, and all the seals were checked again.

During the journey, one of the wounded soldiers awoke, recognized the profile of the man in the third vehicle, and struggled to get out. The medic put him back on the stretcher, and the monk didn't allow anyone to gather around. Capturing Okamura alive was evidence, not using a feverish prisoner for people to vent their anger on. Once the convoy started moving again, the wounded soldier turned to the canopy and asked what the three fallen men were called. The recorder read their names to him.

The entrance to the prisoner-of-war camp was divided into four sections: body search, medical care, identity verification, and belongings verification.

The military badges, watches, documents, and clothing were all numbered. The four attendants were separated and detained, and the records of their questioning were not shared among them. Only after Zhao Weiguo and the others had signed the three forms detailing their identities, injuries, and belongings did they write their names in the handover column.

Okamura identified five minefields, and the engineers' measurements confirmed three were correct, while two were incorrect. He also stated that the refusal-to-surrender force numbered approximately 3,000, but the takeover team only confirmed about 1,800, scattered across seven locations. The discrepancy could be due to disarmament or the presence of ordinary prisoners; his testimony cannot be used to support the battle's findings.

The work in the five cities has not stopped.

More than 40 machine tools were sealed at the Tianjin repair shop; three types of shells were found mixed at the Beiping artillery depot; bearings, rails, and motors at the Shijiazhuang railway warehouse continued to be inspected by technicians. Zhao Tieshan sent a telegram from Taiyuan, stating that machine tools, measuring instruments, and raw material chains could not be depleted due to the capture of the five cities.

Zhao Weiguo approved the order to "do as instructed".

At the end of July, Beiping Radio received a broadcast announcement from Tokyo.

The date was approaching August 15th. Zhao Weiguo ordered the re-examination of the seals on the armories, prisoner-of-war camps, railways, warehouses, radio stations, and hospitals in the five cities, while reserving forces to deal with the small groups of troops who refused to surrender.

Okamura has already entered the prisoner-of-war camp.

The guard posts outside the city are still changing shifts.

Zhao Weiguo stood at the entrance of the prisoner-of-war camp, watching the third vehicle being escorted into the courtyard. Okamura leaned against the stretcher, the bandage on his right waist had been changed, his eyes closed, not glancing towards the entrance.

He touched the small bronze star inside the collar insignia; the stitches were still there. From that ten-year-old child in the scrap yard of Beiping to this truck without military license plates in northwest Tianjin, eight years had passed, and also three hundred and twelve, one thousand two hundred and twenty-three, several thousand people had failed to reach this point.

Zhao Gang walked over and handed him a copy of the handover form.

"August 15th is almost here."

Zhao Weiguo folded the copy neatly and stuffed it into his breast pocket.

"Let's settle today's accounts first. We'll deal with tomorrow's problems tomorrow."