Osaka Division: Merchant Division

This article is adapted from the author's "Rebels of the Osaka Division" and is mainly written about stories on foreign battlefields. --- On the smoke-filled Pacific battlefield, when countless soldiers were fighting bloody battles for the "glory of the empire", Sasaki, a heavy soldier of the Kwantung Army, opened his eyes as a businessman and saw through another essence of war - this is the most chaotic and seductive feast of speculation in human history. Volume One: Nanyang Speculation (1942-1944) From dismantling the will of the US military with jazz music on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines, to exchanging gasoline for emeralds next to the Royal Palace in Bangkok; from secretly trading quinine and Rolex with 70,000 prisoners of war, to reaching a gray agreement of "exchanging roads for jade" with the Chinese Expeditionary Force on the Burma Highway - Sasaki's troops never really charged, but used black transactions one after another to build an invisible "Southern Business Group" in the gaps between the battle lines. War is a stage, and he is the one behind the scenes. Volume 2: Fantasy of the End War (1945) Before the mushroom cloud of the nuclear explosion in Hiroshima had dissipated, he had already assembled a radio to get the news of the surrender in advance, and exchanged blood plasma and first-aid kits for gold. After the broadcast of Emperor Tamaki's voice, he turned the "humiliation of defeat" into business opportunities, organizing soldiers to sell "Longevity in Arms" embroidered underwear to the occupying US military, and using the remains of incendiary bombs to make lighters... In the doomsday carnival of the collapse of the empire, he made a last big gamble: stuffing the entire transport ship with Southeast Asian toys and quietly sailing to the black market hinterland of post-war Japan. This is not a story about war, but a legend about building a business empire on the ruins of war.