Report from the front lines in Germany

Day 563, 08:23 Published in Japan Japan by Imperial Sun Party

Sergeant KITA Ikki deployed to several places in Germany with the Japanese Imperial Army (JIA) in a desperate attempt to turn back the Swedish and Polish hordes. New Society caught up with Sergeant KITA on a short break back in Saarland before another deployment against the Swedes. He showed us some helmet camera footage and recordings that reveal much about the wartime atrocities committed in Swedish-occupied Germany. It is presented here in narrative form:

The peasant brought Sergeant KITA close to the small hovel in the Northrhein-Westphalia countryside not far from a town called Detmold (http://www.pointoo.de/poi/Detmold/Westfaelisches-Freilichtmuseum-140747.html). It appeared that the Swedes had turned an open-air museum into a makeshift prison camp. As the two figures scurried past a spotlight and under a hole in the barbed-wire fence, they found a small depression next to a barn. They could hear the saccharine sounds of a piano riff from a familiar, but old, pop song. Sergeant KITA peered through a hole in the flimsy wooden wall of the old building and shuddered from what he saw. The German prisoner, tied to a chair, was being forced to listen to music by a man in the uniform of a Swedish Army captain. He began to scream as the lyrics cut in: "You are a dancing queen / only seventeen..."

"Schlimmer als David Hasselhof am Ende der 80er." Sergeant KITA had no idea what a "dancing queen" was, only knowing from his education in Japan that Europe was responsible for some depraved things, but he could tell from the ashen expression on the German peasant's face that even this was too much to be normal. The Swedish captain began to sing along with the tinny-sounding music in a ridiculous baritone, the acoustic dead space inside the barn doing little to dampen the horror.

"Herr Klein, ist sowas gängig in Deutschland?" Sergeant KITA had studied German at the Imperial Japanese Military Academy in Kyoto, mastering it, but not the cultural references. He had no idea who "David Hasselhoff" was, but knew that the peasant was right. THIS was worse than any torture he had heard about before. At least the weather in Guantanamo Bay had been nice. It was raining in Germany now, a cold, early June nighttime shower.

"Leider wird immer häufiger. Wer würde so was tun?" The peasant's eyes were angry, but pleading. Sergeant KITA used the digital recording equipment, and from the grainy green-toned image, intelligence analysts later indentified the torturer as "Captain kocken" of the Swedish Army (http://www.erepublik.com/en/citizen/profile/1201721), but more he could not do. A rescue mission was out of the question. "Wir müssen hier weg..." he told the peasant quietly.

As the two passed under the wire, they heard the Swedish captain's gleeful voice: ""Ja, and next we start with the sexuella övergrepp!"

After a few hours hiking back to the assembly area, they recovered their vehicle and drove off-road passing through enemy lines and returned to the relative safety of Rhineland-Palatinate. Sergeant KITA took the peasant back to his house, thanking him for his assistance. The peasant got out, but stood at the side of the road. "Wird Japan uns helfen, Deutschland zu befreien?"

"Wir werden unser bestes tun, alles zur Verfügung stehenden Mittel verwenden, um die Schweden zurückzudrängen." (We'll do our best, use everything in our power to push the Swedes back.) But it was likely an empty promise, and the peasant knew it.

In clear English, the German peasant replied, "I'd rather quit my eLife than be an eSwede." And with that, the peasant Florian Klein (http://www.erepublik.com/en/citizen/profile/1362196) drew his pistol and fired a single shot into his open mouth, killing himself. Sergeant KITA flinched at the sudden gunshot, and hoped that such horror as the Swedes could bring would never be visited on his beloved eJapan.