government archives, much of which was from the period 19421945. We come across corpses every 100 to 200 yards. When I think of the feelings and sentiments of many of my Chinese friends who have fled from Nanjing and of the future of the two countries, I cannot but feel depressed. As Nanking fell to the Japanese, and their troops entered the city on the 13th of December, the streets were already crowded with a large number of . The majority of the bodies were dumped directly into the Yangtze River. Hata argued that Chinese troops killed on the battlefield were part of the Battle of Nanking rather than Nanking Massacre, and that only civilians and disarmed POWs should be counted as massacre victims. . Numbers smaller or larger than the empirically verifiable, scholarly valid victimization range have been put forward by Japanese revisionists and the China Communist Party. For example, a two-volume collection of military documents related to the Nanjing operations was published in 1989; and disturbing excerpts from Kesago Nakajima's diary, a commander at Nanjing, was published in the early 1980s. [44] The women were often killed immediately after being raped, often through explicit mutilation,[45] such as by penetrating vaginas with bayonets, long sticks of bamboo, or other objects. A People's Liberation Army honor guard bearing large funeral wreaths marched slowly past a memorial showing the figure 300,000, China's official death toll in the events of December 1937, as . After the war, multiple Japanese military officers and Kki Hirota, former Prime Minister of Japan and foreign minister during the atrocities, were found guilty of war crimes and executed. Prosecution's Witnesses. Let me recount some instances occurring in the last two days. He heard waves of machine-gun fire and witnessed the Japanese soldiers gun down some two hundred Chinese within ten minutes. . I offer my sympathy, with deep emotion, to a million innocent people. ", "Case 14 On December 16, seven girls (ages ranged from 16 to 21) were taken away from the Military College. [2][3][4][5] Beginning on December 13, 1937, the massacre lasted six weeks. Instead, they wore trousers tied with a string. [50] In their view Honda, who had previously put forward the idea that more than 100,000 people were murdered in the city of Nanking alone, was failing to prove his argument and therefore sought to extend the boundaries of the massacre until a larger figure for the death toll could be achieved. [152] He alleged a death toll of 10,000. "[142], On August 15, 1995, the fiftieth anniversary of the Surrender of Japan, the Japanese prime minister Tomiichi Murayama gave the first formal apology for Japanese actions during the war. [21], The first academic accounts of the Nanking Massacre included as massacre victims all Chinese who were killed by the Japanese Army in and around Nanking, including Chinese soldiers who were killed in action. The perpetrators also committed other war crimes such as mass . "The International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone: An Introduction", Askew, David, "The Nanjing Incident: An Examination of the Civilian Population". On December 13, about 30 soldiers came to a Chinese house at No. [T]here is no obvious explanation for this grim event, nor can one be found. [33][note 3]. Rabe says that the ambassador also "sent us a separate confidential telegram telling us that he has been officially informed by the Foreign Ministry in Hankow that our understanding that General Tang agreed to a three-day armistice and the withdrawal of his troops from Nanjing is mistaken, and moreover that Chiang Kai-shek has announced that he is not in a position to accept such an offer." The massacre has remained a wedge issue between modern China and Japan. He said that during this time, the Chinese government's statements about the event were attacked by the Japanese because they were said to rely too heavily on personal testimonies and anecdotal evidence. The Nanjing Massacre (simplified Chinese: ; traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: Nnjng Dtsh, Japanese: , romanized: Nankin Daigyakusatsu) or the Rape of Nanjing (formerly romanized as Nanking) was the mass murder of Chinese civilians in Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, immediately after the Battle of Nanking in the Second Sino . Five returned. [138], During the 1970s, Katsuichi Honda wrote a series of articles for the Asahi Shimbun on war crimes committed by Japanese soldiers during World War II (such as the Nanjing Massacre). The total death toll of the Nanking Massacre is a highly contentious subject in Chinese and Japanese historiography. The battle was bloody as both sides faced attrition in urban hand-to-hand combat. Targets within and outside of the city wallssuch as military barracks, private homes, the Chinese Ministry of Communication, forests and even entire villageswere completely burnt down, at an estimated value of US$2030 million (1937). More conservative estimates say that the massacre started on December 14, when the troops entered the Safety Zone, and that it lasted for six weeks. [60] On 13 December 1937, John Rabe wrote in his diary: It is not until we tour the city that we learn the extent of destruction. [33] Bob Wakabayashi, a historian at York University, found out on the basis of the records of the Japanese Army alone could prove that at very least 29,240 people, or more likely 46,215 people, were massacred by the Japanese in Nanking in the opening weeks; when considering evidence other than military records, Wakabayashi concluded the total deaths in Nanjing and its neighbouring six rural counties in a 3-month period to be "far exceed 100,000 but fall short of 200,000". "Hundred believed Dead - Panay Death . [88], In early 1980s, after interviewing Chinese survivors and reviewing Japanese records, Japanese journalist Honda Katsuichi claimed that the Nanjing Massacre was not an isolated case, and that Japanese atrocities against the Chinese were common throughout the Lower Yangtze River since the battle of Shanghai. Masahiro Yamamoto, Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000), 112. [1] "[T]here was no burning until the Japanese troops had been in the city five or six days. [74], The Japanese troops did respect the Zone to an extent; until the Japanese occupation, no shells entered that part of the city except a few stray shots. . They were about to rape the girls when the grandmother tried to protect them. On December 13, 2014, China held its first, Askew, David. On March 7, 1938, Robert O. Wilson, a surgeon at the university hospital in the Safety Zone administrated by the United States, wrote in a letter to his family, "a conservative estimate of people slaughtered in cold blood is somewhere about 100,000, including of course thousands of soldiers that had thrown down their arms. The slaughter of civilians is appalling. Robert Sabella, Fei Fei Li and David Liu, eds. Their stories and those of the German residents tell of the city having fallen into the hands of the Japanese as captured prey, not merely taken in the course of organized warfare but seized by an invading army whose members seemed to have set upon the prize to commit unlimited depredations and violence. The death toll of 300,000 is the official estimate engraved on the stone wall at the entrance of the "Memorial Hall for Compatriot Victims of the Japanese Military's Nanking Massacre . John Rabe boarded the U.S. gunboat Panay on December 9 and sent two telegrams, one to Chiang Kai-shek by way of the American ambassador in Hankow, and one to the Japanese military authority in Shanghai. The situation was different in Japan. It took an hour for the sounds of death to stop and even longer for the Japanese to bayonet each individual. On trial with them was Gunkichi Tanaka, a captain from the 6th Division who personally killed over 300 Chinese POWs and civilians with his sword during the massacre. '"[55], For about three weeks since December 13, 1937,[1] the Imperial Japanese Army entered the Nanking Safety Zone to search for former Chinese soldiers hidden among refugees. Few numbers have caused such scholarly debate as the death toll estimates of the Nanking Massacre. They were executed by shooting together on 28 January 1948. Many innocent men were misidentified and killed.[1]. Bergamini, David, "Japan's Imperial Conspiracy," William Morrow, New York; 1971. [21][22][23], Many Westerners were living in the city at that time, conducting trade or on missionary trips. [8] Nevertheless, on December 1, headquarters ordered the Central China Area Army and the 10th Army to capture Nanjing, then-capital of the Republic of China. The four horsemen of denial. "[70][71], Ralph L. Phillips, a missionary, testified to the U.S. State Assembly Investigating Committee, that he was "forced to watch while the Japs disembowled a Chinese soldier" and "roasted his heart and liver and ate them. [25] Since then the death toll of the massacre has been a major topic of discussion among historians across the world. [75], Rabe wrote that, from time to time, the Japanese would enter the Safety Zone at will, carry off a few hundred men and women, and either summarily execute them or rape and then kill them. That same afternoon, two small Japanese Navy fleets arrived on both sides of the Yangtze River. [citation needed], The entry for the same day in Matsui's diary read, "I could only feel sadness and responsibility today, which has been overwhelmingly piercing my heart. For example, Edgar Snow stated in his 1941 book, The Battle for Asia, that 42,000 were massacred in Nanking and 300,000 in total between Nanking and Shanghai, figures which were apparently based on these estimates. In one of the houses in the narrow street behind my garden wall, a woman was raped, and then wounded in the neck with a bayonet. Prince Asaka was granted immunity because of his status as a member of the imperial family. Both officers supposedly surpassed their goal during the heat of battle, making it impossible to determine which officer had actually won the contest. If husbands or brothers intervene, they're shot. Title. Photographs of victims are displayed at the Nanking massacre memorial. The massacre occurred over a period of six weeks starting on December The last refugee camps were closed in May 1938. Japanese troops pursued the retreating Chinese army units, primarily in the Xiakuan area to the north of the city walls and around the Zijin Mountain in the east. During the massacre, she worked tirelessly in welcoming thousands of female refugees to stay in the college campus, sheltering up to 10,000 women. Mrs. Ha asked them why they killed her husband and they shot her. From this gunboat, Rabe sent two telegrams. After being stripped and raped by one or more men, she was bayoneted in the chest and then had a bottle thrust into her vagina. Then the soldier stabbed the fetus, with its umbilical cord clearly visible, and tossed it aside. Some Chinese soldiers stripped civilians of their clothing in a desperate attempt to blend in, and many others were shot by the Chinese supervisory unit as they tried to flee.[21]. Two days later, in his report to The New York Times, Durdin stated that the alleys and streets were filled with the dead, amongst them women and children. However, they feared that speaking out openly "would be detrimental to their careers. Since the area outside the safety zone had been almost completely evacuated, the mopping-up effort was concentrated in the safety zone. The massacre camp generally supports the Tokyo War Crimes Trials figure of "upwards of 100,000" deaths; skeptics claim 15,000 to 50,000, while others venture only up to 10,000. As the Japanese approached, the Chinese army withdrew the bulk of its forces since Nanjing was not a defensible position. This novel has been translated into Chinese and Russian. The grandfather grasped the body of his wife and was killed. And based on a clear definition of the responsibility there can be an answer to the 'moral' question. The Nanking Massacre was an episode of mass murder and mass rape committed by Japanese troops against the residents of Nanjing (then spelled Nanking), then the capital of the Republic of China during the Second Sino-Japanese War.The massacre occurred over a period of six weeks starting on December 13, 1937, the day that the Japanese captured Nanjing. [93], In 2003, the director of Japan's Military History Archives of National Institute for Defense Studies said that as much 70 percent of Japan's wartime records were destroyed. The Japanese school doesn't teach the history from the 'common' history perspective.. (1939), Documents of the Nanking Safety Zone (reprinted in, Kajimoto, Masato "Mistranslations in Honda Katsuichi's the Nanjing Massacre". One thousand disarmed Chinese soldiers, whom the International Committee hoped to save, were taken from them and by this time are probably shot or bayoneted. [56], According to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, estimates made at a later date indicate that the total number of civilians and prisoners of war murdered in Nanjing and its vicinity during the first six weeks of the Japanese occupation was over 200,000. He further added that aspersions were cast regarding the authenticity and accuracy of burial records and photographs presented in the Tokyo War Crime Court, which the Japanese government claimed were fabrications by the Chinese government, artificially manipulated or incorrectly attributed to the Nanjing Massacre. New York Times (New York), January 9, 1938; accessed March 12, 2016. These people had presumably been fleeing and were shot from behind. They also murdered hundreds of thousands . The last murders in the house were of Ha's two children, aged 4 and 2 respectively. Following the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese Imperial Army marched from Shanghai to the Chinese capital city of Nanking, and though a large number of Chinese POWs and civilians were slaughtered by the Japanese following their entrance into Nanking on . [21], However, when Shokun! Unable to escape, the POWs could only scream and thrash desperately. However, Askew notes that Japanese units often exaggerated their body counts. The death toll of civilians is difficult to precisely calculate due to the many bodies deliberately burnt, buried in mass graves, or dumped into the Yangtze River. The compound is located in a neutral zone in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, which is the reason why a group of prostitutes also end up there. The massacre occurred over six weeks starting December 13, 1937, the day that the Japanese captured Nanjing. [34], With the relocation of the capital of China and the reports of Japanese brutality, most of the civilian population fled Nanjing out of fear. . The argument in favor of this made by Katsuichi Honda in 1984 was seen by some scholars involved in the debate on the massacre as a "partial admission of defeat" by Honda. Between the announcement of a ceasefire on August 15, 1945, and the arrival of small advance parties of American troops in Japan on August 28, Japanese military and civil authorities systematically destroyed military, naval, and government archives, much of which was from the period 19421945. [89] His claims have been corroborated with the diaries of other Japanese combatants and medics who fought in China. [156] Trade between the two nations is worth over $200billion annually. Fuller data and our own observations have not brought out facts to discredit their information. Instead of punishing the Japanese troops who were responsible for wholesale rape, "'The Japanese expeditionary Force in Central China issued an order to set up comfort houses during this period of time,' Yoshimi Yoshiaki, a prominent history professor at Chuo University, observes, 'because Japan was afraid of criticism from China, the United States of America and Europe following the case of massive rapes between battles in Shanghai and Nanjing. The number of Chinese killed in the massacre has been . Besides, we count more than 150,000 victims of barbarian acts buried by the charity organizations. All the new books mentioned the massacre and five of them printed the death count as estimated by the Chinese government (300,000 deaths), the remaining two books estimated the death toll at 200,000. [52] Kasahara believes that including massacre victims from the surrounding rural parts of Nanking adds 30,000 victims onto the death toll. We looked. Added in 24 Hours. [28], Prince Asaka issued an order to "kill all captives," thus providing official sanction for the crimes which took place during and after the battle. [173][174][175], "During this period, when the Japanese Army occupied Nanjing it killed a large number of Chinese and carried out looting, arson and assaults. As stated in the Judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, "Estimates indicate that the total number of civilians and prisoners of . Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo dispatched enciphered messages to field commands throughout the Pacific and East Asia ordering units to burn incriminating evidence of war crimes, In July 1937 war broke out in northern China between China and Japan, and by August the fighting had spread to the city of Shanghai. [85] The General Staff Headquarters in Tokyo initially decided not to expand the war due to the high casualties incurred and the low morale of the troops. [11] However, Timperley's source for this number was the French humanitarian Father Jacquinot, who was in Shanghai at the time of the massacre,[12] and it might also have included civilian casualties of the Battle of Shanghai. Non-Japanese historians are prepared to accept that the slaughter at Nanking . It remains, however, the Japanese soldiers swarmed over the city in thousands and committed untold depredations and atrocities. The total death toll of the Nanjing Massacre is a highly contentious subject in Chinese and Japanese historiography. [21][66] Within China scholars focus on defending the official figures and in the past the government has imposed censorship on historians who have suggested alternative numbers. While the books' take on Nanjing is stilted and feels like the product of a committee, in various versions they acknowledge the deaths of thousands of Chinese including women and children, as well as looting, arson and assaults by Japanese soldiers. A mass grave from the Nanjing Massacre. Chinese women didn't wear under-pants. ", "Japanese Crimes in Nanjing, 193738: A Reappraisal", "The Memorial Hall for the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre: Rhetoric in the Face of Tragedy", Japan's Last Vets of Nanking Massacre Open Up, "The Memorial Hall for the Victims of the Nanking Massacre: Rhetoric in the Face of Tragedy", "The Chinese Islamic "Goodwill Mission to the Middle East" During the Anti-Japanese War", "John Rabe's letter to Hitler, from Rabe's diary", "Denial of the Holocaust and the Rape of Nanking", "The Rape of Nanking vs. the incident of Nanking: a Literature Review", "The Nanjing Incident: Recent Research and Trends", Paragraph 2, p. 1012, Judgment International Military Tribunal for the Far East, "Convergence or Divergence? By contrast, Minoru Kitamura argues that Smythe's links to the Nationalist Government of China may have led him to skew his figures upwards. Death toll of the Nanking Massacre. The total death toll of the Nanjing Massacre is a highly contentious subject in Chinese and Japanese historiography. The subject is the notorious Japanese occupation of Nanjing, China, in 1937. [131], Yanziji Nanjing Massacre Memorial in 2004, A statue titled "Family Ruined" in front of the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall, John Rabe's former residence, now the "John Rabe and International Safety Zone Memorial Hall", in Nanjing, September 2010, China and Japan have both acknowledged the occurrence of wartime atrocities. The Tokyo War Crime Tribunal defined the period of the massacre to the ensuing six weeks. Everybody learns that 300,000 people died in the Nanking Massacre when the Japanese occupied the city and massively killed civilians. Hs Shuhsi, ed. [14] The source of this information was Miner Searle Bates, an American resident in Nanking who had used the burial records of the Red Swastika Society in his calculations. [47][48], The International Military Tribunal for the Far East stated that the massacre took place in the parts of Nanking captured on December 13, 1937, and after and lasted until early February 1938. Documents on the Rape of Nanking, p. 254. Estimates of the number of victims vary based on the definitions of the geographical range and the duration of the event. Following the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese Imperial Army marched from Shanghai to the Chinese capital city of Nanking, and though a large number of Chinese POWs and civilians were slaughtered by the Japanese following their entrance into Nanking on . the court found that at least 200,000 had perished during the Rape of Nanking. The death toll, and indeed the events in Nanjing in general, are subject to much discussion, with death toll estimates ranging from 30,000 to 300,000. 19471218: pp. [124], In 1947, Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda, the two officers responsible for the contest to kill 100 people, were both arrested and extradited to China. It was truly a regrettable act of barbarity. A 42-part ROC documentary produced in 1995, entitled "An Inch of Blood For An Inch of Land . Numerological arguments about the death count and distinctions of comparative atrocities do not address this point. But, as noted, no one actually counted the dead. "[97] With the emergence of more information and data, he said that there is a possibility that the death toll could be higher. Didi Tang, Beijing. American vice consul James Espy arrived in Nanjing on January 6, 1938, to reopen the American embassy. [57] Soon after some denialists claimed that no massacre had taken place at all. [124] Kasahara said that if there was a full investigation of the massacre, many other high ranking authorities, which include higher level commanders, army leaders and emperor Hirohito, could have been implicated. [clarification needed], In 1984, in an attempt to refute the allegations of war crimes in Nanjing, the Japanese Army Veterans Association (Kaikosha) interviewed former Japanese soldiers who had served in the Nanjing area from 1937 to 1938. When I show them my party badge, they return the same way. Fifteen of the remaining 22 foreigners formed a committee, called the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone in the western quarter of the city. The poems capture all perspectives of the tragedyfrom the weary, casually cruel Japanese soldiers to the uncomprehending child victims, and from the desperate helpless parents and the brutalized comfort women to the bloodless yet vicious bureaucrats of death. As those who are related to the prewar military, we simply apologize deeply to the people of China. Even with such a huge death toll, some even deny the existence of this massacre. The younger girl was bayoneted also but was spared the horrible treatment that had been meted out to her sister and mother. [28], David Askew, a historian at Ritsumeikan University, states that the death toll of the Nanking Massacre can be calculated by modern-day historians on the basis of four types of sources. [61] Although Koizumi denied that he was trying to glorify war or historical Japanese militarism, the Chinese Foreign Ministry accused Koizumi of "wrecking the political foundations of China-Japan relations". 200,000 (consensus), estimates range from 40,000 to over 300,000. Last night the house of one of the Chinese staff members of the university was broken into and two of the women, his relatives, were raped. For 17 December:[49]. [29][31], The third type of source is Japanese military records, which recorded the number of POWs the Japanese Army executed. [15], Between then and the late 1940s these two estimates were commonly cited by reporters and the media. Live Statistics. General Matsui was indicted before the International Military Tribunal for the Far East for "deliberately and recklessly" ignoring his legal duty "to take adequate steps to secure the observance and prevent breaches" of the Hague Convention. He further argued that he had directed his army division commanders to discipline their troops for criminal acts, and was not responsible for their failure to carry out his directives. Prince Kan'in Kotohito, chief of staff of the Imperial Japanese Army during the massacre, had died before the end of the war in May 1945. The horrific events are known as the Nanjing Massacre or the Rape of Nanjing, as tens of thousands of women and girls were sexually assaulted. Some soldiers then went to the next room, where Mrs. Hsia's parents, aged 76 and 74, and her two daughters aged 16 and 14 [were]. ", "Case 15 There are about 540 refugees crowded in No. The museum notes only that "Chinese soldiers disguised in civilian clothes, which numbered around 4000[34] were severely prosecuted". Iwanami Shinsho, Fujiwara Akira (editor). [107] However, Erwin Wickert, the editor of The diaries of John Rabe, points out that "It is likely that Rabe's estimate is too low, since he could not have had an overview of the entire municipal area during the period of the worst atrocities. Men, women and children were killed in uncounted numbers throughout the city. Iris Chang, author of the Rape of Nanjing (book), wrote one of the most comprehensive accounts of Japanese war atrocities in China. [31] However, some historians have variously argued that Smythe's figures are either underestimates or exaggerations of the true civilian death toll. Just better. From Judgment of the International Military Tribunal, On November 12, 1948, Matsui and Hirota, along with five other convicted Class-A war criminals, were sentenced to death by hanging. On the other side of the city, the 11th Company of the 45th Regiment encountered some 20,000 Chinese soldiers who were making their way from Xiakuan. A People's Liberation Army honour guard bearing large funeral wreaths marched slowly past a memorial showing the figure 3,00,000, China's official death toll in the events of December 1937, as . Improved in 24 Hours. [7] At the same time soldiers of the Japanese Army also committed random acts of murder against civilians, and engaged in rape, arson, and looting. The soldiers killed her with a revolver. He and his staff realized that they could not risk the annihilation of their elite troops in a symbolic but hopeless defense of the capital. Hempel's hotel was broken into as well, as [was] almost every shop on Chung Shang and Taiping Road.[61]. Recent. Chiang planned to fight a protracted war of attrition to wear down the Japanese in the hinterland of China.[9]. Killings were most intense in the first five days from December 13 and remained moderately intense until December 31, 1937, according to the Japanese military records. [21] By contrast Bob Wakabayashi sets the bar higher and believes that the estimate of 40,000 victims put forward by Ikuhiko Hata is the lowest reasonable estimate of the total death toll and considers numbers below this to be attempts at minimizing the atrocity. The Nanking Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking, was an episode of mass murder and mass rape committed by Japanese troops against the residents of Nanki.
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