ronin2172
06-28-2004, 01:07 PM
I don't know if this has been posted before (if it has i apologize) but it's something that shouldn't be forgotten...
Before the Massacre
The Japanese invasion of Manchuria began in September of 1931 after the "Mukden incident," in which a bomb, actually planted by Japanese secret agents, destroyed a Japanese express train. In July 1937, Japan escalated its attacks, launching an all-out war on mainland China. Japan defended its aggressive militarism on several grounds, including that it was in fact "protecting China from its inner turmoil," that Japan's overpopulation "necessitated" colonization of other lands, that its economy lacked adequate resources of its own and so needed those of China, that the long-term effect would be to strengthen all of East Asia, and finally that all of the world's powerful nations had made similar advances in the past.
Prior to Japanese military activities in Manchuria, the population of Nanking had been approximately 250 000, but this number had grown to about one million by late 1937. With Beijing under siege, Nanking had been made the capital of China, accounting for some of this increase; but the greater portion had come from refugees who had fled to the city from the dangerous northern countryside. In the autumn of 1937, Japanese war planes began bombing Nanking, concentrating their efforts on the downtown areas, which were most densely populated by civilians.
As Nanking came under attack, the capital was again moved, this time to Chungking. Knowing that Japanese troops were en route toward the city, the people panicked and tried to flee. On 9 December 1937, Japanese ground forces reached Nanking, where they were met with minimal resistance from overwhelmed and fatigued Chinese military units. By 13 December, with Japanese troops attacking the city from all angles, the Chinese forces were routed. Fearing the consequences of surrender to the Japanese, Chinese military men donned civilian clothing and retreated into the city. It was on this day that the six-week stretch of atrocities against the civilian population of Nanking began.
http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/487_1088437658_invasion.jpg
Japanese troops in Nanking
Massacre Begins
The first few weeks of barbaric rampage by Japanese troops were the grisliest. Tens of thousands of Chinese men, women, and children perished as they desperately attempted to flee across the Yangtze River by swimming or using makeshift flotation devices, while Japanese soldiers fired upon and launched grenades at the scurrying masses. On the city streets, soldiers who claimed to be searching for hidden members of the Chinese army were in reality shooting and bayoneting civilians at will. They also set fire to many buildings, looted homes and robbed citizens of their few possessions.
In the early weeks, there were mass murders with deaths numbering in the thousands. Civilians and suspected soldiers were rounded up and shot until their dead bodies piled atop one another, after which Japanese soldiers haphazardly bayoneted the mounds to make sure to kill any who had survived. On other occasions, crowds of Chinese people were assembled to be doused with gasoline and torched alive; frequently, Japanese soldiers eagerly tossed grenades into such crowds.
Nanking was certainly not the only Chinese city that suffered at the hands of the invading Japanese forces. Soochow, Wuhsi, Shanghai, Hangchow, many other cities, and countless towns and villages were all savaged as well; but it was at Nanking that this brutality reached its nadir.
The Japanese authorities were well aware of the horrors being performed by their men, but took no measures to stop them. Their behaviour, especially the attacks on women, was considered an outlet for their animal urges, a boost to the morale of the soldiers. These men made games of torturing their captives and finding new and cruel ways to kill them. In another effort to boost morale and make sport out of murder, the soldiers held contests to see who could rack up the most kills. The most famous example of this was a competition between two sub-lieutenants, Toshiaki Mukai and Takeshi Noda, who decided to race each other to one hundred kills. They had to extend this goal because it was unclear which one had committed his hundredth murder first, and then they eventually lost count.
http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/487_1088437630_heads.jpg
Decapitated Chinese...possiably POWs...there are accounts of beheading contests involving Japanese officers
The Rape of Nanking
It is for the crimes against the women of Nanking that this tragedy is most notorious. Over the six weeks of the massacre, in addition to the murder of about 300,000 civilians, the Japanese troops raped over 20,000 women, most of whom were murdered thereafter. In recognition of these horrifying acts, the massacre is also commonly referred to as 'the rape of Nanking.'
Women of all ages (including children as young as seven and elderly women in their seventies) were violated, many of them being gangraped or attacked on multiple occasions. Some women were held captive so that the could be repeatedly abused. Rapes were committed in broad daylight, in front of spouses, children, or other family members, and with appalling frequency. The soldiers' usual practice, officially condoned by high-ranking officials so as to "avoid difficulties," was to murder the women when they were finished with them. This was most often done by cutting off their breasts and/or disemboweling them with a bayonet to the abdomen. Senior officers were not only aware of these acts, but participated in them as well.
Particularly disturbing is that the Japanese perpetrators derived great pleasure from these heinous crimes, while their superiors condoned and even supported them. One outstandingly revolting account is of several soldiers who, after raping and killing a pregnant woman, presented her fetus on a bayonet to their commanding officer, who replied with laughter. There were innumerable gruesome occurrences like this ...
acts of cruelty seemingly beyond human capacity ...
but commonplace, in the massacre of Nanking.
http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/487_1088437584_family.jpg
Chinese family grieving over their dead son
Reactions From Foriegners
Foreigners in Nanking had set up a "safety zone" in which civilians would be safe from the marauding Japanese troops, but the willingness of the Japanese to comply was quite limited. The foreign leaders stated that there were no Chinese soldiers in their refuges, but still the Japanese often came to round up and execute young men whom they claimed to be members of the Chinese defense forces. Although foreigners in the area were generally unharmed, Chinese women were raped and buildings were looted within these areas designated for asylum, acts which the foreigners made known outside of China. Were it not for their reports, much less would be known in the West today about the massacre.
Once the international community became aware of some of the atrocities that were taking place in Nanking, Tokyo started to restrain its troops and limit their savagery. The butchering of the citizens of Nanking eventually petered out by the end of January 1938, at which time the Japanese army began to request the assistance of foreign support groups in Nanking to clear away the thousands of corpses that littered the streets. The details of the massacre would later be officially revealed in the Tokyo War Crimes Trials which were held from 1946 to 1948, after the Allies had defeated Japan.
http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/487_1088437683_redcross.jpg
German contingent to the Nanking Safety comittee. Ironically the leader and some of the members of the German contingent were members of the Nazi party. The safety comittee was also composed of American doctors, teachers and missionaries
Japan Unrepentant
Twenty-eight men, including former foreign ministers and high-ranking military officials, were tried in Tokyo by an international jury for their part in the leadership behind the Nanking Massacre. It became clear that Tokyo had known about the atrocities and ignored them, considering them wartime policies. Of the twenty-eight men, two died during the trials, one broke down and was admitted to a mental institution, and the remaining twenty-five were all found guilty on one or more charges. All were sentenced in 1948 either to death by hanging or life imprisonment, but by 1956 every one of them had been paroled.
Decades after the massacre, Japan began to deny much of the history of Nanking. Books were written which offered very different perspectives on the incident, some of which categorically denied that it had ever taken place. Even as late as 1990, there were top officials in the Japanese government who claimed that the massacre was fabricated. While there has since been official acknowledgement of the barbarity of Japanese forces during the war, largely due to international outrage at the Japanese cover-up attempts, apologies and efforts of compensation have not been forthcoming. To this date, Ikuhiko Hata's "Nanking Incident" is considered by the Japanese Ministry of Education to be the definitive historical text on the subject. This book puts the official death count between 38 000 and 42 000, and argues that the killing of enemy soldiers who have surrendered or been captured cannot be considered a massacre.
http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/487_1088437533_behead.jpg
A chinese man about to be beheaded
If u r interested Iris Chang wrote an excellent book on the topic entitled 'The Rape Of Nanking'. She spares no punches and the stories she relates will bring a tear to your eye , and some of the pictures (quite a few taken by japanese troops ironically) r disturbing. Another great irony of the episode is tht one of the men who saved thousands of chinese was a nazi.
All info and pictures courtesy of http://www.bergen.org/AAST/Projects/ChinaHistory/background.htm
http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/487_1088437561_cover.jpg
An excellent book by Iris Chang
Before the Massacre
The Japanese invasion of Manchuria began in September of 1931 after the "Mukden incident," in which a bomb, actually planted by Japanese secret agents, destroyed a Japanese express train. In July 1937, Japan escalated its attacks, launching an all-out war on mainland China. Japan defended its aggressive militarism on several grounds, including that it was in fact "protecting China from its inner turmoil," that Japan's overpopulation "necessitated" colonization of other lands, that its economy lacked adequate resources of its own and so needed those of China, that the long-term effect would be to strengthen all of East Asia, and finally that all of the world's powerful nations had made similar advances in the past.
Prior to Japanese military activities in Manchuria, the population of Nanking had been approximately 250 000, but this number had grown to about one million by late 1937. With Beijing under siege, Nanking had been made the capital of China, accounting for some of this increase; but the greater portion had come from refugees who had fled to the city from the dangerous northern countryside. In the autumn of 1937, Japanese war planes began bombing Nanking, concentrating their efforts on the downtown areas, which were most densely populated by civilians.
As Nanking came under attack, the capital was again moved, this time to Chungking. Knowing that Japanese troops were en route toward the city, the people panicked and tried to flee. On 9 December 1937, Japanese ground forces reached Nanking, where they were met with minimal resistance from overwhelmed and fatigued Chinese military units. By 13 December, with Japanese troops attacking the city from all angles, the Chinese forces were routed. Fearing the consequences of surrender to the Japanese, Chinese military men donned civilian clothing and retreated into the city. It was on this day that the six-week stretch of atrocities against the civilian population of Nanking began.
http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/487_1088437658_invasion.jpg
Japanese troops in Nanking
Massacre Begins
The first few weeks of barbaric rampage by Japanese troops were the grisliest. Tens of thousands of Chinese men, women, and children perished as they desperately attempted to flee across the Yangtze River by swimming or using makeshift flotation devices, while Japanese soldiers fired upon and launched grenades at the scurrying masses. On the city streets, soldiers who claimed to be searching for hidden members of the Chinese army were in reality shooting and bayoneting civilians at will. They also set fire to many buildings, looted homes and robbed citizens of their few possessions.
In the early weeks, there were mass murders with deaths numbering in the thousands. Civilians and suspected soldiers were rounded up and shot until their dead bodies piled atop one another, after which Japanese soldiers haphazardly bayoneted the mounds to make sure to kill any who had survived. On other occasions, crowds of Chinese people were assembled to be doused with gasoline and torched alive; frequently, Japanese soldiers eagerly tossed grenades into such crowds.
Nanking was certainly not the only Chinese city that suffered at the hands of the invading Japanese forces. Soochow, Wuhsi, Shanghai, Hangchow, many other cities, and countless towns and villages were all savaged as well; but it was at Nanking that this brutality reached its nadir.
The Japanese authorities were well aware of the horrors being performed by their men, but took no measures to stop them. Their behaviour, especially the attacks on women, was considered an outlet for their animal urges, a boost to the morale of the soldiers. These men made games of torturing their captives and finding new and cruel ways to kill them. In another effort to boost morale and make sport out of murder, the soldiers held contests to see who could rack up the most kills. The most famous example of this was a competition between two sub-lieutenants, Toshiaki Mukai and Takeshi Noda, who decided to race each other to one hundred kills. They had to extend this goal because it was unclear which one had committed his hundredth murder first, and then they eventually lost count.
http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/487_1088437630_heads.jpg
Decapitated Chinese...possiably POWs...there are accounts of beheading contests involving Japanese officers
The Rape of Nanking
It is for the crimes against the women of Nanking that this tragedy is most notorious. Over the six weeks of the massacre, in addition to the murder of about 300,000 civilians, the Japanese troops raped over 20,000 women, most of whom were murdered thereafter. In recognition of these horrifying acts, the massacre is also commonly referred to as 'the rape of Nanking.'
Women of all ages (including children as young as seven and elderly women in their seventies) were violated, many of them being gangraped or attacked on multiple occasions. Some women were held captive so that the could be repeatedly abused. Rapes were committed in broad daylight, in front of spouses, children, or other family members, and with appalling frequency. The soldiers' usual practice, officially condoned by high-ranking officials so as to "avoid difficulties," was to murder the women when they were finished with them. This was most often done by cutting off their breasts and/or disemboweling them with a bayonet to the abdomen. Senior officers were not only aware of these acts, but participated in them as well.
Particularly disturbing is that the Japanese perpetrators derived great pleasure from these heinous crimes, while their superiors condoned and even supported them. One outstandingly revolting account is of several soldiers who, after raping and killing a pregnant woman, presented her fetus on a bayonet to their commanding officer, who replied with laughter. There were innumerable gruesome occurrences like this ...
acts of cruelty seemingly beyond human capacity ...
but commonplace, in the massacre of Nanking.
http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/487_1088437584_family.jpg
Chinese family grieving over their dead son
Reactions From Foriegners
Foreigners in Nanking had set up a "safety zone" in which civilians would be safe from the marauding Japanese troops, but the willingness of the Japanese to comply was quite limited. The foreign leaders stated that there were no Chinese soldiers in their refuges, but still the Japanese often came to round up and execute young men whom they claimed to be members of the Chinese defense forces. Although foreigners in the area were generally unharmed, Chinese women were raped and buildings were looted within these areas designated for asylum, acts which the foreigners made known outside of China. Were it not for their reports, much less would be known in the West today about the massacre.
Once the international community became aware of some of the atrocities that were taking place in Nanking, Tokyo started to restrain its troops and limit their savagery. The butchering of the citizens of Nanking eventually petered out by the end of January 1938, at which time the Japanese army began to request the assistance of foreign support groups in Nanking to clear away the thousands of corpses that littered the streets. The details of the massacre would later be officially revealed in the Tokyo War Crimes Trials which were held from 1946 to 1948, after the Allies had defeated Japan.
http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/487_1088437683_redcross.jpg
German contingent to the Nanking Safety comittee. Ironically the leader and some of the members of the German contingent were members of the Nazi party. The safety comittee was also composed of American doctors, teachers and missionaries
Japan Unrepentant
Twenty-eight men, including former foreign ministers and high-ranking military officials, were tried in Tokyo by an international jury for their part in the leadership behind the Nanking Massacre. It became clear that Tokyo had known about the atrocities and ignored them, considering them wartime policies. Of the twenty-eight men, two died during the trials, one broke down and was admitted to a mental institution, and the remaining twenty-five were all found guilty on one or more charges. All were sentenced in 1948 either to death by hanging or life imprisonment, but by 1956 every one of them had been paroled.
Decades after the massacre, Japan began to deny much of the history of Nanking. Books were written which offered very different perspectives on the incident, some of which categorically denied that it had ever taken place. Even as late as 1990, there were top officials in the Japanese government who claimed that the massacre was fabricated. While there has since been official acknowledgement of the barbarity of Japanese forces during the war, largely due to international outrage at the Japanese cover-up attempts, apologies and efforts of compensation have not been forthcoming. To this date, Ikuhiko Hata's "Nanking Incident" is considered by the Japanese Ministry of Education to be the definitive historical text on the subject. This book puts the official death count between 38 000 and 42 000, and argues that the killing of enemy soldiers who have surrendered or been captured cannot be considered a massacre.
http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/487_1088437533_behead.jpg
A chinese man about to be beheaded
If u r interested Iris Chang wrote an excellent book on the topic entitled 'The Rape Of Nanking'. She spares no punches and the stories she relates will bring a tear to your eye , and some of the pictures (quite a few taken by japanese troops ironically) r disturbing. Another great irony of the episode is tht one of the men who saved thousands of chinese was a nazi.
All info and pictures courtesy of http://www.bergen.org/AAST/Projects/ChinaHistory/background.htm
http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/487_1088437561_cover.jpg
An excellent book by Iris Chang