Nanking Massacre
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The Nanking Massacre (Simplified Chinese: 南京大屠杀; Traditional Chinese: 南京大屠殺, pinyin: Nánjīng Dàtúshā; Japanese:
南京大虐殺, Nankin
Daigyakusatsu), also known as the Rape of Nanking and sometimes in Japan as the Nanking Incident (南京事件, Nankin
Jiken), refers to the widespread atrocities
committed by the Imperial Japanese Army in and around Nanking
(now called Nanjing), at that time the capital of China, after it fell
to Japanese troops on 13 December 1937.
Dr. Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum, which is near
[edit]
Battle of Nanking
Heaps of dead bodies wait for disposal on the wharves of Hsiakwan, the port suburb north of
Following
the Mukden Incident in 1931,
In
August of 1937, the Japanese army faced strong resistance and suffered heavy
casualties in the Battle of Shanghai, effectively
destroying the possibility of conquering
After
losing the Battle of Shanghai, Chiang
Kai-shek knew the fall of
On
December 9, the Japanese troops launched a massive attack upon the city. On the
12th, the defending Chinese troops decided to retreat to the other side of the
[edit]
Massacre
Eyewitness
accounts from the period state that over the course of six weeks following the
fall of
The
testimonies came from various sources, most cited one being the ones the
Westerners who opted to stay behind in order to protect Chinese civilians from
certain harm, including the diaries of John Rabe and Minnie
Vautrin. An American
missionary, John Magee, stayed behind to provide a 16mm film documentary
and first-hand photographs on the Massacre. Others include first-person
testimonies of the Massacre survivors, the field diaries of Japanese military
personnel as well as the testimonies of Japanese soldiers which were collected
at later period by Japanese veterans organisations.
Immediately
after the city's fall, a group of foreign expatriates headed by John Rabe formed the 15-man International Committee on November 22
and drew up the Nanking Safety Zone
in order to safeguard the lives of civilians in the city, where the population
ran from 200,000 to 250,000. It is likely that the civilian death toll would
have been much higher had this refugee zone not been formed. Rabe and another American missionary Lewis S. C. Smythe, the secretary of the International Committee who
was also a professor of Sociology at the University of Nanking,
recorded atrocities of the Japanese troops and constantly filed reports of
complaints to the Japanese embassy.
[edit]
Murder
Immediately
following the fall of the city, Japanese troops embarked on a frenzied search
for former soldiers, in which thousands of young men, civilian or otherwise,
were captured. Many were taken to the Yangtze
River, where they were machine-gunned so their bodies would be carried down
to Shanghai.
Thousands were led away and mass-executed.
Others
were reportedly used for live bayonet practice. Decapitation
was a popular method of killing, while more drastic practices include burning,
nailing to trees, or hanging by their tongues. Some people were beaten to death.
The Japanese also summarily executed many pedestrians on the streets, mainly on
pretext that they might be disguised soldiers in civilian clothing. Women and
children were not spared of the horrors of the massacres. Many women were first
brutally raped then killed.
The slaughter of civilians is appalling. I
could go on for pages telling of cases or rape and brutality almost beyond
belief. Two bayoneted cases are the only survivors of seven street cleaners who
were sitting in their headquarters when Japanese soldiers came in without
warning or reason and killed five of their number and wounded the two that
found their way to the hospital. (Robert Wilson, letter to his family, Dec. 15)
They not only killed every prisoner they
could find but also a vast number of ordinary citizens of all ages.... Just day
before yesterday we saw a poor wretch killed very near the house where we are
living. (John Magee,
letter to his wife, Dec. 19)
They [Japanese soldiers] bayoneted one
little boy, killing him, and I spent an hour and a half this morning patching
up another little boy of eight who had five bayonet wounds including one that
penetrated his stomach, a portion of omentum was
outside the abdomen.
(Robert Wilson, letter to his family, Dec. 18)
[edit]
Rape
Rapes
were often performed in public during the day, and often in front of spouses or
family members. A large number of them were systematized in a process where
soldiers would search door to door for young girls, with many women taken
captive and then gang-raped, and then killed immediately after rape, often
by mutilation. Any resistance would be met with instant shootings. While the
rape peaked immediately following the fall of the city, it continued for the
duration of the Japanese occupation.
Thirty girls were taken from language school
last night, and today I have heard scores of heartbreaking stories of girls who
were taken from their homes last night--one of the girls was but 12 years
old....Tonight a truck passed in which there were eight or ten girls, and as it
passed they called out "Ging ming!
Ging ming!"--save our
lives. (Minnie Vautrin's diary, Dec. 16, 1937)
It is a horrible story to relate; I know
not where to begin nor to end. Never have I heard or read of such brutality.
Rape: Rape: Rape: We estimate at least 1,000 cases a night and many by day. In
case of resistance or anything that seems like disapproval there is a bayonet
stab or a bullet. (James
McCallum, letter to his family, Dec. 19, 1937)
[edit]
Looting and Arson
(This
section needs citation of testimonies from Foreigners residing in
It is
estimated that over one-third and as much as two-thirds of the city was
destroyed as a result of arson. Whether this was caused by Japanese or by
Nationalists leaving the city is still disputed. Still, there was considerable
destruction to areas outside the city walls. Soldiers pillaged not only from
the wealthy but the poor as well. Japanese soldiers were given a free hand
immediately following the fall of the city. This resulted in the widespread
looting and burglary. To aid the Japanese war effort, soldiers collected every
bit of metal including hinges on doors following the
[edit]
War Crime Tribunals
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[edit]
Controversies
(This
section contains allegations which are not properly sourced, and/or controversal images, which might also not be properly
sourced. The section is not meant as an endorsement or rejection of these allegations.
Please find citations (preferably with archival source citations) then transfer
them to the appropriate section.)
(This
section also contain many interpretation of the event by modern commentators.
Please transfer such commentaries to "debate" section)
The
Massacre is considered to be the most infamous event in the Japanese invasion
of
The
extent of the atrocities is debated, with numbers ranging from the present Chinese Communist Party's claim of a
non-combatant death toll of 300,000, to the claim of the Japanese army at the International Military
Tribunal for the Far East that the death toll was military in nature, and
that there were no organized massacres or atrocities carried out on civilians.
In the death sentence against the commander of the Japanese army in
More
than 300,000 Chinese civilians had been killed. The time period of the massacre
is not clearly defined, though the period of unruly carnage lasted well into 6
weeks after, until early February 1938.
Thousands
were led away and mass-executed in excavations known as "Ten Thousand
Corpse Ditches".
Historians
estimate that 20,000 (and sometimes up to 80,000) women from as young as seven
to the elderly were raped.
Witnesses
recall Japanese soldiers throwing babies into the air and catching them with
their bayonets. Pregnant women were often the target of murder, as they would
often be bayoneted in the belly, sometimes after rape.
The
site of some of the most gruesome atrocities committed during the ordeal was
the
According
to reports, Japanese troops torched newly-built government buildings as well as
the homes of many civilians.
General
Matsui
Iwane was given an art collection worth
$2,000,000 that was stolen from a
According
to testimonies, other women were forced into military prostitution
as comfort
women. There are even stories of Japanese troops forcing families to commit
acts of incest:
sons were forced to rape their mothers, fathers were forced to rape daughters.
One pregnant woman who was gang-raped by Japanese soldiers gave birth only a
few hours later; miraculously, the baby was perfectly healthy (Robert B.
Edgerton, Warriors of the Rising Sun). Monks who had declared a life of
celibacy were forced to rape women for the amusement of the Japanese. Instances
of Chinese men forced to commit sex with corpses were heard of during the
occupation.
Many
historians today believe that the traumatic situation in
[edit]
Death toll estimates
There
is debate as to the extent of the war atrocities in
[edit]
Geographical extent and the killing duration
On one
side is the view that the geographical area of the incident should be limited
to the few square kilometers of the city known as the Safety Zone, where the
civilians congregate. Many Japanese historians seized upon the fact that during
Japanese invasion there were only 200,000–250,000 citizens in
Many
historians include a much larger area around the city. The Xianquan
area is the suburbs
of Nanjing city (which is about 66 miles), and
including that region the combined population of suburban and urban Nanking runs to some 535,000 and 635,000 just prior to the
Japanese occupation.[1] Because the
entire Jiangsu province fell under the administration of Nanking, some historians also include six xian (counties) around Nanking
starting from Suzhou, at the western edge of Jiangsu
province, known as the
The
period of the massacre, hence, is naturally defined by the geography of the
massacre. The Battle of Nanking ended
on December 13, when the divisions of the Japanese Army entered the walled city
of
[edit]
Prisoners of war debate
Another
point of debate is the question of whom to count as the victims of Japanese
atrocities. Historians agree that the Japanese army indiscriminately killed
many civilians in
To
make matters more difficult, archival evidence such as burial records only
state the body count and not which type of group to which each body belonged.
Therefore, it provides no means to distinguish whether bodies were the result
of "legitimate" or "illegitimate" killing. Many different
categories of varying legitimacy exist: soldiers killed during combat, surrendered
soldiers summarily executed after the battle, plain-clothed guerilla
combatants, plain-clothed soldiers hiding among civilians, civilians wrongly
suspected of being guerilla combatants, or those bystanders attacked during the
period of indiscriminate killing, rape and looting (which all the scholars deem
to be illegitimate).
[edit]
Various estimates
The International Military
Tribunal for the Far East or the Nanking War
Crimes Tribunal, stated the death toll of the Nanking Massacre as ranging between 200,000 and 300,000.
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" in
In
1947 at the Nanking War Crimes Tribunal, the verdict
of Lieutenant General Tani Hisao,
the commander of the 6th Division quoted the figure of more than 300,000 death
tolls. Apparently this estimate was made from burial records and eyewitness
accounts. It concluded that some 190,000 were illegally executed at various
execution sites and 150,000 were individually massacred. The International
Military Tribunal for the
At the
Tokyo Tribunal of War Criminals, the Nanking Massacre
death toll was presented either as "more than 200,000" or "more
than 100,000".
Modern
historians like Kasahara Tokushi
at Tsuru University and Fujiwara Akira, a professor emeritus at Hitotsubashi
University, take into account the entire Nanjing
Special Municipality, which consisted of the walled city and its neighboring
six counties, came up to an estimate approaching or over 200,000. Other
Japanese historians, depending on their definition of the geographical and time
duration of the killings, place the death toll on a much wider scale from
40,000 to 300,000. In