There are no official numbers for the death toll in the Nanking Massacre, though estimates range from 200,000 to 300,000 people. [99][100] An estimate death toll of 300,000 has also been cited. [14][15] In Japan, the veracity of the newspaper article about the contest was the subject of ferocious debate for several decades starting in 1967. [citation needed], This nationalist view does not, however, represent a widely shared understanding of what happened at Nanjing, as illustrated by Japanese textbooks' rather different treatment of the atrocity. Since records were not kept, estimates regarding the number of victims buried in the ditch range from 4,000 to 20,000. 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. They were also tried by the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal. . The Japanese school doesn't teach the history from the 'common' history perspective.. [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. The victims were blown up with landmines, then doused with petrol and set on fire. Perhaps all Chinese, regardless of sex or age, seemed marked out as victims. U.S. news correspondents F. Tillman Durdin and Archibald Steele reported seeing corpses of massacred Chinese soldiers forming mounds six feet high at the Nanjing Yijiang gate in the north. The website has quoted a Japanese Twitter user who apparently said, "why the death toll increases every year". [108][109], According to documents in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register, at least 300,000 Chinese were killed. Nanjing Massacre, conventional Nanking Massacre, also called Rape of Nanjing, (December 1937-January 1938), mass killing and ravaging of Chinese citizens and capitulated soldiers by soldiers of the Japanese Imperial Army after its seizure of Nanjing, China, on December 13, 1937, during the Sino-Japanese War that preceded World War II. [59] However, Jean-Louis Margolin does not believe that the Nanjing atrocities should be considered a genocide because only prisoners of war were executed in a systematic manner and the targeting of civilians was sporadic and done without orders by individual actors. "[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. [1] Today most Japanese historians of the so-called "great massacre" school have reduced their death toll estimates somewhat and now advocate the figure of "100,000 plus" in contrast with the old consensus of 200,000. The situation was different in Japan. 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. By early December, it was on the outskirts of Nanjing. While the extent of Prince Asaka's responsibility for the massacre remains a matter of debate, the ultimate sanction for the massacre and the crimes committed during the invasion of China were issued in Emperor Hirohito's ratification of the Japanese army's proposition to remove the constraints of international law on the treatment of Chinese prisoners on August 5, 1937.[32]. In response, Shichihei Yamamoto[140] and Akira Suzuki[141] wrote two controversial yet influential articles[clarification needed] which sparked the Japanese Negationist movement. Because dead bodies don't talk. [18] The judge also ruled against the civil claim of the plaintiffs because the original article was more than 60 years old. Currently, the most reliable and widely agreed upon figures place the massacre victims within Nanjing City Walls to be around 40,000, mostly massacred in the first five days from December 13, 1937; while the total victims massacred as of the end of March 1938 in both Nanjing and its surrounding six rural counties far exceed 100,000 but fall short of 200,000. The Chinese scholars of the committee maintained that at least 300,000 were killed. Friday December 17 2021, 10.25am, The Times. [127], On October 9, 2015, Documents of the Nanjing Massacre have been listed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. ", "Case 10 On the night of December 15th, a number of Japanese soldiers entered the University of Nanjing buildings at Tao Yuen and raped 30 women on the spot, some by six men. [179] Modern Chinese (including most citizens of the PRC, partially in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and overseas) will refer to the Nanjing Massacre to explain certain stances they hold or ideas they have; this "national unifying event" holds true to middle-school educated peasants and to senior government officials alike. Following the outbreak of the Second SinoJapanese War, the Japanese Imperial Army marched from Shanghai to the Chinese capital city of Nanking, and though a large number of Chinese P [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. The Shanghai Aurora College on Thursday said the teacher, surnamed Song, made "wrong comments" during class. [56][57] Robert O. Wilson, a physician, testified that cases of gun wounds "continued to come in [to the hospital of University of Nanjing] for a matter of some six or seven weeks following the fall of the city on December 13, 1937. All we are asking in our protest is that you restore order among your troops and get the normal city life going as soon as possible. "2001 ASSLH conference Chinese seamen and Australian labour: The mass desertion from the, International Committee for the Nanjing Safety Zone, International Military Tribunal for the Far East, International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone, killing contest between two Japanese officers, Learn how and when to remove this template message, introducing citations to additional sources, John Rabe and International Safety Zone Memorial Hall, List of war apology statements issued by Japan, discriminatory policies against minority groups, Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, "29 July 1946. They do not mention sexual assaults. Five returned. Originally titled 13 Flowers of Nanjing, this is the story of a group of schoolgirls that find refuge in a church compound run by an American priest.The year is 1937. Some Chinese men were sodomized and forced to perform "repulsive sex acts". The first type of source is oral history, but he calls this "the most problematic methodology in researching the incident" due in part to large discrepancies between the testimony of Japanese and Chinese eyewitnesses. He met with division commanders, lieutenant-generals Kesago Nakajima and Heisuke Yanagawa, who informed him that the Japanese troops had almost completely surrounded 300,000 Chinese troops in the vicinity of Nanjing and that preliminary negotiations suggested that the Chinese were ready to surrender. [20], The Nanjing garrison force set fire to buildings and houses in the areas close to Xiakuan to the north as well as in the environs of the eastern and southern city gates. 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]. [58] B. Campbell described the Nanjing Massacre as a genocide, given the fact that residents were still slaughtered en masse during the aftermath, despite the successful and certain outcome in battle. The Rape of Nanjing, or the Nanjing Massacre, was the 1937 sacking of Nanjing by invading Japanese forces during the Second Sino-Japanese War. 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. . "Nakamura Akira shi no 'Nanking Jiken Ichiman Nin Gyakusatsu Setsu' wo Hihan Suru [Critique of 'The Death Toll of Ten Thousand in the Nanjing Incident' by Mr. Akira Nakamura]." Seiron . But even last night between 8 and 9 p.m. when five Occidental members of our staff and Committee toured the Zone to observe conditions, we did not find any single Japanese patrol either in the Zone or at the entrances! [citation needed], On 18 February 1938, the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone was forcibly renamed the Nanjing International Rescue Committee, and the Safety Zone effectively ceased to function. [52][53] There are also accounts of Japanese troops coercing families to commit incestuous acts. From Jurong to Tangshan (two cities in Jiangshu Province, China), Mukai had killed 89 people while Noda had killed 78. He assigned Asaka to Nanjing as an opportunity to make amends. 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. The total death toll of the Nanjing Massacre is a highly contentious subject in Chinese and Japanese historiography. I am born in China. [note 1] The massacre was one of the worst atrocities committed during World War II.[6]. We come across corpses every 100 to 200 yards. The Flowers of War by Geling Yan, translated by Nicky Harman. He heard waves of machine-gun fire and witnessed the Japanese soldiers gun down some two hundred Chinese within ten minutes. The Japanese Army had pushed quickly through China after capturing Shanghai in November 1937. "[178], The Nanjing massacre has emerged as one fundamental keystone in the construction of the modern Chinese national identity. [17], In 2005, a Tokyo district judge dismissed a suit by the families of the lieutenants, stating that "the lieutenants admitted the fact that they raced to kill 100 people" and that the story cannot be proven to be clearly false. [105], John Rabe, Chairman of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone, estimated that between 50,000 and 60,000 (civilians) were killed. From this gunboat, Rabe sent two telegrams. [27], On December 5, Asaka left Tokyo by plane and arrived at the front three days later. The seventh and last person in the first row was a pregnant woman. The four horsemen of denial. The death sentence imposed on Hirota, a six-to-five decision by the eleven judges, shocked the general public and prompted a petition on his behalf, which soon gathered over 300,000 signatures but did not succeed in commuting the Minister's sentence. [56], In the early 1970s, Japanese historian Hora's estimate of 200,000 massacre victims was challenged for the first time by the journalist Akira Suzuki, who suggested that "several tens of thousands" had been killed. especially offenses against prisoners of war.[91]. The most accurate and widely accepted estimates place the total number of massacre victims in the entire Nanking Special Administrative District between the range of 40,000 and 200,000, although figures even smaller or larger than this have been proposed by Japanese revisionists and the government of China . Rape! 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. 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. According to the Mainichi Shinbun, this is a photo of Nanking citizens wearing armbands of the flag of Japan and giving cheers to the Japanese military on the day of its Ceremonial Entry into Nanking on December 17, 1937.. Takashi Yoshida asserts that, "Nanjing has figured in the attempts of all three nations [China, Japan and the . Various Japanese officials and historians have disputed the death toll since the war, angering China. They also murdered hundreds of thousands . For most of the morning, Japanese soldiers tied the POWs' hands together. Besides, we count more than 150,000 victims of barbarian acts buried by the charity organizations. [27][50] French historian Jean-Louis Margolin, for instance, has strongly criticized Honda's argument, noting that "As, in our present knowledge, it is impossible to get convincing figures for such large areas, such methods may be considered as attempts to blur hopelessly the debate. [31] Nevertheless, even if Ch took the initiative, Asaka was nominally the officer in charge and gave no orders to stop the carnage. Notably, the novelist Hotta Yoshie[ja] wrote a novel, Time (Jikan) in 1953, portraying the massacre from the point of view of a Chinese intellectual watching it happen. Rabe and American missionary Lewis S. C. Smythe, secretary of the International Committee and a professor of sociology at the University of Nanjing, recorded the actions of the Japanese troops and filed complaints with the Japanese embassy. After losing the Battle of Shanghai, Chiang Kai-shek knew that the fall of Nanjing was a matter of time. The two girls were then stripped, the elder being raped by 23 men and the younger by 3. Other Japanese military leaders in charge at the time of the Nanjing Massacre were not tried. The Nanjing Massacre 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-Japanese War, by the Imperial Japanese Army. Chinese women didn't wear under-pants. Nankin Daigyakusatsu (Nanjing Massacre), "Six weeks long" is a convenient figure but far from precise. [35], In addition, the total civilian population of Nanking in December 1937 and the size of the Chinese garrison defending the city are used as a basis for calculating the death toll, though the matter is complicated due to greatly varying estimates for both of these numbers. The number 300,000 is displayed prominently at memorials and is the higher end of commonly accepted estimates. [169] In the 2010 Japan-China Joint History Research Committee meeting, scholars from the Japanese side set the maximum possible number of civilian victims at 200,000, with estimates of around 40,000 or 20,000. [133], Associate Professor David Askew of Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University said that in Japan, a unified Japanese view of the massacre doesn't exist because of the internal debates and contentions surrounding the massacre, and that the different views can be categorized into mutually exclusive groups. [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. and Japanese historian Fujiwara Akira put the final toll closer to 200,000. . 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. 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 . They were about to rape the girls when the grandmother tried to protect them. Prosecution's Witnesses. Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanjing, criticized Murayama for not providing the written apology that had been expected. The total death toll of the Nanking Massacre is a highly contentious subject in Chinese and Japanese historiography. [54] Sons were coerced in to rape their mothers, fathers were forced to rape their daughters, and brothers were forced to rape their sisters. [61], On 5 February 2009, the Japanese Supreme Court ordered Shd Higashinakano and the publisher Tendensha to pay four million yen in damages to Mrs. Shuqin Xia, who claims to be the 7- or 8-year-old girl who appears in Magee's film. [68], In 2006, Kaz Ross, a historian with the University of Tasmania, anonymously interviewed a number of university researchers in the city of Nanking to learn their private views on the death toll of the Nanking Massacre. Higashinakano had claimed in his book, Thorough Review of Nanjing Massacre, that she and the girl were different persons, and that she was not a witness of the Nanjing massacre, but he was unable to prove this at trial. The older was bayoneted and the younger split down through the head with a sword. Eyewitness accounts include testimonies of expatriates engaged in humanitarian work (mostly physicians, professors, missionary and businessmen), journalists (both Western and Japanese), as well as the field diaries of military personnel. [9], On December 12, under heavy artillery fire and aerial bombardment, General Tang Sheng-chi ordered his men to retreat. Now, in the winter, the season gives time to reflect. By contrast, Minoru Kitamura argues that Smythe's links to the Nationalist Government of China may have led him to skew his figures upwards. . Didi Tang, Beijing. [86], Ono Kenji, a chemical worker in Japan, curated a collection of wartime diaries from Japanese veterans who fought in the Battle of Nanking in 1937. ", "Case 14 On December 16, seven girls (ages ranged from 16 to 21) were taken away from the Military College. He was promoted to the rank of general in August 1939, though he held no further military commands. A Japanese hotelier's denial of a 1937 massacre by Japanese troops in the Chinese city of Nanjing has prompted Chinese social media calls for a boycott of travel to Japan, threatening tourist . This resulted in widespread looting and burglary.[73]. Many historians including Kasahara view incidents like these where the Japanese fired upon retreating troops to be atrocities, whereas Hata sees them as extensions of combat and not massacres. For Japan, it was a question they needed to answer but were reluctant to do so because they too identified themselves as victims after the A-bombs. The subject is the notorious Japanese occupation of Nanjing, China, in 1937. The incident occurred near the Kuling Ssu, a noted temple on the border of the Refugee zone". I think he will live. We "pikankan." Dr. Robert O. Wilson, a surgeon and a member of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone, took the witness stand first. [147], On June 19, 2007, a group of around 100 Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lawmakers again denounced the Nanjing Massacre as a fabrication, arguing that there was no evidence to prove the allegations of mass killings by Japanese soldiers. According to Yang Daqing, professor of History and International Affairs at George Washington University: While it is standard practice for governments to destroy evidence in times of defeat, in the two weeks before the Allies arrived in Japan, various Japanese agenciesthe military in particularsystematically destroyed sensitive documents to a degree perhaps unprecedented in history. Durdin, F. Tillman. [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. [18], Another early estimate was that of China's state-run Central News Agency, which reported in February 1938 that the Japanese had slaughtered 60,000 to 70,000 POWs in Nanking. Official war journals and diaries were also published by Kaikosha, an organization of retired Japanese military veterans. Other eyewitnesses to the massacre also expressed their opinions in Japanese magazines in the 1950s and 1960s, but political shifts slowly eroded this tide of confessions. It would seem according to stories told us by foreign witnesses that the soldiers were let loose like a barbarian horde to desecrate the city. In our South Hill House Japanese broke the panel of the storeroom and took out some old fruit juice and a few other things. However, most credible scholars in Japan, which include a large number of authoritative academics, support the validity of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and its findings, which estimate at least 200,000 murders and at least 20,000 cases of rape. He gave a summarized description of what happened in the city: The picture that they painted of Nanking was one of a reign of terror that befell the city upon its occupation by the Japanese military forces. The perpetrators also committed other war crimes such as mass . [5] Instead they threw away their uniforms and weapons and hid among the city's civilian population. '"[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. [41], Since then Kasahara has proposed a definition between these two. Yoshida argues that "Nanjing crystallizes a much larger conflict over what should constitute the ideal perception of the nation: Japan, as a nation, acknowledges its past and apologizes for its wartime wrongdoings; or stands firm against foreign pressures and teaches Japanese youth about the benevolent and courageous martyrs who fought a just war to save Asia from Western aggression. Zhang Xianwen, editor-in-chief of the report, states that the information collected was based on "a combination of Chinese, Japanese and Western raw materials, which is objective and just and is able to stand the trial of history". In 2005, John Rabe's former residence in Nanjing was renovated and now accommodates the ". On 19 December 1937, the Reverend James M. McCallum wrote in his diary:[46]. Japan Advertiser, 7 December 1937 (an American-owned and edited English-language daily paper in Tokyo), harvnb error: no target: CITEREFKingston2008 (. If husbands or brothers intervene, they're shot. Robert Sabella, Fei Fei Li and David Liu, eds. [1] Ikuhiko Hata considers the number of 300,000 to be a "symbolic figure" representative of China's wartime suffering and not a figure to be taken literally. Some right-wing Japanese politicians have downplayed the death toll or denied outright that the Nanking atrocity happened. The younger girl was bayoneted also but was spared the horrible treatment that had been meted out to her sister and mother. "The International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone: An Introduction", Askew, David, "The Nanjing Incident: An Examination of the Civilian Population". It was worse. This is caused by the Army's misbehaviors after the fall of Nanjing and failure to proceed with the autonomous government and other political plans. [30] Others assert that lieutenant colonel Isamu Ch, Asaka's aide-de-camp, sent this order under the Prince's sign-manual without the Prince's knowledge or assent. The Japanese government had previously agreed not to attack parts of the city that did not contain Chinese military forces, and the members of the Committee managed to persuade the Chinese government to move their troops out of the area. [40], By contrast, Ikuhiko Hata also examined the Japanese Army's documents and tallied up a total of 30,000 Chinese POWs massacred out of a total Chinese force of 100,000. Men, women and children were killed in uncounted numbers throughout the city. Pi means "hip," kankan means "look." Then the soldier stabbed the fetus, with its umbilical cord clearly visible, and tossed it aside. There are no official numbers for the death toll . [44] Most Japanese ultranationalists who deny the Nanking Massacre admit that the Japanese Army killed a large number of Chinese POWs, though they consider these to be legal executions,[45][46] an argument denounced by mainstream historians. [1] Hence, depending on the timeframe and the geographic scope, an empirically verifiable, scholarly valid victimization range is from over 40,000 to under 200,000.[1]. [citation needed], The government of Japan believes it can not be denied that the killing of a large number of noncombatants, looting and other acts by the Japanese army occurred. 616621. [3][43] A large number of rapes were done systematically by the Japanese soldiers as they went from door to door, searching for girls, with many women being captured and gang-raped. Let me recount some instances occurring in the last two days. THE RAPE OF NANKING OR NANJING MASSACRE 5 The judges of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (also known as the Tokyo War Crimes Trials) were prepared to accept that at least 200,000 Chinese civilians and prisoners of war were slaughtered by the Japanese in the six weeks after Nanking fell.The judges were also prepared to accept that the death toll would be much higher if . The second one is right - the Rape of Nanking wasn't as bad as people say. At dusk, the soldiers divided POWs into four columns and opened fire. [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". The Japanese military continued to move forward, breaching the last lines of Chinese resistance, and arriving outside the city gates of Nanjing on December 9.

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