Rape of Nanking: Disaster for Power

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Within a span of six weeks, about three hundred thousand men and women were either killed or raped in Nanking, China. ( Katsuichi 3). After not surrendering, the Japanese attacked various parts of China in 1937, where they then decided to go to the back then capital Nanking, or Nanjing. “Japanese soldiers swept into the city [...] the next two months [...] murder, rape and killing” ( Nanking Massacre Encyclopedia Gale). The Japanese army made an assault on the Nanking walls from multiple directions. The streets were filled with bodies of men, women, kids, and even elderly people. The air was filled with the smell of blood. (Chang 24) The Japanese destroyed the town, and did what they had to do, which was to strike fear across the world through Nanking. Japan was power hungry, so they showed other countries what they were capable of doing. The Japanese used the Rape of Nanking to strike fear and gain control throughout China and the world by leaving Nanking in ruins, raping women, and killing people.
Scarring and brutally killing people was a way the Japanese wanted to show what they are capable of doing for power. Many were killed, in fact “between 250,000 and 300,000 people were killed” (Scarred by History:Rape of Nanking BBC). The Japanese created pits where they would kill people in, and put dead bodies in. Sometimes, at the pits, they would have head cutting competitions to see who would cut the most heads in a certain time. (Katsuichi 22) The head cutting competition showed that Japan did not and would not have any sympathy for anyone. They made sure nobody could escape by bayoneting the gates, and they also tied people they had not kill yet to houses. Sometimes soldiers would randomly fire at people beca...

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...gelow, et al. Vol. 3: Biographies. Detroit: UXL, 1999. 272-277. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 25 Mar. 2014. Tojo was part of the rape for Nanking. He talks about how brutal the Japnese were towards the Chinese, and how they destroyed many cites and many villages throughout China. He was the chief staff of the Kawangtung Army. He agrees that the Rape of Nanking was one of the Japanese’s worst attack. Tojo explains how the Chinese tried to fight the Japanese off, but the Japanese had a strong army and was updated with technology at the time. They used bayonets, guns, poison, etc to hurt and kill everyone in Nanking. Tojo explains that there were bodies everywhere, everywhere you went you saw bodies lying around, of all kinds including many women and children. Tojo now is veteran of the Japanese, he had many positions of fighting when he was in the Japanese army.

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