The Rape of Nanking was a very serious time for the Chinese people of Nanking. The massacre started with the bloody Japanese victory in Shanghai, during the Sino-Japanese war. Chiang-Kai Shek, the Japanese leader at the time, ordered the evacuation of all official Chinese troops and citizens presently residing in Nanking. A lot of people followed the orders and left, but many stayed, unaware of the bloodbath and slaughter that was approaching. On December 13, 1937, the first of the Japanese troops arrived, determined to destroy the city, “the Japanese looted and burned at least one-third of Nanking’s buildings,”(Nanjing Massacre 1). Following the initial attacks of the Japanese soldiers, many different forms of murder and torture occurred. …show more content…
They experienced things that the average person would never have predicted. Crimes such as cannibalism, dismembering, and live burnings. There are many reports of cannibalism and many Japanese officers were arrested and tried for war crimes after VJ Day. For example, one account writes, “Mr Bradley has established that they were tortured, beaten and then executed, either by beheading with swords or by multiple stab-wounds from bayonets and sharpened bamboo stakes. Four were then butchered by the island garrison's surgeons and their livers and meat from their thighs eaten by senior Japanese officers,”(Greenfield 1). The Japanese were ruthless in their methods, and showed no mercy to anyone. They took innocent people, raped them, murdered them, and served them as food to the starving Japanese troops. One Japanese sergeant remembers what he did to one woman, “Enomoto remembers raping a young woman, slicing her up with a meat cleaver, cooking her in a pot and distributing her as food to his troops, who were short of meat,”(1). For the Allied powers, “one of the most horrific aspects of the Pacific War was the Japanese treatment of prisoners of war (POWs). Forced labour, starvation, untreated disease and unjustifiable brutality and torture resulted in unimaginably high death rates,”(Brawley 195). In comparison to the Nazis in the European Theater, the
During World War II American soldiers who were caught by the Japanese were sent to camps where they were kept under harsh conditions. These men were called the prisoners of war, also known as the POWs. The Japanese who were captured by the American lived a simple life. They were the Japanese internees of World War II. The POWs had more of a harsh time during World War II than the internees. While the internees did physically stay in the camps longer, the POWs had it worse mentally.
The Burma-Thailand Railway was a place where prisoners were sent to work during their time in captivity. The Japanese treated the prisoners they held captive horribly. In doing this they ignored the rules of the Geneva Convention set up many years previously and they forced most prisoners to work on the Burma-Thailand Railway where they were starved, diseased or beaten to death. The Japanese officials did not supply the camps with enough food or medical equipment to help enough of the sick and injured prisoners survive and became responsible for the deaths of over 2,700 Australians during a period of only 12 months.
Thousands of individuals, including women and children, were murdered, stores and other properties were plundered and burned, and countless of women were raped . The Japanese government regarded sex as a way to keep the soldiers obedient and focused so rape was a device used to maintain good, Japanese warriors . Not only did human experimentation occur in German concentration camps, but also in Japanese prison camps. The 731 Unit conducted experiments dealing with plague, cholera, typhoid, frostbite, and gas gangrene . American prisoners of war were treated especially cruel during these human experiments. In one incident, an individual had his skull sliced open while Dr. Fukujiro placed a surgical knife inside of his skull cavity
...target to escape and even held a competition of the person who kills 100 people first will win the game. The Japanese keeps denying their actions and refuse to give an official apology to all the offenders. Their officials go to shrine to pay homage on their so-called heroes, ignoring how these “heroes” have deeply injured the Chinese. During the Holocaust, alive human beings were taken to the chamber of gas and organs were taken to do the experiment. How the Nazi treated the Jewish was similar to how the Japanese treated the Chinese.
...ce of ordinary people, fear of retribution from the Japanese underground they still believed to be in existence… (Yamamoto p. 190).” Even after the war, the Chinese were so traumatized by the vile actions that they were still afraid that the Japanese army would return to treat as livestock once more.
In the Japanese relocation camps, prisoners were not there for final execution like Americans seemed to be in the Pacific. Nearly half were forced to work as slave laborers, and about forty percent of American POWs died in Japanese captivity. In America, after the war was over compensations were made to Japanese Americans and government officials apologized for what they put them through; however, no apologies or compensations were made to Americans.
The Rape of Nanking started on December 13, 1937. This was the day the Japanese invaded Nanking (now Nanjing), which was then the capital of Nationalist China (Cook). The Japanese Army faced little resistance as the Chinese Nationalist leader, Chiang Kai-shek, evacuated his troops before the invaders advanced. After seven weeks of Japanese atrocities, the killings ended in early 1938 (The Rape of Nanking). Japanese soldiers finally left Nanking in early February when they needed to continue the attack on China.
In July 1937, the second Sino-Japanese War broke out. A small incident was soon made into a full scale war by the Kwantung army which acted rather independently from a more moderate government. The Japanese forces succeeded in occupying almost the whole coast of China and committed severe war atrocities on the Chinese population, especially during the fall of the capital Nanking. However, the Chinese government never surrendered completely, and the war continued on a lower scale until 1945.
Throughout December of 1937, the historic city of Nanking was invaded by the Japanese military, which will gradually proceed on to rape and kill helpless civilians as well as carry the death toll to exceed that of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, put together. What took place there is certainly retold throughout three views, that of the troops who executed the assault, of the people who survived and suffered, and lastly of the chosen number of Europeans and Americans who battled to save over three hundred thousand people in this abomination. That sort o...
They were looked on in contempt as surrendering was the worst act of cowardice in the Japanese code of military honor at the time. The Chinese soldiers permitted themselves to be transported by trucks to a remote area on the outskirts of Nanking where the savagery against the Chinese soldiers and people began. The assembly of the Chinese POWs created the perfect environment where Japanese soldiers were encouraged to inflict maximum pain and suffering on the POWs in an effort to harden the soldiers and to remove any hesitation to kill. Bayonet practice on the prisoners became common practice and was used as an instructional tool, this often meant that a dozen wounds would be needed to bring death on the suffering POWs. Some prisoners would be burned alive or gunned down to fill trenches to drive their tanks on. Two Japanese lieutenants were famously reported to have held a competition to see who could first cut off 100 Chinese heads using only a
The Rape of Nanking is a graphic and extraordinarily well- written account of a period of time in Japan, which to this day, is one that is looked upon with humiliation and disdain. Interviews and research piece these accounts together in an effective novel that open the readers’ eyes to a period of time not often spoken about. The author makes sure to instill the idea that these soldiers were so indifferent to killing, that they eventually came up with different games for how to “dispose” of these people.
Japanese camps were a place where people were treated as less than nothing. The guards took great pride in dehumanizing all the POWs that were within their camps. This could be seen in a variety of different actions that the guards took. Japanese guards treated the different POWs as less than human and took great joy in making them act like animals.
Of the 22,000 Japanese soldiers on the island, only 212 were taken prisoners. “Iwo Jima was the only battle by the U.S. Marine Corps in which the overall American casualties (killed and wounded) exceeded those of the Japanese, although Japanese combat deaths were thrice those of the Americans throughout the battle (O'Brien, 1987).”
The Japanese leaders had different methods of killing that were instructed to the soldiers. However, the prisoners of this “City of Blood” soon found their liberation and their justice was served. The Japanese saw China as the place to spread their imperial and expansionist objectives. A rough estimate of 300,000 Chinese men and women died in the six weeks after December 13, 1937 (Jones). Around 20,000 women from ages 8 to 70 were raped by Japanese soldiers (Scarred).
The Second World War years saw Japan engaged in military operations throughout Asia with many significant victories. The dropping of Atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki however brought Japan to its knees. The once feared and dreaded Japanese armies were defeated. In the years since, both Western and Asian historians have been able to compile detailed records gained from interviews with survivors and from analysis of Japanese documents themselves giving shocking evidence of the scope of atrocities committed by the Japanese armies and government officials. Regardless of their admirable achievements in industry and technology in the 21st century, the Japanese are must still come to ...