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.
Some people died when the Allies continuously bombed the railway, unaware that their own people were working on it and creating more work for them to do. 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.
Japan’s defeat was seen as a relief to some Japanese citizens and hard to swallow by others. Some individuals were even willing to kill their entire family and commit suicide after learning of Japan’s defeat . Japanese citizens, especially in Manchuria, faced hostility from Russians, Korean, and Americans who came and occupied parts of Japan . The defeat of Japan brought with it humiliation the country had not been prepared for. After World War II, the Imperial government had ended which made way for a new, peaceful era in Japan .
Japan killed millions in World War II we killed under 100,000 in the dropping of the bombs. “More than 46 million people died in World War II. The Japanese, alone, may have killed 17 million. So why have so many focused so intently on the 80,000 who died at Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945?”(Benson). Atomic bombs destroyed parts of Japan and took out the population of cities; however, the Japanese took the lives of enough people to fill to the population of South Dakota; 17 times.
...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.
“Before the rape I felt good. My life was in order. I was getting ready to get married. Afterward everything changed. I kind of lost who I was as a person…
All orders were given "in the name of the Emperor", and so the leaders could never be questioned. Japanese soldiers tried as war criminals were genuinely shocked to have this defense set aside. Simply the fact that they would also attempt to kill themselves for the Emperor too. Either and Explotation of the Bushido code or the Japanese just saught revenge on the white race, due to race relations maybe because the Japanese were looked upon as yellow people from Asia like the Chinese and not capable to fight a 'western country'.
An intense weapon was necessary to coerce a quick Japanese surrender. The Japanese showed no signs of forming any kind of peace agreement in the near future. On a random bomb raid in 1945, 100,000 people were killed in Tokyo in one night, and it appeared to have no impact on their will to fight. Japan would only engage in the vaguest of talks. They were scheduled to have a meeting with the Soviets (before the bombs were dropped) for a negotiated settlement, not the unconditional surrender that the United States and Britain wanted. Japan was unwilling to surrender and ready to wage a suicidal resistance if they could not get the terms they wanted. The Japanese cabinet was aware that if they were invaded, kamikaze pilots would dive bomb enemy ships, soldiers would fight by suicidal banzai charges, and civilians would strap on explosives and throw themselves under enemy tanks. The Japanese were ready to ?fight to the very end,? and only a devastating devic...
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.
Japan lasted from 1185-1603. During that time Japan had emperors, shoguns, daimyos, samurai, and peasants who were all apart of a social class, and all together it was called the Samurai Society. The emperor was just a figurehead for the shogun. The shogun was a powerful military leader that ruled in the emperor’s name. Daimyo were powerful landlords. The daimyo often led armies of samurai. These samurai were trained professional warriors who served daimyo and shoguns. The samurai had to follow a certain code of rules for samurai called Bushido. One of their rules included to always have self-discipline to become a good samurai. The samurai warriors wore light armor, helmets (usually shaped like an animal), and had two swords around their waist. Their armor had a lot of detail and color to it, like their unique helmets. After the samurai comes the peasants, which included farmers and fishermen. They usually always work, then pay takes to the shogun. They usually gave the shogun what they earned from working like food or crops. What made their jobs a bit difficult was their topography. Japan’s topography included many mountains, undersea volcanoes, and barely any flat land to farm on. The Japanese didn’t only work they also practiced their religion. For example, they practiced Confucianism, Buddhism (...
Beginning in the 1930s, comfort stations were being set up in China and they were mainly private comfort stations. The reason for comfort stations was to try and prevent Japanese soldiers from raping local women, which did not completely work. The Japanese did not start to make larger comfort stations till after the Rape of Nanking or also know as the Nanking Massacre. In December 1937 the Japanese capture Nanking an...
In Daqing Yang’s “The Malleable and the Contested”, he gives a detailed explanation on when and how the Nanjing Massacre became such a controversial issue both in China and Japan today. He primarily focuses on the publications that brought awareness of the incident. He also signifies how politics can be a factor in these memories. Right after Japan’s defeat, Japanese atrocities were brought up to the Tokyo War Trials. During the early post-war period, the Nanjing Massacre was acknowledged in Japanese textbooks. It was not until the conservative Liberal Democratic Party’s establishment that the focus on the massacre was lightened in textbooks. On the other hand, the People’s Republic of China brought up the massacre by portraying the communist as the winner who fought against the Japanese in the war, and also focused more on how the United States was the key factor that caused the massacre instead of the Japanese. Yang points out in his article “As China continued its internal struggles to weed out domestic enemies, class conflict, rathe...
caused concern for the general public. The fingers of dead Japanese's soldiers were allege to
The Rape of Nanking, also known as the Nanking Massacre was a six week period when mass numbers of Chinese men and woman were killed by the Japanese. Embarrassed by the lack of effort in the war with China in Shanghai, the Japanese looked for revenge and finally were able to win the battle. The Japanese moved toward the city of Nanjing also known as Nanking and invaded it for approximately six months. Even though the people of Nanjing outnumbered the 50,000 Japanese, they were not as masterful in warfare as their opponents. Chinese soldiers were forced to surrender to the Japanese and the massacre began in which around 300,000 people died and 20,000 women were raped. 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.
Is anyone truly a stranger to nightmares? Has anyone not woken up in a feverish sweat with a racing pulse or pounding heart? Whose eyes have never wildly searched their room for the phantoms of a dream? Now, what if the familiar consolation of learning it was all in your head never came? How do you wake up from a nightmare that is, in fact, a reality? I think I’m getting ahead of myself. What I mean to say is, I was raped, and rape is a nightmare.
There are many historical aspects of the Japanese, but the most interesting is the history of the Samurai. In Japans history war played a large role in the country. Controlling clans fought for parts of the land and overall control of the country. These clans were powerful families that resided in the country and who all wanted power and control of Japan for themselves. The families that would be in control were known as Shoguns. These shoguns would have warriors that fought for them if any of the other clan families would try to attack him in order to overthrow him and take his power from him. The Samurai followed a code that developed from Chinese beliefs when in battle. The Samurais code was known as the Bushido. This code was also known as “The Way of The Warrior” which was the main belief s...