Nanjing Massacre Research Paper

During December of 1937 the Japanese Imperial Army marched into China's capital Nanjing, killing 300,000 out of 600,000 civilians and soldiers in the city during the Second Sino-Japanese War between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan . While this mass murder is often referred to as the Nanjing Massacre, it is also called the Raping of Nanjing since around 20,000 and 80,000 women were sexually assaulted and/or forced into sex trade. The Nanjing Massacre occurred over six weeks starting December 13, 1937, the day the Japanese captured Nanjing . Even though the Japanese government admitted to the massacre and the criminal activities that took place at Nanjing, China, some Japanese government employees and veterans claim that “the death

toll was military in nature” and that the raping and looting never happened . This denial of the accounts that took place that day is what truly ended the Raping of Nanjing.
The invasion of Nanjing happened after a battle at Shanghai, China, that began in the summer of 1937 . The battle lasted from summer into late fall, giving Japan a victory in November. The lengthy battled enraged the Japanese and “whetted their appetite,” having them march to Nanjing . While the Chinese soldiers outnumbered the Japanese and had more than enough ammunition to hold off the Imperial army—they were poorly led and were very disorganized, causing them to retreat . After only four days of fighting, the Japanese soldiers broke into Nanjing on December 13, 1937, with orders to “kill all captives” .
The Japanese, who fight until the bitter end, think that surrender is a cowardly act and the “ultimate violation of military honor” .

They viewed all 90,000 Chinese Prisoners of War (POW) as less than human and unworthy of living. The elimination of Chinese POW began after they were all transported to remote locations. Japanese soldiers directed bayonet practice on live prisoners, decapitated them and displayed their detached heads as souvenirs while they proudly stood among maimed corpses . Other Chinese POWs were shot down by machine-guns or soaked with gasoline and burned alive. The Japanese encouraged the higher ups to inflict as much pain as possible to “[toughen] them up for future battles” . Some soldiers can be seen in photographs and films smiling while they conduct these inhumane acts. After mutilating the POWs, the Japanese soldiers then focused on the women in

Nanjing.
Women over the age of 70 as well as young girls under the age of 8 were taken away to be sexually abused.

More than 20,000 women were ganged raped and then stabbed to death by bayonets or shot so they could never bear witness . Women who were already pregnant were raped and then had “their bellies slit open and fetuses torn out” . Some fathers, brothers and sons were made to rape their daughters, sisters and mothers while the rest of the family was forced to watch . The Comfort Women system was later introduced where young Chinese women were unwillingly put into slave-prostitution only for Japanese soldiers .

Beyond the raping and the torture of the POWs, the Japanese would randomly murder people as they fired their rifles into crowds of civilians. Other troops killed shop owners, loot the stores and then would set the buildings on fire after locking people inside. People were shot on a whim, littering the streets with corpses; the Japanese even had “killing contests” throughout the city . If they were not shot inside the city, the Chinese were brought to the outskirts of Nanjing where they were forced to dig their own graves and be buried

alive.
In January 1938, the Japanese forced all the Chinese into a “safe zone,” which should have ended the war and the killings . A lot of the Japanese troops did not respect the safety zone, resulting in some deaths; but for the most part the rest of the crimes happened outside that zone . Later in January of 1938, the Japanese troops forced all the refugees in the safe zone to go back to their homes, claiming that order had been restored . After all the deaths and inhumane crimes that occurred during the Nanjing Genocide, Japan still tried to cover up their wrongdoings by denying the massacre ever existed for quite some time .
While the safety zone was a transition to end the war, what really made the war disappear was Japan’s denial and/or lack of knowledge of the entire massacre. Since January 1938, Japan has completely avoided giving a formal apology to China; the Japanese rarely speak of the event as a whole. A Japanese film maker, Satoru Mizushima, created a documentary that recounted the events of the Nanjing massacre and claimed that it was not real and that it was Chinese propaganda that threatened the face of Japan and its relations with the other countries . Toshio Tamogi, a formal air force chief of staff, considered the Rape of Nanjing as a false allegation . The younger generations are hardly aware of the Nanjing Genocide because it is not thoroughly taught to students. Japan’s education system left out vital information of the massacre in school textbooks so that not even students can talk about Nanjing massacre; they are still left without knowing what had actually happened during the Rape of Nanking .
The Nanjing Massacre has been hidden from the media for 65 years whether it be denied, hardly mentioned or completely ignored. These denials have kept the country of Japan constantly living in the past. Until Japan owns up to the massacre, both China and Japan can never actually move on from Nanjing.