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…
For instance, “Soldiers would force one group of Chinese captives to dig a grave, a second group to bury the first, and then a third group to bury the second and so on. Some victims were partially buried to their chests or necks so that they would endure further agony, such as being hacked to pieces by swords or run over by horses and tanks,”(Chang 87). Victims were buried alive, sometimes with appendages above ground, with the only purpose being to inflict more pain. Chinese soldiers and citizens were also mutilated in numerous ways. Japanese soldiers, “not only disemboweled, decapitated, and dismembered victims, but performed more excruciating varieties of torture. Throughout the city they nailed prisoners to wooden boards and ran over them with tanks, crucified them to trees and electrical posts, carved long strips of flesh from them, and used them for bayonet practice. At least one hundred men had reportedly had their eyes gouged out and their noses and ears hacked off before being set on fire. Another group of two hundred Chinese soldiers and civilians were stripped naked, tied to columns and doors of a school, and then stabbed by zhuizi- special needles with handles on them-in hundreds of points along their bodies, including their mouths, throats, and eyes,”(87). The Chinese people were tortured in unimaginable ways, ways that one would not expect another person to have the capability of completing. Women were raped on a daily basis, their bodies being violated. At least 20,000 women were raped, many being mutilated, tortured, or murdered in the process. After the POWs were exterminated, “the soldiers turned their attention to the women of Nanking and an outright animalistic hunt ensued. Old women over the age of 70 as well as little girls under the age of 8 were dragged off to be sexually abused. More than 20,000 females (with some estimates as high as 80,000) were gang-raped by Japanese soldiers, then stabbed to death with bayonets or shot so they could never bear witness,”(Rape of Nanking 1). Women were abused, being physically violated with bamboo sticks, and pipes, and then having their abdominal areas being cut open and bashed in, only to be left on the streets to die. The atrocities performed by the Japanese were inhumane and left a lasting impact on the city of Nanking. After the Japanese left, “Corpses could be seen everywhere throughout the city. The streets of Nanking were said to literally have run red with blood,”(1). Never will the families that lost so much be able to recover from the infamy that occurred in the year 1937. Chinese soldiers and citizens were not the only ones that experienced such evils, American prisoners of war were also victimized.
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
Japanese were a lot more extreme in their methods. The Nazis gassed their prisoners, worked them to death, starved them, and beat them to the point of breaking. They were very brutal in their ways of torture. Despite the savagery of the Germans, the Japanese were ultimately more sadistic and inhumane in their ways of torture. With cannibalism, rape, and murder, the Japanese took advantage of the weaknesses of their victims and did things with them that only the most perverted of people would dare perform. Both sides of the war were savage in their plans for prisoners, however the Japanese took their tactics to a new level, a level that exceeded humanity, and dipped into the outskirts of insanity.
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.
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.
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.
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).”
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.
...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 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...
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.
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.
The documentary The Rape of Nanking tells the tale of an atrocity in Chinese and Japanese relations. The documentary starts in the summer of 1937 with the Japanese military continuing its aggravations against China in their long-running expansionist war against the large nation. Their attempts to conquer China in 3 months to prove their superiority was halted in Shanghai when they encountered the tenacious Chinese defense who went toe-to-toe with the Japanese troops. This wrecked their timeline and when the city finally fell the Japanese troops were itching for revenge. The Japanese would prove to enact their vicious revenge and punish the Chinese defiance at the capital city, Nanking. Dr. Takemitsu Ogawa, a medical doctor in the Imperial Japanese
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.
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 ...