The Japanese Rape of Nanking, China

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In December of 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army invaded Nanking, China. They killed 300,00 out of the 600,000 people in China’s capital city. The six-week rampage by the Japanese is now known as the Rape of Nanking and the single worst atrocity during WWII era in either the European or Pacific theaters of the war.
Before Nanking was invaded a tough battle in Shanghai began the war in the summer of 1937. The Chinese put up a shocking battle against japan. This was slightly embarrassing to Japan because they predicted that the would conquer all of China in only three months. The battle in Shanghai alone lasted a little over five months. This infuriated the Japanese and increased the appetite for revenge that was led up to Nanking.
After defeating the Chinese in Shanghai in November, 50,000 soldiers of the Japanese army marched toward Nanking. In Nanking the soldiers were poorly led and unorganized, while Shanghai had a well led and tightly organized group of soldiers. Although they outnumbered the Japanese and had plenty of ammunition, they crumbled under the ferocity of the Japanese attack. Chinese were forced to rapidly retreat as they could. After just 4 days of fighting Japanese troops smashed into the city on December 13th, 1937, with orders to “kill all captives.”
The first concern of the Japanese was to eliminate any threats, which included all of the 90,000 surrendered soldiers of Nanking. To the Japanese, surrendering was an unthinkable act of cowardice and the ultimate violation of the code of military honor pounded into their mind from childhood onward. Because of this they looked at the Chinese POWs with utter disgust, viewing them as animals not worthy of life.
The extermination of the Chinese POWs began after trucks t...

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...ernational safe zone, using red cross flags to mark the areas. These Westerners became the unsung heroes of Nanking, working day and night to the point of exhaustion to aid the Chinese. They also wrote down their impressions of the daily scenes they witnessed, with one describing Nanking as "hell on earth." Another wrote of the Japanese soldiers: "I did not imagine that such cruel people existed in the modern world." About 300,000 Chinese civilians took refuge inside their Safety Zone. Almost all of the people who did not make it into the Zone during the Rape of Nanking ultimately perished.

Works Cited

Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. New York, NY: Basic, 1997. Print.

"Rape of Nanking 1937-38." The History Place. The History Place™, 2000. Web. 18 May 2014. .

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