Japanese invasion of Manchuria began in September of 1931 after the "Mukden incident," in which a bomb, actually planted by Japanese secret agents, destroyed a Japanese express train. In July 1937, Japan escalated its attacks, launching an all-out war on mainland China. Japan defended its aggressive militarism on several grounds, including that it was in fact "protecting China from its inner turmoil," that Japan's overpopulation "necessitated" colonization of other lands, that its economy lacked adequate resources of its own and so needed those of China, that the long-term effect would be to strengthen all of East Asia, and finally that all of the world's powerful nations had made similar advances in the past.
Prior to Japanese military activities in Manchuria, the population of Nanking had been approximately 250 000, but this number had grown to about one million by late 1937. With Beijing under siege, Nanking had been made the capital of China, accounting for some of this increase; but the greater portion had come from refugees who had fled to the city from the dangerous northern countryside. In the autumn of 1937, Japanese war planes began bombing Nanking, concentrating their efforts on the downtown areas, which were most densely populated by civilians.
As Nanking came under attack, the capital was again moved, this time to Chungking. Knowing that Japanese troops were en route toward the city, the people panicked and tried to flee. On 9 December 1937, Japanese ground forces reached Nanking, where they were met with minimal resistance from overwhelmed and fatigued Chinese military units. By 13 December, with Japanese troops attacking the city from all angles, the Chinese forces were routed. Fearing the consequences of surrender to the Japanese, Chinese military men donned civilian clothing and retreated into the city. It was on this day that the six-week stretch of atrocities against the civilian population of Nanking began.
The first few weeks of barbaric rampage by Japanese troops were the grisliest. Tens of thousands of Chinese men, women, and children perished as they desperately attempted to flee across the Yangtze River by swimming or using makeshift flotation devices, while Japanese soldiers fired upon and launched grenades at the scurrying masses. On the city streets, soldiers who claimed to be searching for hidden members of the Chinese army were in reality shooting and bayoneting civilians at will. They also set fire to many buildings, looted homes and robbed citizens of their few possessions.
In the early weeks, there were mass murders with deaths numbering in the thousands. Civilians and suspected soldiers were rounded up and shot until their dead bodies piled atop one another, after which Japanese soldiers haphazardly bayoneted the mounds to make sure to kill any who had survived. On other occasions, crowds of Chinese people were assembled to be doused with gasoline and torched alive; frequently, Japanese soldiers eagerly tossed grenades into such crowds.
Nanking was certainly not the only Chinese city that suffered at the hands of the invading Japanese forces. Soochow, Wuhsi, Shanghai, Hangchow, many other cities, and countless towns and villages were all savaged as well; but it was at Nanking that this brutality reached its nadir.
The Japanese authorities were well aware of the horrors being performed by their men, but took no measures to stop them. Their behaviour, especially the attacks on women, was considered an outlet for their animal urges, a boost to the morale of the soldiers. These men made games of torturing their captives and finding new and cruel ways to kill them. In another effort to boost morale and make sport out of murder, the soldiers held contests to see who could rack up the most kills. The most famous example of this was a competition between two sub-lieutenants, Toshiaki Mukai and Takeshi Noda, who decided to race each other to one hundred kills. They had to extend this goal because it was unclear which one had committed his hundredth murder first, and then they eventually lost count
It is for the crimes against the women of Nanking that this tragedy is most notorious. Over the six weeks of the massacre, in addition to the murder of about 300,000 civilians, the Japanese troops raped over 20,000 women, most of whom were murdered thereafter. In recognition of these horrifying acts, the massacre is also commonly referred to as 'the rape of Nanking.'
Women of all ages (including children as young as seven and elderly women in their seventies) were violated, many of them being gangraped or attacked on multiple occasions. Some women were held captive so that the could be repeatedly abused. Rapes were committed in broad daylight, in front of spouses, children, or other family members, and with appalling frequency. The soldiers' usual practice, officially condoned by high-ranking officials so as to "avoid difficulties," was to murder the women when they were finished with them. This was most often done by cutting off their breasts and/or disemboweling them with a bayonet to the abdomen. Senior officers were not only aware of these acts, but participated in them as well.
Particularly disturbing is that the Japanese perpetrators derived great pleasure from these heinous crimes, while their superiors condoned and even supported them. One outstandingly revolting account is of several soldiers who, after raping and killing a pregnant woman, presented her fetus on a bayonet to their commanding officer, who replied with laughter. There were innumerable gruesome occurrences like this ...
acts of cruelty seemingly beyond human capacity ...
but commonplace, in the massacre of Nanking.
Twenty-eight men, including former foreign ministers and high-ranking military officials, were tried in Tokyo by an international jury for their part in the leadership behind the Nanking Massacre. It became clear that Tokyo had known about the atrocities and ignored them, considering them wartime policies. Of the twenty-eight men, two died during the trials, one broke down and was admitted to a mental institution, and the remaining twenty-five were all found guilty on one or more charges. All were sentenced in 1948 either to death by hanging or life imprisonment, but by 1956 every one of them had been paroled.
Decades after the massacre, Japan began to deny much of the history of Nanking. Books were written which offered very different perspectives on the incident, some of which categorically denied that it had ever taken place. Even as late as 1990, there were top officials in the Japanese government who claimed that the massacre was fabricated. While there has since been official acknowledgement of the barbarity of Japanese forces during the war, largely due to international outrage at the Japanese cover-up attempts, apologies and efforts of compensation have not been forthcoming. To this date, Ikuhiko Hata's "Nanking Incident" is considered by the Japanese Ministry of Education to be the definitive historical text on the subject. This book puts the official death count between 38 000 and 42 000, and argues that the killing of enemy soldiers who have surrendered or been captured cannot be considered a massacre.
