Imagine failure, failure to meet commitments of military service. Imagine committing suicide by disemboweling yourself in front of witnesses because of that failure. Imagine this custom lasting for more than a thousand years. This is Japan. Considering this, does it really come as a surprise that when Japan invaded China and captured the capital city of Nanking in 1937, that one of the most bloody and horrendous massacres would occur? Imagine something as horrifying as the Holocaust. Furthermore, imagine being a victim of this crime and watching the facts purposely mutilated by the Japanese government to this day. It is time to set things straight. People need to know what really happened. They need to understand from start to finish, the horrors involved, and the courage of those few foreigners who tried to stand up against the Japanese soldiers. According to Shi Young, editor-in-chief of New AsianAmericans Magazine, "The Japanese Army perpetrated atrocities and wanton rapes on the people of Nanking that repelled the whole world. It was systematic massacre; at least 369,366 people were murdered, some 80,000 women were raped. This is the infamous Rape of Nanking." (Young xv)
Scholar Iris Chang, author of the famous Rape of Nanking, and acclaimed worldwide for bringing the massacre to the eyes of the world, credits the carnage to the thousand-year-old system in which "social hierarchy was established and sustained through martial competition." (Chang 19) When, in the twelfth century, the Shogun of Japan offered the emperor military protection by the samurai in exchange for sanctification, the Japanese identity thus became set in stone. A samurai became the model for all young men. In 1931, Japan marched into Manchuria, the northernmost region of China, and declared it to be independent. When no Chinese opposition appeared, they established a puppet government there. Bit by bit, the Japanese military crept into China and bit off larger and larger chunks of China through China-Japan negotiations which always led to China surrendering more and more of its land and power. The beginning of Japanese attack occurred at the Marco Polo Bridge in the June of 1937, the goal of which to conquer all of China and enslave the Chinese people. In the December of 1937, all the strategic cities around Nanking had been captured, and the Japanese army had surrounded the city. On December 5th, the Japanese soldiers broke through the walls of Nanking, and were met by the surrender of some 300,000 Chinese troops. Thus began the horrible atrocities to occur in the city of Nanking.
The one thing to be remembered of this entire event is the crime against humanity, the horrors that caused a survivor to wake up screaming for years and years after. Members of the Japanese army murdered for enjoyment and committed rapes on women, no matter the age, from young children to old women past the age of eighty. Corpses could be seen anywhere in the city; Nanking was said to literally "run red with blood." (Rape 2) The Japanese soldiers beheaded, bayoneted, buried alive, burned, and killed for entertainment for six long weeks. The sword was seen as the weapon of custom, the traditional symbol of the warrior. As a result, numerous corpses were seen in the city, without heads. Another favorite method of killing was bayoneting. The troops used victims from the city for bayonet drills, to harden new recruits. In A Japanese Soldier's Confession, Kazuo Sone wrote, "Facing the prisoners and civilians, every recruit wore a tense and expressionless countenance, staring with trembling lips and bloody eyes at their victims.... Hearing the order to charge, they nervously leaped forward... but often those charges lacked energy and determination.... It was impossible to finish off a victim with this kind of charge. The human targets wailed and howled in extreme pain; blood spurted from the open wounds. At this point, the recruits would be frightened by what they had done... the soldiers would stab aimlessly and repeatedly, hoping to end their lives quickly and escape the ordeal.... This kind of killing experience was every soldier's test.... After this they would be fearless in real battle and would glory in the act of killing. War made people cruel, bestial, and insane. It was an abyss of inhuman crimes." (Young 132) The Japanese military used live burial as a way of disposing large groups; the screaming "shattered in the trembling air," and could be heard from miles away (Young 144). Burning was used to make sure the victims were dead. Usually after bayoneting, the victims would be doused with gasoline and burned. In this way, the troops could avoid checking if there were survivors. And finally, the Japanese soldiers killed for enjoyment. There were numerous examples of soldiers pouring gasoline on victims and then shooting them with guns, in order to watch the victims catch on fire. Another example would be when Japanese soldiers found an old woman with bound feet. They cut down a tree, so that the stump had about a 5-inch diameter and placed the woman atop it. Countless times the woman fell, and countless times the soldiers placed her back on it, until finally the woman lay motionless on the ground and the soldiers walked off laughing. These examples of the cruel and heartless atrocities might seem horrible, but not yet mentioned is the rape, the rape that caused the massacre to be known as the Rape of Nanking. Women of all ages were raped in large numbers all throughout Nanking. The slightest resistance would result in death to her and to any family members who tried to protect her. Either way, there was no difference. Raped women were "killed after the act and their bodies mutilated." (Young 158) As if rape was not enough, the Japanese soldiers invented games for recreational rape and torture of the victims. Numerous sights of unbelievable sexual horror could be seen throughout the city, disgusting even many of the Japanese people.
There is almost no end to the abominations committed by the Japanese military, but also there was almost no end to the courage of the few foreigners who tried desperately to protect the Chinese they had come to love from these horrors. The most famous of them all would be John Rabe, the Nazi who saved innumerable lives. The diary he kept during the occupation helps people further understand exactly what happened in those six weeks. In his own words, "Of the perhaps one thousand disarmed soldiers that we had quartered at the Ministry of Justice, between four hundred and five hundred were driven from it with their hands tied.... All protests were in vain.... We assume they were shot since we later heard several salvos of machine-gun fire. These events left us frozen with horror." (Wickert 68) Along with the other foreigners who had elected to remain in Nanking, Rabe built a Safety Zone in which about 250,000 could claim safety. Although the Safety Zone was not a foolproof way to save the Chinese, it was, at least, a place where he himself could keep an eye on them. For example, at one point when Rabe saw a soldier trying to rape a woman, he roared at him in German, shoved his swastika armband under the man's nose, grabbed his collar, and threw him out of the house. Through examples like these, the Chinese revered him as a saint. The only surgeon in Nanking at this time was the American, Robert Wilson. He operated on patients day and night without stopping, for free. Day after day, Wilson worked on relentlessly, although, unlike Rabe, Wilson did not have the protection of the Nazi party. His house was constantly being broken into; he was even shot at. The Japanese soldiers had not a care what the Americans might think. Another American living in Nanking at this time was Wilhelmina Vautrin, the "Living Goddess of Nanking." She was seen as a savior for women, because as the head of the Education Department and dean of studies at Ginling Women's Arts and Science College, she offered women the safety of her college. Vautrin was one of the few Western women who remained in Nanking, and paid for this choice with her life. In 1940, she suffered a nervous breakdown and had to return to the United States. In 1941, on the anniversary of the day she left Nanking, she turned on the gas in her house and committed suicide. What she has done, however, will not be forgotten. Vautrin also kept a diary so future generations will now be able to understand exactly what each of them had to go through. These few people, and more, made up the International Committee, which worked ceaselessly to protect the lives of the Chinese people.
After about six to eight weeks of this horror, the worst was over. At this point, the Japanese government began to impose methods of keeping the Nanking people under control. They distributed opium and heroin to an estimated 50,000 people, regardless of age. These people became addicted and disappeared into the city's opium dens. On January 1, 1938, the Japanese government set up the Nanking Self-Government Committee, or "Autonomous Government." It was but a puppet government that controlled every aspect of Nanking's economy. By the spring of 1938, the massacre was over and outwardly, Nanking began to function once more like a normal city.
The truth about Nanking is finally beginning to come out. However, the Japanese government has had more than 50 years to distort the facts, and only now has the Chinese begun to fight back. It will take the work of generations before the facts will finally sink in, and when that happens, and only then, will retribution finally be paid to the victims of the Rape of Nanking.
Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking. New York: Penguin Books, 1997.
Clubb, Edmund O. 20th Century China. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978.
"The Rape of Nanking." The History Place. Online [http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/nanking.htm]. 8 Dec. 2000.
Wickert, Erwin, ed. The Good Man of Nanking. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, inc., 1998.
Young, Shi and James Yin. The Rape of Nanking: An Undeniable History in Photographs. Chicago: Innovative Publishing Group, 1997.