[34], With the relocation of the capital of China and the reports of Japanese brutality, most of the civilian population fled Nanjing out of fear. Ono Kenji, "Massacre Near Mufushan," in The Nanking Atrocity, 193738: Complicating the Picture, ed. [169] In the 2010 Japan-China Joint History Research Committee meeting, scholars from the Japanese side set the maximum possible number of civilian victims at 200,000, with estimates of around 40,000 or 20,000. [43], By contrast Yoshiaki Itakura adopted an even stricter standard than Hata, advocating that only Chinese soldiers captured in uniform and then killed be included as massacre victims. In the museum adjacent to the shrine, a panel informs visitors that there was no massacre in Nanjing, but that Chinese soldiers in plain clothes were "dealt with severely". Eighteen others received lesser sentences. The Nanjing Massacre was a massacre (an unjust killing of many people) that happened in Nanjing, China, in December of 1937 and January of 1938.It was part of the Second Sino-Japanese War, which was the part of World War II between China and Japan.At the time, Japan was trying to take over China and Nanjing was the Chinese capital.The Japanese Army reached Nanjing on 13 December 1937 and began . Many fled the city on December 7, and the International Committee took over as the de facto government of Nanjing. . This rejection of the committee's ceasefire plan, in Rabe's mind, sealed the fate of the city. By contrast, Minoru Kitamura argues that Smythe's links to the Nationalist Government of China may have led him to skew his figures upwards. [21], Then in 1997 Kasahara formulated a definition between the two. As those who are related to the prewar military, we simply apologize deeply to the people of China. Following the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese Imperial Army marched from Shanghai to the Chinese capital city of Nanking, and though a large number of Chinese POWs and civilians were slaughtered by the Japanese following their entrance into Nanking on . The Chinese scholars of the committee maintained that at least 300,000 were killed. Two girls, about 16, were raped to death in one of the refugee camps. However, the actual number of victims is hard to determine, according to the government of Japan. Pi means "hip," kankan means "look." Title. After decades of struggle, the Nanking Massacre had become a recognized piece of Japanese history. The majority of the bodies were dumped directly into the Yangtze River. The massacre occurred over six weeks starting December 13, 1937, the day that the Japanese captured Nanjing. [25] Since then the death toll of the massacre has been a major topic of discussion among historians across the world. They were about to rape the girls when the grandmother tried to protect them. Last night the house of one of the Chinese staff members of the university was broken into and two of the women, his relatives, were raped. 1938, The Rape of Nanjing Nanjing Massacre documentary, BBC News: Nanjing remembers massacre victims, Online Documentary: The Nanjing Atrocities, English translation of a classified Chinese document on the Nanjing Massacre, Japanese Imperialism and the Massacre in Nanjing, Kirk Denton, "Heroic Resistance and Victims of Atrocity: Negotiating the Memory of Japanese Imperialism in Chinese Museums", Nanjing Massacre history site: History, Photos and Articles, 'No massacre in Nanjing,' Japanese lawmakers say, "Denying Genocide: The Evolution of the Denial of the Holocaust and the Nanjing Massacre,", War and reconciliation: a tale of two countries, Review of Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanjing: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, The Ghosts of Nanjing: Mogollon Connection Special Series by Jesse Horn, The Nanjing Massacre Project: A Digital Archive of Documents & Photographs from American Missionaries Who Witnessed the Rape of Nanjing From the Special Collections of the Yale Divinity School Library, The Nanjing Incident: Recent Research and Trends, Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, Rape during the Soviet occupation of Poland, Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office, Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors, Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, German preWorld War II industrial co-operation, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nanjing_Massacre&oldid=1130624126, Articles with dead external links from August 2017, All articles with bare URLs for citations, Articles with bare URLs for citations from December 2022, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles containing simplified Chinese-language text, Articles containing traditional Chinese-language text, Articles containing Japanese-language text, Instances of Lang-ja using second unnamed parameter, Articles containing Chinese-language text, Articles with unsourced statements from January 2021, Articles needing additional references from June 2016, All articles needing additional references, Articles containing potentially dated statements from December 2016, All articles containing potentially dated statements, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from June 2016, Articles with unsourced statements from March 2015, Articles with unsourced statements from December 2018, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0. Despite this, many Chinese people still have a strong sense of mistrust due to the memory of the atrocity and failure of reconciliation measures. Although the massacre is generally described as having occurred over a six-week period after the fall of Nanjing, the crimes committed by the Japanese army were not limited to that period. Targets within and outside of the city wallssuch as military barracks, private homes, the Chinese Ministry of Communication, forests and even entire villageswere completely burnt down, at an estimated value of US$2030 million (1937). The situation was different in Japan. [31] However, some historians have variously argued that Smythe's figures are either underestimates or exaggerations of the true civilian death toll. At noon on December 9, the Japanese military dropped leaflets into the city, urging the city of Nanjing to surrender within 24 hours, promising "no mercy" if the offer was refused. There are no official numbers for the death toll in the Nanking Massacre, though estimates range from 200,000 to 300,000 people. When I appear they give the excuse that they saw two Chinese soldiers climb over the wall. These people had presumably been fleeing and were shot from behind. [21] When Yoshiaki Itakura, an independent writer who became one of the leading researchers of the Nanking Incident,[21][32] analyzed the records of the Japanese Army, he multiplied his final tally by 0.6 in order to account for exaggeration and reached the total of 13,000 to 19,000 massacre victims. On December 5, Prince Yasuhiko Asaka was installed as Japanese commander in the campaign. 616621. During the massacre, she worked tirelessly in welcoming thousands of female refugees to stay in the college campus, sheltering up to 10,000 women. Zhang Xianwen, editor-in-chief of the report, states that the information collected was based on "a combination of Chinese, Japanese and Western raw materials, which is objective and just and is able to stand the trial of history". He was promoted to the rank of general in August 1939, though he held no further military commands. [139] The publication of these articles triggered a vehement response from Japanese right-wingers regarding the Japanese treatment of the war crimes. In light of the 40,000 corpses which Hata believes were buried in and around Nanking, he estimates the total death toll at between 38,000 and 42,000 POWs and civilians. Bates, Miner Searle", "International Memory of the World Register Documents of Nanjing Massacre", "New film has Japan vets confessing to Nanjing rape", 1937 Japanese Field Commander's Map of the Battle of Shanghai, China, "Analyzing the "Photographic Evidence" of the Nanking Massacre (originally published as Nankin Jiken: "Shokoshashin" wo Kenshosuru)", The Good Man of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe, "War and reconciliation: a tale of two countries", "Jurist Paper Chase: Japanese court rules newspaper didn't fabricate 1937 Chinese killing game", "The scars of Nanking: Memories of a Japanese outrage", "Five Western Journalists in the Doomed City", "Chinese Fight Foe Outside Nanking; See Seeks's Stand", "The International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone: An Introduction", "Genocide in the 20th Century: The Rape of Nanking 19371938 (300,000 Deaths)", "Special Report: How the Nanjing Massacre became a weapon | GRI", "Basic Facts on the Nanking Massacre and the Toyoko War Crimes Trial", "HyperWar: International Military Tribunal for the Far East [Chapter 8]", "Japanese Imperialism and the Massacre in Nanjing: Chapter X: Widespread Incidents of Rape", American Goddess at the Rape of Nanking: The Courage of Minnie Vautrin, "Why the Past Still Separates China and Japan", "HyperWar: International Military Tribunal for the Far East (Chapter 8) (Paragraph 2, p. 1015, Judgment International Military Tribunal for the Far East)", "25 July 1946. [56], According to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, estimates made at a later date indicate that the total number of civilians and prisoners of war murdered in Nanjing and its vicinity during the first six weeks of the Japanese occupation was over 200,000. However, they feared that speaking out openly "would be detrimental to their careers. The soldier abruptly stabbed her in the belly with a bayonet. [85] Approximately 70 percent of the Japanese army's wartime records were destroyed. On March 7, 1938, Robert O. Wilson, a surgeon at the university hospital in the Safety Zone administrated by the United States, wrote in a letter to his family, "a conservative estimate of people slaughtered in cold blood is somewhere about 100,000, including of course thousands of soldiers that had thrown down their arms. Improved in 24 Hours. [note 1] The massacre was one of the worst atrocities committed during World War II.[6]. On the one hand, burial statistics combine massacre victims with Chinese combat casualties and thus exaggerate the death toll. [22] The International Military Tribunal of the Far East tallied up 155,000 victims of the massacre, though in their verdict against General Iwane Matsui this figure was modified somewhat to "upwards of 100,000 people". 83 and 85 on Canton Road. More than 30 women and girls have been raped. [173][174][175], "During this period, when the Japanese Army occupied Nanjing it killed a large number of Chinese and carried out looting, arson and assaults. "[75] According to historian Jonathan Fenby, the most recent research places the death toll at 100,000 or less, though he only cites one recent estimate as evidence for this claim.[76]. [177] Indeed, there is only one sentence that refers to this event: "they [the Japanese troops] occupied that city in December. Rape! The speed of the army's advance was likely due to commanders allowing looting and rape along the way. What happened within the city limits was even more humiliating for humanity. [57] Nanking Massacre studies in Japan eventually became divided into three camps based on their death toll estimates: the "illusion" school of Nanking Massacre deniers, the "great massacre" school which believes hundreds of thousands were killed, and the "middle-of-the-road" or "centrist" school which puts the number in the tens of thousands. Only since the 1990s, through the revisionist Patriotic Education Campaign, the massacre has become a national memory as an episode of the "Century of Humiliation" prior to the communist founding of a "New China". Higashinakano had claimed in his book, Thorough Review of Nanjing Massacre, that she and the girl were different persons, and that she was not a witness of the Nanjing massacre, but he was unable to prove this at trial. [68], Japanese troops gathered 1,300 Chinese soldiers and civilians at Taiping Gate and murdered them. However, Askew notes that Japanese units often exaggerated their body counts. War crimes during the Internal conflict in Peru: 61,007 [see notes] [3][43] A large number of rapes were done systematically by the Japanese soldiers as they went from door to door, searching for girls, with many women being captured and gang-raped. Prosecution's Witnesses. Everybody learns that 300,000 people died in the Nanking Massacre when the Japanese occupied the city and massively killed civilians. Then the soldier stabbed the fetus, with its umbilical cord clearly visible, and tossed it aside. There was no belt. In China the figure of 300,000, the death toll reckoned at the Nanking War Crimes Tribunal, is the official estimate engraved on the stone wall at the entrance of the Qin-Hua Rijun Nanjing Datsusha Yunan Tongbao Jinianguan, or the Memorial Hall for Compatriot Victims of the Japanese Military's Nanjing Massacre. The girl was 14 years old. Files. In the latter process we are glad to cooperate in any way we can. Just better. The safety zone, an area of 3.85 square kilometres, was packed with the remaining population of Nanjing. According to American historian Edward J. Drea: While the Germans, beginning in 1943, did engage in substantial efforts to obliterate evidence of such crimes as mass murder, and they destroyed a great deal of potentially incriminating records in 1945, a great deal survived, in part because not each one of the multiple copies had been burned. [29] By contrast, Kasahara generally supports the higher burial estimates presented at the IMTFE, though he concedes that not all of the Chongshantang's figures can be accepted "at face value. In 2005, John Rabe's former residence in Nanjing was renovated and now accommodates the ". On the one hand, Kasahara asserts that the survey substantially underestimated the death toll, partly because Smythe only surveyed inhabited homes and thus skipped over the homes of families who had been entirely destroyed or been unable to return. [44] Most Japanese ultranationalists who deny the Nanking Massacre admit that the Japanese Army killed a large number of Chinese POWs, though they consider these to be legal executions,[45][46] an argument denounced by mainstream historians. The total death toll of the Nanjing Massacre is a highly contentious subject in Chinese and Japanese historiography. Such crime continued from three to six weeks depending on the types of crime. [26][36] For instance, Tokushi Kasahara claims that Nanking's population in 1937 included 400,000 to 500,000 civilians and 150,000 soldiers,[37] whereas David Askew believes it was 200,000 to 250,000 civilians and 73,790 to 81,500 soldiers. The novel itself was based on interviews that Ishikawa conducted with troops in Nanjing in January 1938. Some Chinese soldiers stripped civilians of their clothing in a desperate attempt to blend in, and many others were shot by the Chinese supervisory unit as they tried to flee.[21]. They were executed by shooting together on 28 January 1948. Until 1982, mentioning of the massacre was suppressed in China because ideologically the communists would rather promote the "martyrs of class struggles" than wartime victims, especially when there were no communist heroes or any communists at all in Nanjing when the massacre happened. [citation needed], On 18 February 1938, the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone was forcibly renamed the Nanjing International Rescue Committee, and the Safety Zone effectively ceased to function. The death toll of 300,000 is the official estimate engraved on the stone wall at the entrance of the "Memorial Hall for Compatriot Victims of the Japanese Military's Nanking Massacre" in Nanjing. [15], Between then and the late 1940s these two estimates were commonly cited by reporters and the media. The massacre began the same day, with Japanese troops running entirely unchecked. ", "Case 14 On December 16, seven girls (ages ranged from 16 to 21) were taken away from the Military College. The Nanjing massacre has also been described as one of the most barbaric episodes in the history of World War II although it officially began on September 1, 1939. . [112], The duration of the incident is naturally defined by its geography: the earlier the Japanese entered the area, the longer the duration. Simply apologize deeply to the government of Japan triggered a vehement response from right-wingers... 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