The second telegram was sent through Shanghai to Japanese military leaders, advocating for a three-day ceasefire so that the Chinese could withdraw from the city. [131], Yanziji Nanjing Massacre Memorial in 2004, A statue titled "Family Ruined" in front of the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall, John Rabe's former residence, now the "John Rabe and International Safety Zone Memorial Hall", in Nanjing, September 2010, China and Japan have both acknowledged the occurrence of wartime atrocities. [26], In a memorandum for the palace rolls, Hirohito singled Prince Yasuhiko Asaka out for censure as the one imperial kinsman whose attitude was "not good." 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. A People's Liberation Army honor guard bearing large funeral wreaths marched slowly past a memorial showing the figure 300,000, China's official death toll in the events of December 1937, as . I told them that after all our efforts to enhance the Imperial prestige, everything had been lost in one moment through the brutalities of the soldiers. According to the archives research "The telegrams sent by the U.S. diplomats [in Berlin] pointed to the massacre of an estimated half a million people in Shanghai, Suzhou, Jiaxing, Hangzhou, Shaoxing, Wuxi and Changzhou". She said that the people of China "don't believe that an unequivocal and sincere apology has ever been made by Japan to China" and that a written apology from Japan would send a better message to the international community. However, Askew notes that Japanese units often exaggerated their body counts. You hear nothing but rape. Languages. [9] The number of Chinese soldiers in plain clothes that were executed is estimated to be around 4,000. Physical evidences are almost everywhere to the killing of men, women and children, of the breaking into and looting of property and of the burning and destruction of houses and buildings. Rabe says that the ambassador also "sent us a separate confidential telegram telling us that he has been officially informed by the Foreign Ministry in Hankow that our understanding that General Tang agreed to a three-day armistice and the withdrawal of his troops from Nanjing is mistaken, and moreover that Chiang Kai-shek has announced that he is not in a position to accept such an offer." Men, women and children were killed in uncounted numbers throughout the city. Essay On The Nanking Massacre. Just better. A vocational college teacher was fired after a video of her questioning the true death toll of the Nanjing Massacre surfaced online, triggering a wave of backlash on social media platforms over the statement. Two days later he defended his remarks, saying, "Even since I was a national Diet representative, I have said [repeatedly] there was no [Nanjing] massacre that resulted in murders of several hundred thousands of people. [124], In 1947, Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda, the two officers responsible for the contest to kill 100 people, were both arrested and extradited to China. [citation needed], The government of Japan believes it can not be denied that the killing of a large number of noncombatants, looting and other acts by the Japanese army occurred. [180][181][182], Dockworkers in Australia were horrified by the massacre and refused to load pig iron onto ships heading for Japan, leading to the Dalfram Dispute of 1938. [157], Takashi Yoshida described how changing political concerns and perceptions of the "national interest" in Japan, China, and the U.S. have shaped the collective memory of the Nanjing massacre. He was promoted to the rank of general in August 1939, though he held no further military commands. [38][39], In his final analysis, Tokushi Kasahara looks at documents and diaries recorded by soldiers of the Japanese Army and concludes that at least 80,000 Chinese soldiers and POWs, or possibly over 100,000, were massacred by the Japanese, which was most of the estimated total force of 150,000 soldiers. The "Great Massacre School" group supports the validity of the findings at the Tokyo Trials, and concludes that there were at least 200,000 casualties and at least 20,000 rape cases; whereas "The Illusion School" group rejects tribunal findings as "victor's justice". It was worse. 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. The subject is the notorious Japanese occupation of Nanjing, China, in 1937. However, most credible scholars in Japan, which include a large number of authoritative academics, support the validity of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and its findings, which estimate at least 200,000 murders and at least 20,000 cases of rape. Some right-wing Japanese politicians have downplayed the death toll or denied outright that the Nanking atrocity happened. Practically every building in the city was entered many, many times by these roving gangs of soldiers throughout the first six or seven weeks of the occupation". In the University Middle School where there are 8,000 people the Japs came in ten times last night, over the wall, stole food, clothing, and raped until they were satisfied. Live Statistics. Nanjing had been constantly bombed for days and the Chinese troops that remained there were disheartened and had taken to drinking before the city's inevitable fall. 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 December 13, 1937, the precise number remains unknown. In case of resistance or anything that seems like disapproval, there is a bayonet stab or a bullet. People are hysterical Women are being carried off every morning, afternoon and evening. Wealthy families were the first to flee, leaving Nanjing in automobiles, followed by the evacuation of the middle class and then the poor, while only the destitute lowest class such as the ethnic Tanka boat people remained behind. [154] He said that there were isolated incidents of brutality but no widespread atrocity, and criticized the Tokyo Trials figure of 200,000. [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". Hs Shuhsi, ed. A year before that a series of "smaller courts" held in China, including in Nanjing, put the death toll at 300,000. Between the declaration of a ceasefire on August 15, 1945, and the arrival of American troops in Japan on August 28, "the Japanese military and civil authorities systematically destroyed military, naval, and It would seem according to stories told us by foreign witnesses that the soldiers were let loose like a barbarian horde to desecrate the city. Groups of Chinese civilians were formed, bound with their hands behind their backs, and marched outside the walls of the city where they were killed in groups by machine gun fire and with bayonets. The judges were also prepared to accept that the death toll would be much higher if estimates of the number of Chinese burned alive by the Japanese in mass slaughter pits and bodies dumped in the river were added. Prosecution's Witnesses. The battle was bloody as both sides faced attrition in urban hand-to-hand combat. Mrs. Hsia was dragged out from under a table in the guest hall where she had tried to hide with her 1-year-old baby. [2][3][4][5] Beginning on December 13, 1937, the massacre lasted six weeks. All we are asking in our protest is that you restore order among your troops and get the normal city life going as soon as possible. Their stories and those of the German residents tell of the city having fallen into the hands of the Japanese as captured prey, not merely taken in the course of organized warfare but seized by an invading army whose members seemed to have set upon the prize to commit unlimited depredations and violence. [27][50] French historian Jean-Louis Margolin, for instance, has strongly criticized Honda's argument, noting that "As, in our present knowledge, it is impossible to get convincing figures for such large areas, such methods may be considered as attempts to blur hopelessly the debate. [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. Some soldiers then went to the next room, where Mrs. Hsia's parents, aged 76 and 74, and her two daughters aged 16 and 14 [were]. Kasahara notes that Smythe's survey proves that a bare minimum of 12,000 ordinary civilians were massacred within Nanking, though other contemporary sources gives figures between 50,000 and 100,000, plus at least another 26,870 outside Nanking. 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). [21][31][34] According to Smythe's survey, as many as 12,000 civilians were killed within the city of Nanking plus another 26,870 in the rural counties outside Nanking. In a press release to foreign reporters, Tang Shengzhi announced the city would not surrender and would fight to the death. 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. [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. [18][33] Though Ikuhiko Hata has also used Japanese military records to calculate the death toll of the massacre, he does not account for exaggeration as Itakura did. 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]. A Japanese hotelier's denial of a 1937 massacre by Japanese troops in the Chinese city of Nanjing has prompted Chinese social media calls for a boycott of travel to Japan, threatening tourist . [176], Another history textbook prepared by the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, which had been approved by the government in 2001, attempts to whitewash Japan's war record during the 1930s and early 1940s. [31] Nevertheless, even if Ch took the initiative, Asaka was nominally the officer in charge and gave no orders to stop the carnage. The extent of the atrocities is hotly debated, with numbers ranging from Japanese ultra-nationalist claims of several hundred, to the Chinese claim of a non-combatant death toll of 300,000. [16][17] The 1944 film, The Battle of China, stated that 40,000 were killed in the Nanking Massacre. In 1947 at the Nanking War Crimes Tribunal, the verdict of Lieutenant General Tani Hisao , the commander of the 6th Division quoted the figure of more . For most of the morning, Japanese soldiers tied the POWs' hands together. 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 tribunal determined that more than 200,000 people were killed in Nanjing. [13] Timperley included a second estimate in his book published later the same year, Japanese Terror In China, which quoted "a foreign member of the University faculty" as stating that "close to 40,000 unarmed persons were killed within and near the walls of Nanking". A new report on the 1937-1938 massacre doesn't settle the contested issue of how many people died -- but it points to a much more On the other hand, they fail to include corpses that were destroyed rather than buried and thus underestimate the death toll. "[120], Matsui asserted that he had never ordered the execution of Chinese POWs. Because dead bodies don't talk. An official from South Korea said they would summon the Tokyo ambassador to protest. The first three weeks were more intense. The total death toll of the Nanjing Massacre is a highly contentious subject in Chinese and Japanese historiography. I think he will live. [42] He argued that Chinese soldiers who had thrown away their uniforms were legally executed because the laws of war at the time did not apply to them, though this line of reasoning is hotly disputed by other historians. '"[55], For about three weeks since December 13, 1937,[1] the Imperial Japanese Army entered the Nanking Safety Zone to search for former Chinese soldiers hidden among refugees. [7] By mid-November, the Japanese had captured Shanghai with the help of naval and aerial bombardment. [52][53] There are also accounts of Japanese troops coercing families to commit incestuous acts. In 1986 Ikuhiko Hata became the first historian to call this definition into question. "[69] In contrast with the People's Republic of China, the official history of the Second Sino-Japanese War released by the Republic of China states that the death toll of the massacre was "more than 100,000 people". The massacre camp generally supports the Tokyo War Crimes Trials figure of "upwards of 100,000" deaths; skeptics claim 15,000 to 50,000, while others venture only up to 10,000. The first type of source is oral history, but he calls this "the most problematic methodology in researching the incident" due in part to large discrepancies between the testimony of Japanese and Chinese eyewitnesses. "[85] Overseas troops in the Pacific and East Asia were ordered to destroy incriminating evidence of war crimes. [51] In her book, she estimated that the number of Chinese women raped by Japanese soldiers ranged from 20,000 to 80,000. A bar graph comparing four different claims for the number of non-military victims of the Nanjing Massacre, as well as the death toll claims of six different groups. Two bayoneted corpses are the only survivors of seven street cleaners who were sitting in their headquarters when Japanese soldiers came in without warning or reason and killed five of their number and wounded the two that found their way to the hospital. ", "Case 15 There are about 540 refugees crowded in No. [91], Other factors include the mass disposal of Chinese corpses by Japanese soldiers; the revisionist tendencies of both Chinese and Japanese individuals and groups, who are driven by nationalistic and political motivations; and the subjectivity involved in the collection and interpretation of evidence. Kasahara generally concludes that the death toll must have been well over 100,000, and possibly around 200,000. They also murdered hundreds of thousands . [136] According to him, "of the two, however, the Great Massacre School is clearly the more sophisticated, counting among its members a large number of academics who bring a great deal of authority to their findings. Matsui was convicted by a majority of the judges at the Tokyo tribunal who ruled that he bore ultimate responsibility for the "orgy of crime" at Nanjing because, "He did nothing, or nothing effective, to abate these horrors. John Rabe's Safety Zone was mostly a success, and is credited with saving at least 200,000 lives. What happened within the city limits was even more humiliating for humanity. That day, the prime minister and the Japanese Emperor Akihito pronounced statements of mourning at Tokyo's Nippon Budokan. What many people don't know is that the emperor had largely lost control of the army and Japan, which was a flourishing democracy before was taken over by the military (basically) following . [18] The judge also ruled against the civil claim of the plaintiffs because the original article was more than 60 years old. The total death toll of the Nanjing Massacre is a highly contentious subject in Chinese and Japanese historiography. [107] Other sources, including Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanjing, also conclude that the death toll reached 300,000. See: Death toll of the Nanking Massacre. There are no official numbers for the death toll . Yoshida argues that "Nanjing crystallizes a much larger conflict over what should constitute the ideal perception of the nation: Japan, as a nation, acknowledges its past and apologizes for its wartime wrongdoings; or stands firm against foreign pressures and teaches Japanese youth about the benevolent and courageous martyrs who fought a just war to save Asia from Western aggression. Five of these were journalists who remained in the city a few days after it was captured, leaving the city on December 16. [12][63][64] Bob Wakabayashi concludes from this that estimates over 200,000 are not credible. Many fled the city on December 7, and the International Committee took over as the de facto government of Nanjing. Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, "Leftover Problems," in The Nanking Atrocity, 193738: Complicating the Picture, ed. ", "Japanese Crimes in Nanjing, 193738: A Reappraisal", "The Memorial Hall for the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre: Rhetoric in the Face of Tragedy", Japan's Last Vets of Nanking Massacre Open Up, "The Memorial Hall for the Victims of the Nanking Massacre: Rhetoric in the Face of Tragedy", "The Chinese Islamic "Goodwill Mission to the Middle East" During the Anti-Japanese War", "John Rabe's letter to Hitler, from Rabe's diary", "Denial of the Holocaust and the Rape of Nanking", "The Rape of Nanking vs. the incident of Nanking: a Literature Review", "The Nanjing Incident: Recent Research and Trends", Paragraph 2, p. 1012, Judgment International Military Tribunal for the Far East, "Convergence or Divergence? The Japanese army mounted its assault on the Nanjing walls from multiple directions; the SEF's 16th Division attacked three gates on the eastern side, the 6th Division of the 10A launched its offensive on the western walls, and the SEF's 9th Division advanced into the area in-between. Women and girls were raped en masse and looting was widespread. [citation needed], To many Japanese scholars, post-war estimations were distorted by "victor's justice", when Japan was condemned as the sole aggressor. Instead of refuting the allegations, the interviewed veterans confirmed that a massacre had taken place and openly described and admitted to taking part in the atrocities. 18 I Ho Lu, Japanese soldiers wanted a man's cigarette case and when he hesitated, one of the soldier crashed in the side of his head with a bayonet. Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanjing, criticized Murayama for not providing the written apology that had been expected. 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