[28], David Askew, a historian at Ritsumeikan University, states that the death toll of the Nanking Massacre can be calculated by modern-day historians on the basis of four types of sources. Between the announcement of a ceasefire on August 15, 1945, and the arrival of small advance parties of American troops in Japan on August 28, Japanese military and civil authorities systematically destroyed military, naval, and government archives, much of which was from the period 19421945. 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]. Nanjing Massacre, conventional Nanking Massacre, also called Rape of Nanjing, (December 1937-January 1938), mass killing and ravaging of Chinese citizens and capitulated soldiers by soldiers of the Japanese Imperial Army after its seizure of Nanjing, China, on December 13, 1937, during the Sino-Japanese War that preceded World War II. The visitor is left to assume they did. Matsui returned to retirement, but Prince Asaka remained on the Supreme War Council until the end of the war in August 1945. But we always stabbed and killed them. I offer my sympathy, with deep emotion, to a million innocent people. magazine surveyed members of each "school" for their opinions on the massacre, many of the so-called "centrists" advocated extremely low figures for the total number of victims, including Dokkyo University professor Akira Nakamura, journalist Yoshiko Sakurai, and researcher Toshio Tanabe, who each counted about 10,000 massacred, and military historian Takeshi Hara who selected 20,000. From Judgment of the International Military Tribunal, On November 12, 1948, Matsui and Hirota, along with five other convicted Class-A war criminals, were sentenced to death by hanging. [25] Since then the death toll of the massacre has been a major topic of discussion among historians across the world. The most accurate and widely accepted estimates place the total number of massacre victims in the entire Nanking Special Administrative District between the range of 40,000 and 200,000, although figures even smaller or larger than this have been proposed by Japanese revisionists and the government of China . 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 Citation "Nanjing Death Toll Graph," Atlas of the Dead, accessed January 17, . Minnie Vautrin was a Christian missionary who established Ginling Girls College in Nanking, which was within the established Safety Zone. The massacre occurred over a period of six weeks starting on December On 13 December, the 6th and the 116th Divisions of the Japanese Army were the first to enter the city, facing little military resistance. Asaka denied the existence of any massacre and claimed never to have received complaints about the conduct of his troops.[119]. His decision to visit the shrine regardless sparked international outrage. Many innocent men were misidentified and killed.[1]. Tang Junshan, survivor and witness to one of the Japanese army's systematic mass killings, testified:[64]. [51] In her book, she estimated that the number of Chinese women raped by Japanese soldiers ranged from 20,000 to 80,000. David Askew, "The Scale of Japanese Atrocities in Nanjing: An Examination of the Burial Records," Ritsumeikan Journal of Asia Pacific Studies, June 2004, 710. The Chinese scholars of the committee maintained that at least 300,000 were killed. Other Japanese military leaders in charge at the time of the Nanjing Massacre were not tried. When I think of the feelings and sentiments of many of my Chinese friends who have fled from Nanjing and of the future of the two countries, I cannot but feel depressed. He reportedly told one of his civilian aides: I now realize that we have unknowingly wrought a most grievous effect on this city. We thus have a total of more than 300,000 victims. As the Japanese approached, the Chinese army withdrew the bulk of its forces since Nanjing was not a defensible position. Added in 24 Hours. The argument in favor of this made by Katsuichi Honda in 1984 was seen by some scholars involved in the debate on the massacre as a "partial admission of defeat" by Honda. Recent Historical Writings on the Rape of Nanjing", "Le massacre de Nankin et les mcanismes de sa ngation par la classe politique dirigeante", U.S. Archives Reveal War Massacre of 500,000 Chinese by Japanese Army, https://en.unesco.org/sites/default/files/china_nanjing_en.pdf, "Japanese statement protesting UNESCO registration of Nanjing Massacre docs backfires", Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, "The Nanjing Massacre: Primary Source Records and Secondary InterpretationsA Textual Critique of Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi's Review", "Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan", "Biography of Lieutenant-General Moritake Tanabe - () - ( ) (1889 1949), Japan", "More names on Nanjing Massacre memorial wall", "Religious Assembly Held to Mourn Nanjing Massacre Victims", "China holds first Nanjing Massacre memorial day", "The Nanking Massacre: Fact Versus Fiction", "A (very) short history of Japan's war apologies", "Nagoya mayor won't budge on Nanjing remark", "Japan ruling MPs call Nanjing massacre fabrication", "Subcommittee on Nanjing Issues Press Conference (YouTube)", "Japanese Official Denies Nanjing Massacre", Nagoya mayor won't budge on Nanjing remark, "Tokyo governor backs Nanjing massacre denial", "The Nanking 100-man killing contest debate", "Governor of Japan broadcaster NHK denies Nanjing massacre", "The Nanking Massacre, Justice and Reconciliation: A Chinese Perspective", "In Japan, denial over Nanjing still holds sway after 70 years", "Book review. [147], On June 19, 2007, a group of around 100 Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lawmakers again denounced the Nanjing Massacre as a fabrication, arguing that there was no evidence to prove the allegations of mass killings by Japanese soldiers. The massacre began the same day, with Japanese troops running entirely unchecked. 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. Since the area outside the safety zone had been almost completely evacuated, the mopping-up effort was concentrated in the safety zone. 19471218: pp. [107] However, Erwin Wickert, the editor of The diaries of John Rabe, points out that "It is likely that Rabe's estimate is too low, since he could not have had an overview of the entire municipal area during the period of the worst atrocities. [67] Joshua A. Fogel, a historian of China at York University, has decried the efforts of many Chinese to exaggerate the death toll of the atrocity and then "silence anyone who disagrees". In August 1937, the Japanese army invaded Shanghai, where they met strong resistance and suffered heavy casualties. The last refugee camps were closed in May 1938. In one estimate the Nanking War Crimes Tribunal put the death toll at more than 300,000, though the Tribunal also recorded other estimates including one of 430,000. He would later state that he had seen tank guns used on bound soldiers. "Case 5 On the night of December 14th, there were many cases of Japanese soldiers entering houses and raping women or taking them away. Many fled the city on December 7, and the International Committee took over as the de facto government of Nanjing. The seventh and last person in the first row was a pregnant woman. By the time they had arrived at Zijin Mountain, Noda had killed 105 people while Mukai had killed 106 people. Many atrocities were reported to have been committed as the Japanese army advanced from Shanghai to Nanjing. I think he will live. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East estimated that 20,000 women, including some children and the elderly, were raped during the occupation, with Yale University claiming over 80,000 rapes. Some right-wing Japanese politicians have downplayed the death toll or denied outright that the Nanking atrocity happened. However, they feared that speaking out openly "would be detrimental to their careers. [139] The publication of these articles triggered a vehement response from Japanese right-wingers regarding the Japanese treatment of the war crimes. They do not mention sexual assaults. 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". [58], The official stance of the People's Republic of China is that 300,000 or more Chinese were massacred in Nanking. 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. "[150][151], On February 24, 2012, Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara denied the Nanjing massacre. [98] Tomio Hora supports the information found in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, which estimates a death toll of at least 200,000. Dr. Robert O. Wilson, a surgeon and a member of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone, took the witness stand first. [94], According to the verdict of the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal on 10 March 1947, there are "more than 190,000 mass slaughtered civilians and Chinese soldiers killed by machine gun by the Japanese army, whose corpses have been burned to destroy proof. The Nanjing Massacre (simplified Chinese: ; traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: Nnjng Dtsh, Japanese: , romanized: Nankin Daigyakusatsu) or the Rape of Nanjing (formerly romanized as Nanking) was the mass murder of Chinese civilians in Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, immediately after the Battle of Nanking in the Second Sino . 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. In an attempt to secure permission for this cease-fire from Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, Rabe, who was living in Nanjing and had been acting as the Chairman of the Nanking International Safety Zone Committee, boarded the USSPanay(PR-5) on December 9. [7] By mid-November, the Japanese had captured Shanghai with the help of naval and aerial bombardment. Chang also states that not all rape victims were women. The poems capture all perspectives of the tragedyfrom the weary, casually cruel Japanese soldiers to the uncomprehending child victims, and from the desperate helpless parents and the brutalized comfort women to the bloodless yet vicious bureaucrats of death. In the latter process we are glad to cooperate in any way we can. Some other Japanese military leaders in charge at the time of the Nanjing Massacre were not tried only because by the time of the tribunals they had either already been killed or committed seppuku (ritual suicide). [85] Approximately 70 percent of the Japanese army's wartime records were destroyed. "The International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone: An Introduction", Askew, David, "The Nanjing Incident: An Examination of the Civilian Population". This resulted in widespread looting and burglary.[73]. In December 2007, newly declassified U.S. government archive documents revealed that a telegraph by the U.S. ambassador to Germany in Berlin sent one day after the Japanese army occupied Nanjing, stated that he heard the Japanese ambassador in Germany boasting that the Japanese army had killed 500,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians as the Japanese army advanced from Shanghai to Nanjing. Chinese teacher sacked for questioning death toll in Nanjing massacre. On December 13, 1937, after seizing Nanjing, the Japanese army carried out a bloody slaughter of unparalleled savagery in violation of international law. [179] Modern Chinese (including most citizens of the PRC, partially in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and overseas) will refer to the Nanjing Massacre to explain certain stances they hold or ideas they have; this "national unifying event" holds true to middle-school educated peasants and to senior government officials alike. [110][111], 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. Masahiro Yamamoto, Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000), p. 193. The younger girl was bayoneted also but was spared the horrible treatment that had been meted out to her sister and mother. [85] The baby was killed with a bayonet. Unable to escape, the POWs could only scream and thrash desperately. 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. [49] Though many still support the IMTFE's geographic scope for the massacre, in 1984 the journalist Katsuichi Honda became the first individual to voice disapproval of this definition. [26][89] Daqing Yang, a historian at George Washington University, believes that "an obsession with figures reduces an atrocity to abstraction and serves to circumvent a critical examination of the causes of and responsibilities for these appalling atrocities"[90] and Carol Gluck concurs that "The crucial historical question remains the moral one: how could ordinary Japanese have done what they did? [26][27] However, emotional arguments and political interference in the debate have tended to hinder the construction of an academic consensus on the number of people killed in the atrocity. Now, in the winter, the season gives time to reflect. [21] The IMTFE stated that a total of 155,300 corpses were buried in and around Nanking after the fall of the city, based on statistics from the Red Swastika Society and the Chongshantang, though many historians now discount the accuracy of the burials recorded by the Chongshantang. The massacre has remained a wedge issue between modern China and Japan. Because dead bodies don't talk. 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. According to Navy veteran Sho Mitani, "The Army used a trumpet sound that meant 'Kill all Chinese who run away'. As stated in the Judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, "Estimates indicate that the total number of civilians and prisoners of . Never I have heard or read such brutality. The older girl was stabbed afterwards and a cane was rammed in her vagina. [citation needed], This nationalist view does not, however, represent a widely shared understanding of what happened at Nanjing, as illustrated by Japanese textbooks' rather different treatment of the atrocity. [54] Sons were coerced in to rape their mothers, fathers were forced to rape their daughters, and brothers were forced to rape their sisters. The man is now at the University Hospital and is not expected to live. Currently, the most reliable and widely agreed upon figures place the massacre victims within Nanjing City Walls to be around 40,000, mostly massacred in the first five days from December 13, 1937; while the total victims massacred as of the end of March 1938 in both Nanjing and its surrounding six rural counties far exceed 100,000 but fall short of 200,000. Files. Rabe commented on how efforts to remove these Chinese troops failed and Japanese soldiers began to lob grenades into the refugee zone.[10]. But even last night between 8 and 9 p.m. when five Occidental members of our staff and Committee toured the Zone to observe conditions, we did not find any single Japanese patrol either in the Zone or at the entrances! The mass murder at the Yangtze river was just one of the tragedies of the Nanking Massacre. [9], The Nanking Massacre was reported internationally within a week of occurring[10] and the first estimate of the full death toll was published on January 24, 1938, in the New China Daily. 'Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 19581962' by Yang Jisheng", "China cites Japan wartime 'confessions' in propaganda push", "The Chinese, Too, Have Much to Apologize For", "Japanese statement protesting UNESCO registration of Nanjing Massacre docs backfiresCanada ALPHA ", "China athletes unlikely to stay at controversy-linked Sapporo hotel", "Japan threatens to halt Unesco funding over Nanjing massacre listing", " | JBpress ()", " | JBpress ()", "What Japanese history lessons leave out", "History Education: The Source of Conflict Between China and Japan", "The Nanjing Incident Recent Research and Trends", The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, The Nanking Atrocity: An Interpretive Overview, The Nanking Massacre: Fact Versus Fiction: A Historian's Quest for the Truth, Analyzing The 'Photographic Evidence' of The Nanking Massacre, War Damage in the Nanking area Dec. 1937 to Mar. The girl was 14 years old. [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. Beginning, I believe, on the 19th or 20th of December, burning was carried on regularly for six weeks. "[85] Overseas troops in the Pacific and East Asia were ordered to destroy incriminating evidence of war crimes. At dusk, the soldiers divided POWs into four columns and opened fire. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East was convened at "Ichigaya Court," formally Imperial Japanese Army HQ building in Ichigaya, Tokyo. It took an hour for the sounds of death to stop and even longer for the Japanese to bayonet each individual. 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. 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