[86] Some of the concealed information was made public a few decades later. [20], The Nanjing garrison force set fire to buildings and houses in the areas close to Xiakuan to the north as well as in the environs of the eastern and southern city gates. 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. The death toll, and indeed the events in Nanjing in general, are subject to much discussion, with death toll estimates ranging from 30,000 to 300,000. The seventh and last person in the first row was a pregnant woman. The tribunal determined that more than 200,000 people were killed in Nanjing. On December 13, 2014, China held its first, Askew, David. 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 . I offer my sympathy, with deep emotion, to a million innocent people. 83 and 85 on Canton Road. More than 30 women and girls have been raped. [143], He offered his apology to all survivors and to the relatives and friends of the victims. [1] Today most Japanese historians of the so-called "great massacre" school have reduced their death toll estimates somewhat and now advocate the figure of "100,000 plus" in contrast with the old consensus of 200,000. especially offenses against prisoners of war.[91]. Beginning on December 13, 1937, the massacre lasted six weeks. At the Tokyo Tribunal of War Criminals, the Nanking Massacre death toll was presented either as "more than . [134] Jung Chang and Jon Halliday's biography of Mao claims Mao never made any comment either contemporaneously or later in his life about the massacre, but did frequently remark with enduring bitterness about a political struggle between himself and Wang Ming which also occurred in December 1937. The perpetrators also committed other war crimes such as mass rape, looting, and arson. [8] Nevertheless, on December 1, headquarters ordered the Central China Area Army and the 10th Army to capture Nanjing, then-capital of the Republic of China. More conservative estimates say that the massacre started on December 14, when the troops entered the Safety Zone, and that it lasted for six weeks. Nanjing Death Toll Graph. [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. Stories are heard of civilians being shot or bayoneted for no apparent reason.[62]. The Rape of Nanjing, or the Nanjing Massacre, was the 1937 sacking of Nanjing by invading Japanese forces during the Second Sino-Japanese War. 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. This district encompassed not only the city of Nanking proper, occupied by the Japanese from December 13, but also the six rural counties surrounding it, namely Jiangning, Lishui, Jurong, Jiangpu, Luhe, and Gaochun. This sense of mistrust is strengthened by Japan's unwillingness to admit to and apologize for the atrocities. After a while we would say something like, "It's my day to take a bath," and we took turns raping them. The mass murder at the Yangtze river was just one of the tragedies of the Nanking Massacre. The death toll of civilians is difficult to precisely calculate due to the many bodies deliberately burnt, buried in mass graves, or dumped into the Yangtze River. Perhaps all Chinese, regardless of sex or age, seemed marked out as victims. 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 . [112], The duration of the incident is naturally defined by its geography: the earlier the Japanese entered the area, the longer the duration. There are no official numbers for the death toll . The massacre occurred over a period of six weeks starting on December [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." A year before that a series of "smaller courts" held in China, including in Nanjing, put the death toll at 300,000. 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". Therefore, according to journalists Asami Kazuo and Suzuki Jiro, writing in the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun of December 13, they decided to begin another contest to kill 150 people.[40]. [citation needed], The entry for the same day in Matsui's diary read, "I could only feel sadness and responsibility today, which has been overwhelmingly piercing my heart. [76], By February 5, 1938, the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone had forwarded to the Japanese embassy a total of 450 cases of murder, rape, and general disorder by Japanese soldiers that had been reported after the American, British and German diplomats had returned to their embassies:[77], It is said that Rabe rescued between 200,000 and 250,000 Chinese people.[78][79]. The older girl was stabbed afterwards and a cane was rammed in her vagina. [121], Kki Hirota, Prime Minister of Japan at an earlier stage of the war, and a diplomat during the atrocities at Nanjing, was convicted of participating in "the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy" (count 1), waging "a war of aggression and a war in violation of international laws, treaties, agreements and assurances against the Republic of China" (count 27) and count 55. Five returned. I think he will live. "[85] Overseas troops in the Pacific and East Asia were ordered to destroy incriminating evidence of war crimes. [21], The second type of source is the burial records written down by Chinese charitable associations. We "pikankan." The baby was killed with a bayonet. When I show them my party badge, they return the same way. The war, still undeclared, had no clear-cut goal or purpose. 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". 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". [152] He alleged a death toll of 10,000. 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. "[1], One-third of the city was destroyed as a result of arson. This created panic in the area and hundreds of women moved into the Ginling College campus yesterday. Since the area outside the safety zone had been almost completely evacuated, the mopping-up effort was concentrated in the safety zone. Hui volunteers and imams buried over a hundred of their dead following Muslim ritual. '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. Some victims of the Nanking Massacre were thrown into mass, unmarked graves; others were just left to rot in the sun. Hata argued that Chinese troops killed on the battlefield were part of the Battle of Nanking rather than Nanking Massacre, and that only civilians and disarmed POWs should be counted as massacre victims. Nankin Daigyakusatsu (Nanjing Massacre), "Six weeks long" is a convenient figure but far from precise. Didi Tang, Beijing. Whether Asaka ordered the Rape, or simply stood by as it happened, is disputed, but he took no action to stop the carnage. Due to multiple factors, death toll estimates vary from 40,000 to over 300,000, with rape cases ranging from 20,000 to over 80,000 cases. For example, a two-volume collection of military documents related to the Nanjing operations was published in 1989; and disturbing excerpts from Kesago Nakajima's diary, a commander at Nanjing, was published in the early 1980s. I am born in China. [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. Eighteen others received lesser sentences. And based on a clear definition of the responsibility there can be an answer to the 'moral' question. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East was convened at "Ichigaya Court," formally Imperial Japanese Army HQ building in Ichigaya, Tokyo. The Nanking Massacre was an episode of mass murder and rape committed by Japanese troops against the residents of Nanking, then the capital of China, during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937 - 1945). They believed the 300,000 toll typified a "Chinese-style exaggeration" with disregard for evidence. The total death toll of the Nanjing Massacre is a highly contentious subject in Chinese and Japanese historiography. After being stripped and raped by one or more men, she was bayoneted in the chest and then had a bottle thrust into her vagina. Photographs of victims are displayed at the Nanking massacre memorial. [171][172], According to a brief reference to Nanjing at the Yasukuni museum in Tokyo, the Japanese general in charge gave his men maps showing foreign settlements and a civilian "safety zone", and ordered them to maintain strict military discipline. The Nanking Massacre was an episode of mass murder and mass rape committed by Japanese troops against the residents of Nanjing (then spelled Nanking), then the capital of the Republic of China during the Second Sino-Japanese War.The massacre occurred over a period of six weeks starting on December 13, 1937, the day that the Japanese captured Nanjing. From this gunboat, Rabe sent two telegrams. Many innocent men were misidentified and killed.[1]. The debate on the death toll has gone on for many decades to the point where some historians have begun to question its usefulness on the grounds that excessive quibbling over the precise death toll has distracted from the study of other more important facets of the massacre. [124] Kasahara said that if there was a full investigation of the massacre, many other high ranking authorities, which include higher level commanders, army leaders and emperor Hirohito, could have been implicated. [citation needed], In February 1938, both Prince Asaka and General Matsui were recalled to Japan. [34], In reference to the greatly divergent ways in which various scholars have delineated the massacre, Askew has affirmed that the debate on the death toll "is meaningless if two completely different definitions are being used". Fuller data and our own observations have not brought out facts to discredit their information. [14] The source of this information was Miner Searle Bates, an American resident in Nanking who had used the burial records of the Red Swastika Society in his calculations. They killed him immediately with a revolver and also Mrs. Ha, who knelt before them after Ha's death, begging them not to kill anyone else. [21], Then in 1997 Kasahara formulated a definition between the two. Probably taken by Bernhard Sindberg, The dehumanization of Chinese people in the Japanese education system is also blamed for why many ordinary soldiers were eager to engage in atrocities.[82]. As the Japanese approached, the Chinese army withdrew the bulk of its forces since Nanjing was not a defensible position. historians have been unable to accurately estimate the death toll from the massacre. [31] His more specific range of figures is roughly 160,000 to 170,000. The novel itself was based on interviews that Ishikawa conducted with troops in Nanjing in January 1938. A lesser debate rests on who among the dead to be included as "massacre victims". The civilian Chinese population remaining in the city crowded the streets of the so-called "safety zone" as refugees, many of whom are destitute. During the chaos following the attack of the city, some were killed in the Safety Zone, but the crimes that occurred in the rest of the city were far greater by all accounts. [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. [6] Over the course of its subsequent occupation of Nanking the Japanese Army hunted down the former Chinese soldiers within the city and in a large number of cases summarily executed them. Tokyo Nichi Nichi, 13 December 1937 article on the killing contest. 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. The safety zone, an area of 3.85 square kilometres, was packed with the remaining population of Nanjing. In his diary kept during the aggression against the city and its occupation by the Imperial Japanese Army, the leader of the Safety Zone, John Rabe, wrote many comments about Japanese atrocities. 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. December 1937 article on the killing contest 13 December 1937 article on the killing contest, an area 3.85. Was concentrated in the Pacific and East Asia were ordered to destroy incriminating evidence war..., `` six weeks long '' is a highly contentious subject in and... 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