Nanking Massacre

“In 1933, Japan occupied Jehol Province, not including Chahar and Hopei, and wanted the Hopei as a demilitarized zone” (Hua-ling 56). In 1935, the Japanese forced the Chinese to withdraw from their stations in Hopei and Chahar and also ended all activities in the area. In September, Foreign Minister Hirota Koki, presented The Three Principles of Hirota to the Chinese government demanding that China should stop using American and European influence to maintain friendship, China should recognize Manchukuo, and that Japan and China mst establish a common defense against communism (Hua-ling 58). After Japan withdrew from the League of Nations, they were no longer going for world peace (Morley 72). “The Nanking Massacre refers to an exceedingly horrible massacre of civilians by the Japanese army during a six-week period from December 1937 to January 1938 after its occupation of Nanking, then the capital of the Republic of China” (Taso). General Iwane Matsui, the commanding officer in Shanghai, and the cabinet argued that the capture of Nanking would convince the nationalist government to settle the incident (Morley 74). Even before the Rape of Nanking, the Japanese had tried to use their power to force China to do things against their

Throughout The Rape of Nanking, the brutal massacre of thousands of innocent Chinese citizens is brought forth through the invasion of this ancient city taken over by the Imperial Japanese army. Iris Chang illustrates the graphic details of the murder and rape of these victims through the perspectives of different sides of the attack. Chang; furthermore, ties in the mass genocide and destruction displayed throughout the book with the example of the Japanese government’s desperate attempt to cover up the incident and the reluctance of the survivors to discuss it. In addition, the horrifying events of The Rape of Nanking only further motivated an uncontrollable desire for aggression, violence, and imperialism in the Asian community evidently

The retaliation of the Japanese had the world concerned by the oppression of military actions and to reveal power during the modern era (1900’s). The strategy of the Japanese

They slaughtered thousands of Chinese civilians during the rape of Nanking in 1937. It was necessary for America to drop the bomb.

World War II was a devastating war, whether you were directly in the war zone, or away from the battlefield, you were impacted greatly. Flyboys is a book written by James Bradley, in this book Bradley tells stories of World War II using first-hand accounts. In chapter five, Bradley discusses “The Rape of China” which was a battle that took place in 1937 during the beginning of World War II. In this battle, the Japanese fight the Chinese and destroy China. Both Japan and China had very different moral beliefs on fighting in the war. China believed that the soldiers needed to “be courteous,” and to also be “neither selfish nor unjust” to civilians (Bradley 54). Meanwhile, the Japanese had totally opposite policies known as the “Three Alls” meaning

Both Japan and China lie in the East of Asia. ‪To a certain extent，Japan and China own similar culture background, in the Confucian Cultural Circle. But when we look back into the modern history development, Japan and China made quite different decisions when facing the western countries’ aggression. China suffered the invasion in 1840 after the first Sino-British War. Japan was in a similar situation in the black boat incident in 1853, the Opium War made the West began to pay attention to East Asia. From then on, Japan began to face the western culture. ‬The reactions, as well as the result of Japan and China were quite disparate. This article wants to discuss what lead to the difference. ‬‬

1. The Japanese invasion of China immediately before and during World War II lasted from the early 1930's to 1945. During this dark period in modern Asian history, the Japanese military machine was motivated by an uncontrollable desire for aggression, expansion and imperialism. The brutalities and atrocities committed by the Japanese military in China and elsewhere in Asia finally ended with destruction on Japanese soil -- the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945. The victims of the Japanese militarists' aggression included the innocent and peace-loving peoples of China, Korea, the Philippines, other south east Asian countries, United States, and Japan herself.

Wild Swans by Jung Chang takes us on a journey through the multiple regime changes in China in the 20th century through the perspective of her grandmother, mother, and herself. Through their perspectives we get firsthand accounts on the events in China leading to the Communist Revolution. For the purpose of this paper I will be focusing on the events up to the Communist takeover of mainland China. The book is far from short on shock value as Chang provides the reader with grizzly accounts of the treatment of people under the Japanese. Her mother also describes her own rationale essentially for wanting to join the Communists in overthrowing the Nationalist government.

The conflict between the Allies and the Axis was a horrific and deadly one, which consisted of genocide and mass bombings. Innocent citizens were killed with the estimated sixty million casualties, which lead to the question as to the morality of the different actors—Germany, Japan, England and America— in WWII. In order to truly assess their guilt, meaning their moral innocence, each country will be measured upon the morality of their intent and execution of the different controversial mass killings that Germany (the Holocaust), Japan (Nanking), and the Allied forces (Dresden and Hiroshima) took part in. This hierarchy of evil can be judged upon how Japan’s tyranny and the Allies’ area bombing compare to the genocide performed by Germany. Similarly, these countries will be judged on the whether these different acts were premeditated versus in response to another act, as well as the proportionality to which these acts were carried out. This measurement of evil places each party on an overall scale, which depicts the total guilt that each country or countries deserve. WWII exemplifies that while war is an unavoidable aspect of human nature, there is no such thing as a just war. Similarly, while there is a definite hierarchy of morality between the different actors of WWII, each of the countries at play are immoral in their intent and execution of the attacks on opposing countries.

The rape of Nanking (Nanjing) was the Japanese breach of the former Chinese capital of Nanking in the late 1930’s. The Japanese committed extensive numbers of criminal misconduct against Chinese soldiers and innocent civilians. Some Japanese natives and citizens prefer to ignore it and believe that it never happened. The data and documentation that have come from it say otherwise. The Chinese were being punished without reason except for that, Japan wanted to take their land and supplies. Thousands of innocent civilians were being killed so Japan could take their land before the Chinese got to surrender. Some of the war criminal subjects were sent to prison or tried in front of other countries, but they were not punished harshly until the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. They were punished fairly well.

Then I read the book, “The Making of the ‘Rape of Nanking’”, which reminds me of

During Second-Sino War, the Chinese were extremely worried about air raids from the Japanese. “Many thousands of Chinese were killed in the indiscriminate bombing of cities by the Japanese air force” (HISTORY). In Lindo Jong’s story she explains that many people did not attend her wedding because they confused storm lightning with bombs. The Japanese also raided Chinese villages and attacked innocents. Japanese are historically merciless therefore “massacres and atrocities were common” in the Second Sino-Japanese War (HISTORY). Jing-mei Woo’s mother tells her story of traveling back to Kweilin and discovering slaughtered bodies from the works of Japanese soldiers. There is no help for Jing-mei Woo’s mother in Kweilin so she is forced to leave

Between 1031 and 1937, the Japanese army had invaded Manchuria and created a demilitarized zone in east Hubei and a Mongolian puppet state around Charchar and fought with Chinese in Shanghai. Fumimaro Konoe became prime minister in mid-1937, but the army which had conducted the war largely independently had taken over many position within the government. In China, Chiang Kai Shek, realizing he would have little support from the Leauge of Nations, strengthened the relationship with Nazi Germany to improve his armies. And with war loaming, he had united many of the warlords and communists into a united front. But some like the Guangxi Clique and Shanxi ran virtually independent states. And Xin Jiang was in a state of war and under Soviet influence. Plus, after years of war, China’s army was left weak. But in early 1937, Japanese soldiers, who had conducted military exercises outside Beijing for decades, exchanged fire with Chinses soldiers. The Japanese army responded to this, the Marco Polo bridge incident, with a full-scale invasion without support from Konoe. Within month they quickly captured Beijing and Tianjin, crushed a mutiny in Hubei and continued South to

In 1937 300,000 soldiers and civilians were killed and almost 80,000 women were sexually assaulted, this was the Nanking massacre. The Japanese just defeated the Chinese in a bloody battle and now they were going after the capital Nanking. The leader of China was fearful of the Japanese as they were a strong army so he ordered the army to flee and left the untrained army. The Japanese quickly took over and tore the people and city to ruins. The Japanese saw the Chinese surrender as cowardice and an

One of the main reason the Japanese government was able to almost make the raping of Nanking disappear was because the Japanese government would collect the journals from the soldier and would stop publishing the event in the history books. Also, a lot of soldiers that were involved in the event did not want to come forward and if they did they wanted to be anonymous. Between the 1950’s to the 1970’s what went on during the Nanking Massacre was distorted and it was not until 1975 when they actually reveal the truth.