Essay about Rape of Nanking

“Kill all, loot all, burn all.” This was the Japanese policy towards China dealing with the massacre (Sheng-Ping). To begin, the term genocide has eight unique stages, various interpretations, and a specific root. In Japan, opposing perspectives on who was to control Nanking created tension between the Japanese and Chinese. The horrendous actions inflicted on the Chinese resulted because of eight specific stages. Sadly, genocide will not end unless nations across the world work together to put an end to this horrifying concept. The genocide of Japan, directed by the malice of the Japanese military regime, was based on the idea that any enemy soldier who surrendered was considered criminal, and therefore, many people perished because

Infants were axed or speared, or hit against a rock to kill them. Females were raped and scalped. Some females and children were taken captive. Many captives did not make it out of enemy country. They were raped and killed on the trail, leaving bloody relics behind for their enemy. Torture included staking men out facing the sun with no eyelids and leaving them. They also used fire to torture. One account tells how they staked out some captured Tonkawa and applied fire to their hand and feet until they destroyed the nerves. They would then amputate the extremity and start the fire torture all over on the wounded flesh. They would cut their tongues out to silence screams. Scalps were almost always taken, many times while the victims were still alive. The dead were mutilated terribly. They cut off limbs, mutilated genitals, decapitated victims after scalping them, and eviscerated their bodies. They believed that this would cripple their enemy for

The camps that the Japanese-Americans were taken to had the worse conditions imaginable. “More than 120,000 Americans of Japanese Ancestry were incarcerated in 10 camps scattered throughout the Western United States during World War II” (Children of the Camps Project 1). Detainees spent many years in these camps. They were locked behind barbed wire fences, and armed guards patrolled the camps. The conditions were comparable to the Jewish camps in Eastern Europe. Entire families lived in quarters that were poorly constructed and horribly cramped. These areas were also unbearably cramped and unclean. There was also no hot water for dishes or showers in the living quarters. In addition, lice was a huge problem in the internment camps. These camps and the laws that our government passed against the Japanese community were atrocious. The United States experienced a terrible tragedy when Pearl Harbor was attacked. However, the American government had no right to make these innocent Americans prisoners of war. During the 1940s and 1950s the Japanese

In December of 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army invaded Nanking, China. They killed 300,00 out of the 600,000 people in China’s capital city. The six-week rampage by the Japanese is now known as the Rape of Nanking and the single worst atrocity during WWII era in either the European or Pacific theaters of the war.

During world war two, the Imperial Japanese army forced an estimated 200,000 women into sexual slavery. This is just one of the many atrocities committed by Japan during world war two. Even though many say that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were inhumane, the US was completely justified because the future casualties were minimized and Japan and its allies committed atrocious war crimes.

Throughout these camps disease, malnutrition, starvation and abuse were rampant in the best camps. Also maintaining these camps were sinister people such as “The Bird” (Mutsuhiro Watanabe), one of the thousands hunted down for war crimes and crimes against humanity after the dropping of the bombs that changed the world forever. The Bird would push the men past there limits through beating and unlivable conditions in the camps he was stationed in. In the case of allied invasion of japan, a “kill all order” was issued to ensure that the POWs wouldn’t fight back against their captors. Which Unbroken showed true in the case of the island Palawan, where a Commanding Officer believed was soon to become the next staging ground for an invasion. “That night the commander sent a radio message to Palawan. “Annihilate the 150 prisoners””. Only eleven men survived the onslaught, who eventually made their way to allied

Japanese soldiers are widely remembered as being cruel and indifferent to the fate of Allied prisoners of war. Cruelty could take different forms, from extreme violence and torture to minor acts of physical punishment, humiliation and neglect. Some prisoners were made to hold a heavy stone above their heads for many hours. Others might be forced into small cells with little food or water.

The most gruesome tales have come to light by the people who survived the merciless actions of the Japanese soldiers. For instance, Tang Shunsan who witnessed and survived the mass murder of Nanking when he left the safety of his hideout behind due to his simple curiosity. Tang and his fellow shoemaker apprentices hid in their house where they converted the doorway so it looked like “...from the outside, a smooth, unbroken wall”(nanking 2). The Japanese soldiers never would have known he was there had he not ventured out into the open to satiate his curiosities of what a Japanese man looked like. Once discovered, he was taken to a large grave for the Chinese people they had killed, and, “...to Tang’s horror, a competition began among the soldiers-a competition to determine who could kill the fastest”(nanking 3 pg. 85). With luck on his side, Tang survived the competition when “ the soldier decapitated the man directly in front of Tang”(nanking 4) and instead of moving out of the way, “Tang also toppled backwards and dropped, together with the body, into the pit”(nanking

The war crimes Japanese soldiers inflicted upon the people of Nanking are one of the most heinous examples of this idea of extermination, resulting in the loss of an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 lives. Thousands of women were raped, forced to take pictures with their assailants in pornographic poses, shamed and seen as being dirty, viewed as being subhuman. Soldiers were warned to eliminate the women they had raped, disposing of the evidence of what they had done. “‘Perhaps when we were raping her, we looked at her as a woman,’ Azuma [a soldier] wrote, “‘but when we killed her, we just thought of her as something like a pig’” (50). Rape was often rooted in superstition, the belief that the violation of virgins would provide strength and

The Japanese soldiers had no sense of remorse or sorrow for the prisoners instead they pushed them to their breaking point. Many prisoners collapsed which proved fatal because if you fell behind you became a practice dummy for the Japanese to sharpen their bayonet skills and techniques of killing on you. On one occasion, a prisoner was falling behind in the rear so tanks that followed lined themselves up to run over the victim and squish him into the pavement to make it look as if he were from a cartoon. Since the Japanese could

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

During World War II American soldiers who were caught by the Japanese were sent to camps where they were kept under harsh conditions. These men were called the prisoners of war, also known as the POWs. The Japanese who were captured by the American lived a simple life. They were the Japanese internees of World War II. The POWs had more of a harsh time during World War II than the internees. While the internees did physically stay in the camps longer, the POWs had it worse mentally.

Prisoners of war had an especially rough life during and after their time imprisoned. Hillenbrand writes that during that time, corporal punishment was very common for Japanese soldiers. Because of this, she explains, beatings were “inescapable.” The frustrations held by the Japanese soldiers would then be transferred to their prisoners, which Hillenbrand says is called “transfer of oppression by Japanese historians. Hillenbrand also makes the claim that some guards, “intoxicated by absolute power and indoctrinated in racism and disgust for POWs,” became sadists - people who derive pleasure, especially sexual gratification, from inflicting pain or humiliation on others. Hillenbrand states POWs were beaten, starved, isolated, humiliated, and murdered. The sadism found in Japanese soldiers left POWs with a lifetime of nightmares and terror, if they somehow managed to

In just six short weeks, the Chinese city of Nanjing was devastated with the brutal murdering of civilians ranging somewhere between 40,000 to 300,000 deaths, along with 20,000 to 80,000 of the cities woman being raped. These horrific statistics came to fruition after the Imperial Japanese Army forces abruptly entered the Chinese city of Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China at the time, on December 13, 1937. It is often debated as to how serious the massacre really was as both the death and rape tolls seems to have such large ranges. Although many may argue that the Rape of Nanjing was Japans attempt at world domination, others often disagree, proclaiming that the genocide was simply exaggerated and possibly even fabricated entirely. In many instances this “fabrication” was believed to be an attempt at political propaganda, but there are various supporting facts that prove otherwise. The massacre was in fact a real,

College-age adults are known to be high risk for sexual violence and most studies show that one in three women have experiences some type of sexual assault whether it was through physical force or harassment. These statics are known by most women on college campuses to ensure that women know and understand that this could happen to them. The issue is more than ensuring that women are aware of how protect themselves and know how to avoid these situations because it shouldn’t even be happening. When women are taught that they should know how to defend themselves we are saying that this type of behavior is normal and inevitable. We should shift from this dynamic and start teaching both men and women that this behavior is completely unacceptable and that sexually assaulting or harassing someone is NOT normal. This paper will mostly focus on incidents of rape and sexual assault on college campuses and what the outcome and reactions of these incidents were.