The Massacre At Nanjing

Just like everydays, I look up random things on the quora. There is a question suddenly popped up in my eyes: “Why do the Chinese still care about the Nanjing massacre so much?” The person who asked this question doesn’t understand why lots of chinese against APA hotel, only because the chief of APA hotel written a book that denial the Nanking Massacre happens.

Beating had long been an acceptable and routine method of discipline within the Japanese Army. Soldiers could strike subordinates with no questions asked and no explanation warranted. The slightest distinction between ranks was of critical importance because it meant the difference between who could inflict blows, and who could expect to receive them. This sort of institutionalized brutality had a tendency to work its way down the ranks to the lowliest private. One can imagine what would happen when an enlisted man, hardened by this psychology of top-down violence, found himself suddenly thrown into a foreign and not altogether distasteful situation in which he was the superior, in charge of a group of helpless prisoners. For some, the temptation to beat proved irresistible. For others, beating was only the beginning." (Hampton 91-92)

Mrs. Wen, in her testimony of the Japanese atrocities at Nanking in 1937, she writes “ Japanese troops arrived, all of them armed with guns, knives, force me to take off my pants, I would be killed if I didn’t, I personally watched as the Japanese troops massacred many people” (Doc A). In stating this, the author means that the Japanese soldiers went through every house and shooting every civilian they could and raping women without hesitation. Mr. Taketa, in his testimony about life in Japan before the atomic bomb was dropped, he claims that “the Japanese people were forced to endure poverty and suffering” (Doc D). The author means that Japan’s government starve their people to death and let them suffer, as part of their culture. Furthermore, the Japanese were known by their way of killing their prisoners. These brutalities by the Japanese soldiers were considered inhumane. Thus, President Truman should have dropped the atomic bombs on Japan because the cruel actions of the Japanese needed to be stopped, and save innocent

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

Consistent with Japanese propaganda the nationalist leaders held belief that Japan was “the leader, protector and light of Asia”. However, this perception of liberation from colonial rule was a façade as the civilians of occupied nations experienced harsher treatment under the Japanese than they did under the colonial authorities.

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

In the article The Rape of Nanking, the author Iris Chang discusses the ways the Japanese used their cruel tactics to torture the Chinese. In my opinion the Japanese should be held to the same standard of punishment as the Nazis. The author illustrates this when she describes, “The Rape of Nanking should be remembered not only for the number of people slaughtered but for the cruel manner in which many met their deaths.” This shows that, the Japanese had been torturing the Chinese in a cruel procedure that had forced them to meet their death. Furthermore, the Japanese were a cruel ethnic group of people due to the fact that, “Fathers were forced to rape their daughters, and sons their mothers, as other family members watched.

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

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.

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,

“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

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 general feel of Zhigeng’s book portrays the Chinese as victims of World War II, specifically victims of the brutality of the Japanese. His introduction asserts that not did the Japanese commit these crimes, but some modern Japanese leaders refuse that these crimes occurred. While Zhigeng’s history may mostly, or even entirely, accurate, the main problem with his work is that he does not offer a works cited. Throughout the work, he mentions how he used interviews, as well as other sources, for his research, but he does not include any

Fujitani does not solely describe the cruelty exhibited by the Japanese and the Americans; he includes positive measures that were taken by both as well. Fujitani claims that “A historically responsible and empirically sound critique of wartime racism in these two nation-state-based empires cannot simply deny their life-enhancing efforts, but must somehow account for the uneasy fit between what can only be recognized as their gross cruelty toward minority and colonial subjects and their apparent concern for the life, reproduction, welfare, and sometimes even happiness of these same peoples” (Fujitani 13). The paradox that exists is dutifully acknowledged as Japan and the United States are not treating the minority populations with complete respect, but consequently, respect them out of necessity.

During world war two, countries on both sides committed war crimes that shocked both the people involved, and the globe. From 1937 through to 1945, the Japanese justified their treatment of the Australian prisoners of war at the Burma railway with three things. The Japanese believed that their bushido code allowed them to treat the Australian this way, their ethics was one of complete brutality and hardship, and the Japanese soldiers were being fed false propaganda that showed a dehumanized view of the Australians. These three statements demonstrate that the Japanese atrocities committed at Burma, were, in the eyes of the Japanese, fair and just.