Nanjing Massacre

Mass grave of slain children

The Nanjing Massacre (Chinese: 南京大屠殺, pinyin: Nánjīng Dà Túshā; Japanese: 南京大虐殺, Hepburn: Nankin Dai Gyaku-satsu), also known as the Rape of Nanking and sometimes in Japan as the Nanjing Incident (南京事件, Nankin Jiken), refers to the widespread atrocities conducted against Chinese civilians in and around Nanjing, China after its fall to Japanese troops on December 13, 1937 in the Battle of Nanjing during the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) (a war that would later become a part of World War II). Chinese investigations show that the massacre was committed against a backdrop of war crimes by the Japanese army in many other Chinese cities in the region.

Various credible Western and Eastern source put the death toll at about 300,000. The number cited in the popular book The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang is 260,000–350,000. The facts that Nanjing was awash with refugees at the time, and that many of the killings occurred outside and around the city, complicate estimates of the number of victims. However, by the mid-1930s the city had 1 million people, many of them refugees fleeing from the Japanese army which had invaded northeast China. Reports by Western journalists, hundreds of witnesses and victims, and more recently the statements of over a hundred Japanese troops in Nanjing at the time stated that many thousands of the city's women were raped by Japanese soldiers, often repeatedly.

History

For the events leading up to the Nanjing Massacre, see Battle of Nanjing. Generally, the Japanese took Tianjin in July and overran Shanghai in a three-month siege before they moved toward the capital Nanjing in 1937.

On November 20, 1937, as the Japanese army pressed on towards Nanjing, the Kuomintang government announced that the capital of the Republic of China had been relocated to Chongqing. The evacuation of Nanjing was ordered simultaneously. However, the majority of those evacuated from the city belonged to the government and administrative classes; many civilians were left behind. On November 22, Americans and Europeans working in the city set up an "International Committee" and drew up "Safety Zones" to provide a temporary safe haven for the Chinese, since formal hostilities between Japan and the Western countries did not begin until 1941. The Safety Zones housed approximately 200,000 refugees. The "International Committee" was headed by John Rabe, a German national, who personally sheltered 650 refugees on his property. The Committee was authorized with city administration by the KMT after it has evacuated.

On November 25, the Japanese army encroached upon the city. At that time, the defending Chinese army had a force of 100,000 men, commanded by general Tang Shengzhi. Tang opted to relocate his forces back into the city in preparation for a siege.

On December 12, the gate to the city was blown open by the Japanese army. Seeing that hopes of defending the city were lost, Tang ordered his troops to cross the Yangtze River to retreat; the Japanese captured the city the next day.

When the Japanese captured Nanjing, many of the residents in the city moved into the Safety Zones. The remaining people were the employees of companies and stores, and some residents who stayed behind to guard their property. There were not many people in the streets. However, wounded soldiers, remnants of destroyed armies from the fronts, and refugees from nearby places, old and young, flooded into Nanjing from Zhongshan gate and Zhonghua gate. After they arrived in Nanjing, the attack from Japanese became more intense, and they became more nervous and wanted to hide in the Safety Zones, but they were refused. At last, they hoped to break out and cross the Yangtze River. Part of the crowd moved onto the north Zhongshan avenue that leads to the bank of the river, and planned to break through Yijiang gate and cross the river from the Zhongshan dock at Xiaguan; another crowd moved onto Central Avenue, planning to break through Peace gate and cross the river. When the refugees moved to North Zhongshan Avenue and Central Avenue, a part of the KMT army was waiting on the bank of the river to escape; in fear that the refugees would obstruct their crossing, they closed the Yijiang gate and Peace gate, effectively trapping the civilians inside the city.

On December 13, the massacres began. The Imperial Army entered the main streets, especially the North Zhongshan avenue and the Central avenue, and began killing the people, including POWs, and looting the city. On the December 14, the slaughter increased as Japanese mechanized troops entered the city. Many people were killed and some were drowned in the Yangtze River as they tried to swim across to escape the slaughter. On December 16, some people were rounded up at the Overseas Chinese Guest House (now 21 N. Zhongshan Avenue in modern Nanjing) and executed; their bodies were dumped in the river. Other sites of concentrated massacre include Yanziji gate, Guanyin gate, the forest farm of the Central University at Guanyinmen, and, most notably, Caoxiexia, which was a KMT fortress. Many people were captured and used as live bayonet practice and were then decapitated. Some people were buried alive near Mt. Zijing.

On December 17, the Imperial Army formally held a victory parade and General Matsui Iwane entered the city. Iwane ordered that the remaining residents open up their windows and doors to "welcome" the Japanese. Toward the end of December, the "Street Purge" began to exterminate any Chinese who exhibited any anti-Japanese feelings; many were tortured before being executed. Rape of Chinese women also continued throughout the six-week period.

By the middle of February 1938, the streets of Nanjing were covered with thousands of corpses. As these had become a health hazard, the Japanese army disposed of them by digging a huge pit and dumping the bodies in it. The International Committee was ordered to help dispose of the bodies.

In the international Safety Zone, Rabe tried to prevent as many atrocities as possible by showing his Nazi party membership. He and the International Committee managed to save many refugees in spite of constant threats of violence and intimidation from the Japanese.

Chinese historians insist that approximately 300,000 had been massacred by the end of the three months. The city remained under Japanese control throughout the Sino-Japanese War, with a puppet government installed in 1940 headed by Wang Jingwei.

Causes

The Nanjing massacre was perhaps the most brutal event in the Japanese invasion of China. There are several causes for this. In the Mukden Incident in 1931, Japanese revealed its aggression in conquering China. The Communists and the KMT were still mired in a race for domination and did not resist the Japanese effectively. However, in 1937, following the Xian Incident, the Chinese finally agreed to form a united front, and the KMT then formally started an all-out defense against the Japanese threat. Compared to the Japanese army, the Chinese army was poorly trained and equipped, with some regiments armed primarily with swords and hand grenades and with virtually no anti-tank weaponry whatsoever. Following the battle at Marco Polo bridge, which formally started the Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese were swift in capturing major Chinese cities in the northeast.

However, in August of 1937 the Japanese army was faced with strong resistance and suffered heavy casualties in the Battle of Shanghai, effectively destroying any possibility of realizing the Japanese proclamation of "三月亡華," or "Conquering China in Three Months." (or in original Japanese "三日下上海,三月亡支那" or "Conquering Shanghai in Three Days, Conquering China in Three Months") The battle in Shanghai was bloody as soldiers fought house to house, with both sides pouring into the battlefield to replenish those who fell. Many historians today believe that the situation in Shanghai nurtured the psychological conditions for Japanese soldiers to march on a berserk rampage in Nanjing later on. By mid-November the Japanese finally captured the city with help of naval bombardment, but the General Staff Headquarters in Tokyo decided not to expand the war due to heavy casualties incurred and the increasingly low morale of the troops. However, on December 1, headquarters ordered the Central China Area Army and the 10th Army to capture Nanjing, the capital of China. The Japanese army contained many army reserves who had families back home and expected to return home once the campaign in Shanghai was over. Thus, as said orders came, the Japanese troops, already burdened with casualties in Shanghai and the possibility of being mired in China indefinitely, began projecting their inflamed animosities on Chinese soldiers and civilians throughout their march to Nanjing, which, according to many historians, was a prelude to the massive atrocities that would later take place in Nanjing.

In his memoirs, journalist Matsumoto Shigeharu, the Shanghai bureau chief of Domei News Agency, recalled a circulating rumor among his colleagues. "The reason that the Yanagawa Corps [the 10th Army] is advancing [to Nanjing] quite rapidly is due to the tacit consent among the officers and men that they could loot and rape as they wish." This was seen as the main cause that the brutalities were committed by ordinary infantry troops, not just by some specially-assigned killing squads.

Death toll estimates

Today the majority of historians estimate the death toll of the Nanjing Atrocities to range between 200,000 and 300,000 as claimed by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East or the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal. In China the figure of 300,000, the death toll reckoned at the Nanking War Crimes Tribunal, is the official estimate engraved on the stone wall at the entrance of the "Memorial Hall for Compatriot Victims of the Japanese Military's Nanjing Massacre".

Western estimates also correspond to this. For instance, on January 11, 1938, a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, Harold Timperley, apparently tried to cable a similar estimate but was censored by the Japanese authorities in Shanghai because his report said that "not less than 300,000 Chinese civilians" were slaughtered in cold blood in "Nanjing and elsewhere." His message was relayed from Shanghai to Tokyo to be sent out to the Japanese Embassies in Europe and the United States.

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 than 300,000 victims. Apparently the estimation was made from burial records and eyewitness accounts. It concluded that some 190,000 were illegally executed on a massive scale at various execution sites and 150,000 were individually massacred. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East estimated in its judgment that "over 200,000" or "over 100,000" civilians and prisoners of war were murdered during the first six weeks of the Japanese occupation. That number was based on burial records submitted by two charitable organizations, the Red Swastika Society and the Chung Shan Tang (Tsung Shan Tong), the research done by Smythe and some estimates given by survivors.

The main difference in calculating the number dead lies in the rationale in defining the range of the massacre. Some include the march from Shanghai into the massacre. However, it is generally accepted that Nanjing Massacre occurred from early December 1937 to late March 1938, when the Japanese army declared that public order has been restored.

Japanese estimates

At the Tokyo Tribunal of War Criminals, the Nanjing Massacre death toll was presented either as "more than 200,000" or "more than "100,000". In Japan, there are four opinions about Nanjing Massacre.

less than 10,000 were killed but most of them were combatants
40,000 were killed
starting from 120,000 or 130,000 and ending with upward of 250,000 were killed
250,000 to 300,000 were killed

The debate concerning the occurrence of killings and rapes took place mainly in the 1970s, during which Chinese official statements about the event came under attack because they relied heavily on personal testimonies and anecdotal evidence. Also coming under attack were the burial records presented in the Tokyo War Crime Court, which were said to be fabrications by the Chinese side of the debate. However, Japanese imperial army records, as well as a number of personal records by Japanese soldiers reporting the killings and rapes, made a denial impossible in the public forum.

Currently, no notable group, including right-wing nationalists, deny the existence of the killings and the debate has shifted mainly to the death toll, to the extent of rapes and civilian killings (as opposed to POW and suspected guerrillas) and to the appropriateness of using the word "massacre". Apologists insist that burial records from the Red Swastika Society and the Chung Shan Tang (Tsung Shan Tong) were never cross examined at the Tokyo and Nanking trials, arguing therefore that the estimates derived from these two sets of records should be heavily discounted. They also admit that personal records of Japanese soldiers do suggest the occurrence of rapes, but insist that this does not determine the extent of rapes. Moreover, they regard personal testimony from the Chinese side to be propaganda. They also point out that there are no documented records of the rapes, unlike the burial records which exist and document the killings, and therefore argue that the assertion of mass rape is unsubstantiated. Apologists further insist that the majority of those killed were POWs and "suspected guerrillas", which they consider to be legitimate killing, so that the use of descriptive word "massacre" is inappropriate.

The majority of Japanese historians belong to the third group and a minority belong to the second, while the first and fourth groups are considered on the fringe. The disagreement is mainly over the acceptance of estimates obtained from two different sets of burial records and debate between the two groups still continues today. Those associated with left wing politics in Japan insist on a figure of 250,000–300,000 deaths, much in line with the Chinese estimate.

File:Nanking Memorial.jpg

The Nanking Massacre Memorial

Historiography

Dramatic reports by American journalists of Japanese brutality against Chinese civilians, in addition to the Panay incident which also occurred after the occupation of Nanjing, helped turn American public opinion against Japan and, in part, led to a series of events which culminated in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Despite the large amount of evidence and scholarship regarding the atrocities in Nanjing, some groups (both in Japan and elsewhere) claim the massacre never took place. Disputes over the historical portrayal of events has been the root of continuing political tensions between the People's Republic of China and Japan.

Japanese perspectives

Since the Second World War, some Japanese historians and critics with ultra-nationalist or rightist perspectives have either denied the existence of atrocities (as, for example, Fujio Masayuki, an ex-Minister of Education), or more recently, sought to minimize them. The governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara also gained notoriety for his declaration in a 1995 Playboy interview that the massacre was a "Chinese creation". The way in which the subject is taught in Japanese schools became the centre of controversy in the Japanese textbook controversies of 1982 and 1986. Despite this persistent revisionism, the events following the fall of Nanjing are well documented by journalists and other eyewitnesses and are currently not disputed by most historians, including the majority of Japanese historians.

Interest in the Nanjing Massacre in Japan did not begin until 1971, the year China and Japan normalized their relationship. In commemoration of the normalization, one major newspaper, Asahi Shinbun, ran serialized articles titled "Chugoku no Tabi" ("Travel to China"), written by journalist Katuichi Honda, which detailed the atrocities of the Japanese Army within China, including the Nanjing Massacre. In the series, Honda mentioned an episode in which two officers competed to slay 100 Chinese with their swords. The truth of this incident is hotly disputed and critics seized on the opportunity to imply that the episode, as well as the Nanking Massacre and all its accompanying articles, were largely falsified. This is regarded as the start of the controversy in Japan.

The controversy flared up again in 1982 when the Ministry of Education censored any mention of the Nanjing Massacre in a school textbook. The reason given by the ministry was that Nanking Massacre was not a well-established historical event. The author of the textbook, Professor Saburō Ienaga, sued the Ministry of Education in an extended case that was eventually won by the plaintiff in 1997. In response to this highly publicized case, a number of journalists and historians formed the Nankin Jiken Chōsakai (Nanking Incident Research Group). The research group collected large quantities of archival materials as well as testimonies from both Chinese and Japanese sources. A competing group with a revisionist bent was headed by Tanaka Shōmei. However, the debate ended in the collapse of the revisionist side. In his presentation of the denial argument, Tanaka Shōmei presented the diary of Major Ishine Matsui. In editing the diary, it was revealed that Tanaka altered, deleted or even added his own writing in nearly 600 places. This was discovered by historian Yuriaki Itakura. Itakura himself was much closer to the revisionist side, but he severely criticized Tanaka's distortion.

The controversy was related outside Japan by some journalists who followed the domestic debate. The issue gained wide publicity in the West after the publication of The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang in 1997. Even though the standard of historical research was described as highly flawed by both sides of the debate in Japan, it did bring the controversy to a much wider western audience.

As far as Japanese academics are concerned, the controversy ended in the 1990s. Both sides accept that killing did occur; however, disagreement exists over the actual numbers, which depends on the standard of inclusion of archival or anacedotal evidence, definition of the period of the massacre, as well as geographical coverage.

However, within the public the debate still continues. Those downplaying the massacre have most recently rallied around a group of academic and journalists associated with the Society for the Creation of New Textbooks. Their views are often shared in publications associated with conservative, right-wing publishers such as Bungei Shunjū and Sankei Shuppan. In response, two Japanese organizations have taken the lead in publishing material detailing the massacre and collecting related documents and accounts. The Study Group on the Nanjing Incident, founded by a group of historians in 1984, has published the most books responding directly to revisionist historians; the Center for Research and Documentation on Japan's War Responsibility, founded in 1993, has published many materials in its own journal.

The Society for the Creation of New Textbooks produced history textbooks for junior high school and submitted them to the Ministry of Education. The Ministry ordered corrections in 137 places. After the corrections, the book passed the 2001 inspection. This has again caused fury from Korea and China, both sides demanding reinspection. The book was published and went on to become a bestseller, selling more than 750,000 copies. The 2002 rate of adoption of this textbook in schools, however, was a very low 0.039%.

External links

The Nanjing Incident: Recent Research and Trends - Detailed article by David Askew Discussing New Research on the Massacre and its Victims
Online documentary: The Nanking Atrocities - Comprehensive account of the Nanjing Massacre including photos, video clips, interviews, and documented materials.
An English translation of a classified Chinese document on the Nanjing Massacre
Princeton University's exhibit on the massacre - Contains a gallery of the atrocities.
Japanese Army's Atrocities - Nanjing Massacre - Contains archived documents including photos and maps.
A Japanese Historiography of the Nanjing Massacre - details the transpirations of history revisionism in the Japanese media, research done by Columbia University.
WWW Memorial Hall of the Victims in the Nanjing Massacre
Research Institute of Propaganda Photos (Machine translation of Japanese site)
The Nanjing Massacre is a lie! (Machine translation of Japanese site)
New Research on the Nanjing Incident - Detailed article by David Askew Discussing New Research on the Massacre and its Victims
Refutation by Tanaka Masaaki