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The Nanjing Massacre (Chinese: 南京大屠殺, pinyin: Nánjīng Dà Túshā; Japanese: 南京大虐殺, 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 by the Japanese army including the looting, rape and killing of 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). The Nanjing Massacre is only one of many major war crimes committed during World War II.
Causes
The Nanjing massacre was perhaps the most brutal event in the Japanese invasion of China. Following the Mukden Incident in 1931, Japan began its invasion of Manchuria. The Communists and the Kuomintang (KMT) were still mired in the Chinese Civil War 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. Although, it was likely that, as at most periods in history, China held the largest army in the world in terms of sheer number of troops. 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 the Domei News Agency, recalled a circulating rumor among his colleagues. "The reason that the Yanagawa Corps is advancing 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 by some as the main reason why the brutalities were committed by ordinary infantry troops, not just by some specially-assigned killing squads.
). 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 was only 0.039%.
Related topics
- Death Railway
- History of the Republic of China
- List of Japanese War Atrocities
- Manila Massacre
- Sook Ching Massacre
- Unit 100
- Unit 731
== the Nanjing Massacre" Sino-Japanese Studies, 13. 2 (March 2001) pp.32-44
- Rabe, John, The Good Man of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe, Vintage (Paper), 2000. ISBN 0375701974
- Yamamoto, Masahiro, Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity, Praeger Publishers, 2000. ISBN 0275969045
- Tanaka, Masaaki, What Really Happened in Nanking, Sekai Shuppan, 2000. ISBN 4916079078
- Yoshida, Takeshi "A Japanese Historiography of the Nanjing Massacre", Columbia East Asian Review, Fall 1999. (A much longer and more detailed version of this article is in above in the work edited by Joshua Fogel)
- Takemoto, Tadao and Ohara, Yasuo The Alleged "Nanking Massacre": Japan's rebuttal to China's forged claims, Meisei-sha, Inc., 2000, (Tokyo Trial revisited) ISBN 4944219059
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