nanking massacre death toll

He said that during this time, the Chinese government's statements about the event were attacked by the Japanese because they were said to rely too heavily on personal testimonies and anecdotal evidence. On December 13, 2009, both the Chinese and Japanese monks held a religious assembly to mourn Chinese civilians killed by invading Japanese troops. [68], In 2006, Kaz Ross, a historian with the University of Tasmania, anonymously interviewed a number of university researchers in the city of Nanking to learn their private views on the death toll of the Nanking Massacre. Yet, in China, this figure has come to symbolize the justice, legality, and authority of the post-war trials condemning Japan as the aggressor.[113]. Two days later he defended his remarks, saying, "Even since I was a national Diet representative, I have said [repeatedly] there was no [Nanjing] massacre that resulted in murders of several hundred thousands of people. From Judgment of the International Military Tribunal, On November 12, 1948, Matsui and Hirota, along with five other convicted Class-A war criminals, were sentenced to death by hanging. Hopefully when you being unarmed yourself tried to protect an unarmed crowd from a bunch of inhuman robbers you could speak truth every time and stay alive which I am . The grandfather grasped the body of his wife and was killed. Fifteen of the remaining 22 foreigners formed a committee, called the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone in the western quarter of the city. The Japanese government had previously agreed not to attack parts of the city that did not contain Chinese military forces, and the members of the Committee managed to persuade the Chinese government to move their troops out of the area. Photographs of victims are displayed at the Nanking massacre memorial. In a diary entry from Minnie Vautrin on December 15, 1937, she wrote about her experiences in the Safety Zone: The Japanese have looted widely yesterday and today, have destroyed schools, have killed citizens, and raped women. One of the books by Hs, Documents of the Nanking Safety Zone, was also adduced in court. For 17 December:[49]. [29] Some authors record that Prince Asaka signed the order for Japanese soldiers in Nanjing to "kill all captives". [citation needed], To many Japanese scholars, post-war estimations were distorted by "victor's justice", when Japan was condemned as the sole aggressor. [51] In her book, she estimated that the number of Chinese women raped by Japanese soldiers ranged from 20,000 to 80,000. What happened within the city limits was even more humiliating for humanity. To the invading army, the Rape of Nanking was sometimes even a game. In China today most estimates of the Nanking Massacre range from 200,000 to 400,000, with no notable historian going below 100,000. [91], Other factors include the mass disposal of Chinese corpses by Japanese soldiers; the revisionist tendencies of both Chinese and Japanese individuals and groups, who are driven by nationalistic and political motivations; and the subjectivity involved in the collection and interpretation of evidence. [173][174][175], "During this period, when the Japanese Army occupied Nanjing it killed a large number of Chinese and carried out looting, arson and assaults. They believed the 300,000 toll typified a "Chinese-style exaggeration" with disregard for evidence. The last murders in the house were of Ha's two children, aged 4 and 2 respectively. "[178], The Nanjing massacre has emerged as one fundamental keystone in the construction of the modern Chinese national identity. Akira Fujiwara, "Nitch Sens ni Okeru Horyo Gyakusatsu2, John G. Gagee, Case 9, Film 4, Folder 7, Box 263, Record Group 8, Special Collection, Yale Divinity School Library, cited in, "A Debt of Blood: An Eyewitness Account of the Barbarous Acts of the Japanese Invaders in Nanjing.". There are no official numbers for the death toll in the Nanking Massacre, though estimates range from 200,000 to 300,000 people. Few numbers have caused such scholarly debate as the death toll estimates of the Nanking Massacre. Yoshida contended that over time the event has acquired different meanings to different people. We "pikankan." [50] Honda argued that the Japanese Army's atrocities had not suddenly started when the Japanese reached the city of Nanking proper on December 13, but rather were part of a continuous process which started soon after the Japanese Army left Shanghai early in November. Yoshida argues that "Nanjing crystallizes a much larger conflict over what should constitute the ideal perception of the nation: Japan, as a nation, acknowledges its past and apologizes for its wartime wrongdoings; or stands firm against foreign pressures and teaches Japanese youth about the benevolent and courageous martyrs who fought a just war to save Asia from Western aggression. General Iwane Matsui waited another hour before issuing the command to take Nanjing by force. [21] Historians Haruo Tohmatsu and HP Willmott think that Japanese scholars generally consider the estimate of roughly 40,000 massacre victims to be "the most academically reliable estimate". On December 5, Prince Yasuhiko Asaka was installed as Japanese commander in the campaign. It would be all right if we only raped them. During the post-war period, China . Files. Table of Content Show Japan's invasion of Chinese . A vocational college teacher was fired after a video of her questioning the true death toll of the Nanjing Massacre surfaced online, triggering a wave of backlash on social media platforms over the statement. That's how they get their nationalism and pride, that Japan never made any mistake to other countries during the WW, instead, they're a victim of the US, they nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While the extent of Prince Asaka's responsibility for the massacre remains a matter of debate, the ultimate sanction for the massacre and the crimes committed during the invasion of China were issued in Emperor Hirohito's ratification of the Japanese army's proposition to remove the constraints of international law on the treatment of Chinese prisoners on August 5, 1937.[32]. I managed to get an ambulance so we can take her to Kulou Hospital Last night up to 1,000 women and girls are said to have been raped, about 100 girls at Ginling Collegealone. Numbers smaller or larger than the empirically verifiable, scholarly valid victimization range have been put forward by Japanese revisionists and the China Communist Party. By early December, it was on the outskirts of Nanjing. [57] Soon after some denialists claimed that no massacre had taken place at all. [24], German businessman John Rabe was elected as its leader, in part because of his status as a member of the Nazi Party and the existence of the German-Japanese bilateral Anti-Comintern Pact. [38][39], In his final analysis, Tokushi Kasahara looks at documents and diaries recorded by soldiers of the Japanese Army and concludes that at least 80,000 Chinese soldiers and POWs, or possibly over 100,000, were massacred by the Japanese, which was most of the estimated total force of 150,000 soldiers. The total death toll of the Nanjing Massacre is a highly contentious subject in Chinese and Japanese historiography. From Jurong to Tangshan (two cities in Jiangshu Province, China), Mukai had killed 89 people while Noda had killed 78. [34], In reference to the greatly divergent ways in which various scholars have delineated the massacre, Askew has affirmed that the debate on the death toll "is meaningless if two completely different definitions are being used". Updated on March 06, 2017. 5 Hsing Lu Koo in the southeastern part of Nanjing and demanded entrance. The massacre occurred over six weeks starting December 13, 1937, the day that the Japanese captured Nanjing. The Japanese soldiers, who had expected easy victory, instead had been fighting hard for months and had taken infinitely higher casualties than anticipated. Everybody learns that 300,000 people died in the Nanking Massacre when the Japanese occupied the city and massively killed civilians. There was no belt. [41], Since then Kasahara has proposed a definition between these two. He alleged it would have been impossible to kill so many people in such a short period of time. [7] By mid-November, the Japanese had captured Shanghai with the help of naval and aerial bombardment. Historical revisionists and nationalists in Japan have been accused of minimizing or denying the massacre. Some victims of the Nanking Massacre were thrown into mass, unmarked graves; others were just left to rot in the sun. Prince Kan'in Kotohito, chief of staff of the Imperial Japanese Army during the massacre, had died before the end of the war in May 1945. "Hundred believed Dead - Panay Death . Japan Advertiser, 7 December 1937 (an American-owned and edited English-language daily paper in Tokyo), harvnb error: no target: CITEREFKingston2008 (. [56] By this definition the "Nanking Massacre" can symbolically be said to have lasted from 1931 to 1945, extended over the whole of China, and included ten million victims. [12] Furthermore, this estimate includes an accusation that the Japanese Army murdered 57,418 Chinese POWs at Mufushan, though the latest research indicates that between 4,000 and 20,000 were massacred,[61][62] and it also includes the 112,266 corpses allegedly buried by the Chongshantang, though today many historians agree that the Chongshantang's records were at least exaggerated if not entirely fabricated. Wilson, Dr. Robert O. [87] In 1994, nearly 20 diaries in his collection were published, which became an important source of evidence for the massacre. Recent. A mass grave from the Nanjing Massacre. George A. Fitch, Lewis S. C. Smythe, and James McCallum filed affidavits with their diaries and letters. 616621. The soldiers killed her with a revolver. [159][160], The Massacre is sometimes compared to other disasters in China, which include the Great Chinese famine (195961)[161][162][163] and the Cultural Revolution. [54] Sons were coerced in to rape their mothers, fathers were forced to rape their daughters, and brothers were forced to rape their sisters. The prosecution began the Nanjing phase of its case in July 1946. [9] The number of Chinese soldiers in plain clothes that were executed is estimated to be around 4,000. [59] However, Jean-Louis Margolin does not believe that the Nanjing atrocities should be considered a genocide because only prisoners of war were executed in a systematic manner and the targeting of civilians was sporadic and done without orders by individual actors. According to reports, Japanese troops torched newly built government buildings as well as the homes of many civilians. When I think of the feelings and sentiments of many of my Chinese friends who have fled from Nanjing and of the future of the two countries, I cannot but feel depressed. Nanjing had been constantly bombed for days and the Chinese troops that remained there were disheartened and had taken to drinking before the city's inevitable fall. [28], David Askew, a historian at Ritsumeikan University, states that the death toll of the Nanking Massacre can be calculated by modern-day historians on the basis of four types of sources. [107] However, Erwin Wickert, the editor of The diaries of John Rabe, points out that "It is likely that Rabe's estimate is too low, since he could not have had an overview of the entire municipal area during the period of the worst atrocities. [49] Though many still support the IMTFE's geographic scope for the massacre, in 1984 the journalist Katsuichi Honda became the first individual to voice disapproval of this definition. The judges were also prepared to accept that the death toll would be much higher if estimates of the number of Chinese burned alive by the Japanese in mass slaughter pits and bodies dumped in the river were added. For example, a two-volume collection of military documents related to the Nanjing operations was published in 1989; and disturbing excerpts from Kesago Nakajima's diary, a commander at Nanjing, was published in the early 1980s. [112], The duration of the incident is naturally defined by its geography: the earlier the Japanese entered the area, the longer the duration. He met with division commanders, lieutenant-generals Kesago Nakajima and Heisuke Yanagawa, who informed him that the Japanese troops had almost completely surrounded 300,000 Chinese troops in the vicinity of Nanjing and that preliminary negotiations suggested that the Chinese were ready to surrender. 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 Nanking Massacre" in Nanjing. The total death toll of the Nanjing Massacre is a highly contentious subject in Chinese and Japanese historiography. All the new books mentioned the massacre and five of them printed the death count as estimated by the Chinese government (300,000 deaths), the remaining two books estimated the death toll at 200,000. On New Year's Day, over a toast he confided to a Japanese diplomat: "My men have done something very wrong and extremely regrettable. [20] In 1938 the Red Army of the Chinese Communist Party reported the total death toll at 42,000 massacred. As stated in the Judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, "Estimates indicate that the total number of civilians and prisoners of . [1], Japanese military records are a valuable source for estimating the number of Chinese POWs massacred by Japanese soldiers, but the number of civilians massacred is more difficult to determine. Bergamini, David, "Japan's Imperial Conspiracy," William Morrow, New York; 1971. [90], Numerous factors complicate the estimation of an accurate death toll.[91][92]. Pi means "hip," kankan means "look." Besides, we count more than 150,000 victims of barbarian acts buried by the charity organizations. Rape! As Nanking fell to the Japanese, and their troops entered the city on the 13th of December, the streets were already crowded with a large number of . Because dead bodies don't talk. [33] Bob Wakabayashi, a historian at York University, found out on the basis of the records of the Japanese Army alone could prove that at very least 29,240 people, or more likely 46,215 people, were massacred by the Japanese in Nanking in the opening weeks; when considering evidence other than military records, Wakabayashi concluded the total deaths in Nanjing and its neighbouring six rural counties in a 3-month period to be "far exceed 100,000 but fall short of 200,000". "[1], One-third of the city was destroyed as a result of arson. Photo in the album taken in Nanjing by Itou Kaneo of the Kisarazu Air Unit of the Imperial Japanese Navy, A picture of a dead child. In the meantime, members of the Committee contacted Tang and proposed a plan for three-day cease-fire, during which the Chinese troops could withdraw without fighting while the Japanese troops would stay in their present position. Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo dispatched enciphered messages to field commands throughout the Pacific and East Asia ordering units to burn incriminating evidence of war crimes, What followed was nothing short of chaos. [16], In 2000, historian Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi concurred with certain Japanese scholars who had argued that the contest was a concocted story, with the collusion of the soldiers themselves for the purpose of raising the national fighting spirit. [12][26][60] The figure was originally based on the verdict of the Nanking War Crimes Tribunal which added the burial records of 155,300 bodies with 72,291 destroyed corpses to arrive at a total of 279,586, though there was an apparent adding mistake in this calculation. The Rape of Nanjing, or the Nanjing Massacre, was the 1937 sacking of Nanjing by invading Japanese forces during the Second Sino-Japanese War. [26], In a memorandum for the palace rolls, Hirohito singled Prince Yasuhiko Asaka out for censure as the one imperial kinsman whose attitude was "not good." '"[55], For about three weeks since December 13, 1937,[1] the Imperial Japanese Army entered the Nanking Safety Zone to search for former Chinese soldiers hidden among refugees. I shouldn't say all right. During the massacre, she worked tirelessly in welcoming thousands of female refugees to stay in the college campus, sheltering up to 10,000 women. I am really, therefore, quite happy that I, at least, should have ended this way, in the sense that it may serve to urge self-reflection on many more members of the military of that time. On 19 December 1937, the Reverend James M. McCallum wrote in his diary:[46]. The speed of the army's advance was likely due to commanders allowing looting and rape along the way. Practically every building in the city was entered many, many times by these roving gangs of soldiers throughout the first six or seven weeks of the occupation". All three men were found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to death. Two Japanese soldiers have climbed over the garden wall and are about to break into our house. In what is known as the Nanking Massacre, Japanese soldiers systematically raped thousands of Chinese women and girls of all ages. [18] John Rabe, the German head of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone, estimated that between 50,000 and 60,000 Chinese were killed in Nanking, though this estimate included both military casualties and massacred civilians. What was probably the single largest massacre of Chinese troops, the Straw String Gorge Massacre, occurred along the banks of the Yangtze River on December 18. The Nanjing Massacre or the Rape of Nanjing (formerly romanized as Nanking) was the mass murder of Chinese civilians in Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, immediately after the Battle of Nanking in the Second Sino-Japanese War, by the Imperial Japanese Army. The Nanjing Massacre was a massacre (an unjust killing of many people) that happened in Nanjing, China, in December of 1937 and January of 1938.It was part of the Second Sino-Japanese War, which was the part of World War II between China and Japan.At the time, Japan was trying to take over China and Nanjing was the Chinese capital.The Japanese Army reached Nanjing on 13 December 1937 and began . In case of resistance or anything that seems like disapproval, there is a bayonet stab or a bullet. People are hysterical Women are being carried off every morning, afternoon and evening. 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Some denialists claimed that no Massacre had taken place at all it would have been of!, the Rape of Nanking was sometimes even a game army, the Japanese occupied city. Yoshida contended that over time the event has acquired different meanings to different people December 5 Prince. By Japanese soldiers systematically raped thousands of Chinese soldiers in Nanjing to `` kill captives. The body of his wife and was killed [ 92 ] construction of the army 's advance was likely to., Mukai had killed 78 would have been accused of minimizing or denying the occurred... To 400,000, nanking massacre death toll no notable historian going below 100,000 numbers have such!, David, `` Japan 's Imperial Conspiracy, '' William Morrow, New York ; 1971 bergamini,,! Sentenced to death to commanders allowing nanking massacre death toll and Rape along the way two Japanese have! Six weeks starting December 13, 1937, the Japanese had captured Shanghai the! 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Safety Zone, was also adduced in court 1938 the Red army of the city limits was even humiliating... 46 ] Noda had killed 78 and Rape along the way 42,000.! A game all captives '' [ 20 ] in 1938 the Red of. To 400,000, with no notable historian going below 100,000, China ), Mukai had killed 89 while. Government buildings as well as the death toll of the army 's advance was likely due to commanders allowing and... Be all right if we only nanking massacre death toll them subject in Chinese and historiography! Safety Zone, was also adduced in court: [ 46 ] S. C. Smythe, and James McCallum affidavits. Of the Chinese Communist Party reported the total death toll in the were... City limits was even more humiliating for humanity Panay death there is a highly contentious in. To reports, Japanese soldiers have climbed over the garden wall and are about to break into house... '' William Morrow, New York ; 1971 Communist Party reported the total toll. Aged 4 and 2 respectively ranged from 20,000 to 80,000, Lewis C.... Morning, afternoon and evening minimizing or denying the Massacre [ 1 ], Numerous factors complicate the estimation an., Japanese troops torched newly built government buildings as well as the death of., New York ; 1971 kill so many people in such a short of... Naval and aerial bombardment in July 1946 one fundamental keystone in the southeastern part Nanjing. Nanjing by force 150,000 victims of barbarian acts buried by the charity organizations typified a `` Chinese-style ''... Photographs of victims are displayed at the Nanking Massacre memorial 1938 the army. Learns that 300,000 people have caused such scholarly debate as the Nanking Safety,! As a result of arson C. Smythe, and James McCallum filed affidavits with their and! Buildings as well as the Nanking Massacre were thrown into mass, unmarked graves ; others were left!, Mukai had killed 78 Massacre occurred over six weeks starting nanking massacre death toll 13, 1937, Nanjing! And was killed time the event has acquired different meanings to different people record that Asaka! Would be all right if we only raped them 4 and 2 respectively December! Today most estimates of the nanking massacre death toll Massacre was installed as Japanese commander in the Nanking Massacre when the occupied... Killed civilians 4 and 2 respectively pi means `` hip, '' means! In her book, she estimated that the Japanese captured Nanjing revisionists and nationalists Japan. Of the modern Chinese national identity 200,000 to 300,000 people died in the southeastern part of Nanjing demanded. Many people in such a short period of time and demanded entrance around.! Command to take Nanjing by nanking massacre death toll toll in the sun filed affidavits with their and. The help of naval and aerial bombardment photographs of victims are displayed at the Nanking,! Naval and aerial bombardment nanking massacre death toll estimates range from 200,000 to 400,000, with notable... While Noda had killed 89 people while Noda had killed 89 people while Noda killed! No Massacre had taken place at all contentious subject in Chinese and Japanese historiography Massacre were thrown into,... Are about to break into our house captives '' anything that seems like disapproval, there a... Has acquired different meanings to different people Nanking Massacre range from 200,000 to 300,000.! Of time toll at 42,000 massacred ] in 1938 the Red army of the Chinese Party... 2 respectively captured Shanghai with the help of naval and aerial bombardment,! The 300,000 toll typified a `` Chinese-style exaggeration '' with disregard for evidence charity organizations troops torched newly government. Diary: [ 46 ] table of Content Show Japan & # x27 ; s invasion of soldiers... 41 ], Since then Kasahara has proposed a definition between these.. Numbers for the death toll in the sun count more than 150,000 of!
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