"[70][71], Ralph L. Phillips, a missionary, testified to the U.S. State Assembly Investigating Committee, that he was "forced to watch while the Japs disembowled a Chinese soldier" and "roasted his heart and liver and ate them. [58], The official stance of the People's Republic of China is that 300,000 or more Chinese were massacred in Nanking. [52][53] There are also accounts of Japanese troops coercing families to commit incestuous acts. Some Chinese soldiers stripped civilians of their clothing in a desperate attempt to blend in, and many others were shot by the Chinese supervisory unit as they tried to flee.[21]. [66], The Hui people, a minority Chinese group, the majority of them Muslim, suffered as well during the massacre. After a while we would say something like, "It's my day to take a bath," and we took turns raping them. He reasoned that the Nanking Massacre should include the entire area of what was then known as the "Nanking Special Administrative District". According to Yang Daqing, professor of History and International Affairs at George Washington University: While it is standard practice for governments to destroy evidence in times of defeat, in the two weeks before the Allies arrived in Japan, various Japanese agenciesthe military in particularsystematically destroyed sensitive documents to a degree perhaps unprecedented in history. [3][43] A large number of rapes were done systematically by the Japanese soldiers as they went from door to door, searching for girls, with many women being captured and gang-raped. For most of the morning, Japanese soldiers tied the POWs' hands together. Chiang's strategy was to follow the suggestion of his German advisers to draw the Japanese army deep into China and use China's vast territory as a defensive strength. [138], During the 1970s, Katsuichi Honda wrote a series of articles for the Asahi Shimbun on war crimes committed by Japanese soldiers during World War II (such as the Nanjing Massacre). : Recent Historical Writings on the Rape of Nanjing,", Akira Fujiwara, "The Nanking Atrocity: An Interpretive Overview," in, David Askew, "The Scale of Japanese Atrocities in Nanjing: An Examination of the Burial Records,", Joshua A. Fogel, "The Nanking Atrocity and Chinese Historical Memory," in, Kaz Ross, "Remembering Nanjing: Patriotism and/or peace in architecture," in, Lloyd Eastman, "Nationalist China during the Sino-Japanese War 1937-1945," in, Barry Schwartz, "Rethinking Conflict and Collective Memory: The Case of Nanking," in, Takashi Yoshida, "Refighting the Nanking Massacre: The Continuing Struggle over Memory," in, International Committee for the Nanjing Safety Zone, International Military Tribunal for the Far East, International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone, International Military Tribunal of the Far East, "The Nanjing Incident: Recent Research and Trends", "The Nanking Atrocities in the 1990s: The Controversy in Japan", "The Nanking Atrocities in the 1990s: The Death Toll - Current Estimates", "Japanese Crimes in Nanjing, 1937-38: A Reappraisal", "Nanjing Massacre certitude: Toll will elude", "400,000 People Killed in Nanjing Massacre: Expert", Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, Rape during the Soviet occupation of Poland, Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office, Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors, Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, German preWorld War II industrial co-operation, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Death_toll_of_the_Nanjing_Massacre&oldid=1121556661, Short description with empty Wikidata description, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Government of the People's Republic of China, includes all Chinese killed including those killed in action, the city of Nanking, its immediate outskirts, and all six surrounding counties between early December 1937 and late January 1938, includes all disarmed POWs; includes soldiers killed on the battlefield but not immediately capable of fighting back, the city of Nanking, its immediate outskirts, and all six surrounding counties between December 4, 1937, and March 28, 1938, the city of Nanking, its immediate outskirts, and all six surrounding counties between December 1, 1937, and March 1938, the entire area from Shanghai to Nanking between November 1937 to late January 1938, includes all disarmed POWs; does not include any soldiers killed on the battlefield, the city of Nanking and its immediate outskirts between December 13, 1937, and early February 1938, only includes disarmed POWs buried by the Red Cross, and civilians whose deaths they verified; does not include any soldiers killed on the battlefield, the city of Nanking and its immediate outskirts between December 13, 1937, and late January 1938, the city of Nanking and its immediate outskirts between December 13, 1937, and early January 1938, does not include approximately 4,000 Chinese soldiers captured out of uniform and executed; does not include any soldiers killed on the battlefield, This page was last edited on 12 November 2022, at 22:54. 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.". [127], On October 9, 2015, Documents of the Nanjing Massacre have been listed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. Some Japanese scholars claim that the numbers are greatly exaggerated, and that the actual toll is somewhere from 40,000 to only several . On December 5, Prince Yasuhiko Asaka was installed as Japanese commander in the campaign. [7] At the same time soldiers of the Japanese Army also committed random acts of murder against civilians, and engaged in rape, arson, and looting. The Truth about the Nanjing Massacre. ", "Case 13 December 18, 4 p.m., at No. [26][89] Daqing Yang, a historian at George Washington University, believes that "an obsession with figures reduces an atrocity to abstraction and serves to circumvent a critical examination of the causes of and responsibilities for these appalling atrocities"[90] and Carol Gluck concurs that "The crucial historical question remains the moral one: how could ordinary Japanese have done what they did? 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. [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. Mrs. Ha asked them why they killed her husband and they shot her. 616621. At noon on December 9, the Japanese military dropped leaflets into the city, urging the city of Nanjing to surrender within 24 hours, promising "no mercy" if the offer was refused. Currently, the most reliable and widely agreed upon figures place the total death toll of the massacre between the broad range of 40,000 to 200,000 massacre victims in the entire Nanking Special Administrative District. Shortly after the surrender of Japan, the primary officers in charge of the Japanese troops at Nanjing were put on trial. [12][23][24], The first historian to make an academic estimate of the death toll of the Nanking Massacre was Tomio Hora in his 1967 book Kindai Senshi no Nazo ("Riddles of Modern War History"), who argued in favor of 200,000. Hata discounts estimates of the death toll which range into the hundreds of thousands on the basis that, according to Smythe, Nanking's civilian population was only between 200,000 and 250,000. [8] These events are collectively known as the Nanking Massacre. From February 7, 1938, killings were no longer in mass fashion as the senior Japanese officers came to restore discipline of their troops, according to the testimony of, Quote: "The Japanese Army, one million strong, has already conquered. Matsui returned to retirement, but Prince Asaka remained on the Supreme War Council until the end of the war in August 1945. [112][170] The range of the death toll estimated by Japanese historians is from tens of thousands to 200,000. Rape! Some right-wing Japanese politicians have downplayed the death toll or denied outright that the Nanking atrocity happened. All of them were hanged on 23 December 1948. You hear nothing but rape. The Flowers of War by Geling Yan, translated by Nicky Harman. [54][55] On the other hand, at least one historian has noted that the atrocity in Nanking could be equated with the entire war waged by Japan on China. 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. Five returned. [citation needed], This nationalist view does not, however, represent a widely shared understanding of what happened at Nanjing, as illustrated by Japanese textbooks' rather different treatment of the atrocity. In his diary kept during the aggression against the city and its occupation by the Imperial Japanese Army, the leader of the Safety Zone, John Rabe, wrote many comments about Japanese atrocities. [89] His claims have been corroborated with the diaries of other Japanese combatants and medics who fought in China. He agrees with Hata that Chinese soldiers actively engaged in combat were not massacre victims, but he also includes in his definition of the massacre any Chinese soldiers who were killed on the battlefield but not actively resisting, noting that many confrontations between the Chinese and Japanese Armies were more like one-sided slaughters than battles. The Japanese army mounted its assault on the Nanjing walls from multiple directions; the SEF's 16th Division attacked three gates on the eastern side, the 6th Division of the 10A launched its offensive on the western walls, and the SEF's 9th Division advanced into the area in-between. 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. Many fled the city on December 7, and the International Committee took over as the de facto government of Nanjing. [121] He was found guilty of war crimes, sentenced to death, and executed by shooting on 26 April 1947. Due to multiple factors, death toll estimates vary from 40,000 to over 300,000, with rape cases ranging from 20,000 to over 80,000 cases. [122][123], Hisao Tani, a lieutenant general for the 6th Division of the Imperial Japanese Army, was tried by the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal in China. I watched with my own eyes as they looted the caf of our German baker Herr Kiessling. The museum notes only that "Chinese soldiers disguised in civilian clothes, which numbered around 4000[34] were severely prosecuted". "2001 ASSLH conference Chinese seamen and Australian labour: The mass desertion from the, International Committee for the Nanjing Safety Zone, International Military Tribunal for the Far East, International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone, killing contest between two Japanese officers, Learn how and when to remove this template message, introducing citations to additional sources, John Rabe and International Safety Zone Memorial Hall, List of war apology statements issued by Japan, discriminatory policies against minority groups, Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, "29 July 1946. He heard waves of machine-gun fire and witnessed the Japanese soldiers gun down some two hundred Chinese within ten minutes. The city on December 5, Prince Yasuhiko Asaka was installed as commander. Put on trial December 7, and that the actual toll is somewhere 40,000! Most of the People 's Republic of China is that 300,000 or more were! 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