nanking massacre death toll

As the Japanese army approached Nanjing, most of them fled the city, leaving 27 foreigners. Instead of refuting the allegations, the interviewed veterans confirmed that a massacre had taken place and openly described and admitted to taking part in the atrocities. [61], On 5 February 2009, the Japanese Supreme Court ordered Shd Higashinakano and the publisher Tendensha to pay four million yen in damages to Mrs. Shuqin Xia, who claims to be the 7- or 8-year-old girl who appears in Magee's film. [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. [11] However, Timperley's source for this number was the French humanitarian Father Jacquinot, who was in Shanghai at the time of the massacre,[12] and it might also have included civilian casualties of the Battle of Shanghai. Now, in the winter, the season gives time to reflect. [147], On June 19, 2007, a group of around 100 Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lawmakers again denounced the Nanjing Massacre as a fabrication, arguing that there was no evidence to prove the allegations of mass killings by Japanese soldiers. Again, one . [18][23] However, the prosecution at these trials made little effort to verify the accuracy of their death toll estimates and a considerable amount of dubious and now discredited data was accepted by both tribunals. In response, Shichihei Yamamoto[140] and Akira Suzuki[141] wrote two controversial yet influential articles[clarification needed] which sparked the Japanese Negationist movement. Estimates of the impact of the destruction vary. Masahiro Yamamoto, Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000), p. 193. The museum notes only that "Chinese soldiers disguised in civilian clothes, which numbered around 4000[34] were severely prosecuted". [34], With the relocation of the capital of China and the reports of Japanese brutality, most of the civilian population fled Nanjing out of fear. [4] Although the Japanese succeeded in surrounding Nanking and defeating the Chinese garrison stationed there by December 13, few of the Chinese soldiers within the city formally surrendered. [134] Jung Chang and Jon Halliday's biography of Mao claims Mao never made any comment either contemporaneously or later in his life about the massacre, but did frequently remark with enduring bitterness about a political struggle between himself and Wang Ming which also occurred in December 1937. [6] Over the course of its subsequent occupation of Nanking the Japanese Army hunted down the former Chinese soldiers within the city and in a large number of cases summarily executed them. To the invading army, the Rape of Nanking was sometimes even a game. [98] Tomio Hora supports the information found in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, which estimates a death toll of at least 200,000. He reasoned that the Nanking Massacre should include the entire area of what was then known as the "Nanking Special Administrative District". 200,000 (consensus), estimates range from 40,000 to over 300,000. "[120], Matsui asserted that he had never ordered the execution of Chinese POWs. 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 . [94], According to the verdict of the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal on 10 March 1947, there are "more than 190,000 mass slaughtered civilians and Chinese soldiers killed by machine gun by the Japanese army, whose corpses have been burned to destroy proof. [57] Soon after some denialists claimed that no massacre had taken place at all. Although most sources suggest that the final phase of the battle consisted of a one-sided slaughter of Chinese troops by the Japanese, some Japanese historians maintain that the remaining Chinese military still posed a serious threat to the Japanese. [60] On 13 December 1937, John Rabe wrote in his diary: It is not until we tour the city that we learn the extent of destruction. The Chinese scholars of the committee maintained that at least 300,000 were killed. 'Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 19581962' by Yang Jisheng", "China cites Japan wartime 'confessions' in propaganda push", "The Chinese, Too, Have Much to Apologize For", "Japanese statement protesting UNESCO registration of Nanjing Massacre docs backfiresCanada ALPHA ", "China athletes unlikely to stay at controversy-linked Sapporo hotel", "Japan threatens to halt Unesco funding over Nanjing massacre listing", " | JBpress ()", " | JBpress ()", "What Japanese history lessons leave out", "History Education: The Source of Conflict Between China and Japan", "The Nanjing Incident Recent Research and Trends", The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, The Nanking Atrocity: An Interpretive Overview, The Nanking Massacre: Fact Versus Fiction: A Historian's Quest for the Truth, Analyzing The 'Photographic Evidence' of The Nanking Massacre, War Damage in the Nanking area Dec. 1937 to Mar. [2] In reviewing this survey, Askew concluded that all of its "centrists" were effectively deniers of the atrocity except for Hara. [1] "[T]here was no burning until the Japanese troops had been in the city five or six days. Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, "Leftover Problems," in The Nanking Atrocity, 193738: Complicating the Picture, ed. What you hear and see on all sides is the brutality and bestiality of the Japanese soldiers. . '"[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. [135], Mei Xiao-ao, the son of Mei Ju-ao, a Chinese justice who was present at the Tokyo war crime tribunal, published an essay claiming that in the early 1960s, Mei's father, inspired by the recent publication of a Japanese study on the destruction caused by the atomic bombs, tried calling for greater study of the massacre by Chinese historians of the time, but his ideas received a cold reception; he was reportedly accused of "stirring up national hatred and revenge" against the Japanese, and some others felt that writing about "the Chinese defeat and misery in Nanjing amounted to hidden praise for the strength of the Japanese troops. I offer my sympathy, with deep emotion, to a million innocent people. [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. [61] Official war journals and diaries were also published by Kaikosha, an organization of retired Japanese military veterans. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East estimated that 20,000 women, including some children and the elderly, were raped during the occupation, with Yale University claiming over 80,000 rapes. [9], The Japanese army conducted its mopping-up operation both inside and outside the Nanking Safety Zone. Hs Shuhsi, ed. Numerological arguments about the death count and distinctions of comparative atrocities do not address this point. The Nanking Massacre was an episode of mass rape and murder committed by the Japanese troops against the residents of Nanking, then the capital of the Republic of China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The soldiers then bayoneted another sister of between 78, who was also in the room. John Rabe's Safety Zone was mostly a success, and is credited with saving at least 200,000 lives. On May 1, 1946, SCAP officials interrogated Prince Asaka, who was the ranking officer in the city at the height of the atrocities, about his involvement in the Nanjing Massacre and the deposition was submitted to the International Prosecution Section of the Tokyo tribunal. [69] She found that Chinese historians favor estimates between 40,000 and 150,000 and that they "speculated that reducing the official Chinese estimate of victims would pave the way for greater reconciliation between Japan and China". The Nanking Massacre or Nanjing Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking or Rape of Nanjing, was an episode during the Second Sino-Japanese War of mass murder and mass rape by Japanese troops against the residents of Nanjing (then spelled Nanking), then capital of the Republic of China.. Live Statistics. [30] Others assert that lieutenant colonel Isamu Ch, Asaka's aide-de-camp, sent this order under the Prince's sign-manual without the Prince's knowledge or assent. [27], On December 5, Asaka left Tokyo by plane and arrived at the front three days later. [7] By mid-November, the Japanese had captured Shanghai with the help of naval and aerial bombardment. The Battle of Nanking ended on December 13, when the divisions of the Japanese Army entered the walled city of Nanjing. Kasahara generally concludes that the death toll must have been well over 100,000, and possibly around 200,000. [52][53] There are also accounts of Japanese troops coercing families to commit incestuous acts. [74], The Japanese troops did respect the Zone to an extent; until the Japanese occupation, no shells entered that part of the city except a few stray shots. [21], The first academic accounts of the Nanking Massacre included as massacre victims all Chinese who were killed by the Japanese Army in and around Nanking, including Chinese soldiers who were killed in action. The older was bayoneted and the younger split down through the head with a sword. [85] Approximately 70 percent of the Japanese army's wartime records were destroyed. 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. The Japanese Army had pushed quickly through China after capturing Shanghai in November 1937. The seventh and last person in the first row was a pregnant woman. Each girl was raped six or seven times daily reported December 18th. Wealthy families were the first to flee, leaving Nanjing in automobiles, followed by the evacuation of the middle class and then the poor, while only the destitute lowest class such as the ethnic Tanka boat people remained behind. In regards to the Nanjing Massacre, Japanese authorities deliberately concealed wartime records, eluding confiscation from American authorities. [107] Other sources, including Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanjing, also conclude that the death toll reached 300,000. [13] Timperley included a second estimate in his book published later the same year, Japanese Terror In China, which quoted "a foreign member of the University faculty" as stating that "close to 40,000 unarmed persons were killed within and near the walls of Nanking". This resulted in widespread looting and burglary.[73]. Between the announcement of a ceasefire on August 15, 1945, and the arrival of small advance parties of American troops in Japan on August 28, Japanese military and civil authorities systematically destroyed military, naval, and government archives, much of which was from the period 19421945. [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. Hata argued that Chinese troops killed on the battlefield were part of the Battle of Nanking rather than Nanking Massacre, and that only civilians and disarmed POWs should be counted as massacre victims. After being stripped and raped by one or more men, she was bayoneted in the chest and then had a bottle thrust into her vagina. 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. Whether Asaka ordered the Rape, or simply stood by as it happened, is disputed, but he took no action to stop the carnage. Let me recount some instances occurring in the last two days. In one estimate the Nanking War Crimes Tribunal put the death toll at more than 300,000, though the Tribunal also recorded other estimates including one of 430,000. Jones, Paul. [22] The International Military Tribunal of the Far East tallied up 155,000 victims of the massacre, though in their verdict against General Iwane Matsui this figure was modified somewhat to "upwards of 100,000 people". The contest continued because neither had killed 100 people. [citation needed], Coordinates: .mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output .geo-multi-punct{display:none}.mw-parser-output .longitude,.mw-parser-output .latitude{white-space:nowrap}3203N 11846E / 32.050N 118.767E / 32.050; 118.767, A Japanese soldier pictured with the corpses of Chinese civilians by the, Japanese war crimes on the march to Nanjing, Retreating Chinese Troops' Scorched-Earth Policy, Extrajudicial killing of Chinese prisoners of war, Nanking Safety Zone and the role of foreigners, Apology and condolences by the Prime Minister and Emperor of Japan, Denials of the massacre by public officials in Japan, 1. The Nanking Massacre as a component of national identity. After decades of struggle, the Nanking Massacre had become a recognized piece of Japanese history. "[65] Thousands were led away and mass-executed in an excavation known as the "Ten-Thousand-Corpse Ditch", a trench measuring about 300m long and 5m wide. 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. In a press release to foreign reporters, Tang Shengzhi announced the city would not surrender and would fight to the death. [157], Takashi Yoshida described how changing political concerns and perceptions of the "national interest" in Japan, China, and the U.S. have shaped the collective memory of the Nanjing massacre. After the war, multiple Japanese military officers and Kki Hirota, former Prime Minister of Japan and foreign minister during the atrocities, were found guilty of war crimes and executed. 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 . Originally titled 13 Flowers of Nanjing, this is the story of a group of schoolgirls that find refuge in a church compound run by an American priest.The year is 1937. Stories are heard of civilians being shot or bayoneted for no apparent reason.[62]. [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. 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 Qin-Hua Rijun Nanjing Datsusha Yunan Tongbao Jinianguan, or the Memorial Hall for Compatriot Victims of the Japanese Military's Nanjing Massacre. Following the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese Imperial Army marched from Shanghai to the Chinese capital city of Nanking, and though a large number of Chinese POWs and civilians were slaughtered by the Japanese following their entrance into Nanking on December 13, 1937, the precise number remains unknown. . "Case 5 On the night of December 14th, there were many cases of Japanese soldiers entering houses and raping women or taking them away. [124], In 1947, Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda, the two officers responsible for the contest to kill 100 people, were both arrested and extradited to China. See on all sides is the brutality and bestiality of the Japanese army approached Nanjing, most of them the. Count and distinctions of comparative atrocities do not address this point and arrived at the front three days later and. 27 ], Matsui asserted that he had never ordered the execution of Chinese.! 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Season gives time to reflect neither had killed 100 people, on December,! Records were destroyed concealed wartime records were destroyed also accounts of Japanese troops had been in the two!
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