Japan
In Japan, about 8.5 million Japanese civilians were displaced from their homes between 1943 and 1945 as a result of air raids on Japan by the United States Army Air Forces during WW2. By August 1944, 333 000 children had been relocated to rural areas where they continued their education in inns, temples and other public buildings and further 343 000 urban residents were forced to leave their homes. On August 6 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, instantly killing 80 000 - 140 000 people immediately, with possibly another 100 000 survivors dying of injuries and radiation exposure by 1950. Civilians were greatly impacted, both physically and psychologically. China (Asia) Due to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, China lost about 20 million people. China claims that 35 million Chinese were killed or wounded during the Japanese occupation from 1931 to 1945 and estimated that 2.7 million Chinese were killed in a Japanese "pacification" program that targeted "all males between 15 and 60 who were suspected to be enemies" along with other "enemies pretending to be local people." Out of the thousands of Chinese prisoners captured during the war only 56 were found alive in 1946. Australia During the Second World War, the Japanese flew 64 raids on Darwin and 33 raids on other targets in Northern Australia. This was the first time European settlement in Australia had been attacked by a foreign enemy. Most of the town was destroyed and resulted in a significantly lower population, as many were killed or fled.The majority of women and children had been evacuated previously under government orders during December 1941 and January 1942. |
The Nanjing MassacreThe most infamous attack was the Nanjing Massacre, or the Rape of Nanjing that began in December 1937 and lasted over a period of six weeks in the then capital of Nationalist China. During this time, an estimated 300,000 civilians were brutally slaughtered and around 20,000 to 80,000 women were raped. Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians were murdered by the Japanese soldiers in horrific ways including: mass executions, shootings, beheadings, live burials and being burnt alive. From December to January, the streets of Nanjing were covered with bodies of the Chinese people, and the Yangtze river ran red with the blood of the bodies that were dumped there. All civilians were targeted including the elderly, children, pregnant women and infants. Tens of thousands of women young and old were brutally raped then bayoneted or shot, so they could not bear witness. Many pregnant women had their stomachs bayoneted and their fetuses savagely torn out, while many men were loaded off in trucks to be dumped in a ‘slaughter pit’ and used for bayonet practice and murdered. As well as the mass killings, Japanese soldiers looted and burned around a third of Nanjing’s buildings, often killing the people inside or locking them in while the building burned. The devastating impacts of the Nanjing Massacre still affect Sino-Japanese relations to this day.
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