Japanese War CrimesJapanese war crimes occurred in many Asian and Pacific countries during the period of Japanese imperialism. These incidents have been described as an Asian Holocaust and Japanese war atrocities.
Some Japanese history textbooks only offer brief references to the various war crimes, and members of the Liberal Democratic Party such as Shinzo Abe have denied some of the atrocities such as government involvement in abducting women to serve as "comfort women" (sex slaves). |
NanJing Massacres |
The Japanese troops invaded China’s northern provinces, leading to the quick capture of the ancient Chinese capital now known as Beijing. The 1930s was a time when the Japanese aimed to invent new and more torturous ways to kill the Chinese and break their will to resist. Although they were poorly trained and lacked numbers and weapons, the Chinese put up a strong resistance.
Infuriated by the strength of Chinese resistance, the Japanese troops immediately slaughtered thousands of Chinese soldiers who had surrendered when China’s Nationalist capital Nanjing fell on December 13th, 1937. The Japanese then rounded up twenty thousand young Chinese men and transported them outside the city walls before they were killed in a massive slaughter. For six weeks, groups of drunken Japanese soldiers roamed the streets of the city, murdering, raping, looting, and burning anything, encouraged by their officers. During the first four weeks of Japanese occupation, over twenty thousand Chinese women were raped, with many mutilated and killed when the Japanese troops were finished with them. When the bodies of murdered Chinese filled the streets, the Japanese were forced to refine their methods of slaughter to prevent the spread of disease. Batches of Chinese civilians were rounded up and herded into slaughter pits where they would either be buried alive, hacked to death, used for bayonet practice, or have petrol poured over them and be burned alive. Thousands of victims’ bodies were dumped into the Yangtze River. After looting Nanking, the Japanese started fires that damaged one third of the city. Independent foreign observers of the Rape of Nanking, including Nazi Party member John Rabe, were appalled at the horrifying brutality. Rabe created a safety zone on his estate in an attempt to to save as many Chinese as he could. He also appealed to Adolf Hitler to intervene, but the Nazi leader rebuffed his appeal. Convincing independent proof of the horrifying scale of the Japanese massacre at Nanking emerged in 1996 with the publication of Rabe's diary record of the massacre. The atrocities at Nanking were widely publicised by foreign observers and when the Japanese high command became aware of this, they went through considerable lengths to destroy all evidence. The Nanjing Massacre led to the death of at least 200, 000 Chinese civilians and prisoners of war, with the death toll estimated to reach as high as 370, 000 victims. Despite photographic and independent eyewitness evidence, the Japanese government still refuses to acknowledge or permit Japanese schoolchildren to be told the full story of the slaughter, rape and looting that took place at Nanking in 1937. |