Japanese Crimes in Nanjing, 1937-38 : A Reappraisal

China perpectives, 63 | january - february 2006

Quotes will be in italics.

For many Chinese worldwide, Nanjing is considered a tragedy of proportions equal only to Hiroshima and Auschwitz2. Many Japanese still try hard, if not to completely deny their army's crimes, at least to minimise them and to find excuses for them.

The author notes that we should be able to tell exactly what happened and the degree it happened since there were so many witnesses and written records. He notes that, over time, the intensity of what happened has polarized with the numbers that were killed either growing or shrinking depending on what group is talking about what happened.

some Japanese veterans, politicians and historians (but definitely not the majority) still consider it a matter of honour and respect for their fallen soldiers to deny either the facts, or the figures, or both ; and many Chinese (in China, and maybe even more in the United States) consider it a matter of national pride to add new layers to the amount of victims.

But what happened next was totally contrary to the age-old and universally accepted laws and customs of war, and, particularly, to the 1929 Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War, signed but not ratified by Japan11. Seen by Japanese Headquarters, it was probably a follow-up of a battle that should have led to the total crushing of Chiang’s forces. But the most extensive crime (by universal morality, by international law) that took place in (or, more precisely, around) Nanjing was the systematic massacre of unarmed Chinese soldiers. Most had surrendered, frequently in whole units...

What happened was that those who surrendered were gathered up by the Japanese troops and taken out of the city and were killed, hundreds or even thousands at a time. This is in addition to the civilians who were killed or raped, their houses and businesses looted, all by Japanese soldiers.

This was complicated by the fact that many Chinese soldiers took off their military outfits and got into civilian clothes and tried to pass themselves off as regular civilians. The Japanese soldiers gathered up any of the men who looked like they might have been soldiers due to certain traits (marks on the body that they carried a backpack, etc), and then killed them. They also killed some of the governmental employees.

The countless rapes (8,000 to 20,000, according to Western witnesses) were the main cause of the terror in which refugees passed those months. Taking women within the main target age range (say, between 15 and 40) and numbering to a maximum of 50,000, and also taking into account the frequent multiple rapes that many of them suffered, it can safely be deduced that, in the space of about two months, a huge portion of that age group (most probably between 10% and 30%) were victims of sex crimes. Some days (or more precisely nights) of December, according to IC members, upwards of 1,000 women were raped. Few women could feel safe : on the university campus alone, the youngest victim was nine years old, the oldest seventy-six.

The body count should have remained a secondary issue : the evidence is overwhelming, and scientifically undeniable, of large-scale massacres in Nanjing. And there is also sufficient evidence to show that the killing of the POWs was systematic as well as organised according to military hierarchy, sufficient evidence too of the general acceptance (if not participation) of the army leaders regarding the violence against civilians. That knowledge is not recent : it provided the basis of the verdict of death returned against General Matsui, in 1948.

There are problems, though, with trying to determine the exact number killed.

The troubles start with the enumeration of these events : they took place over a few days, in a reduced space, and consequently it is often almost impossible to decide if two different sources are describing two different massacres or one and the same, with a slightly different timetable and/or location.

There are burial records kept by the Chinese Red Swastika (a version of the Red Cross), but this number doesn't caount those murdered and thrown into the rivers or those murdered and buried in mass graves by the Japanese themselves. There is also a question, though, of how many of the bodies found in the city were civilians and just how many were Chinese soldiers that were killed during the fighting.

Even determing how many people were in the city at the time of the invasion is difficult. The city at one time had about a million people in it. When it became obvious that the Japanese were going to invade, the rich people, the city leaders, and even many military men fled. Just how many people were left is debatable, although the number of 200,000 to 250,000 is commonly given. (The number is backed up by John Rabe's diary entry.)

The writer of the article believes that 30,000 Chinese soldiers were captured by the Japanese and killed. He says that there was no systematic attempt to wipe out the civilians. He also says there is no evidence that women or children were killed in large numbers.

Miner Bates—the Nanjing University historian, and IC member—sums up Smythe's enquiries (having taken part in them) : "Our final estimate of the number of civilians killed in Nanking was 12,000, nine-tenths apart from military operations, and including many women, children, and aged men. That figure is in the ratio of one to every four families then in the city"

He also claims that there was no genocidal policy and no breakdown of discipline on the part of the Japanese troops. He notes that the Japanese had no plans or facilities for dealing with large numbers of POWs.

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