Japanese Terror in China

1938

The book starts off saying: “telegrams reporting the outrages committed against Chinese civilians by the Japanese troops, which occupied Nanking in December of last year were suppressed by the censors installed by the Japanese authorities in the foreign cable officers at Shanghai.”

The book then notes there were at least 300, 000 Chinese military casualties for the Central China campaign. After that, it talks about the Safety Zone established in the city of Nanking.

The book itself consists of various reports from various people at or shortly after the time of the attack.

The first says that Japanese troops entered Nanking on December 13. A few days earlier they had dropped leaflets saying “the Japanese troops exert themselves to the utmost to protect good citizens and to enable them to live in peace, enjoying their occupation.” The person writing this section said that to run was basically to be shot, and that squads of men were taken, tied together, and shot by Japanese troops. Massive looting took place.

Another writer talks about the safety zone and refugee camps, and how many men were taken from the camps and were never seen again. One instance consisted of 1,300 men taken to be shot. The writer notes over 100 women were taken by soldiers and raped. The writer adds in his December 17th entry about over a thousand women raped during the previous day. For his Dec. 19th entry, a Sunday, he writes “Some houses are entered from five to ten times in one day and the poor people looted and robbed and the women raped.

Dec. 20: “Vandalism and violence continue absolutely unchecked. Whole sections of the city are being systematically burned.”

Keep in mind a very,very important fact: these are things written by people who were actually there at that time going through what happened, not people writing years or decades later about something they actually never saw.

Dec. 22: Writer refers to shots from a firing squad. Also he saw around 50 corpses in a pond, all civilians, all with hands tied behind their backs and shot.

Dec. 23: 70 people taken from one camp and shot.

The next writer is a staff member at a University there. :Evidence from burials indicate that close to forty thousand unarmed persons were killed, within and near the walls of Nanking. of whom some 30 per cent had never been soldiers.”

Another writer: “Girls as low as eleven and women as old as fifty-three have been raped on University property alone. ...Practically every building in the city has been robbed repeatedly by soldiers.” The writer also notes that some Chinese soldiers had burned villages and homes outside of Nanking, and had done some looting before they fled in advance of the Japanese.

The author of the book writes: “It should not be supposed, however, that the events at Nanking were by any means exceptional. Similar outrages against civilians have been reported from widely separated regions of China ever since the beginning of hostilities in North China...”

In talking about the city Soochow, a writer notes widespread looting by Japanese soldiers. He adds, “None can possibly estimate the number of women ravagedby the lust-mad Japanese army.”

In relation to the city of Wuhu: “During the first week of occupation, the ruthless treatment and slaughter of civilians and the wanton looting and destruction of the homes of the city far exceeded anything ever seen during my twenty years' experience in China. ...The soldiers seemed to especially seek Chinese women for violation...”

For the city of Hanchow, the writer talks about the mayor, officials and police left before the Japanese arrived. They deserted the civilians, and this is not the only city that kind of thing was done in.

There is a chapter devoted to Japanese planes bombing various cities, and it even includes a list of cities attacked, the list taken from a Japanese publication. Examples of deaths include: Sungkiang (200); Nantan (200); Rubicon Village (15); and Canton (“thousands”).

“Neutral foreign observers who have had the opportunity to travel extensively in the lower Yangtze River Delta since Japanese occupation of the areas state that destruction similar to that witnessed in and near Shanghai has occurred on an almost identical scale in the larger cities, such as Nanking, Wusih, Soochow and Chinkiang, no less than in the thousands of isolated groups of farmhouses which dot the countryside.”

The book then lists in the Appendices actual day-by-day reports of things that happened in Nanking.

The book thus brings a some of the horrors of what happened at Nanking and other places to life by being written by eye-witnesses to the events. There is no over-all total for civilians dead at Nanking, unfortunately. Still, the very fact that widespread raping and killing went on shows just how vicious the Japanese Army could be to innocents.

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