nanking massacre death toll
[16][17] The 1944 film, The Battle of China, stated that 40,000 were killed in the Nanking Massacre. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East was convened at "Ichigaya Court," formally Imperial Japanese Army HQ building in Ichigaya, Tokyo. At trial, Matsui went out of his way to protect Prince Asaka by shifting blame to lower-ranking division commanders. These figures also do not take into account those persons whose bodies were destroyed by burning, drowning or other means, or whose bodies were interred in mass graves. Pi means "hip," kankan means "look." especially offenses against prisoners of war.[91]. "[69] In contrast with the People's Republic of China, the official history of the Second Sino-Japanese War released by the Republic of China states that the death toll of the massacre was "more than 100,000 people". [52] Kasahara believes that including massacre victims from the surrounding rural parts of Nanking adds 30,000 victims onto the death toll. Iris Chang, author of the Rape of Nanjing (book), wrote one of the most comprehensive accounts of Japanese war atrocities in China. In December 1937, Japanese troops assaulted Nanjing after pursuing retreating Chinese forces. Tang Junshan, survivor and witness to one of the Japanese army's systematic mass killings, testified:[64]. [179] Modern Chinese (including most citizens of the PRC, partially in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and overseas) will refer to the Nanjing Massacre to explain certain stances they hold or ideas they have; this "national unifying event" holds true to middle-school educated peasants and to senior government officials alike. . [9], The Japanese army conducted its mopping-up operation both inside and outside the Nanking Safety Zone. [176], Another history textbook prepared by the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, which had been approved by the government in 2001, attempts to whitewash Japan's war record during the 1930s and early 1940s. He further added that aspersions were cast regarding the authenticity and accuracy of burial records and photographs presented in the Tokyo War Crime Court, which the Japanese government claimed were fabrications by the Chinese government, artificially manipulated or incorrectly attributed to the Nanjing Massacre. Files. The American ambassador in Hankow replied that although he supported Rabe's proposal for a ceasefire, Chiang did not. Although the death toll exceeds the immediate number of deaths from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (140,000 and 70,000 respectively, by the end of 1945) and even the total civilian . In light of the 40,000 corpses which Hata believes were buried in and around Nanking, he estimates the total death toll at between 38,000 and 42,000 POWs and civilians. The girl was 14 years old. The horrific events are known as the Nanjing Massacre or the Rape of Nanjing, as tens of thousands of women and girls were sexually assaulted. Nanjing Massacre, conventional Nanking Massacre, also called Rape of Nanjing, (December 1937-January 1938), mass killing and ravaging of Chinese citizens and capitulated soldiers by soldiers of the Japanese Imperial Army after its seizure of Nanjing, China, on December 13, 1937, during the Sino-Japanese War that preceded World War II. All the new books mentioned the massacre and five of them printed the death count as estimated by the Chinese government (300,000 deaths), the remaining two books estimated the death toll at 200,000. Some victims of the Nanking Massacre were thrown into mass, unmarked graves; others were just left to rot in the sun. ", Harold Timperley, a journalist in China during the Japanese invasion, reported that at least 300,000 Chinese civilians were killed in Nanjing and elsewhere, and tried to send a telegram but was censored by the Japanese military in Shanghai. Between the declaration of a ceasefire on August 15, 1945, and the arrival of American troops in Japan on August 28, "the Japanese military and civil authorities systematically destroyed military, naval, and Improved in 24 Hours. [9] The number of Chinese soldiers in plain clothes that were executed is estimated to be around 4,000. The Nanking Safety Zone was demarcated through the use of Red Cross Flags.[25]. Soldiers pillaged from the poor and the wealthy alike. Five of these were journalists who remained in the city a few days after it was captured, leaving the city on December 16. Rabe commented on how efforts to remove these Chinese troops failed and Japanese soldiers began to lob grenades into the refugee zone.[10]. Prince Asaka was granted immunity because of his status as a member of the imperial family. [75], Rabe wrote that, from time to time, the Japanese would enter the Safety Zone at will, carry off a few hundred men and women, and either summarily execute them or rape and then kill them. ", "Case 16 A Chinese girl named Loh, who, with her mother and brother, was living in one of the Refugee Centers in the Refugee Zone, was shot through the head and killed by a Japanese soldier. They killed him immediately with a revolver and also Mrs. Ha, who knelt before them after Ha's death, begging them not to kill anyone else. [40], By contrast, Ikuhiko Hata also examined the Japanese Army's documents and tallied up a total of 30,000 Chinese POWs massacred out of a total Chinese force of 100,000. . In his diary kept during the aggression against the city and its occupation by the Imperial Japanese Army, the leader of the Safety Zone, John Rabe, wrote many comments about Japanese atrocities. Title. "[75] According to historian Jonathan Fenby, the most recent research places the death toll at 100,000 or less, though he only cites one recent estimate as evidence for this claim.[76]. In our South Hill House Japanese broke the panel of the storeroom and took out some old fruit juice and a few other things. The visitor is left to assume they did. John Rabe boarded the U.S. gunboat Panay on December 9 and sent two telegrams, one to Chiang Kai-shek by way of the American ambassador in Hankow, and one to the Japanese military authority in Shanghai. Languages. The Truth about the Nanjing Massacre. [9], The Nanking Massacre was reported internationally within a week of occurring[10] and the first estimate of the full death toll was published on January 24, 1938, in the New China Daily. Many were taken to the Yangtze River, where they were machine-gunned to death. ", "Case 13 December 18, 4 p.m., at No. In 21st century Japan, the Nanjing Massacre touches upon national identity and notions of "pride, honor and shame". There was considerable destruction to areas outside the city walls. On March 7, 1938, Robert O. Wilson, a surgeon at the university hospital in the Safety Zone administrated by the United States, wrote in a letter to his family, "a conservative estimate of people slaughtered in cold blood is somewhere about 100,000, including of course thousands of soldiers that had thrown down their arms. [1] Today most Japanese historians of the so-called "great massacre" school have reduced their death toll estimates somewhat and now advocate the figure of "100,000 plus" in contrast with the old consensus of 200,000. [59] However, Jean-Louis Margolin does not believe that the Nanjing atrocities should be considered a genocide because only prisoners of war were executed in a systematic manner and the targeting of civilians was sporadic and done without orders by individual actors. Description. [139] The publication of these articles triggered a vehement response from Japanese right-wingers regarding the Japanese treatment of the war crimes. A 42-part ROC documentary produced in 1995, entitled "An Inch of Blood For An Inch of Land . [90], Numerous factors complicate the estimation of an accurate death toll.[91][92]. 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. The total death toll of the Nanjing Massacre is a highly contentious subject in Chinese and Japanese historiography. The soldiers then bayoneted another sister of between 78, who was also in the room. [122][123], Hisao Tani, a lieutenant general for the 6th Division of the Imperial Japanese Army, was tried by the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal in China. [1] "[T]here was no burning until the Japanese troops had been in the city five or six days. [21], The second type of source is the burial records written down by Chinese charitable associations. The Nanking Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking, was an episode of mass murder and mass rape committed by Japanese troops against the residents of Nanki. The Nanjing Massacre, commonly known as "The Rape of Nanking," was an infamous war crime committed by the Japanese military in and around the then capital of . The women and children are crying all nights. The total death toll of the Nanjing Massacre is a highly contentious subject in Chinese and Japanese historiography. [73], According to Canadian scholar David Bruce MacDonald, the higher range of estimates of over 100,000 victims are more likely to be accurate,[74] whereas by contrast the Irish historian LM Cullen argues that the lower range of estimates, which put the death toll in tens of thousands, "are probably the most credible. In 2006 former Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi made a pilgrimage to the shrine despite warnings from China and South Korea. China on Monday marked the 84th anniversary of the Nanking Massacre, in which hundreds of thousands of civilians and disarmed soldiers were killed by Japanese troops in and around the former Chinese capital. [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. On the one hand, burial statistics combine massacre victims with Chinese combat casualties and thus exaggerate the death toll. During the chaos following the attack of the city, some were killed in the Safety Zone, but the crimes that occurred in the rest of the city were far greater by all accounts. Conditions inside the compound are worse than we can describe. However, death toll estimates vary widely with some ranging as low as 40,000 . [18], Another early estimate was that of China's state-run Central News Agency, which reported in February 1938 that the Japanese had slaughtered 60,000 to 70,000 POWs in Nanking. Eyewitness accounts include testimonies of expatriates engaged in humanitarian work (mostly physicians, professors, missionary and businessmen), journalists (both Western and Japanese), as well as the field diaries of military personnel. It was the Japanese Army going nuts. The Japanese Army had pushed quickly through China after capturing Shanghai in November 1937. See: Death toll of the Nanking Massacre. [citation needed], The remembrance of the massacre has evolved drastically in China. Bergamini, David, "Japan's Imperial Conspiracy," William Morrow, New York; 1971. [63], Pregnant women were targeted for murder, as their stomachs were often bayoneted, sometimes after rape. [133] In her book Rape of Nanjing, Iris Chang asserted that the politics of the Cold War encouraged Chairman Mao to stay relatively silent about Nanjing in order to keep a trade relationship with Japan. The first Japanese troops reached the city on December 13, and faced little resistance. The perpetrators also committed other war crimes such as mass rape, looting, and arson. [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. 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 . He further argued that he had directed his army division commanders to discipline their troops for criminal acts, and was not responsible for their failure to carry out his directives. Minnie Vautrin was a Christian missionary who established Ginling Girls College in Nanking, which was within the established Safety Zone. [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. The Nanking Massacre, commonly known as the Rape of Nanking, was a war crime committed by the Japanese military in Nanjing, then capital of the Republic of China, after it fell to the Imperial Japanese Army on December 13, 1937. On December 1, 1937, Nanjing Mayor Ma Chaochun ordered all Chinese citizens remaining in Nanjing to move into the "Safety Zone." [18] John Rabe, the German head of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone, estimated that between 50,000 and 60,000 Chinese were killed in Nanking, though this estimate included both military casualties and massacred civilians. A new report on the 1937-1938 massacre doesn't settle the contested issue of how many people died -- but it points to a much more [85] Approximately 70 percent of the Japanese army's wartime records were destroyed. . [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. The number of Chinese killed in the massacre has been . Many innocent men were misidentified and killed.[1]. 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. However, the actual number of victims is hard to determine, according to the government of Japan. [29][31], The third type of source is Japanese military records, which recorded the number of POWs the Japanese Army executed. 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