The Nanking Massacre: 80,000 Gang-Rapes and Millions Were Killed

The Forgotten Holocaust

The most brutal war in history is the Sino-Japanese war. In this war, the Japanese Imperial Army invaded China and shook humanity by their atrociousness and brutality.

The Nanking Massacre is one of the darkest events of Chinese and the world history.

They even won the Korean Peninsula in the first sino war. In the second Sino-Japanese war, which was in 1937, the Japanese imperial army became one of the world's strongest armies.

They did not see who was on their front and kept killing everyone. Infants, women, men, or old, they killed them all.

The Chinese Civil War made its army weaker

When Japan was making its army more powerful, a different scenario was running in China.

A fierce and aggressive struggle was going on between the KMT party and Communist leader Mao Zadong. Ultimately power came in favor of Mao Zadong, which led to the rise of C ommunism in China.

Due to the fight for power, China neither had worked in the nation's development nor made their army stronger.

By this time Japanese army became more powerful than ever.

China got frightened of Japan.

Apart from being in the Civil war, they (KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek and Mao) both shook hands because they knew that Japan would destroy a large portion of China and kill its people.

The problem with China was when they came to know that japan is coming as peril, they (KMT & Mao) become one, and when Japan goes out, they started their civil war for power again.

Japan was now pretty confident that it requires only three months — they will invade and conquer the whole of northern China.

In 1931 another part of the Sino-Japanese war was the Battle of Shanghai.

Nanking became the capital of China in 1928. It remained the capital till 1949.

Japan won the battle of Shanghai. Then all the ruthless and heinous attacks were made on the people of China.

Shanghai, one of the wealthiest cities in China, was captured by the Japanese army. Following this victory, the Japanese military governments agreed to launch a campaign. They headed to invade Nanking, the capital city and seat of power of the Republic of China.

The second Sino war, which eventually had started in 1937, came to its end when the Americans dropped the atom bombs in 1945 on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.

The strategy Of the Chinese Government for the war

Chiang Kai-shek was then-Commander in chief of the National Revolutionary Army of China, was very frightened, and opted to be in the defense mode at the very last moment.

This was because they knew that they are not as strong as Japan’s army.

Chiang Kai-shek's advisor(a German) advised him: Let the Japanese army come inside the Nanking. When the Japanese military would be deep inside the capital, we would bounce back on them.

He then ordered its army to come back from Nanking. Hideously, he left a few troops there itself. He also had a subtle fear of other wars, which will take place shortly, and decided to save a more significant portion of its army.

Whereas the people of Nanking had two different mindsets during that time:

• Firstly, most people believed that whatever happens, the Chinese army will never leave us to die and surely will come and help us. As we are the people of the capital, the government will take appropriate steps and send the army to fight with the Japanese army.
• The remaining people of Nanking were in a different illusion. They thought that Japan is a well-progressed nation, and if they invade us, we will also become a part of Japan. Soon, ultimately they will treat us better than the Chinese government. They even might give us our rights.

The second thinking was definitely strange and stupid.

When the Japanese army was entering Nanking, some Chinese people welcomed them by waving Japanese flags in their hands to show the military that they were happy that the Japanese had come. To express their unhappiness from their government, they all shouted, “We want freedom from the Chinese Government.”

But the minute the Japanese army arrived, they started shooting with their guns right on the people's heads in front of them.

Although there were few troops of the Chinese Army in the capital, they didn't stand anywhere compared to the Imperial Army.

In mere nine days, they captured the entire capital. The Chinese government also didn’t do anything.

They took off their support from the capital and left them on the namesake of god and on the Japanese army.

Although the Japanese Soldiers had captured the people and the capital, the Chinese soldiers hid, and they thought of another way. The Japanese army started dropping leaflets in Nanking for two days with a message: “Chinese Soldiers do surrender now.”

The Chinese soldiers knew the consequences of surrendering and kept hiding. If any soldier tries to leave the capital, the Chinese soldiers themselves shoot them.

In a rage, the Japanese army penetrated the entire Nanking and later caught most Chinese soldiers.

They made them bury alive in such a position their whole body was inside the ground except their heads. They covered their heads with a pile of woods and set it afire.

Within a week, they killed all of the Chinese soldiers. Luckily, few of them had escaped from Nanking.

Now Japanese started killing citizens.

Loot, gang-rape, brutally kilings of people was part of their daily life.

There is an incident that depicts the extent of cold-bloodedness of the Japanese army.

Two Japanese soldiers did a contest among themselves. The one who would behead 100 people first would win.

When they started beheading people, they forgot how many heads they had decapitated. So they increased the number from 100 to 150.

The Japanese army was doing this cruelty and brutality just for their fun and amusement. They believed that Nanking had fallen, so they started enjoying themselves by cruelty, gang rapes, and murders.

The most shocking thing was, they started experimenting the new ways of killing Chinese people.

They were executing numerous mass executions and thousands of rapes. The army looted and burned the areas of the city and the surrounding towns, destroying more than a third of the buildings.

The post-WW2 Japanese government even denied this incident and refused to accept their vicious crimes. When the Japanese government was were provided with various footage and clips of Nanking, they accepted their cruelty, saying, ‘maybe it happened in a very usual way.’

Europeans or no other country were aware of it as there was no media or television. Later, photographs and videos got leaked.

Everyone got to know later when they saw the footage and photos.

There is a river called the Yangtze, which goes nearby Nanking.

Japanese Soldiers made that river red with the blood of civilians.

When Japanese soldiers were killing people, they all did photoshoots with dead bodies or wounded people and bodies without heads.

They used to send those photographs to Japan to show them how they made Japan proud.

These soldiers were treated as ‘Heroes’ in Japan. Japanese citizens celebrated for their army: they had made our Japan great again.

The emperor of Japan, Hirohito, was in authority of decision-making. He had ordered his army that no Chinese should be left alive in Nanking.

Ruthlessly, the people of china were being killed. They even forced Chinese families to kill one another.

Ruthless Killings and Rapes

Nanking was witnessing the inhumanity, brutality, cruelty at its peak, and gang rapes.

One eye witness of Nanking said —

I was with my family, hiding in our house. We were all in a room sitting next to each other. We all knew the consequences. Suddenly, the Japanese soldier banged the door. When we didn’t open it for them, they broke the entrance gate and came inside. First, they gang-raped my grandmother, and when my grandfather wanted to protect her. Those monsters split my grandfather in half. In front of me, they dragged my sisters outside the house. They both were in 14–16 years of age. They gang-raped and killed them with insane brutality, which I can’t even explain. I get tears when I think about that day. They humiliated and assaulted my parents on the street and took their clothes from them, and then shot them on their heads from behind.

The most heinous and brutal attacks were made on the women.

The other dark side of this massacre is the brutality with monks

Monks who were in Nanking were forced to rape Chinese girls. These monks had pledged to remain celibate for their lifetime.

But these ruthless Japanese soldiers didn’t spare them.

They made them sit in front of naked Chinese women and forced them to have sex with them. If any monk refused to accept their orders, they would castrate their penises.

Later they killed all the monks and threw them in a large pit, which they made to bury the corpse.

That pit used to be filled with dead bodies already.

Japanese Soldiers were psychotically killing, raping, and torturing people. According to reports, three lakhs Chinese were killed, and twenty thousand women were raped and killed.

But the actual truth is of more than eighty thousand rapes.

Shamelessly, the Japanese even claimed that these records are exaggerating and manipulated. We did not do that much cruelty in Nanking. (such a shame!)

These ruthless murders continued for more than fifteen days. Firstly the soldiers, then the Chinese people; everyone was facing tyranny.

Later the target was women.

Japanese soldiers were searching for women every day and night and took them to their camp. Whether it was an eight-year-old girl or an 80-year older woman, every woman was raped morning to evening and was tortured mercilessly.

One of the American missionary officials gave in writing that — approximately over 1,000 girls were raped every night, and many others during the daytime.

John Rabe recalls in his diary: “Up to 1,000 women and girls are said to have been raped each night.”

“You hear nothing but rape.” If their husbands or brothers interrupt, they’re shot.

“What you hear and see around you is the brutality of the Japanese soldiers.”

When Japanese soldiers used to perform sexual activity with young girls, they used to make cuts in their private parts to rape them satisfactorily if they were unable to perform their sexual activity.

All classes of women were ruthlessly raped. No one escaped.

As the Nirbhaya gang rape of Delhi took place, the same was happening with every Chinese woman in Nanking.

When it all was coming to its end, and Japanese soldiers were returning, they took all of the remaining women with them as comfort women so that they would be their prostitutes (unfortunately, this is what was mentioned in the documents).

John Rabe, a Nazi, sent some clips and photos to Hitler because of the International safety zone. He wanted the massacre to end.

Think upon it, Hitler, who himself witnessed the killings of millions of jews. He was also scared by this heinous act of the Japanese Soldiers.

Hitler forced and ordered to stop this brutality in Nanking.

Furthermore, many letters, diaries, and some rare films captured the tragic events that to this day, remain the point of friction between China and Japan.

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References

https://www.britannica.com/event/Nanjing-Massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre