Part I. The Nanjing Massacre: Atrocities Committed by Japanese Army

Long after the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894—1895, the imperialist Japanese government continued to make plans to invade China. In 1927, Japanese prime minister Tanaka Giichi convened the famous Eastern Conference in Tokyo. The conference established a new China policy, making the occupation of China, the invasion of Asia, and world domination the strategic direction for Japan's outward expansion. Subsequently, the Japanese Kwantung Army in northeast China caused a series of incidents in order to provoke a war. On the evening of September 18, 1931, the Japanese bombed a section of track of the South Manchuria Railway near the suburb of Liutiao Lake north of the city of Shenyang (then known as Mukden), falsely accusing the Chinese army of the action. The Japanese then attacked the Chinese garrison at Beidaying in Shenyang, creating the prelude for a new war of aggression against China.

Within about six months after the Mukden Incident, the Japanese had quickly occupied the entire territory of northeast China. Following this, they pointed the spearhead of their invasion toward north China. During the evening of July 7, 1937, the Japanese army garrisoned in the Fengtai District of Beijing (known then as Peking or Beiping) held northern regional military exercises in Wanping County. Using a missing Japanese soldier as an excuse, they shelled the Wanping county seat, which became known worldwide as the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. The Chinese People's War of Resistance against Japan (also known as the Second Sino-Japanese War) had been a local phenomenon, but at that point broke out on a national scale.

After the Japanese army occupied the Beijing-Tianjin region, they moved south along the Tianjin-Pukou and Beijing-Hankou railways in order to expand their captured territory. Meanwhile, to accelerate the destruction of China, in August of 1937 the army created constant provocations in Shanghai to create an excuse to expand the war. On August 13, the Japanese attacked the city's Zhabei District, setting off the Battle of Shanghai, the largest battle to date in China's eastern coastal region since the outbreak of the War of Resistance. Japan established the Shanghai Expeditionary Army and then the Central China Area Army,(1) and made General Matsui Iwane commander of the latter, which gave him unified command over combat in Shanghai and other areas. The Japanese continually increased their forces, sending in their 3rd, 11th, 9th, 13th, 16th, 101st, 6th, 18th, and 114th Divisions, as well as additional regiments. In response, the Chinese Nationalist Government's Military Affairs Commission adjusted its military deployment, mobilizing numerous elite troops and placing them in the Yangtze River Delta region to defend Shanghai, China's largest industrial and commercial city. The Chinese troops fought hard and bloody battles, dealing major blows to the Japanese and causing heavy casualties. The Chinese army held out in Shanghai for three months, shattering Japan's dream of using a blitzkrieg strategy to destroy China in three months, and arousing the Chinese people's determination to resist. The army's effort strengthened Chinese confidence in winning the war and also gained precious time for industrial enterprises and cultural and educational institutions in the coastal areas to move inland.

Shanghai fell on November 12. The Japanese decided to attack China's capital of Nanjing (known then as Nanking) to maximize pressure on China, force its government to surrender, and end the war.

Japan's Central China Area Army split up and advanced toward Nanjing in a formation to fully surround the city. One force consisted of the 11th, 13th, and 16th Divisions, which moved along both sides of the Nanjing-Shanghai Railway to attack the cities and towns of Wuxi, Changzhou, Danyang, Zhenjiang, and Jurong. A second force, composed of the advance force of the 3rd Division, along with the 9th Division, entered Suzhou, Wuxi, and Jintan in their advance toward Nanjing. As part of a third force, troops under the Tenth Army occupied Jiaxing and Wuxing and passed through Yixing, Liyang, and Lishui to move directly toward Nanjing, while the 18th Division took Guangde and Ningguo (Xuancheng) and attacked Wuhu. Meanwhile, the Kunisaki Detachment moved into Pukou just north of the Yangtze River, cutting off retreat for the Chinese army defending Nanjing. Under the Japanese onslaught, southern Jiangsu Province and southeastern Anhui Province fell in succession. The Japanese army approached the outskirts of Nanjing on December 6.

The Chinese Nationalist Government decided to move its capital inland to the city of Chongqing, and shifted some of its military and government authorities to the cities of Wuhan and Changsha to accommodate the needs of the war. Meanwhile, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek convened a conference in Nanjing to discuss military deployments for the city's defense. The urban district of Nanjing lay south of the Yangtze with its back to the river. The terrain was easy to attack and hard to defend. Nanjing was the capital of China; if the Chinese government did not deploy a defense of the city, it would be condemned by the entire nation and have an adverse effect on relations with the international community. While some generals, such as Chen Cheng, did not advocate trying to hold Nanjing,(2) Chiang Kai-shek decided to establish the Nanjing Garrison Command. He named Tang Shengzhi (Tang Sheng-chih ) as commander in chief and Luo Zhuoying and Liu Xing as deputy commanders in chief. Under this command were more than 100,000 soldiers available for the defense of Nanjing, including the 66th Corps commanded by Ye Zhao, the 71st Corps (Wang Jingjiu), the 72nd Corps (Sun Yuanliang), the 74th Corps (Yu Jishi), the 78th Corps (Song Xilian), the 83rd Corps (Deng Longguang), and the 2nd Army (Xu Yuanquan), as well as training corps and military police regiments. To express his determination to “live or die with Nanjing,” Tang Shengzhi evacuated all vessels sailing from Xiaguan (Hsiakwan), on the south bank of the Yangtze, to Pukou on the north bank. He forbade any troops to cross the river to evacuate to the north.

In early December, the Japanese army occupied the eastern suburb of Tangshan, the southern suburbs of Hushu, Chunhua, and Molingguan, and the southwestern suburbs of Banqiao and Dashengguan. The two sides battled heatedly until the night of December 12, when the Japanese broke through points around the city: Zhongshan Gate, Yuhua Gate, Zhonghua Gate, Guanghua Gate, Shuixi Gate, Tongji Gate, and the heights of Purple (Zijin) Mountain to the east. Nanjing fell on December 13. The defending Chinese forces suffered very heavy casualties, except for a portion who retreated through Taiping Gate or other places and moved to northern Jiangsu, or the border areas between Zhejiang and Anhui Provinces. Some soldiers, whose retreat was cut off, lay down their arms and took off their uniforms, and some were able to enter the Nanjing Safety Zone established by foreign residents.

After the Japanese occupied Nanjing, they believed that these Chinese soldiers out of uniform were their greatest threat. There were “probably still lurking in the city many surviving enemy intending to resist,” and they therefore “planned to implement thorough mop-up operations within and outside the city of Nanjing.”(3) A Japanese document stated, “There are indications that most of the escaping enemy are dressed in civilian clothes. All suspicious persons are to be arrested and imprisoned in an appropriate location.” (4) Because they were unable to distinguish between soldiers and ordinary people, the Japanese decided “to treat all young and adult men as remnants of the defeated army or soldiers in civilian clothing, and arrest and imprison them.” (5) The American missionary John G. Magee, who had remained in Nanjing, used a camera to covertly film scenes of the Japanese army rounding up Chinese soldiers and slaughtering Chinese citizens on the city streets. On December 13, 1937, the first day of the occupation of Nanjing, 16th Division commander Lieutenant General Nakajima Kesago wrote in his diary, “We are essentially not implementing a prisoner of war policy. We have decided to undertake a policy of complete elimination...Sasaki's troops alone disposed of about 15,000 persons, and a company commander garrisoned at Taiping Gate disposed of about 1,300 persons.” Nakajima bluntly stated, “Because it was never envisaged that these measures would be taken, the general staff really have their hands full.”(6) Iinuma Mamoru, at the time the chief of staff of the Shanghai Expeditionary Army, wrote in his diary on December 21, “When Yamada's detachment bayoneted well over ten thousand prisoners in groups, a considerable number of people were escorted to the same place within a few days, and the prisoners rioted. Finally our army used machine-gun fire, resulting in a number of our army officers and soldiers also being killed. A considerable number of prisoners also took the opportunity to escape.”(7) Senior Japanese generals also treated Chinese prisoners of war very cruelly, taking the lives of the prisoners as a trifling matter. On December 13, Lieutenant General Nakajima wrote in his diary, “Today at noon Swordsman Takayama came to visit, and there happened to be seven prisoners, so I told him to try to behead them. I also ordered him to try to behead them with my saber, and he actually cut off two heads extremely well.” (8) General Okamura Yasuji, who later became the supreme commander of the invading Japanese army, also documented in his diary on July 13, 1938, the arbitrary killings of Chinese prisoners of war by the Japanese army. He wrote, “After arriving at the Shina(9) battlefield, I learned from listening to the reports of expeditionary staff officer Miyazaki, Central China Expeditionary Army special services chief Major General Harada, and Lieutenant Colonel Hagiwara, head of the Hangzhou office that, using the difficulties of sending military supplies to front-line troops as an excuse, the Expeditionary Army has put a large number of prisoners to death, and it has become a bad habit. As many as forty or fifty thousand persons were massacred during the Battle of Nanjing, and a great number of city residents were also looted and raped.” (10) Killing large numbers of prisoners who have laid down their arms after the occupation of an enemy country is a serious breach of international law. It is an indisputable fact that Japanese troops killed large numbers of Chinese prisoners of war before and after they captured Nanjing. The Japanese also aimed their butcher's knives at the many peaceful residents of Nanjing. They committed many large-scale massacres in Nanjing's urban district and nearby suburbs, in the form of both collective and dispersed killings. Some of the most tragic and concentrated killings occurred at Mufu Mountain, Yanziji, Meitangang, Yuleiying, Baota Bridge, and Zhongshan Dock in the vicinity of Xiaguan along the Yangtze River; Shuixi Gate, Hanzhong Gate, and Jiangdongmen west of the city; Yuhuatai and Huashen Temple to the south; and several neighborhoods within the city limits. In each of these massacres, between several hundred and tens of thousands of people were killed. The targets of the massacres were not limited to young and adult men; not even the elderly, children, or women were spared. The methods of slaughter included shooting, beheading, stabbing, burying alive, burning, drowning, and even killing for sport, with extreme brutality.

After they occupied Nanjing, the Japanese army also committed appalling sexual violence against a great number of Chinese women. These heinous acts were committed on a large scale and using cruel methods. The February 1946 Report on the Investigation on Enemy Crimes Ordered by the Capital District Prosecutors Office stated, “There were many victims, generally from young women to elderly women in their sixties and seventies. Some were raped, some gang-raped, some who resisted rape were killed, and in some cases a father was ordered to rape his daughter, a brother to rape his sister, or a father-in-law to rape his daughter-in-law for entertainment. There were also breasts cut off, chest stabbings, broken teeth, swollen private parts, and various other circumstances too horrible to contemplate.” (11) As public opinion strongly condemned the Japanese army's sexual violence and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases increased among the soldiers, the Japanese authorities changed their tactics. They set up numerous “comfort stations” in Nanjing and other occupied areas and forcibly recruited Chinese and Korean women as subjects of their sexual violence. According to investigations by scholars, the Japanese established more than 40 comfort stations in Nanjing's urban district and suburbs.

In order to subjugate China politically and spiritually, the Japanese spared no effort to destroy the Chinese capital of Nanjing. During the attack on the city, and especially after its capture, Japanese troops burned, destroyed, and looted everywhere. Buildings in neighborhoods such as Zhonghua Road, Taiping Road, and Confucius Temple in the southern part of the city were largely burned down. Residents' furniture, goods, grain, livestock, and other property were looted by the Japanese. The once bustling capital of Nanjing was full of rubble, debris, and ruins. This ancient city, already beginning a lively modernization process, was devastated by the Japanese army.

Persons involved and eyewitnesses from China, Japan, and Western countries who faced the Japanese atrocities in Nanjing have left behind a great deal of valuable primary source material revealing the truth about the events. The diaries, letters, and post-war memoirs of Japanese officers and soldiers on the battlefield recorded the Japanese army's actions during the massacre. Diaries were left by important senior officers of the Japanese army, including Generals Hata Shunroku, Okamura Yasuji, and Matsui Iwane, Lieutenant General Nakajima Kesago, and soldiers Makihara Nobuo Azuma Shirō. After the fall of Nanjing, a group of missionaries, college instructors, doctors, businessmen, and reporters from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and other Western countries remained in the city. They personally witnessed this human tragedy and produced a great deal of valuable information, including diaries, letters, and other documents. Domestic Chinese newspapers and many renowned Western newspapers, including the New York Times, the Chicago Daily News, the Washington Post, and the Times reported and exposed the Japanese army's crimes in Nanjing.

In a special report from Nanjing sent to the International Department of the Chicago Daily News on December 15, 1937, American reporter Archibald T. Steele wrote, “It was like killing sheep...emerging via this gate [referring to Yijiang Gate—Ed.] today I found it necessary to drive over heaps of bodies 5 feet high, over which hundreds of Japanese trucks and guns had already passed. Streets throughout the city were littered with the bodies of civilians….” (12) His December 17 special report to the newspaper stated, “I saw the dead scattered along every street, including some old men who could not possibly have harmed anyone; also mounds of the bodies of executed men...I saw a grisly mess at the north gate, where what once had been 200 men was a smoldering mass of flesh and bones.” (13) On February 4, 1938, the Chicago Daily News published another report from Nanjing by its special correspondent Steele: “I witnessed one mass execution. The band of several hundred condemned men came marching down the street bearing a large Japanese flag. They were accompanied by two or three Japanese soldiers, who herded them into a vacant lot. There they were brutally shot dead in small groups. One Japanese soldier stood over the growing pile of corpses with a rifle pouring bullets into any of the bodies which showed movement.”(14)American reporter Frank Tillman Durdin said in a report airmailed to the New York Times, “In taking over Nanking, the Japanese indulged in slaughters, looting and rapine exceeding in barbarity any atrocities committed up to that time in the course of the Sino-Japanese hostilities. The unrestrained cruelties of the Japanese are to be compared only with the vandalism in the Dark Ages in Europe or the brutalities of medieval Asiatic conquerors.”(15)

The Japanese army's various means of committing the crime of rape against Chinese women were reported in many domestic and foreign news media. Missionaries from various Western countries living in Nanjing continually made their protests known to the Japanese authorities, exposing the Japanese army's criminal rape of Chinese women.

In his report published in The New York Times on January 9, 1938, correspondent Durdin stated, “Wholesale looting was one of the major crimes of the Japanese occupation. Once a district was in their full control, Japanese soldiers received free rein to loot all houses therein. Food seemed to be the first demand, but all articles of value were taken at will, particularly things easily carried. Occupants of homes were robbed and any who resisted were shot.” (16) On March 16, 1938, the South China Morning Post reported, “On December 19, the firing of shops began on a large scale. Trucks were loaded with loot and the empty shops then set ablaze...fourteen of the twenty-two foreigners who had remained in Nanking went in a body to the Japanese Embassy to protest against this burning of the Y.M.C.A. The Embassy explained that the soldiers were out of hand. The deputation was able to inform the Embassy, however, that its members had observed the troops under the direction of their officers engaged in systematic loot and arson. This continued for a month. Eighty per cent of the shops were looted and burned, and fifty per cent of the homes.”(17) It was also reported that, “Most areas in Nanjing are now deserted. Residential areas in Zhonghua Gate, Confucius Temple, Zhonghua Road, Taiping Road, Zhongshan Road, and Guofu Road were burned particularly severely.”(18) Foreigners' residences and consulates in Nanjing were not spared, either. Numerous buildings in the city, including the embassy offices of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, were subject to repeated looting by Japanese soldiers. After a period of more chaotic looting, most shops were subject to systematic and organized ransacking and looting by hordes of Japanese soldiers driving trucks under the command of officers. Afterward, the buildings were torched and completely burned down. Even “American facilities under the Stars and Stripes flag were also looted. The employees of American missionary universities and hospitals were inspected and robbed of watches and money. Boarding dormitories for nurses also lost many valuables as a result of Japanese searches. The Japanese also forced their way into employee buildings at the American Jinling Women's College and took food and other valuables.”(19) In response, the United States repeatedly raised serious protests to the Japanese authorities, but the atrocities committed by the Japanese army were not restrained as a result.

Ironically, even the Japanese 16th Division's headquarters and the living quarters of division commander Nakajima Kesago were looted by Japanese soldiers. On December 19, Nakajima wrote in his diary, “Japanese troops are all engaging in looting without regard to whether an area is under the jurisdiction of other units. They forcibly enter the residences in these places and loot them bare. In a word, the more thick skinned they are, the more shameless, and the more they take advantage. The best example of this is, when we occupied the official residence of the Nationalist Government, 16th Division soldiers had already come through to clean it out on December 13. On the morning of the 14th, after reconnaissance by the Administration Department, an allocation plan for accommodation was developed and a ‘Division Headquarters' sign hung. But when we entered the rooms, we saw that every corner of each room, including that of the Chairman, had been rummaged from top to bottom and thoroughly looted. Whether an antique display or whatever else, as long it was deemed worth money, it was carted away. After entering the city on the 15th, I placed some remaining items together in a cabinet and affixed a seal, but that still did not work. On the third day when I came to look, the things I had put away had disappeared without a trace. It seems necessary to put things in a safe; it is no use putting them anywhere else.” Nakajima commented, “Entering an area controlled by others, not to mention a building already hung with a headquarters sign, and stealing nonchalantly, is just too much.”(20)

The facts described above are just the tip of the iceberg of the violence committed by the Japanese army in Nanjing. Their crimes are too numerous to describe in full here.

 

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(1) The Japanese Central China Area Army was created in November 1937 by combining the Shanghai Expeditionary Army and the Tenth Army.—Trans.

(2) Chen Cheng said, “The Generalissimo called me to the capital to inquire about a defensive strategy for Nanjing. First, I asked, do you want me to defend the city? The Generalissimo said, ‘No'.” Chen stated that, “Our army must quickly leave the battlefield and withdraw to southern Anhui, using Nanjing as an advance position so that we may engage in a long-term War of Resistance.” He also said, “Tang Shengzhi saw Nanjing as the location of the national capital, and that it was not to be given up easily; he asked for more elite troops to defend it to the death.” Chen indicated that, “Our defenders of the city faced the enemy on three sides, and with the great river to the north there was no way to withdraw; it was the most brutal sacrifice seen during the eight years of the War of Resistance.” See Chen Cheng, Chen Cheng xiansheng huiyilu: Kangri Zhanzheng (shang) [The memoirs of Mr. Chen Cheng: The War of Resistance against Japan (Vol. 1)] (Taipei: Academia Historica, 2004), 60.

(3) “Bubing Di-sanshiba Liandui zhandou xiangbao di 12 hao” (Zhaohe 12 nian 12 yue 14 ri) [38th Infantry Regiment detailed battle report no. 12 (December 14, 1937)], in Nanjing Da Tusha shiliaoji, di 11 ce: Riben junfang wenjian [Nanjing Massacre historical collection, Vol. 11: Japanese military documents], ed. Zhang Xianwen, Wang Weixing, and Lei Guoshan (Nanjing: Jiangsu People's Publishing, Ltd., 2006), 70.

(4) “Nanjing chengnei saodang yaoling” [Overview of mop-up operations within the city of Nanjing], in Zhang, Wang, and Lei, Historical Collection, Vol. 11, 110.

(5) “Youguan shishi saodang de zhuyi shixiang (Zhaohe 12 nian 12 yue 13 ri)” [Notes on the implementation of mop-up operations (December 13, 1937)], in Zhang, Wang, and Lei, Historical Collection, Vol. 11, 111.

(6) Nakajima Kesago, “Zhongdao Jinchaowu riji” [Diary of Nakajima Kesago], in Nanjing Da Tusha shiliaoji, di 8 ce: Rijun guanbing riji [Nanjing Massacre historical collection, Vol. 8: Diaries of Japanese officers and soldiers], ed. Zhang Xianwen and Wang Weixing (Nanjing: Jiangsu People's Publishing, Ltd., 2005), 280.

(7) Iinuma Mamoru, “Fanzhao Shou riji” [Diary of Iinuma Mamoru], in Zhang and Wang, Historical Collection, Vol. 8, 212—213.

(8) Nakajima, “Diary of Nakajima Kesago,” 278.

(9) A derogatory Japanese term for China.—Trans.

(10) Okamura Yasuji, “Gangcun Ningci zhenzhong ganxiang lu” [Record of the thoughts of Okamura Yasuji during battle], in Zhang and Wang, Historical Collection, Vol. 8, 6.

(11) Capital District Prosecutor's Office, “Shoudu Difang Fayuan Jianchachu fengling diaocha diren zuixing baogaoshu (1946 nian 2 yue)” [Report on the investigation of enemy crimes ordered by the Capital District Prosecutor's Office] (February 1946)], in Nanjing Da Tusha shiliaoji, di 21 ce: Rijun zuixing diaocha weiyuanhui diaocha tongji (xia) [Nanjing Massacre historical collection, Vol. 21 (3) Survey data from commissions investigating Japanese army war crime], ed. Zhang Xianwen, Guo Biqiang, and Jiang Liangqin (Nanjing: Jiangsu People's Publishing, Ltd., 2006), 1723.

(12) A. T. Steele, “Japanese Kill Thousands in Captured City,” Chicago Daily News, December 15, 1937.

(13) Steele, “Chinese War Horror Pictured by Reporter: Panay Victims under Japanese Fire for Full Half Hour; Butchery and Looting Reign in Nanking,” Chicago Daily News, December 17, 1937.

(14) Steele, “Reporter Likens Slaughter of Panicky Nanking Chinese to Jackrabbit Drive in U.S.,” Chicago Daily News, February 4, 1938.

(15) F. Tillman Durdin, “Japanese Atrocities Marked Fall of Nanking after Chinese Command Fled,” New York Times, January 9, 1938.

(16) F. Tillman Durdin, “Japanese Atrocities Marked Fall of Nanking after Chinese Command Fled,” New York Times, January 9, 1938.

(17) “The Rape of Nanking: American Eyewitness Tells of Debauchery by Invaders; Unarmed Chinese Butchered,” South China Morning Post, March 16, 1938.

(18) “Huangfei de chengshi” [Deserted city], in Nanjing Da Tusha shiliaoji, di 6 ce: Waiguo meiti baodao Yu Deguo shiguan baogao [Nanjing Massacre historical collection, Vol. 6: Reports from foreign media and German embassy], ed. Zhang Xianwen and Zhang Sheng (Nanjing: Jiangsu People's Publishing, Ltd., 2005), 169.

(19) Peter Nielson, “The Nanking Atrocities,” China Today, Vols. 3—4, 1936—1938, as translated in Zhang and Zhang, Historical Collection, Vol. 6, 181—182.

(20) Nakajima, “Diary of Nakajima Kesago,” 283—284.