nanking massacre death toll

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. The last murders in the house were of Ha's two children, aged 4 and 2 respectively. Since the area outside the safety zone had been almost completely evacuated, the mopping-up effort was concentrated in the safety zone. For Japan, it was a question they needed to answer but were reluctant to do so because they too identified themselves as victims after the A-bombs. While the extent of Prince Asaka's responsibility for the massacre remains a matter of debate, the ultimate sanction for the massacre and the crimes committed during the invasion of China were issued in Emperor Hirohito's ratification of the Japanese army's proposition to remove the constraints of international law on the treatment of Chinese prisoners on August 5, 1937.[32]. The death toll of 300,000 is the official estimate engraved on the stone wall at the entrance of the "Memorial Hall for Compatriot Victims of the Japanese Military's Nanking Massacre . And based on a clear definition of the responsibility there can be an answer to the 'moral' question. : Recent Historical Writings on the Rape of Nanjing,", Akira Fujiwara, "The Nanking Atrocity: An Interpretive Overview," in, David Askew, "The Scale of Japanese Atrocities in Nanjing: An Examination of the Burial Records,", Joshua A. Fogel, "The Nanking Atrocity and Chinese Historical Memory," in, Kaz Ross, "Remembering Nanjing: Patriotism and/or peace in architecture," in, Lloyd Eastman, "Nationalist China during the Sino-Japanese War 1937-1945," in, Barry Schwartz, "Rethinking Conflict and Collective Memory: The Case of Nanking," in, Takashi Yoshida, "Refighting the Nanking Massacre: The Continuing Struggle over Memory," in, International Committee for the Nanjing Safety Zone, International Military Tribunal for the Far East, International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone, International Military Tribunal of the Far East, "The Nanjing Incident: Recent Research and Trends", "The Nanking Atrocities in the 1990s: The Controversy in Japan", "The Nanking Atrocities in the 1990s: The Death Toll - Current Estimates", "Japanese Crimes in Nanjing, 1937-38: A Reappraisal", "Nanjing Massacre certitude: Toll will elude", "400,000 People Killed in Nanjing Massacre: Expert", Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, Rape during the Soviet occupation of Poland, Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office, Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors, Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, German preWorld War II industrial co-operation, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Death_toll_of_the_Nanjing_Massacre&oldid=1121556661, Short description with empty Wikidata description, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Government of the People's Republic of China, includes all Chinese killed including those killed in action, the city of Nanking, its immediate outskirts, and all six surrounding counties between early December 1937 and late January 1938, includes all disarmed POWs; includes soldiers killed on the battlefield but not immediately capable of fighting back, the city of Nanking, its immediate outskirts, and all six surrounding counties between December 4, 1937, and March 28, 1938, the city of Nanking, its immediate outskirts, and all six surrounding counties between December 1, 1937, and March 1938, the entire area from Shanghai to Nanking between November 1937 to late January 1938, includes all disarmed POWs; does not include any soldiers killed on the battlefield, the city of Nanking and its immediate outskirts between December 13, 1937, and early February 1938, only includes disarmed POWs buried by the Red Cross, and civilians whose deaths they verified; does not include any soldiers killed on the battlefield, the city of Nanking and its immediate outskirts between December 13, 1937, and late January 1938, the city of Nanking and its immediate outskirts between December 13, 1937, and early January 1938, does not include approximately 4,000 Chinese soldiers captured out of uniform and executed; does not include any soldiers killed on the battlefield, This page was last edited on 12 November 2022, at 22:54. Photo in the album taken in Nanjing by Itou Kaneo of the Kisarazu Air Unit of the Imperial Japanese Navy, A picture of a dead child. [29] By contrast, Kasahara generally supports the higher burial estimates presented at the IMTFE, though he concedes that not all of the Chongshantang's figures can be accepted "at face value. [133], Associate Professor David Askew of Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University said that in Japan, a unified Japanese view of the massacre doesn't exist because of the internal debates and contentions surrounding the massacre, and that the different views can be categorized into mutually exclusive groups. In the meantime, members of the Committee contacted Tang and proposed a plan for three-day cease-fire, during which the Chinese troops could withdraw without fighting while the Japanese troops would stay in their present position. However, Askew notes that Japanese units often exaggerated their body counts. In late December 1937 and early January 1938, the Imperial Japanese Army perpetrated one of the most horrific war crimes of the World War II era. It took an hour for the sounds of death to stop and even longer for the Japanese to bayonet each individual. Kasahara notes that Smythe's survey proves that a bare minimum of 12,000 ordinary civilians were massacred within Nanking, though other contemporary sources gives figures between 50,000 and 100,000, plus at least another 26,870 outside Nanking. In 2005, John Rabe's former residence in Nanjing was renovated and now accommodates the ". This article is part of . Non-Japanese historians are prepared to accept that the slaughter at Nanking . The first type of source is oral history, but he calls this "the most problematic methodology in researching the incident" due in part to large discrepancies between the testimony of Japanese and Chinese eyewitnesses. However, they feared that speaking out openly "would be detrimental to their careers. This is caused by the Army's misbehaviors after the fall of Nanjing and failure to proceed with the autonomous government and other political plans. After the establishment of the weixin zhengfu (the collaborating government) in 1938, order was gradually restored in Nanjing and atrocities by Japanese troops lessened considerably. "[70][71], Ralph L. Phillips, a missionary, testified to the U.S. State Assembly Investigating Committee, that he was "forced to watch while the Japs disembowled a Chinese soldier" and "roasted his heart and liver and ate them. The contesta race between the two officers to see who could kill 100 people first using only a swordwas covered much like a sporting event with regular updates on the score over a series of days. Death toll of the Nanjing Massacre Last updated May 04, 2022. I offer my sympathy, with deep emotion, to a million innocent people. Hui volunteers and imams buried over a hundred of their dead following Muslim ritual. However, most credible scholars in Japan, which include a large number of authoritative academics, support the validity of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and its findings, which estimate at least 200,000 murders and at least 20,000 cases of rape. Masahiro Yamamoto, Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000), p. 193. The girl was 14 years old. Rape! The American ambassador in Hankow replied that although he supported Rabe's proposal for a ceasefire, Chiang did not. [158], Many Japanese prime ministers have visited the Yasukuni Shrine, a shrine for Japanese war deaths up until the end of the Second World War, which includes war criminals that were involved in the Nanjing Massacre. [44] The women were often killed immediately after being raped, often through explicit mutilation,[45] such as by penetrating vaginas with bayonets, long sticks of bamboo, or other objects. General Iwane Matsui waited another hour before issuing the command to take Nanjing by force. "[65] Thousands were led away and mass-executed in an excavation known as the "Ten-Thousand-Corpse Ditch", a trench measuring about 300m long and 5m wide. But we always stabbed and killed them. [91], Other factors include the mass disposal of Chinese corpses by Japanese soldiers; the revisionist tendencies of both Chinese and Japanese individuals and groups, who are driven by nationalistic and political motivations; and the subjectivity involved in the collection and interpretation of evidence. The baby was killed with a bayonet. Both officers supposedly surpassed their goal during the heat of battle, making it impossible to determine which officer had actually won the contest. [30] Others assert that lieutenant colonel Isamu Ch, Asaka's aide-de-camp, sent this order under the Prince's sign-manual without the Prince's knowledge or assent. Improved in 24 Hours. [171][172], According to a brief reference to Nanjing at the Yasukuni museum in Tokyo, the Japanese general in charge gave his men maps showing foreign settlements and a civilian "safety zone", and ordered them to maintain strict military discipline. Pikankan means, "Let's see a woman open up her legs." The Nanjing Massacre (simplified Chinese: ; traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: Nnjng Dtsh, Japanese: , romanized: Nankin Daigyakusatsu) or the Rape of Nanjing (formerly romanized as Nanking) was the mass murder of Chinese civilians in Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, immediately after the Battle of Nanking in the Second Sino . [63], Pregnant women were targeted for murder, as their stomachs were often bayoneted, sometimes after rape. At trial, Matsui went out of his way to protect Prince Asaka by shifting blame to lower-ranking division commanders. After decades of struggle, the Nanking Massacre had become a recognized piece of Japanese history. Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo dispatched enciphered messages to field commands throughout the Pacific and East Asia ordering units to burn incriminating evidence of war crimes, "[168] Recognizing the Nanjing Massacre as such can be viewed in some circles in Japan as "Japan-bashing" (in the case of foreigners) or "self-flagellation" (in the case of Japanese). Beginning, I believe, on the 19th or 20th of December, burning was carried on regularly for six weeks. All we are asking in our protest is that you restore order among your troops and get the normal city life going as soon as possible. In 1948, the case of the Nanjing massacre was considered by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, which handed down two death sentences. When I appear they give the excuse that they saw two Chinese soldiers climb over the wall. 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. In 2006 former Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi made a pilgrimage to the shrine despite warnings from China and South Korea. [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. Japan Advertiser, 7 December 1937 (an American-owned and edited English-language daily paper in Tokyo), harvnb error: no target: CITEREFKingston2008 (. [note 1] The massacre was one of the worst atrocities committed during World War II.[6]. [56][57] Robert O. Wilson, a physician, testified that cases of gun wounds "continued to come in [to the hospital of University of Nanjing] for a matter of some six or seven weeks following the fall of the city on December 13, 1937. [135], Mei Xiao-ao, the son of Mei Ju-ao, a Chinese justice who was present at the Tokyo war crime tribunal, published an essay claiming that in the early 1960s, Mei's father, inspired by the recent publication of a Japanese study on the destruction caused by the atomic bombs, tried calling for greater study of the massacre by Chinese historians of the time, but his ideas received a cold reception; he was reportedly accused of "stirring up national hatred and revenge" against the Japanese, and some others felt that writing about "the Chinese defeat and misery in Nanjing amounted to hidden praise for the strength of the Japanese troops. [143], He offered his apology to all survivors and to the relatives and friends of the victims. "Convergence or Divergence? The younger girl was bayoneted also but was spared the horrible treatment that had been meted out to her sister and mother. [24], German businessman John Rabe was elected as its leader, in part because of his status as a member of the Nazi Party and the existence of the German-Japanese bilateral Anti-Comintern Pact. Some victims of the Nanking Massacre were thrown into mass, unmarked graves; others were just left to rot in the sun. 1938, The Rape of Nanjing Nanjing Massacre documentary, BBC News: Nanjing remembers massacre victims, Online Documentary: The Nanjing Atrocities, English translation of a classified Chinese document on the Nanjing Massacre, Japanese Imperialism and the Massacre in Nanjing, Kirk Denton, "Heroic Resistance and Victims of Atrocity: Negotiating the Memory of Japanese Imperialism in Chinese Museums", Nanjing Massacre history site: History, Photos and Articles, 'No massacre in Nanjing,' Japanese lawmakers say, "Denying Genocide: The Evolution of the Denial of the Holocaust and the Nanjing Massacre,", War and reconciliation: a tale of two countries, Review of Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanjing: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, The Ghosts of Nanjing: Mogollon Connection Special Series by Jesse Horn, The Nanjing Massacre Project: A Digital Archive of Documents & Photographs from American Missionaries Who Witnessed the Rape of Nanjing From the Special Collections of the Yale Divinity School Library, The Nanjing Incident: Recent Research and Trends, Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, Rape during the Soviet occupation of Poland, Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office, Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors, Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, German preWorld War II industrial co-operation, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nanjing_Massacre&oldid=1130624126, Articles with dead external links from August 2017, All articles with bare URLs for citations, Articles with bare URLs for citations from December 2022, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles containing simplified Chinese-language text, Articles containing traditional Chinese-language text, Articles containing Japanese-language text, Instances of Lang-ja using second unnamed parameter, Articles containing Chinese-language text, Articles with unsourced statements from January 2021, Articles needing additional references from June 2016, All articles needing additional references, Articles containing potentially dated statements from December 2016, All articles containing potentially dated statements, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from June 2016, Articles with unsourced statements from March 2015, Articles with unsourced statements from December 2018, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0. the court found that at least 200,000 had perished during the Rape of Nanking. Just better. The second telegram was sent through Shanghai to Japanese military leaders, advocating for a three-day ceasefire so that the Chinese could withdraw from the city. [note 1] A group of foreign expatriates headed by Rabe had formed a 15-man International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone on November 22 and mapped out the Nanking Safety Zone in order to safeguard civilians in the city.[38]. [7] By mid-November, the Japanese had captured Shanghai with the help of naval and aerial bombardment. Outside of . [145][146], In May 1994, Justice Minister Shigeto Nagano called the Nanjing Massacre a "fabrication". [66], The Hui people, a minority Chinese group, the majority of them Muslim, suffered as well during the massacre. [164][165][166], Yoshida asserts that "Nanjing has figured in the attempts of all three nations [China, Japan and the United States] to preserve and redefine national and ethnic pride and identity, assuming different kinds of significance based on each country's changing internal and external enemies."[167]. . We thus have a total of more than 300,000 victims. The slaughter of civilians is appalling. The first was to Chiang through an American ambassador in Hankow, asking that Chinese forces "undertake no military operations" within Nanjing. In 1986 Ikuhiko Hata became the first historian to call this definition into question. He would later state that he had seen tank guns used on bound soldiers. An official from South Korea said they would summon the Tokyo ambassador to protest. As per Sina, Oberver.com verified that Twitter froze the . Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 382384. The Nanking Safety Zone was demarcated through the use of Red Cross Flags.[25]. Instead of refuting the allegations, the interviewed veterans confirmed that a massacre had taken place and openly described and admitted to taking part in the atrocities. Chiang's strategy was to follow the suggestion of his German advisers to draw the Japanese army deep into China and use China's vast territory as a defensive strength. [citation needed], Some conspiracy theories claim that the whole event was entirely made up by the CCP and Chinese Nationalists as a weapon to attack Japan, deny the truth and facts of the war, and to indirectly justify China's discriminatory policies against minority groups in Xinjiang and Tibet. State that he had seen tank guns used on bound soldiers May 04, 2022 made a to. 20Th nanking massacre death toll December, burning was carried on regularly for six weeks out openly `` would be to... Effort was concentrated in the sun 2008 ), 382384 the worst atrocities committed during World War II. 25! 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