He heard waves of machine-gun fire and witnessed the Japanese soldiers gun down some two hundred Chinese within ten minutes. Notably, the novelist Hotta Yoshie[ja] wrote a novel, Time (Jikan) in 1953, portraying the massacre from the point of view of a Chinese intellectual watching it happen. The perpetrators also committed other war crimes such as mass . What was probably the single largest massacre of Chinese troops, the Straw String Gorge Massacre, occurred along the banks of the Yangtze River on December 18. He agrees with Hata that Chinese soldiers actively engaged in combat were not massacre victims, but he also includes in his definition of the massacre any Chinese soldiers who were killed on the battlefield but not actively resisting, noting that many confrontations between the Chinese and Japanese Armies were more like one-sided slaughters than battles. "[53], Apart from geographical scope, some historians including Kasahara deny that the massacre ended in early February and instead put the end date at March 28, though such a long time range is disputed by other historians. [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. [29][31], The third type of source is Japanese military records, which recorded the number of POWs the Japanese Army executed. Answer (1 of 16): 1. The report consists of eight volumes and was released to mark the 70th anniversary of the start of the massacre. The death toll, and indeed the events in Nanjing in general, are subject to much discussion, with death toll estimates ranging from 30,000 to 300,000. [21], Then in 1997 Kasahara formulated a definition between the two. 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. The massacre has remained a wedge issue between modern China and Japan. Many remember the atrocities that occurred to the Jews in the Holocaust, but few remember what is called, "The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II," where 300,000 people were murdered, and 20,000 women were raped (Rivera 2). Honda believes all those atrocities that were committed on "the road to Nanking" were part of the massacre. [9], On December 12, under heavy artillery fire and aerial bombardment, General Tang Sheng-chi ordered his men to retreat. . The last murders in the house were of Ha's two children, aged 4 and 2 respectively. "The International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone: An Introduction", Askew, David, "The Nanjing Incident: An Examination of the Civilian Population". 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 . The Nanking Massacre or Nanjing Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking or Rape of Nanjing, was an episode during the Second Sino-Japanese War of mass murder and mass rape by Japanese troops against the residents of Nanjing (then spelled Nanking), then capital of the Republic of China.. The total death toll of the Nanjing Massacre is a highly contentious subject in Chinese and Japanese historiography. The soldier thought he might as well rape her before killing her, so he pulled her out of the group to a spot about ten meters away. 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. English Articles. Death Toll Estimates. "[30] However, both Kasahara and Yamamoto have noted that burial records can be problematic in ways that can exaggerate or underestimate the true death toll of the massacre. Even with such a huge death toll, some even deny the existence of this massacre. '"[55], For about three weeks since December 13, 1937,[1] the Imperial Japanese Army entered the Nanking Safety Zone to search for former Chinese soldiers hidden among refugees. The Chinese government left for relocation on December 1, and the president left on December 7, leaving the fate of Nanjing to an International Committee led by John Rabe, a German national. This novel has been translated into Chinese and Russian. [67], Soon after the fall of the city, Japanese troops made a thorough search for Chinese soldiers and summarily arrested thousands of young Chinese men. A 42-part ROC documentary produced in 1995, entitled "An Inch of Blood For An Inch of Land . The soldiers killed her with a revolver. [43], By contrast Yoshiaki Itakura adopted an even stricter standard than Hata, advocating that only Chinese soldiers captured in uniform and then killed be included as massacre victims. [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. Nanjing Death Toll Graph. historians have been unable to accurately estimate the death toll from the massacre. The Nanking Safety Zone was demarcated through the use of Red Cross Flags.[25]. [60] On 13 December 1937, John Rabe wrote in his diary: It is not until we tour the city that we learn the extent of destruction. The total death toll of the Nanking Massacre is a highly contentious subject in Chinese and Japanese historiography. Nanjing had been constantly bombed for days and the Chinese troops that remained there were disheartened and had taken to drinking before the city's inevitable fall. The first was to Chiang through an American ambassador in Hankow, asking that Chinese forces "undertake no military operations" within Nanjing. We thus have a total of more than 300,000 victims. Yoshida has argued that the Nanjing Massacre has figured in the attempts of all three nations as they work 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. Numerological arguments about the death count and distinctions of comparative atrocities do not address this point. [9] The number of Chinese soldiers in plain clothes that were executed is estimated to be around 4,000. Yang Daqing, "Convergence or Divergence? The speed of the army's advance was likely due to commanders allowing looting and rape along the way. They were about to rape the girls when the grandmother tried to protect them. Let me recount some instances occurring in the last two days. [27][50] French historian Jean-Louis Margolin, for instance, has strongly criticized Honda's argument, noting that "As, in our present knowledge, it is impossible to get convincing figures for such large areas, such methods may be considered as attempts to blur hopelessly the debate. Each girl was raped six or seven times daily reported December 18th. place the death toll on a much wider scale from 40,000 to 300,000. [57] Nanking Massacre studies in Japan eventually became divided into three camps based on their death toll estimates: the "illusion" school of Nanking Massacre deniers, the "great massacre" school which believes hundreds of thousands were killed, and the "middle-of-the-road" or "centrist" school which puts the number in the tens of thousands. The death toll has been actively contested among scholars since the 1980s, with typical estimates ranging from 40,000 to over 300,000. There was considerable destruction to areas outside the city walls. [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. The novel itself was based on interviews that Ishikawa conducted with troops in Nanjing in January 1938. A Japanese hotelier's denial of a 1937 massacre by Japanese troops in the Chinese city of Nanjing has prompted Chinese social media calls for a boycott of travel to Japan, threatening tourist . All three men were found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to death. It would seem according to stories told us by foreign witnesses that the soldiers were let loose like a barbarian horde to desecrate the city. [21] By contrast Bob Wakabayashi sets the bar higher and believes that the estimate of 40,000 victims put forward by Ikuhiko Hata is the lowest reasonable estimate of the total death toll and considers numbers below this to be attempts at minimizing the atrocity. The two men were described as vying to be the first to kill 100 people with a sword before the capture of Nanjing. It was truly a regrettable act of barbarity. [36], From December 13, 1937, the Japanese Army engaged in random murder, wartime rape, looting, arson, and other war crimes. [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. Akira Fujiwara, "Nitch Sens ni Okeru Horyo Gyakusatsu2, John G. Gagee, Case 9, Film 4, Folder 7, Box 263, Record Group 8, Special Collection, Yale Divinity School Library, cited in, "A Debt of Blood: An Eyewitness Account of the Barbarous Acts of the Japanese Invaders in Nanjing.". The American ambassador in Hankow replied that although he supported Rabe's proposal for a ceasefire, Chiang did not. In 1986 Ikuhiko Hata became the first historian to call this definition into question. [17], In 2005, a Tokyo district judge dismissed a suit by the families of the lieutenants, stating that "the lieutenants admitted the fact that they raced to kill 100 people" and that the story cannot be proven to be clearly false. Asaka denied the existence of any massacre and claimed never to have received complaints about the conduct of his troops.[119]. [8] These events are collectively known as the Nanking Massacre. [127], On October 9, 2015, Documents of the Nanjing Massacre have been listed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. In 1995, Daniel Kwan held a photo exhibit in Los Angeles titled, "The Forgotten Holocaust". The civilian government of Nanjing fled, leaving the city under the de facto control of German citizen John Rabe, who had founded the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone. Because dead bodies don't talk. A People's Liberation Army honour guard bearing large funeral wreaths marched slowly past a memorial showing the figure 3,00,000, China's official death toll in the events of December 1937, as . Men, women and children were killed in uncounted numbers throughout the city. Last night the house of one of the Chinese staff members of the university was broken into and two of the women, his relatives, were raped. [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. Although most sources suggest that the final phase of the battle consisted of a one-sided slaughter of Chinese troops by the Japanese, some Japanese historians maintain that the remaining Chinese military still posed a serious threat to the Japanese. As vying to be the first to kill 100 people with a sword before the of... 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