Japan And The Second World War

Japan and the Second World War

The Nanking Massacre

The Nanking Massacre, Nanjing Massacre or also known as the Rape of Nanking, was one of the results of the attempt to annex Manchuria by the Imperial Japanese Army, after the capture of the city Nanking, on December 13, 1937, occurred during the following six-week period. This incident is well known because of the mass murder, genocide andwar rape performed by the Japanese soldiers to non-combatant Chinese men, women and children. [1] Different estimates of the casualties had been given: International Military Tribunal of the Far East (IMTFE) estimates more than 200,000; China's official estimate is about 300,000 casualties; Japanese historians vary estimating quantities between 40,000 to 200,000, respectively. [2]
The greatestsources of information from this incident are the diary of John Rabe (German Nazi who lived in Nanking who has been compared to Oskar Schindler because of being the reason to nearly 200,000 Chinese survived), Miner Bates (history professor at Nanking University), and Robert Wilson (last surgeon in Nanking). Rabe’s diary entry of December 16 says “the road to Hsiakwan is nothing but a field ofcorpses strewn with the remains of military equipment….There are executions everywhere, some are being carried out with machine guns outside the barracks of the War Ministry.” [3] Bates described in a letter on December 31 “more than ten thousand unarmed persons have been killed in cold blood. (…)These were Chinese soldiers who threw down their arms or surrendered after being trapped; and civiliansrecklessly shot and bayoneted, often without even the pretext that they were soldiers, including not a few women and children. Able German colleagues put the cases of rape at 20,000. (…) Girls as young as 11 and women as old as 53 have been raped on University property alone”. [4] Wilson, as a surgeon, saw tortured-half dead Chinese, cases involving burning, numerous bayonet wounds, and many ofthese being rape victims. [5]
Soldiers, like Azuma Shiro, describe what they did: “we took turns raping them. It would be all right if we only raped them. I shouldn't say all right. But we always stabbed and killed them. Because dead bodies don't talk.” [6] Most of these rapes were done by searches door-to-door looking for young girls. [7]
Around 1,300 Chinese soldiers and civilians were gathered atTaiping Gate, where they were blown up with landmines and set on fire, killing with bayonets the rest that were left alive. [8]
In April 1939, after the Japanese soldier actions had calmed, a research facility was opened: Unit Ei 1644. In here, Chinese were used as human guinea pigs. This facility stayed as a secret until scientist interrogated at the IMTFE confessed its existence. [9]

BataanDeath March

During the WWII, after the Battle of Bataan, thousands of American and Filipino soldiers surrendered to the Imperial Japanese Army; being around 75,000 persons (registers say 11,756 Americans and 66,304 Filipino soldiers). [10] The Bataan Death March was the result of the Japanese Army mobilization of these POWs in a march about 60 miles long. [11] The death toll has beenapproximately settled between 5,000 and 10,000 Filipino, and 600 to 650 American POWs, these dying before they could reach Camp O’Donnell (located in Capas). [12] The reasons of death were starvation, heat and exhaustion, be bayoneted if fell or being unable to march, dysentery and other diseases because of the crowded conditions and inadequate sanitation at the camps. [13]
The plan to move out the POWswas full of problems. The main problem for the Japanese Army was that, before the surrender of the troops, they were expecting that about 25,000 soldiers would surrender. The Japanese Army itself was 81,000 men, increasing by almost 100 percent their demands of supplies. Another problem was the distances that needed to be covered between camps: March a distance of 25 miles was considered normal...