The Rape of Nanking and its Aftermath: How a Genocidal Event Shaped Sino-Japanese Relations After World War II

by zreynolds22 (student)

University Degree Historical and Philosophical studies

Zach Reynolds

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History I: Paul Hamel

June 1, 2010

The Rape of Nanking and its Aftermath: How a Genocidal Event Shaped Sino-Japanese Relations After World War II

“In my garden, about 70 girls and women are on their knees, banging their heads against the ground. Their weeping and wailing would melt a heart of stone. They don’t want to leave my garden camp, because they are quite rightly afraid that they will be raped by Japanese soldiers.” This diary entry was written on February 3, 1938 by John Rabe, a German businessman who saved over 250,000 lives in Nanking (Nanjing). Even though Rabe was able to save so many people, the Rape of Nanking is still known as one of the bloodiest massacres in history; the Japanese army systematically raped, tortured and murdered more than 300,000 Chinese civilians. In order to understand the Rape of Nanking, one must examine the events leading up to the massacre, the event itself, and the relationship between China and Japan over the last fifty years.

Events leading up to the Rape of Nanking demonstrate the strong desire of the Japanese army to invade China. In 1931, Japan created a pretext for invading China by setting off explosions and blaming it on China. “[The deliberate Japanese train explosion] gave the Japanese an excuse to seize Manchuria, which was renamed Manchukuo and where the Japanese installed Pu Yi, the last Emperor of China and heir of the Manchu Dynasty, as puppet ruler.” The seizure of Manchuria was an opportunity for Japan to check the Nationalists’ power. Moreover, by 1937, the Japanese government found the opportunity to test the Chinese military’s ability to respond to an attack: “…an accidental clash occurred outside Beijing and, when the Chinese did not back down, the Japanese army was forced to choose between withdrawal and full military assault.” Feeling militarily superior to China, Japan decided to invade, “…hoping that a quick defeat would topple Chiang [Kai-Shek], neutralize China, and free Japanese troops for expected confrontations with the Soviet Union.” The invasion of China was the first step of Japanese aggression toward China in the 1930s, and allowed for later military access to Nanking, China’s capital.

The Japanese had a well-strategized plan to capture Nanking, and were able to commit their horrible acts against the Chinese populace in part by deceiving the citizens. Their first step was to converge upon “…Nanking in a semi-circular front from the southeast, [so that] the Japanese could use the natural barrier of the [Yangtze River]…” By using the river, the Japanese essentially trapped everyone in the city and prevented all escape from the massacre. When the troops arrived at the city walls on December 13, 1937, “…they entered a city in which they were vastly outnumbered. Historians later estimated that more than half a million civilians and ninety thousand Chinese troops were trapped in Nanking, compared to the fifty thousand Japanese soldiers who assaulted the city.” Because the Japanese were outnumbered, it forced them to be extremely aggressive, and they employed deception to dupe the Chinese into not feeling threatened by their presence. Because an all out attack would not work, they used an incremental strategy to effect their plan for total annihilation: “… promising the Chinese fair treatment in return for an end to resistance, coaxing them into surrendering themselves to their Japanese conquerors, dividing them into groups of one to two hundred men, and then luring them to different areas near Nanking to be killed.” From the above examples it is apparent that the Japanese military outsmarted the Chinese and that this lead directly to the destruction of Nanking.

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In Nanking, the Japanese soldiers brutally raped and murdered thousands of innocent civilians. In one of the only remaining first-hand accounts of the events, John Rabe records on December 17th: “Last night up to one thousand women and girls are said to have been raped, about 100 girls at Ginling Girls College alone. You hear of nothing but rape. If husbands or brothers intervene, they’re shot. What you hear and see on all sides are the brutality and bestiality of the Japanese soldiery.” With virtually all foreign media absent, the Japanese could commit terrible crimes with impunity. Because they were ...

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…planes dropped pamphlets saying that all civilians would be ‘treated humanely in all respects’ -- soon gave way to frustration, then horror and despair. ‘We come across corpses every 100 to 200 yards,’ [Rabe] writes on Dec. 13, 1937, the day after the Japanese took control. ‘The bodies of civilians that I examined had bullet holes in their backs. These people had presumably been fleeing and were shot from behind.’ (Wudunn).

The Japanese soldiers massacred Chinese military and civilians alike, not distinguishing between soldiers and non-combatants:

By the end of the massacre an estimated 260,000 to 350,000 Chinese had been killed. Between 20,000 and 80,000 Chinese women were raped --and many soldiers went beyond rape to disembowel women, slice off their breasts, nail them alive to walls. So brutal were the Japanese in Nanking that even the Nazis in the city were shocked.

The Japanese soldiers were extremely cruel and inhumane to the innocent civilians, disemboweling women, and shooting people in the backs. The Nazis, arguably the most violent and aggressive army in contemporary history, were shocked at the atrocities that the Imperial Army had committed. The Japanese soldiers seemingly killed everyone who had not fled the city, and as a result, John Rabe created the Nanking safety zone in order to save as many innocent people as he could from inevitable death.

The Nanking safety zone saved over a quarter of a million civilians from the Japanese assault on Nanking. John Rabe, who was in charge of the local Nazi party, worked honorably and incredibly hard with other foreigners “…to save the innocent from slaughter by creating a safety zone where some 250,000 civilians found shelter.” The safety zone was a safe haven in which Japanese soldiers were not allowed under international law. However, they did not always adhere to this law. For example, on December 18, 1937, at 6 p.m., John Rabe returned home to find:

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…a pair of Japanese soldiers who had entered by way of the garden wall. One of the two has already taken off his uniform and sidearm and is about to violate one of the girls among the refugees, when I come up and demand he return at once the same way he came.

The soldiers had such a rage to kill and rape that on some occasions they jumped over the safety zone wall to seek victims protected by John Rabe. In one attempt to raid the safety zone, “Six Japanese climbed over my garden wall and attempted to open the gates from the inside. When I arrive and shine my flashlight in the face of one of the bandits, he reaches for his pistol, but his hands drops quickly enough when I yell at him and hold my swastika arm band under his nose.” Because the Japanese and the Nazis were allies during World War II, Rabe commanded respect from the Japanese soldiers, and in this instance, saved many peoples’ lives because of it. Despite many attempts to penetrate the walls of the safety zone by the Japanese soldiers, it saved many innocent peoples’ lives and is viewed as one of the most heroic acts in defiance of the countless horrific atrocities.

Despite a concerted cover up by the Japanese government in an effort to deny the Rape of Nanking ever occurred, many foreign nations, in particular the United States, were aware of the atrocities committed by the Imperial Army. During the early stages of the massacre, the Japanese felt tremendous pride, however, “…It was only later, after news of the sinking of the Panay and the butchering of Nanking citizens had met with international condemnation, that the Japanese government quickly tried to hide what its army had done and replaced the news with propaganda.” The Panay, a gunboat transporting Nanking refugees and foreign officials, represented foreign influence in China and once it was sunk it brought much negative Western attention to the events occurring in Nanking.

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After the outside world realized what atrocities had occurred, Japan started a propaganda campaign to mislead the world about what it had done to the citizens of Nanking. In order to cover up the “nauseating details” of what the soldiers did to Chinese citizens, the Japanese delayed the return of foreign diplomats to Nanking in an attempt to hide the truth. However, the Germans and the Americans saw through the subterfuge and understood what the Japanese did in Nanking. Once the Foreign representatives were planning to return to Nanking, “ ‘there were feverish cleanup efforts undertaken, [by the Japanese,] to remove the evidence of the senseless mass murders of civilians, women and children.’ ” Removing evidence from Nanking suggests that the Japanese understood what its military had done, and tried to cover it up in an effort to uphold its international status. However, to this day, the Japanese government has never formally apologized to China, and some leaders have never admitted that the Rape of Nanking even happened.

Today, many Chinese survivors feel betrayed by their government, which continues to forgive the Japanese for their actions in return for economic benefit, what is now known as “A Second Rape.” Survivors, despite all they had suffered, found comfort in knowing that some day Japan would apologize for all it had done: “This hope, however, was swiftly shattered when the People’s Republic of China (PRC), eager to forge an alliance with the Japanese to gain international legitimacy, announced various times that it had forgiven the Japanese…” Despite what the Japanese did to the citizens of Nanking, Chinese absolved the war crimes of the Japanese in favor of stronger economic ties. While many Japanese soldiers who raped and murdered thousands received full military pensions and benefits, “thousands of their victims suffered (and continue to suffer) lives of silent poverty, shame, or chronic physical and mental pain.” Indeed, Iris Chang documents, “One man who was nearly roasted alive by the Japanese during the Rape of Nanking told me that he wept uncontrollably when he heard rumors that the PRC had forgiven the Japanese for their past crimes. Another woman whose father was executed during the Nanking massacre said that her mother collapsed in a faint when the news of the prime minister’s visit reached her over the radio.” Clearly, the Chinese government believes that the economic benefits from a strong relationship with Japan strongly outweigh the sorrow and poverty in which the survivors live. It is hard to believe that the Chinese have any relationship with Japan after seventy years have passed without a formal apology for the war crimes it committed in Nanking.

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In the years since the Rape of Nanking, the relationship between China and Japan have been colored by a so-called “textbook war.” The Japanese Education Ministry stipulates that high school history textbook must be approved by the Japanese government, however the contents have been the source of conflict: “Reports of attempts to replace phrases such as 'Japan's aggression in China' with 'Japan's advance into China' have understandably created anger in countries that suffered hugely during the era of Japanese colonialism.” Countries such as China feel discriminated against because of the way in which the truth is altered in the textbooks. Because the Japanese youth, the audience of the textbooks, did not live during the Rape of Nanking, they are essentially being “brainwashed” to believe that Japan did not act wrongfully. In 2005, in an attempt to humiliate Japan, China “made sure that memories of the past would help to scupper Japan's hopes for the future,” in this case an influential seat on the UN Security Council. In contrast to how Japan chooses to teach its youth, the Chinese have textbooks that provide “comprehensive coverage of Japanese war crimes, with figures of fatalities, gruesome pictures, and even names of villages and individuals that had fallen victim to the aggression.” The Chinese have also built museums, most notably the one in Nanking, that are sites for patriotic education and for documenting the atrocities in an effort to make the future generations connect with the past. By seeing how the two countries teach history, one must pose the question, “What will happen when the youth of such close and internationally important countries grow up with vastly different perspectives on influential events that shaped modern history?”

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Even though the Chinese citizenry outnumbered the Japanese army when it entered Nanking in December of 1937, through deception, cunning and a brutal strategy of humiliation and destruction, the Imperial Army was able to commit terrible genocidal atrocities of rape, torture and murder with impunity for over a three-month period of time. Nanking was the capital city of China at the time, and a symbolic target for Japanese aggression. By the wholesale rape and murder of innocent civilians, Japan embarked on a war strategy of violent intimidation that, because of the absence of media presence or international observation, was unimpeded and unpunished. The final humiliation was China itself, turning away from the citizens of Nanking who had suffered so much, and allying itself with Japan, minimizing the affects of Japanese aggression and criminal acts against the populace for expedient economic and political motives. The world can learn from atrocities like the Rape of Nanking and its aftermath that genocidal acts of rape and murder for political goals can never be excused or forgotten. It is only by remembering history, however unpleasant that history may be, that we can prevent it from repeating over and over again.

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Bibliography

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