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Genocide in China: Nanking's Other History

Dawne Hendrix - 3/17/2005

Nanking is a city widely known for its great literary, political, and artistic contributions to Chinese culture; and in the history of the city, one can learn about the extravagant tombs, palaces, and museums, for it was considered to be a cultural hub. However, it seems that when looking at this city's history in the twentieth century, one major event is not really mentioned. This history relates to the massacre that occurred right before the official beginning of the Second World War.

When thinking about World War II, the United States tends to view it from a narrow perspective. For many living in the West, World War II conjures up images of Nazi soldiers terrorizing and murdering Jewish people. In fact, the numerous retellings and historical documents related to just the Jewish Holocaust are so numerous it would be impossible to list them. However, many do not realize just before the time period many Americans/Westerners view as the commencement of the Second World War another genocide was being visited upon the citizens of China. The massacre that occurred in Nanking, China, beginning with the fall of the great city in 1937 and ending in the summer of 1945, is yet another example of the way countries bury shame associated with their atrocities.

The massacre was probably one of the bloodiest in history and was one in which the depths of human deprivation reached a whole new low. According to Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanking, "Tens of thousands of young men were rounded up and herded to the outer areas of the city, where they were mowed down by machine guns, used for bayonet practice, or soaked with gasoline and burned alive"(4). This is only what they did to the men, as the women suffered greater degradations. By the end of the slaughter, close to 300,000 soldiers and civilian men, women and children had been murdered by the Japanese army that occupied the city beginning in December of 1937, and 300,000 is a conservative estimate. Furthermore, murder is the most appropriate word used for this discussion because, as Chang describes in her book, the Japanese soldiers "systematically killed the city dwellers as they conducted house-to-house searches for Chinese soldiers in Nanking"(46). She asserts, in her telling of this shameful period in Japanese history, the killing was unrelenting while the corpses "piled up outside the city walls, along the river (which literally turned red with blood), by ponds and lakes, and on hills and mountains"(46).

Throughout the Chang's discourse of the murderous rampage, she describes the numerous ways the Japanese soldiers set about dispatching Chinese men-both civilian and military. One way was by using the Chinese men for bayonet practice, the cruelty being that each man watched the deaths of the others while awaiting his own fate. Other methods were to lure the men with promises of security as long as they complied and then to line them up for beheading. In addition to the threat of physical violence, faced sexual violence, as the Chinese men "were sodomized or forced to perform a variety of repulsive sexual acts in front of laughing soldiers"(95). In war, it is common for the occupying army to inflict terror in the community that it is being conquered to subjugate the people; but the wanton and unchecked murder and degradation that occurred during this period reached a new low in the development of humans as rational, civilized beings.

While the men were often killed in brutal ways, the women had even more viciousness visited upon them. The rapes, and subsequent murders, became so common that women feared venturing away from home for the threat of assault. The Japanese men were not discriminatory in their rapes either, for they ravaged women as old as 80 and as young as eight. Chang documents copious cases of women and young girls being forced into sexual bondage. In one case, she writes, "Chinese witnesses described the body of an eleven-year-old who had died after she was raped continuously for two days: 'According to eyewitness reports, the blood stained, swollen and ruptured area between the girl's legs created a disgusting scene difficult for anyone to look at directly'"(94). Other women were kidnapped and made to serve the Japanese soldiers as prostitutes in brothels. The worst part about the whole event, as Chang explains, is that surviving the rape only meant that the girl or woman would face a different type of victimization because her honor, in a sense, was ruined.

All in all, the rape of this city was so devastating it became a ghost town, as many were frightened away for at least two years. It seems really odd that such an atrocity happened without the knowledge of the world; but the world did know what was occurring. The world simply just did not address the situation. Chang asserts that the world did know about the massacre because reporters from both America and Japan divulged the events that unfolded. However, at some point for damage control, the Japanese government sealed off the city as to avoid reporters from coming in. In addition, to add in their desire to cover up their transgressions, the Japanese impeded foreign diplomats and other visitors from returning to Nanking. This attempt to seal the flow of information worked as the Japanese, in addition to barring foreign individuals from coming into the city, "launch[ed] a blitz of propaganda, which they hoped would somehow obscure the details of one of the greatest bloodbaths of world history"(149). Even though many foreigners who remained in the city were able to smuggle bits and pieces of information to the public, the Japanese managed to wield such a public relations campaign that they nullified any attempts at putting the spotlight on this tragedy-at least temporarily. Ultimately, because the Japanese effectively were able to control what communications were released, they, in effect at least until the ending of the War, could continue to create unchecked havoc upon this community. The control over the media lasted only until the end of the war after which many of these "written reports, photographs, and even films of Japanese atrocities found their way into the world media"(157).

Probably the most devastating part of this whole catastrophe is what occurred after the Japanese left Nanking. To begin, for a while, it appeared as if those individuals who were guilty of first and second hand knowledge of the rapes and massacre would be punished, and some were. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) set about trying and punishing Japanese war criminals. Documents report that almost 800 affidavits and depositions were included and the trial itself included 49,000 pages of transcripts; in its scope and length, it is recorded as one of the longest trial in history lasting two and a half years, "three times as long as the Nuremburg trials"(172). By the end of the trial, most of the culpability fell on the shoulders of Matsui Iwane, Commander of Japan's Central China Expeditionary Force. Whether he was entirely at fault for the tragedy continues to be debated. Sadly, though, many of the perpetrators central to this assault on the city of Nanking remained unpunished and never went to court.

When all was said and done, as reported by Chang, the survivors were left with not only the economic devastation that was left but also the psychological oppression that accompanies a trauma of this magnitude. For many years after the Nanking massacre, survivors remained silent, vanishing from public scrutiny. Some of the reasons for this vanishing act may have to do with the fact that right after this period China entered the Cultural Revolution, which was a time when the Chinese remained isolated from the rest of the world.

But Chang also cites the way in which the Japanese war criminals were handled, in comparison to the German war criminals, as an explanation of why the Japanese escaped international scrutiny. First of all, many more German war criminals were forced to acknowledge their crimes, in addition to the fact Germany had to reconcile with its complicity in the attempted genocide of the Jewish people. Conversely, the Japanese government, as Chang asserts, "has never forced itself or Japanese society to do the same"(200). For this reason, many of the Japanese treat the tragedy as one of individual incidents, which allows them to escape culpability. In addition to this delusion and distortion of history, the fact is that there are Japanese scholars and politicians, for one Ishihara Shintaro, that believe that continuously repeating that the Japanese pillaged this community only serves to tarnish the reputation of Japan. Though, by hiding the details or not even acknowledging these atrocities occurred, the Japanese have done nothing but pique the interest of the world as to why this issue has never been addressed.

To that end, it seems to make sense why the Japanese government would not address this issue, as it is a blight on the character of the nation in addition to the possible financial costs associated with compensating victims for their losses. However, by not addressing this issue through reparations, or even an apology, the Japanese will never "achieve closure on a dark chapter that stained its history"(225).

* Parts of the article are referenced to Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. Penguin Books: United States of America, 1998.