Krishna
This is a very detailed description of one atrocity by the Japanese in China during the World War II. Very detailed and well researched, and also interesting to read.
The Asians count the start of WW II even earlier than Pearl Harbour or even the capture of Poland by Hitler in 1939. To them, Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1931 is the start. Japan set up a puppet government under the deposed emperor of China. The expansion continued until in 1937 Beijing and Nanking fell.
The atrocities of the Japanese conquerors is largely hidden but the ‘Rape of Nanking’ is well known due to accounts by foreigners who were there and accounts of some survivors. Tens of thousands of young men were taken to outer areas of city where they were mowed down by machine guns, used for bayonet target practice, or simply burned alive.
The number of casualties range from 260,000 to over 350,000. This was done in just a few weeks! The cruelty, though, belies imagination. Chinese women were raped enmasse, with fathers forced to rape the daughters and son their mothers forcing the rest of the family to watch.
Live burials, carving of organs, castration all became ripe. Babies were sliced. More cruel punishments were given but the Western literature gave this no notice, and the events were unknown outside Asia.
1853 Matthew Perry’s visit to Japan and humiliation of Shogun royalty shocked Japan who had insulated itself from the outside world. A riot followed by the people and Shogun dynasty was overthrown. The main reason is that, realizing the superior firepower of the Western nations, Japan decided not to retaliate.
. Restoration of the emperor followed. People’s attitude changed. Samurai code of Bushido was adapted as the model code for all Japanese citizens . With a single minded purpose, almost bordering on obsession, Japan set out to close the military gap with the western nations and succeeded in just a few short years.
Japan crushed China in Korea in 1865 and got Taiwan and other provinces. It was forced to give back Liaodong Peninsula by Russia, France and Germany.
After the crash of 1933 Japan sunk into penury since western powers preferred investing in China and not Japan and people started starving. The overwhelming feeling was that Japan was being victimized by another Western conspiracy to keep it subdued.
We also learn many things, Chinese expansion was always urged by ultranationalists in Japan as (then) the Japanese population was expanding and “other countries needed to be conquered and exploited to feed the growing number of mouths”. They were also predicting a giant battle between the Eastern Superpower Japan and the Western superpower The United States.
With the overthrow of the Qing dynasty, two centuries of Manchurian rule ended. When Chang Kai Shek unified China, Japan was alarmed that it was getting stronger militarily. So, in 1931 Japan sabotaged a Japan owned railway track hoping to engineer an accident. When that failed, they killed two Chinese guards, fabricated a story regarding saboteurs and used it as a pretext to conquer Manchuria. Chinese nationalists enraged rioted and attacked five Japanese Buddhist monks in Shanghai, killing one. Japan bombed Shanghai heavily in retaliation and stung by international opprobrium secluded itself once again and resigned from the League of Nations.
The army entering into Nanking was led by Nakajima Kesago, who was a sadist and cruel man and compared to “Himmler”. Even his biographers had no good word for him! Farmlands and even cities were razed to the ground in their path. Emperor Hitohito put Asaka as the commander just before the attack on Nanking, which made things worse for the Chinese.
Ninety thousand Chinese troops meekly surrendered to just 50000 Japanese troops, waving white flags of surrender, to be bound and then executed by Japanese troops. However, this caused contempt in Asaka’s eyes. He promised them good treatment, bound their hands. Separated them into groups and then executed every one of them. They were unaware of the treachery until the last moment, just like the Nazis deceived the Jews (See our review of Schindler’s List for those horrifying details.)
Then, with the Chinese army eliminated, they turn their attention on the civilians! The details are gruesome and heartrenching, especially the mass rape of women, followed by their murder ‘so that the truth will not be revealed in the future’.
The level of rape enraged Matsui who visited the place after recovering enough from Tuberculosis. In anger and desperation, he shared what he saw with The New York Times in particular and Americans in general. When the story leaked causing international opprobrium, the Japanese government’s response was to corral a huge number of ‘comfort women’ – most of them forcibly – so that ‘the instinct to rape would be lessened in Japanese soldiers’. When that was found out, Japan flatly denied it first and then claimed that it was done by private initiatives, not the government.
The women were kept in appalling conditions, not ‘comfort’ and were referred to as ‘public toilets’ by the Japanese soldiers who used them.
Not just that. The confessions by regretful Japanese soldiers of how they were turned from a human with sympathy for the unfortunate victims to feelingless killing machines – just in the span of three months – is chilling and shocking to read even now.
The rape and other cruelties meted out to all women captured by the Japanese soldiers almost inspires incredulity.
In the midst of all these horrors, it is heartwarming to read how Rabe, a German businessman and a Nazi, chose to save as many Chinese as possible through his courage, even going fearlessly outside his compound and chase away Japanese in the act of committing rape on innocent girls and even saving many by accommodating them in his compound. In the last, he resembles Schindler of the Schindler’s List fame.
There are other heroes – journalists and others – who bravely tried to save as many locals as possible.
The public denunciation of Stalin by Khuruschav is surprising but the expectations that the ‘winds of liberalization would now blow through USSR’ were not fulfilled at all.
The author rightly deplores the destruction of War Documents by the Japanese before McArthur even set foot with intent to investigate the war crimes. But she bemoans that an English book is not believed by many because it has unprovable claims and unverified sources. Really? I understand the angst of the cruelty of the Japanese to a Chinese province but how far would you go to ‘prove’ that the author was right, when several scholars argued that it was a fabrication?
She rightly points to the impunity enjoyed by the Royal family as a deliberate act by the Americans after the World War ended. (It is described from the American viewpoint more deeply in the book we have already reviewed titled Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan )
The author also describes why most of the Japanese war criminals were left ffree – due to the spread of communism – and how most of them continued to prosper and work while the Chinese victims continued to suffer. She ignores geopolitical reality and holds on to her righteous anger when she says that China did not push for reparations for the victims. Understandable? Yes. Pragmatic? Probably not. I am not defending everyone just moving on, and do not even agree with it, but all I am saying is that I understand why it happened.
The author seems to lament that Americans at least have either no knowledge of the atrocities or have clean forgotten it, while the gas chambers of the Nazi Concentration camps is writ large in their conscience.
However, the consistent attacks by the ultranationalists in Japan and threats and physical harm on anyone who dared refer to the atrocities during the Rape of Nanking are chilling to read. Example after example of journalists and politicians who dared report on the extent of Japanese military misbehaviour, let alone blame Emperor Hirohito for any of these are terrible to read.
The epilog is interesting too. The compilation of other authors’ opinion about what caused the complete lack of both discipline and compassion of Japanese military in China is a fascinating read.
Her fond wish is that with China and other victims of Japanese aggression gaining strength, Japan will be called upon to admit its atrocities. At the time of this writing, it just remains a fond hope of the author. (I am not condoning Japanese action or claiming Chinese news was exaggerated but just reporting facts as they are).
7/10
— Krishna