In December of 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army marched into China'scapital city of Nanking and proceeded to murder 300,000 out of 600,000civilians and soldiers in the city. The six weeks of carnage would becomeknown as the Rape of Nanking and represented the single worst atrocityduring the World War II era in either the European or Pacific theatersof war.
The actual military invasion of Nanking was preceded by a tough battleat Shanghai that began in the summer of 1937. Chinese forces there putup surprisingly stiff resistance against the Japanese Army which had expectedan easy victory in China. The Japanese had even bragged they would conquerall of China in just three months. The stubborn resistance by the Chinesetroops upset that timetable, with the battle dragging on through the summerinto late fall. This infuriated the Japanese and whetted their appetitefor the revenge that was to follow at Nanking.
After finally defeating the Chinese at Shanghai in November, 50,000Japanese soldiers then marched on toward Nanking. Unlike the troops atShanghai, Chinese soldiers at Nanking were poorly led and loosely organized.Although they greatly outnumbered the Japanese and had plenty of ammunition,they withered under the ferocity of the Japanese attack, then engaged ina chaotic retreat. After just four days of fighting, Japanese troops smashedinto the city on December 13, 1937, with orders issued to "kill allcaptives."
Their first concern was to eliminate any threat from the 90,000 Chinesesoldiers who surrendered. To the Japanese, surrender was an unthinkableact of cowardice and the ultimate violation of the rigid code of militaryhonor drilled into them from childhood onward. Thus they looked upon ChinesePOWs with utter contempt, viewing them as less than human, unworthy oflife.
The elimination of the Chinese POWs began after they were transportedby trucks to remote locations on the outskirts of Nanking. As soon as theywere assembled, the savagery began, with young Japanese soldiers encouragedby their superiors to inflict maximum pain and suffering upon individualPOWs as a way of toughening themselves up for future battles, and alsoto eradicate any civilized notions of mercy. Filmed footage and still photographstaken by the Japanese themselves document the brutality. Smiling soldierscan be seen conducting bayonet practice on live prisoners, decapitatingthem and displaying severed heads as souvenirs, and proudly standing amongmutilated corpses. Some of the Chinese POWs were simply mowed down by machine-gunfire while others were tied-up, soaked with gasoline and burned alive.
See AlsoWhy The Nanking Massacre Was One Of The Worst Acts Of Genocide During WW2Rape of Nanjing: Massacre, Facts & Aftermath | HISTORYNanking 1937: Sie zwangen Väter, ihre Töchter zu vergewaltigen - WELTJapan Carries Out the Rape of Nanking, 1937
Maps & Photo
Present day map of China showing location of Shanghai and Nanking (now called Nanjing).
Map of the Japanese Empire at its peak in 1942.
One of the last humans left alive after intense bombing duringthe Japanese attack on Shanghai's South Station. August 1937.
After the destruction of the POWs, the soldiers turned their attentionto the women of Nanking and an outright animalistic hunt ensued. Old womenover the age of 70 as well as little girls under the age of 8 were draggedoff to be sexually abused. More than 20,000 females (with some estimatesas high as 80,000) were gang-raped by Japanese soldiers, then stabbed todeath with bayonets or shot so they could never bear witness.
Pregnant women were not spared. In several instances, they were raped,then had their bellies slit open and the fetuses torn out. Sometimes, afterstorming into a house and encountering a whole family, the Japanese forcedChinese men to rape their own daughters, sons to rape their mothers, andbrothers their sisters, while the rest of the family was made to watch.
Throughout the city of Nanking, random acts of murder occurred as soldiersfrequently fired their rifles into panicked crowds of civilians, killingindiscriminately. Other soldiers killed shopkeepers, looted their stores,then set the buildings on fire after locking people of all ages inside.They took pleasure in the extraordinary suffering that ensued as the peopledesperately tried to escape the flames by climbing onto rooftops or leapingdown onto the street.
The incredible carnage - citywide burnings, stabbings, drownings, strangulations,rapes, thefts, and massive property destruction - continued unabated forabout six weeks, from mid-December 1937 through the beginning of February1938. Young or old, male or female, anyone could be shot on a whim by anyJapanese soldier for any reason. Corpses could be seen everywhere throughoutthe city. The streets of Nanking were said to literally have run red withblood.
Those who were not killed on the spot were taken to the outskirts ofthe city and forced to dig their own graves, large rectangular pits thatwould be filled with decapitated corpses resulting from killing conteststhe Japanese held among themselves. Other times, the Japanese forced theChinese to bury each other alive in the dirt.
After this period of unprecedented violence, the Japanese eased offsomewhat and settled in for the duration of the war. To pacify the populationduring the long occupation, highly addictive narcotics, including opiumand heroin, were distributed by Japanese soldiers to the people of Nanking,regardless of age. An estimated 50,000 persons became addicted to heroinwhile many others lost themselves in the city's opium dens.
In addition, the notorious Comfort Women system was introduced whichforced young Chinese women to become slave-prostitutes, existing solelyfor the sexual pleasure of Japanese soldiers.
News reports of the happenings in Nanking appeared in the official Japanesepress and also in the West, as page-one reports in newspapers such as theNew York Times. Japanese news reports reflected the militaristicmood of the country in which any victory by the Imperial Army resultingin further expansion of the Japanese empire was celebrated. Eyewitnessreports by Japanese military correspondents concerning the sufferings ofthe people of Nanking also appeared. They reflected a mentality in whichthe brutal dominance of subjugated or so-called inferior peoples was consideredjust. Incredibly, one paper, the Japan Advertiser, actually publisheda running count of the heads severed by two officers involved in a decapitationcontest, as if it was some kind of a sporting match.
In the United States, reports published in the New York Times,Reader's Digest and Time Magazine, were greeted with skepticismfrom the American public. The stories smuggled out of Nanking seemed almosttoo fantastic to be believed.
Overall, most Americans had only a passing knowledge or little interestin Asia. Political leaders in both America and Britain remained overwhelminglyfocused on the situation in Europe where Adolf Hitler was rapidly re-armingGermany while at the same time expanding the borders of the Nazi Reichthrough devious political maneuvers.
Back in Nanking, however, all was not lost. An extraordinary group ofabout 20 Americans and Europeans remaining in the city, composed of missionaries,doctors and businessmen, took it upon themselves to establish an InternationalSafety Zone. Using Red Cross flags, they brazenly declared a 2.5 square-milearea in the middle of the city off limits to the Japanese. On numerousoccasions, they also risked their lives by personally intervening to preventthe execution of Chinese men or the rape of women and young girls.
These Westerners became the unsung heroes of Nanking, working day andnight to the point of exhaustion to aid the Chinese. They also wrote downtheir impressions of the daily scenes they witnessed, with one describingNanking as "hell on earth." Another wrote of the Japanese soldiers:"I did not imagine that such cruel people existed in the modern world."About 300,000 Chinese civilians took refuge inside their Safety Zone. Almostall of the people who did not make it into the Zone during the Rape ofNanking ultimately perished.
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