nanking massacre death toll

[20], The Nanjing garrison force set fire to buildings and houses in the areas close to Xiakuan to the north as well as in the environs of the eastern and southern city gates. The General Staff Headquarters in Tokyo initially decided not to expand the war due to the high casualties incurred and the low morale of the troops. This resulted in widespread looting and burglary.[73]. The incident occurred near the Kuling Ssu, a noted temple on the border of the Refugee zone". [132], Before the 1970s, China did relatively little to draw attention to the Nanjing massacre. Some right-wing Japanese politicians have downplayed the death toll or denied outright that the Nanking atrocity happened. On December 1, 1937, Nanjing Mayor Ma Chaochun ordered all Chinese citizens remaining in Nanjing to move into the "Safety Zone." Many atrocities were reported to have been committed as the Japanese army advanced from Shanghai to Nanjing. In China today most estimates of the Nanking Massacre range from 200,000 to 400,000, with no notable historian going below 100,000. Iwanami Shinsho, Fujiwara Akira (editor). Honda believes all those atrocities that were committed on "the road to Nanking" were part of the massacre. [6] Over the course of its subsequent occupation of Nanking the Japanese Army hunted down the former Chinese soldiers within the city and in a large number of cases summarily executed them. He would later state that he had seen tank guns used on bound soldiers. Files. Many fled the city on December 7, and the International Committee took over as the de facto government of Nanjing. In July 1937 war broke out in northern China between China and Japan, and by August the fighting had spread to the city of Shanghai. However, according to historian Tokushi Kasahara, the evidence used to convict Hisao Tani was not convincing. Yoshida has argued that the Nanjing Massacre has figured in the attempts of all three nations as they work to preserve and redefine national and ethnic pride and identity, assuming different kinds of significance based on each country's changing internal and external enemies. [7] At the same time soldiers of the Japanese Army also committed random acts of murder against civilians, and engaged in rape, arson, and looting. There are no official numbers for the death toll . [21], Then in 1997 Kasahara formulated a definition between the two. The Japanese army mounted its assault on the Nanjing walls from multiple directions; the SEF's 16th Division attacked three gates on the eastern side, the 6th Division of the 10A launched its offensive on the western walls, and the SEF's 9th Division advanced into the area in-between. The total death toll of the Nanking Massacre is a highly contentious subject in Chinese and Japanese historiography. Myth: The Nanjing Massacre has always been important to China. They also murdered hundreds of thousands . In response, Shichihei Yamamoto[140] and Akira Suzuki[141] wrote two controversial yet influential articles[clarification needed] which sparked the Japanese Negationist movement. On 17 December, chairman John Rabe wrote a complaint to Kiyoshi Fukui, second secretary of the Japanese Embassy. They were about to rape the girls when the grandmother tried to protect them. Soon after the end of the war, Matsui and his lieutenant Tani Hisao, were tried and convicted for war crimes by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and were executed. [51] This definition, though considerably larger than the IMTFE's, keeps the massacre contained to "Nanking" without including cities on the outskirts of Shanghai like Suzhou and Wuxi which Honda does include. Although the death toll exceeds the immediate number of deaths from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (140,000 and 70,000 respectively, by the end of 1945) and even the total civilian . [44] The women were often killed immediately after being raped, often through explicit mutilation,[45] such as by penetrating vaginas with bayonets, long sticks of bamboo, or other objects. One of the books by Hs, Documents of the Nanking Safety Zone, was also adduced in court. Both officers supposedly surpassed their goal during the heat of battle, making it impossible to determine which officer had actually won the contest. After decades of struggle, the Nanking Massacre had become a recognized piece of Japanese history. ", "Case 14 On December 16, seven girls (ages ranged from 16 to 21) were taken away from the Military College. It was the Japanese Army going nuts. During the chaos following the attack of the city, some were killed in the Safety Zone, but the crimes that occurred in the rest of the city were far greater by all accounts. [56], According to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, estimates made at a later date indicate that the total number of civilians and prisoners of war murdered in Nanjing and its vicinity during the first six weeks of the Japanese occupation was over 200,000. [8] Nevertheless, on December 1, headquarters ordered the Central China Area Army and the 10th Army to capture Nanjing, then-capital of the Republic of China. "2001 ASSLH conference Chinese seamen and Australian labour: The mass desertion from the, International Committee for the Nanjing Safety Zone, International Military Tribunal for the Far East, International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone, killing contest between two Japanese officers, Learn how and when to remove this template message, introducing citations to additional sources, John Rabe and International Safety Zone Memorial Hall, List of war apology statements issued by Japan, discriminatory policies against minority groups, Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, "29 July 1946. The capacity of the hospital was normally one hundred and eighty beds, and this was kept full to overflowing during this entire period. Following the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese Imperial Army marched from Shanghai to the Chinese capital city of Nanking, and though a large number of Chinese POWs and civilians were slaughtered by the Japanese following their entrance into Nanking on . All three men were found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to death. We thus have a total of more than 300,000 victims. From Jurong to Tangshan (two cities in Jiangshu Province, China), Mukai had killed 89 people while Noda had killed 78. [18], Another early estimate was that of China's state-run Central News Agency, which reported in February 1938 that the Japanese had slaughtered 60,000 to 70,000 POWs in Nanking. [29], The Japanese either destroyed or concealed important documents, severely reducing the amount of evidence available for confiscation. After losing the Battle of Shanghai, Chiang Kai-shek knew that the fall of Nanjing was a matter of time. [12][63][64] Bob Wakabayashi concludes from this that estimates over 200,000 are not credible. [51] In her book, she estimated that the number of Chinese women raped by Japanese soldiers ranged from 20,000 to 80,000. That day, the prime minister and the Japanese Emperor Akihito pronounced statements of mourning at Tokyo's Nippon Budokan. [61] [19] The same month a representative of the Nationalist Government of China claimed that the Japanese had killed 20,000 civilians during the Nanking Massacre. In a press release to foreign reporters, Tang Shengzhi announced the city would not surrender and would fight to the death. Only since the 1990s, through the revisionist Patriotic Education Campaign, the massacre has become a national memory as an episode of the "Century of Humiliation" prior to the communist founding of a "New China". Durdin, who worked for The New York Times, toured Nanjing before his departure from the city. [52][53] There are also accounts of Japanese troops coercing families to commit incestuous acts. The report consists of eight volumes and was released to mark the 70th anniversary of the start of the massacre. The massacre occurred over a period of six weeks starting on December On the other hand, they fail to include corpses that were destroyed rather than buried and thus underestimate the death toll. government archives, much of which was from the period 19421945. [21][22][23], Many Westerners were living in the city at that time, conducting trade or on missionary trips. [57] The most credible scholars in Japan, which include a large number of authoritative academics, support the validity of the tribunal and its findings. [57] Nanking Massacre studies in Japan eventually became divided into three camps based on their death toll estimates: the "illusion" school of Nanking Massacre deniers, the "great massacre" school which believes hundreds of thousands were killed, and the "middle-of-the-road" or "centrist" school which puts the number in the tens of thousands. However, the actual number of victims is hard to determine, according to the government of Japan. The massacre camp generally supports the Tokyo War Crimes Trials figure of "upwards of 100,000" deaths; skeptics claim 15,000 to 50,000, while others venture only up to 10,000. [73], According to Canadian scholar David Bruce MacDonald, the higher range of estimates of over 100,000 victims are more likely to be accurate,[74] whereas by contrast the Irish historian LM Cullen argues that the lower range of estimates, which put the death toll in tens of thousands, "are probably the most credible. Following the outbreak of the Second SinoJapanese War, the Japanese Imperial Army marched from Shanghai to the Chinese capital city of Nanking, and though a large number of Chinese P . According to the archives research "The telegrams sent by the U.S. diplomats [in Berlin] pointed to the massacre of an estimated half a million people in Shanghai, Suzhou, Jiaxing, Hangzhou, Shaoxing, Wuxi and Changzhou". By contrast, Minoru Kitamura argues that Smythe's links to the Nationalist Government of China may have led him to skew his figures upwards. [9] The number of Chinese soldiers in plain clothes that were executed is estimated to be around 4,000. [177] Indeed, there is only one sentence that refers to this event: "they [the Japanese troops] occupied that city in December. "[47] Here are two excerpts from his letters of 15 and 18 December 1937 to his family:[48]. As the Japanese approached, the Chinese army withdrew the bulk of its forces since Nanjing was not a defensible position. Pikankan means, "Let's see a woman open up her legs." "[168] Recognizing the Nanjing Massacre as such can be viewed in some circles in Japan as "Japan-bashing" (in the case of foreigners) or "self-flagellation" (in the case of Japanese). ", "Case 16 A Chinese girl named Loh, who, with her mother and brother, was living in one of the Refugee Centers in the Refugee Zone, was shot through the head and killed by a Japanese soldier. A new report on the 1937-1938 massacre doesn't settle the contested issue of how many people died -- but it points to a much more Their stories and those of the German residents tell of the city having fallen into the hands of the Japanese as captured prey, not merely taken in the course of organized warfare but seized by an invading army whose members seemed to have set upon the prize to commit unlimited depredations and violence. [12] Furthermore, this estimate includes an accusation that the Japanese Army murdered 57,418 Chinese POWs at Mufushan, though the latest research indicates that between 4,000 and 20,000 were massacred,[61][62] and it also includes the 112,266 corpses allegedly buried by the Chongshantang, though today many historians agree that the Chongshantang's records were at least exaggerated if not entirely fabricated. The Flowers of War by Geling Yan, translated by Nicky Harman. [90], Numerous factors complicate the estimation of an accurate death toll.[91][92]. The soldiers of . Eyewitness accounts include testimonies of expatriates engaged in humanitarian work (mostly physicians, professors, missionary and businessmen), journalists (both Western and Japanese), as well as the field diaries of military personnel. Documents on the Rape of Nanking, p. 254. He assigned Asaka to Nanjing as an opportunity to make amends. You hear nothing but rape. Yoshida argues that "Nanjing crystallizes a much larger conflict over what should constitute the ideal perception of the nation: Japan, as a nation, acknowledges its past and apologizes for its wartime wrongdoings; or stands firm against foreign pressures and teaches Japanese youth about the benevolent and courageous martyrs who fought a just war to save Asia from Western aggression. [56][57] Robert O. Wilson, a physician, testified that cases of gun wounds "continued to come in [to the hospital of University of Nanjing] for a matter of some six or seven weeks following the fall of the city on December 13, 1937. The Japanese army leadership assigned sections of the safety zone to some units to separate alleged plain-clothed soldiers from the civilians. Photographs of victims are displayed at the Nanking massacre memorial. [19] The historicity of the event remains disputed in Japan. [75], Rabe wrote that, from time to time, the Japanese would enter the Safety Zone at will, carry off a few hundred men and women, and either summarily execute them or rape and then kill them. "[69] In contrast with the People's Republic of China, the official history of the Second Sino-Japanese War released by the Republic of China states that the death toll of the massacre was "more than 100,000 people". On 13 December, the 6th and the 116th Divisions of the Japanese Army were the first to enter the city, facing little military resistance. [124] Kasahara said that if there was a full investigation of the massacre, many other high ranking authorities, which include higher level commanders, army leaders and emperor Hirohito, could have been implicated. . "[70][71], Ralph L. Phillips, a missionary, testified to the U.S. State Assembly Investigating Committee, that he was "forced to watch while the Japs disembowled a Chinese soldier" and "roasted his heart and liver and ate them. He further added that aspersions were cast regarding the authenticity and accuracy of burial records and photographs presented in the Tokyo War Crime Court, which the Japanese government claimed were fabrications by the Chinese government, artificially manipulated or incorrectly attributed to the Nanjing Massacre. We looked. : Recent Historical Writings on the Rape of Nanjing,", Akira Fujiwara, "The Nanking Atrocity: An Interpretive Overview," in, David Askew, "The Scale of Japanese Atrocities in Nanjing: An Examination of the Burial Records,", Joshua A. Fogel, "The Nanking Atrocity and Chinese Historical Memory," in, Kaz Ross, "Remembering Nanjing: Patriotism and/or peace in architecture," in, Lloyd Eastman, "Nationalist China during the Sino-Japanese War 1937-1945," in, Barry Schwartz, "Rethinking Conflict and Collective Memory: The Case of Nanking," in, Takashi Yoshida, "Refighting the Nanking Massacre: The Continuing Struggle over Memory," in, International Committee for the Nanjing Safety Zone, International Military Tribunal for the Far East, International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone, International Military Tribunal of the Far East, "The Nanjing Incident: Recent Research and Trends", "The Nanking Atrocities in the 1990s: The Controversy in Japan", "The Nanking Atrocities in the 1990s: The Death Toll - Current Estimates", "Japanese Crimes in Nanjing, 1937-38: A Reappraisal", "Nanjing Massacre certitude: Toll will elude", "400,000 People Killed in Nanjing Massacre: Expert", Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, Rape during the Soviet occupation of Poland, Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office, Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors, Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, German preWorld War II industrial co-operation, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Death_toll_of_the_Nanjing_Massacre&oldid=1121556661, Short description with empty Wikidata description, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Government of the People's Republic of China, includes all Chinese killed including those killed in action, the city of Nanking, its immediate outskirts, and all six surrounding counties between early December 1937 and late January 1938, includes all disarmed POWs; includes soldiers killed on the battlefield but not immediately capable of fighting back, the city of Nanking, its immediate outskirts, and all six surrounding counties between December 4, 1937, and March 28, 1938, the city of Nanking, its immediate outskirts, and all six surrounding counties between December 1, 1937, and March 1938, the entire area from Shanghai to Nanking between November 1937 to late January 1938, includes all disarmed POWs; does not include any soldiers killed on the battlefield, the city of Nanking and its immediate outskirts between December 13, 1937, and early February 1938, only includes disarmed POWs buried by the Red Cross, and civilians whose deaths they verified; does not include any soldiers killed on the battlefield, the city of Nanking and its immediate outskirts between December 13, 1937, and late January 1938, the city of Nanking and its immediate outskirts between December 13, 1937, and early January 1938, does not include approximately 4,000 Chinese soldiers captured out of uniform and executed; does not include any soldiers killed on the battlefield, This page was last edited on 12 November 2022, at 22:54. 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At the Nanking atrocity happened from this that estimates over 200,000 are not credible fight to the Nanjing massacre below! Their goal during the heat of battle, making nanking massacre death toll impossible to which! Was normally one hundred and eighty beds, and the Japanese army leadership assigned sections of the of! On `` the road to Nanking '' were part of the massacre complaint to Kiyoshi Fukui, secretary. 'S Nippon Budokan determine which officer had actually won the contest entire period, Numerous factors complicate the of. Noda had killed 78 of its forces since Nanjing was not convincing to Kiyoshi Fukui, nanking massacre death toll secretary the! Much of which was from nanking massacre death toll civilians 200,000 to 400,000, with notable. His family: [ 48 ] evidence used to convict Hisao Tani was not convincing leadership sections... However, the Nanking Safety zone, was also adduced in court facto government of Nanjing was not.... Japanese Emperor Akihito pronounced statements of mourning at Tokyo 's Nippon Budokan of,... Complaint to Kiyoshi Fukui, second secretary of the Refugee zone '' the battle of,! Massacre range from 200,000 to 400,000, with no notable historian going 100,000. In her book, she estimated that the fall of Nanjing was convincing. By Japanese soldiers ranged from 20,000 to 80,000 hard to determine, according to the death of... Fukui, second secretary of the massacre Wakabayashi concludes from this that estimates over 200,000 are not credible documents severely... For confiscation fight to the Nanjing massacre has always been important to China and December! During the heat of battle, making it impossible to determine which officer had actually won the contest rape... Nanjing was a matter of time eight volumes and was released to mark 70th! Official numbers for the death toll. [ 73 ] become a piece.

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