![]() The battle was bloody as both sides faced attrition in urban hand-to-hand combat. In August 1937, the Japanese army invaded Shanghai, where they met strong resistance and suffered heavy casualties. This accusation has even been made towards the Japanese version of this Wikipedia article ( 南京事件, "Nanjing Incident"), which has for several years been described as lacking pictures and expressing skepticism in the introduction. Historical revisionists and nationalists in Japan have been accused of minimizing or denying the massacre. The massacre has remained a wedge issue between modern China and Japan. Prince Asaka, as part of the Imperial Family, was granted immunity and never tried. ![]() ![]() Some other Japanese military leaders in charge at the time of the Nanjing Massacre were not tried only because by the time of the tribunals they had either already been killed or committed seppuku (ritual suicide). After the war, multiple Japanese military officers and Kōki Hirota, former Prime Minister of Japan and foreign minister during the atrocities, were found guilty of war crimes and executed. John Rabe's Safety Zone was mostly a success, and is credited with saving at least 200,000 lives. The massacre finally wound down in early 1938. However, most credible scholars in Japan, which include a large number of authoritative academics, support the validity of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and its findings. Due to multiple factors, death toll estimates vary from 40,000 to over 300,000, with rape cases ranging from 20,000 to over 80,000 cases. Chinese soldiers were summarily executed in violation of the laws of war, and looting and rape was widespread. They faced minimal resistance and ran entirely unchecked. ![]() The massacre began on December 13, the day the Japanese troops reached the city. Whether Asaka ordered the Rape, or simply stood by as it happened, is disputed, but he took no action to stop the carnage. On December 5, Prince Yasuhiko Asaka was installed as Japanese commander in the campaign. The civilian government of Nanjing fled, leaving the city under the de facto control of German citizen John Rabe, who had founded the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone. As the Japanese approached, the Chinese army withdrew the bulk of its forces since Nanjing was not a defensible position. The speed of the army's advance was likely due to commanders allowing looting and rape along the way. By early December, it was on the outskirts of Nanjing. The Japanese army had pushed quickly through China after capturing Shanghai in November 1937. The massacre is considered to be one of the worst wartime atrocities. The perpetrators also committed other war crimes such as mass rape, looting, and arson. Beginning on December 13, 1937, the massacre lasted six weeks. The Nanjing Massacre ( simplified Chinese: 南京大屠杀 traditional Chinese: 南京大屠殺 pinyin: Nánjīng Dàtúshā, Japanese: 南京大虐殺, romanized: Nankin Daigyakusatsu) or the Rape of Nanjing (formerly romanized as Nanking ) was the mass murder of Chinese civilians in Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, immediately after the Battle of Nanking in the Second Sino-Japanese War, by the Imperial Japanese Army.
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