The death toll of civilians is difficult to precisely calculate due to the many bodies deliberately burnt, buried in mass graves, or dumped into the Yangtze River. [76], By February 5, 1938, the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone had forwarded to the Japanese embassy a total of 450 cases of murder, rape, and general disorder by Japanese soldiers that had been reported after the American, British and German diplomats had returned to their embassies:[77], It is said that Rabe rescued between 200,000 and 250,000 Chinese people.[78][79]. ", "Case 10 On the night of December 15th, a number of Japanese soldiers entered the University of Nanjing buildings at Tao Yuen and raped 30 women on the spot, some by six men. 616621. Many atrocities were reported to have been committed as the Japanese army advanced from Shanghai to Nanjing. [3] After capturing Shanghai the Japanese Army decided on December 1 to continue its military campaign to the capital city of the Nationalist government of China, Nanking, which is roughly 300 kilometers west of Shanghai. "[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). From Judgment of the International Military Tribunal, On November 12, 1948, Matsui and Hirota, along with five other convicted Class-A war criminals, were sentenced to death by hanging. 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. "[75] According to historian Jonathan Fenby, the most recent research places the death toll at 100,000 or less, though he only cites one recent estimate as evidence for this claim.[76]. On March 7, 1938, Robert O. Wilson, a surgeon at the university hospital in the Safety Zone administrated by the United States, wrote in a letter to his family, "a conservative estimate of people slaughtered in cold blood is somewhere about 100,000, including of course thousands of soldiers that had thrown down their arms. The compound is located in a neutral zone in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, which is the reason why a group of prostitutes also end up there. 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 . A Japanese hotelier's denial of a 1937 massacre by Japanese troops in the Chinese city of Nanjing has prompted Chinese social media calls for a boycott of travel to Japan, threatening tourist . The massacre occurred over a period of six weeks starting on December [citation needed], The government of Japan believes it can not be denied that the killing of a large number of noncombatants, looting and other acts by the Japanese army occurred. Estimates of the number of victims vary based on the definitions of the geographical range and the duration of the event. The massacre occurred over six weeks starting December 13, 1937, the day that the Japanese captured Nanjing. Unable to escape, the POWs could only scream and thrash desperately. In 1948, the case of the Nanjing massacre was considered by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, which handed down two death sentences. [169] In the 2010 Japan-China Joint History Research Committee meeting, scholars from the Japanese side set the maximum possible number of civilian victims at 200,000, with estimates of around 40,000 or 20,000. "Hundred believed Dead - Panay Death . [59] However, Jean-Louis Margolin does not believe that the Nanjing atrocities should be considered a genocide because only prisoners of war were executed in a systematic manner and the targeting of civilians was sporadic and done without orders by individual actors. They also murdered hundreds of thousands . [40], By contrast, Ikuhiko Hata also examined the Japanese Army's documents and tallied up a total of 30,000 Chinese POWs massacred out of a total Chinese force of 100,000. [156] Trade between the two nations is worth over $200billion annually. However, they feared that speaking out openly "would be detrimental to their careers. [122][123], Hisao Tani, a lieutenant general for the 6th Division of the Imperial Japanese Army, was tried by the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal in China. Fifteen of the remaining 22 foreigners formed a committee, called the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone in the western quarter of the city. [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. . There are no official numbers for the death toll . Only after firmly establishing 'historical particularities' can one clearly define Japans responsibility. The U.S., which served as the melting pot of cultures and is home to descendants of members of both Chinese and Japanese cultures, took up the mantle of investigator for the victimized Chinese. These estimates are borne out by the figures of burial societies and other organizations, which testify to over 155,000 buried bodies. [110][111], In the 2010 Japan-China Joint History Research Committee meeting, scholars from the Japanese side set the maximum possible number of civilian victims at 200,000, with estimates of around 40,000 or 20,000. . On 19 December 1937, the Reverend James M. McCallum wrote in his diary:[46]. : 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. 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 . [99][100] An estimate death toll of 300,000 has also been cited. Prince Yasuhiko Asaka told a war correspondent later that he was in a very perilous position when his headquarters was ambushed by Chinese forces that were in the midst of fleeing from Nanjing east of the city. The man is now at the University Hospital and is not expected to live. He further argued that he had directed his army division commanders to discipline their troops for criminal acts, and was not responsible for their failure to carry out his directives. magazine surveyed members of each "school" for their opinions on the massacre, many of the so-called "centrists" advocated extremely low figures for the total number of victims, including Dokkyo University professor Akira Nakamura, journalist Yoshiko Sakurai, and researcher Toshio Tanabe, who each counted about 10,000 massacred, and military historian Takeshi Hara who selected 20,000. This is caused by the Army's misbehaviors after the fall of Nanjing and failure to proceed with the autonomous government and other political plans. He assigned Asaka to Nanjing as an opportunity to make amends. [98] Tomio Hora supports the information found in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, which estimates a death toll of at least 200,000. Two days later he defended his remarks, saying, "Even since I was a national Diet representative, I have said [repeatedly] there was no [Nanjing] massacre that resulted in murders of several hundred thousands of people. [7] By mid-November, the Japanese had captured Shanghai with the help of naval and aerial bombardment. As Nanking fell to the Japanese, and their troops entered the city on the 13th of December, the streets were already crowded with a large number of . . The soldiers killed her with a revolver. U.S. news correspondents F. Tillman Durdin and Archibald Steele reported seeing corpses of massacred Chinese soldiers forming mounds six feet high at the Nanjing Yijiang gate in the north. Shortly after the surrender of Japan, the primary officers in charge of the Japanese troops at Nanjing were put on trial. "[53], Apart from geographical scope, some historians including Kasahara deny that the massacre ended in early February and instead put the end date at March 28, though such a long time range is disputed by other historians. The four horsemen of denial. ", Organized and wholesale murder of male civilians was conducted with the apparent sanction of the commanders on the pretext that Chinese soldiers had removed their uniforms and were mingling with the population. She said that the people of China "don't believe that an unequivocal and sincere apology has ever been made by Japan to China" and that a written apology from Japan would send a better message to the international community. 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. Nanjing Death Toll Graph. Hata argued that Chinese troops killed on the battlefield were part of the Battle of Nanking rather than Nanking Massacre, and that only civilians and disarmed POWs should be counted as massacre victims. [148][149], On February 20, 2012, Takashi Kawamura, mayor of Nagoya, told a visiting delegation from Nanjing that the massacre "probably never happened". "Japanese Atrocities Marked Fall of Nanking After Chinese Command Fled." [11] However, Timperley's source for this number was the French humanitarian Father Jacquinot, who was in Shanghai at the time of the massacre,[12] and it might also have included civilian casualties of the Battle of Shanghai. Answer (1 of 16): 1. [18] John Rabe, the German head of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone, estimated that between 50,000 and 60,000 Chinese were killed in Nanking, though this estimate included both military casualties and massacred civilians. According to Yang Daqing, professor of History and International Affairs at George Washington University: While it is standard practice for governments to destroy evidence in times of defeat, in the two weeks before the Allies arrived in Japan, various Japanese agenciesthe military in particularsystematically destroyed sensitive documents to a degree perhaps unprecedented in history. In 1995, Daniel Kwan held a photo exhibit in Los Angeles titled, "The Forgotten Holocaust". It would seem according to stories told us by foreign witnesses that the soldiers were let loose like a barbarian horde to desecrate the city. At trial, Matsui went out of his way to protect Prince Asaka by shifting blame to lower-ranking division commanders. [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. All the new books mentioned the massacre and five of them printed the death count as estimated by the Chinese government (300,000 deaths), the remaining two books estimated the death toll at 200,000. Zhang Xianwen, editor-in-chief of the report, states that the information collected was based on "a combination of Chinese, Japanese and Western raw materials, which is objective and just and is able to stand the trial of history". 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 . and Japanese historian Fujiwara Akira put the final toll closer to 200,000. . [5] Instead they threw away their uniforms and weapons and hid among the city's civilian population. [citation needed], The remembrance of the massacre has evolved drastically in China. The baby was killed with a bayonet. In the meantime, members of the Committee contacted Tang and proposed a plan for three-day cease-fire, during which the Chinese troops could withdraw without fighting while the Japanese troops would stay in their present position. "[91], Chinese soldiers and POWs as massacre victims, F. Tillman Durdin, "Japanese Atrocities Marked Fall of Nanking,", David Askew, "Part of the Numbers Issue: Demography and Civilian Victims," in, Ikuhiko Hata, "The Nanking Atrocities: Fact and Fable,", Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, "The Messiness of Historical Reality," in, Daqing Yang, "A Sino-Japanese Controversy: The Nanjing Atrocity As History,", Tokushi Kasahara, "," in, Tokushi Kasahara, "Massacres outside Nanking City," in, David Askew, "The Nanjing Incident: An Examination of the Civilian Population,", David Askew, "Defending Nanking: An Examination of the Capital Garrison Forces,", Daqing Yang, "Convergence or Divergence? This sense of mistrust is strengthened by Japan's unwillingness to admit to and apologize for the atrocities. The girl was 14 years old. ", Harold Timperley, a journalist in China during the Japanese invasion, reported that at least 300,000 Chinese civilians were killed in Nanjing and elsewhere, and tried to send a telegram but was censored by the Japanese military in Shanghai. I could go on for pages telling of cases of rape and brutality almost beyond belief. "Convergence or Divergence? [49] Though many still support the IMTFE's geographic scope for the massacre, in 1984 the journalist Katsuichi Honda became the first individual to voice disapproval of this definition. [54] Sons were coerced in to rape their mothers, fathers were forced to rape their daughters, and brothers were forced to rape their sisters. [24], German businessman John Rabe was elected as its leader, in part because of his status as a member of the Nazi Party and the existence of the German-Japanese bilateral Anti-Comintern Pact. [21] Noting that different definitions produce vastly different estimates, he believes that even the significant disagreements between the historians Tokushi Kasahara and Ikuhiko Hata would disappear if they had been using the same definitions. On December 5, Prince Yasuhiko Asaka was installed as Japanese commander in the campaign. All of them were hanged on 23 December 1948. Matsui was convicted by a majority of the judges at the Tokyo tribunal who ruled that he bore ultimate responsibility for the "orgy of crime" at Nanjing because, "He did nothing, or nothing effective, to abate these horrors. [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. The Nanjing massacre has also been described as one of the most barbaric episodes in the history of World War II although it officially began on September 1, 1939. . "[72], "In the first days of the occupation the soldiers [] took a great deal of bedding, cooking utensils and food from the refugees. [21], The first academic accounts of the Nanking Massacre included as massacre victims all Chinese who were killed by the Japanese Army in and around Nanking, including Chinese soldiers who were killed in action. [89] His claims have been corroborated with the diaries of other Japanese combatants and medics who fought in China. [177] Indeed, there is only one sentence that refers to this event: "they [the Japanese troops] occupied that city in December. [134] Jung Chang and Jon Halliday's biography of Mao claims Mao never made any comment either contemporaneously or later in his life about the massacre, but did frequently remark with enduring bitterness about a political struggle between himself and Wang Ming which also occurred in December 1937. On 17 December, chairman John Rabe wrote a complaint to Kiyoshi Fukui, second secretary of the Japanese Embassy. For 17 December:[49]. In one estimate the Nanking War Crimes Tribunal put the death toll at more than 300,000, though the Tribunal also recorded other estimates including one of 430,000. Five of these were journalists who remained in the city a few days after it was captured, leaving the city on December 16. A bar graph comparing four different claims for the number of non-military victims of the Nanjing Massacre, as well as the death toll claims of six different groups. 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. [44] Most Japanese ultranationalists who deny the Nanking Massacre admit that the Japanese Army killed a large number of Chinese POWs, though they consider these to be legal executions,[45][46] an argument denounced by mainstream historians. It was truly a regrettable act of barbarity. The soldiers of . 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 December 13, 1937, the precise number remains unknown. [31] His more specific range of figures is roughly 160,000 to 170,000. The Battle of Nanking ended on December 13, when the divisions of the Japanese Army entered the walled city of Nanjing. Quite the same Wikipedia. [105], John Rabe, Chairman of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone, estimated that between 50,000 and 60,000 (civilians) were killed. Please give us help. [74], The Japanese troops did respect the Zone to an extent; until the Japanese occupation, no shells entered that part of the city except a few stray shots. Men, women and children were killed in uncounted numbers throughout the city. When I think of the feelings and sentiments of many of my Chinese friends who have fled from Nanjing and of the future of the two countries, I cannot but feel depressed. Other members of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone who took the witness stand included Miner Searle Bates and John Magee. Some Chinese soldiers stripped civilians of their clothing in a desperate attempt to blend in, and many others were shot by the Chinese supervisory unit as they tried to flee.[21]. The contesta race between the two officers to see who could kill 100 people first using only a swordwas covered much like a sporting event with regular updates on the score over a series of days. [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. [68], In 2006, Kaz Ross, a historian with the University of Tasmania, anonymously interviewed a number of university researchers in the city of Nanking to learn their private views on the death toll of the Nanking Massacre.