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The Rape Of Nanking (Japan) |
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Written by The Editor
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On December 13th, 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army captured the then capital city of China, Nanking. Immediately upon entering the city, the troops with superior officer approval proceeded to murder nearly 400,000 of the city's occupants and rape an estimated 80,000 woman and children.
At one point, civilians and ex-soldiers of the Chinese Army were gathered together, their hands were bound and they were collectively marched to the outskirts of the city where they were systematically, in groups, raked with machine gun fire or individually: beheaded and/or otherwise victimized by Japanese samurai sword practices; used for bayonet practice [photos were first published in this country by Life magazine] , doused with gasoline and set afire, beaten to death or buried alive. Two Japanese lieutenants maintained an ongoing competition as to who would be the first to behead 100 victims. Both reached their goal and kept right on going!
No Japanese government apology has been forthcoming; indeed, to the contrary, much effort has been made to suppress its ever happening. Nothing of the matter is taught in Japan's schools. And, public officials demanding that an apology be made to the Chinese have been assaulted and received death threats. The equivalent of a mayor of one city was shot by irate Japanese nationalists.
Much of the atrocity is chronicled in a photographic history entitled "The Rape of Nanking - An Undeniable History in Photographs," by Shi Young and James Yin and published by Innovative Publishing Group of Chicago, in 1997 and available from any bookstore. Many of the photographs were taken by Japanese soldiers, wishing to have a memento of their activities. Definitely a "must read" for America's multiculturalists.
[ From left-to-right, the photographs above depict: a woman in the process of being raped by a Japanese soldier; Japanese recruits using live Chinese prisoners to get the "feel" of bayonet penetration through practice; the bodies of children bayoneted by Japanese soldiers, piled atop firewood and about to be incinerated; the latter two photos show still more bayonet practice sessions. These are only a few of the more, comparatively speaking, mundane photos in the text's collection. ]
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