evangilder
"Shooter"
Bingo, buffnut. Not only that, but when you face a situation that appears to be a no win deal, you fight much differently. There are times in a soldiers life when they think they have no chance of surviving, but it is rare.
Battle for Nanking
- Thread starter Thorlifter
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parsifal
Colonel
I can accept that as well BN. But I still think that links back to survival. A soldier knows he can survive, only if enough of his mates also survive.
The will to survive is not a purely selfish instinct. It does include selfless actions as well. But deep down, most soldiers are thinking....."if I dod this, I can survive as well"as
The will to survive is not a purely selfish instinct. It does include selfless actions as well. But deep down, most soldiers are thinking....."if I dod this, I can survive as well"as
buffnut453
Captain
I don't disagree, Parsifal - there's always strength in numbers and there's always the slight chance that you might survive. However, I do think it's a little more complex than that - militaries live and breathe their ethos and team ethic. There was a British soldier who threw himself on a grenade that landed in his platoon position to save his mates. That takes an innate desire to protect the team. Amazingly, he survived the action because his backpack absorbed virtually all the blast. However, at the time, he was not weighing the chances of his survival, rather he wanted to protect his mates.
The distinction you are drawing there is highly questionable in terms of known historical facts, though in both cases the situation is blurred by propaganda of both sides, neither of those cases is as well studied and documented as say, the Holocaust.
There is no evidence the Soviets ordered their soldiers to commit atrocities against civilians on a large scale in Germany (or Eastern Europe generally, or Manchuria in 1945, where they also behaved atrociously toward civilians) but in Germany in particular it's quite apparent that their leadership was not inclined to protect Germany civilians, especially given the frequent atrocities committed by the German armed forces in the USSR in the years just preceding. Whether or not some Soviet soldiers were prosecuted or shot out of hand for mistreating civilians, the atrocities occurred on a quite massive scale, inconsistent with a really serious Soviet attempt to prevent them, as opposed to some selective enforcement to have a fig leaf for later propaganda and or history to say it wasn't deliberate, as well as declaring at a certain point 'enough is enough' when enough women had been raped enough times in a particular area. First hand accounts seem to admit this.
OTOH I know of no evidence, or even claim, that the Japanese ordered their soldiers to mistreat civlians around Nanking. Read "The Good German of Nanking" which is the personal account of the John Rabe Siemens Corp rep in Nanking, a Nazi sympathizer (though again this was 1937, before the real horrors of Nazism), who organized a 'safe zone' for Chinese civilians in the city. It's clear from that day to day diary that the main threat to Chinese civilians was individual Japanese soldiers and small groups looking to commit crimes (robbery, rape, and to kill if resisted), and their officers didn't really care, though repeatedly promised Rabe they would do a better job stopping it, and eventually they did. Rabe figured that a few 1,000 civilians had lost their lives. Separately, the Japanese executed (often gruesomely) a larger number of Chinese soldiers caught trying to escape the city in civlian clothes. They were technically within their rights to do so if they conducted some kind of trials, but they didn't, and moreover the Chinese tried such escapes because they believed it was their only chance to survive if cut off from retreat. Surely some of the suspected Nationalist soldiers killed were actually civilians. Altogether the number of people killed might have been as many as 100k, the usually bandied 200-300k being a fairly clear exaggeration.
The numbers of course aren't really the point. Military leaders who show obvious dereliction in protecting civilians from their soldiers *are* war criminals, besides the offending soldiers themselves. Some IJA officers were brought to justice for that, basically no Red Army officers were: because the Japanese lost WWII and the Soviets won. That's the main actual distinction between Nanking and Berlin. That distinction also shows up in the fact that Soviet crimes in Germany weren't played up in the West much; the Nazi regime wasn't around to still do it, a clearly adversarial relationship between West and Soviets came only later on, and the Allies were somewhat implicated being in bed with the Soviets (also wrt abandoning Poland etc to the tender mercies of Stalin), so it wasn't something that reflected badly only on the Soviets. OTOH Chinese propaganda versions of Nanking were, and even are, still sold as pure fact.
Joe
parsifal
Colonel
OTOH I know of no evidence, or even claim, that the Japanese ordered their soldiers to mistreat civlians around Nanking. Read "The Good German of Nanking" which is the personal account of the John Rabe Siemens Corp rep in Nanking, a Nazi sympathizer (though again this was 1937, before the real horrors of Nazism), who organized a 'safe zone' for Chinese civilians in the city. It's clear from that day to day diary that the main threat to Chinese civilians was individual Japanese soldiers and small groups looking to commit crimes (robbery, rape, and to kill if resisted), and their officers didn't really care, though repeatedly promised Rabe they would do a better job stopping it, and eventually they did. Rabe figured that a few 1,000 civilians had lost their lives. Separately, the Japanese executed (often gruesomely) a larger number of Chinese soldiers caught trying to escape the city in civlian clothes. They were technically within their rights to do so if they conducted some kind of trials, but they didn't, and moreover the Chinese tried such escapes because they believed it was their only chance to survive if cut off from retreat. Surely some of the suspected Nationalist soldiers killed were actually civilians. Altogether the number of people killed might have been as many as 100k, the usually bandied 200-300k being a fairly clear exaggeration.
The numbers of course aren't really the point. Military leaders who show obvious dereliction in protecting civilians from their soldiers *are* war criminals, besides the offending soldiers themselves. Some IJA officers were brought to justice for that, basically no Red Army officers were: because the Japanese lost WWII and the Soviets won. That's the main actual distinction between Nanking and Berlin. That distinction also shows up in the fact that Soviet crimes in Germany weren't played up in the West much; the Nazi regime wasn't around to still do it, a clearly adversarial relationship between West and Soviets came only later on, and the Allies were somewhat implicated being in bed with the Soviets (also wrt abandoning Poland etc to the tender mercies of Stalin), so it wasn't something that reflected badly only on the Soviets. OTOH Chinese propaganda versions of Nanking were, and even are, still sold as pure fact.
Hi Joe.
I have to disagree with the suggestion that there is little or no evidence of official sanction of the massacre. In fact there is a truckload of it. Only if one accepts the banal post 1990 version of the event put out by some Japanese nationalist after 1990, can it be plausibly argued that there was no order to commit the massacre from the highest levels of command
On December 5, Prince Asaka was ordered by no less than Hirohito to the Nanking front, to take command of the army leading the assault. Asaka was sent there as punishment for insubordination and poor performance. Asaka left Tokyo by plane and arrived at the front three days later. Asaka met with division commanders, lieutenant-generals Kesago Nakajima and Heisuke Yanagawa, who informed him that the Japanese troops had almost completely surrounded three hundred thousand Chinese troops in the vicinity of Nanking and that preliminary negotiations suggested that the Chinese were ready to surrender. Asaka was informed that the Chinese wanted to declare the city an open city, essentially surrendering its control to the Japanese.
Prince Asaka allegedly wanted to make an example of the city and issued an order to "kill all captives," thus providing official sanction for the crimes which took place during and after the battle. Some authors record that Prince Asaka signed the order for Japanese soldiers in Nanking to "kill all captives". Others have tried to claim that lieutenant colonel Isamu Chō, Asaka's aide-de-camp, sent this order under the Prince's sign manual without the Prince's knowledge or assent. However, even if Chō took the initiative on his own, Prince Asaka, who was nominally the officer in charge, gave no orders to stop the carnage.
It was not until the arrival of General l Matsui four weeks after the massacre had begun, that orders were finally issued that eventually resulted in the end of the unrelenting massacre. Even so the killing did not stop, and this appears to be a direct result of Asakas continued presence and authority. He simply did not want to stop the killing, and as a member of the royal family, held considerable sway over the army. Not that the army needed any sort of encouragement in this work
While the extent of Prince Asaka's responsibility for the massacre remains a matter of debate, the ultimate sanction for the massacre and the crimes committed during the invasion of China were issued in the Emperor Hirohito's ratification of the Japanese army's proposition to remove the constraints of international law on the treatment of Chinese prisoners on August 5, 1937. Therein lies the root cause of the massacre…….
With regard to your take on the numbers, in fact there is no firm handle on the numbers, though the number you are suggesting seems far too low. The 300000 you seem to dismiss is a number generally accepted (read the article i posted earlier , a link is to be found on page 3 of this thread....it gives pretty strong suggestion that the figure is between 300 and 400K. However, no-one can say even to the nearest 20000 what the casualties were. . However, in that six month period that takes in the majority of the massacre, the Chinese lost 785000 people in the war, and given that the lions share of the fighting was around Nanking, your figure of "about 100000 starts to lose some credibility
Perhaps the Soviet prosecutions were token as you say, though there is no evidence either way in that regard (infact there is some evidence to suggest they were genuine attampts to curtail the violence). Its hard to defend the actions of the Red Army in 1945, but I adhere to the notion that the Soviet behaviour in Germany was far better than anything that can be said for the Japanese in Nanking, and indeed , in China in general. There is ample evidence, for example that the Japanese ordered the use of opiates and bacteriological agents in their war, which were never used by the Russians. And you are right about the russians not having issued any orders to massacre surrendered civilians in 1945. And you are right that the barbarity of the Russian soldiers can at least be understood because of the activities of the Germans in the previous 4 years.
With regard to your second statement about the dereliction of civilians under care, that can be a part of a war crime, but in the context of 1945, it is still not a war crime. Given the terms of reference issued to Nurenberg, and at tokyo, the Soviet actions cannot be seen, or defined as a war crime. Its missing one of the essential ingredients included in the terms of reference and therefore whilst it can be argued as criminally negligent, cannot be given the label war crime
The numbers of course aren't really the point. Military leaders who show obvious dereliction in protecting civilians from their soldiers *are* war criminals, besides the offending soldiers themselves. Some IJA officers were brought to justice for that, basically no Red Army officers were: because the Japanese lost WWII and the Soviets won. That's the main actual distinction between Nanking and Berlin. That distinction also shows up in the fact that Soviet crimes in Germany weren't played up in the West much; the Nazi regime wasn't around to still do it, a clearly adversarial relationship between West and Soviets came only later on, and the Allies were somewhat implicated being in bed with the Soviets (also wrt abandoning Poland etc to the tender mercies of Stalin), so it wasn't something that reflected badly only on the Soviets. OTOH Chinese propaganda versions of Nanking were, and even are, still sold as pure fact.
Hi Joe.
I have to disagree with the suggestion that there is little or no evidence of official sanction of the massacre. In fact there is a truckload of it. Only if one accepts the banal post 1990 version of the event put out by some Japanese nationalist after 1990, can it be plausibly argued that there was no order to commit the massacre from the highest levels of command
On December 5, Prince Asaka was ordered by no less than Hirohito to the Nanking front, to take command of the army leading the assault. Asaka was sent there as punishment for insubordination and poor performance. Asaka left Tokyo by plane and arrived at the front three days later. Asaka met with division commanders, lieutenant-generals Kesago Nakajima and Heisuke Yanagawa, who informed him that the Japanese troops had almost completely surrounded three hundred thousand Chinese troops in the vicinity of Nanking and that preliminary negotiations suggested that the Chinese were ready to surrender. Asaka was informed that the Chinese wanted to declare the city an open city, essentially surrendering its control to the Japanese.
Prince Asaka allegedly wanted to make an example of the city and issued an order to "kill all captives," thus providing official sanction for the crimes which took place during and after the battle. Some authors record that Prince Asaka signed the order for Japanese soldiers in Nanking to "kill all captives". Others have tried to claim that lieutenant colonel Isamu Chō, Asaka's aide-de-camp, sent this order under the Prince's sign manual without the Prince's knowledge or assent. However, even if Chō took the initiative on his own, Prince Asaka, who was nominally the officer in charge, gave no orders to stop the carnage.
It was not until the arrival of General l Matsui four weeks after the massacre had begun, that orders were finally issued that eventually resulted in the end of the unrelenting massacre. Even so the killing did not stop, and this appears to be a direct result of Asakas continued presence and authority. He simply did not want to stop the killing, and as a member of the royal family, held considerable sway over the army. Not that the army needed any sort of encouragement in this work
While the extent of Prince Asaka's responsibility for the massacre remains a matter of debate, the ultimate sanction for the massacre and the crimes committed during the invasion of China were issued in the Emperor Hirohito's ratification of the Japanese army's proposition to remove the constraints of international law on the treatment of Chinese prisoners on August 5, 1937. Therein lies the root cause of the massacre…….
With regard to your take on the numbers, in fact there is no firm handle on the numbers, though the number you are suggesting seems far too low. The 300000 you seem to dismiss is a number generally accepted (read the article i posted earlier , a link is to be found on page 3 of this thread....it gives pretty strong suggestion that the figure is between 300 and 400K. However, no-one can say even to the nearest 20000 what the casualties were. . However, in that six month period that takes in the majority of the massacre, the Chinese lost 785000 people in the war, and given that the lions share of the fighting was around Nanking, your figure of "about 100000 starts to lose some credibility
Perhaps the Soviet prosecutions were token as you say, though there is no evidence either way in that regard (infact there is some evidence to suggest they were genuine attampts to curtail the violence). Its hard to defend the actions of the Red Army in 1945, but I adhere to the notion that the Soviet behaviour in Germany was far better than anything that can be said for the Japanese in Nanking, and indeed , in China in general. There is ample evidence, for example that the Japanese ordered the use of opiates and bacteriological agents in their war, which were never used by the Russians. And you are right about the russians not having issued any orders to massacre surrendered civilians in 1945. And you are right that the barbarity of the Russian soldiers can at least be understood because of the activities of the Germans in the previous 4 years.
With regard to your second statement about the dereliction of civilians under care, that can be a part of a war crime, but in the context of 1945, it is still not a war crime. Given the terms of reference issued to Nurenberg, and at tokyo, the Soviet actions cannot be seen, or defined as a war crime. Its missing one of the essential ingredients included in the terms of reference and therefore whilst it can be argued as criminally negligent, cannot be given the label war crime
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buffnut453
Captain
Joe,
Are you referring to 1939 or 1945? I wanted to understand whcih period you were talking about.
Many thanks.
- Thread starter
- #127
Thorlifter
Captain
I agree with Parcifal on all accounts, but using your words, Joe, you may be correct. I don't know of an "order" to slaughter civilians was directly given, but the actions of the soldiers was encouraged and popularized by the Japanese media. Given the extreme discipline handed out to the common soldier, the way any act of individualism was literally beaten out of them, a suggestion or encouragement was just as good as an order.
Altogether the number of people killed might have been as many as 100k, the usually bandied 200-300k being a fairly clear exaggeration.
Even some Japanese historians and revisonists say the numbers were at least 120,000 and they are trying to downplay the event. The Chinese may very well have exaggerated the numbers to 350,000. The IMTFE has estimated the numbers to be 260,000 noncombatants, not soldiers, but noncombatants.
However, I think, whatever the numbers are, we can agree it was a mass stage of rape, murder, and torture rarely seen on this earth. Parcifal also reference the biological warfare the Japanese used against the Chinese. In the book I read, which I completely understand has a pro-Chinese bias, the author wrote about the war in China as a whole.....
"The final death count was almost incredible, between 1,578,000 and 6,325,000 people. R.J. Rummel gives a prudent estimate of 3,949,000 people killed, of which all but 400,000 were civilians. But he points out that millions more perished from starvation and disease caused in large part by Japanese looting, bombing, and medical experimentation."
She points out the biological warfare such as experiments done on the villages that helped the Doolittle attackers, how the Japanese aviators sprayed fleas carrying plague germs over cities like Shanghai, Ningpo, and Changteh, flasks of microbes carrying cholera, dysentery, typhoid, plague, anthrax, and paratyphoid were tossed into rivers, wells, reservoirs, and houses. Cakes were laced with typhoid and were scattered around bivouac areas to entice hungry peasants. You don't think things like this were done without orders?
OTOH Chinese propaganda versions of Nanking were, and even are, still sold as pure fact.
I agree with you on this also. Atrocities happened on a grand scale, no question. Was it to the numbers the Chinese claim? I have my doubts.
Altogether the number of people killed might have been as many as 100k, the usually bandied 200-300k being a fairly clear exaggeration.
Even some Japanese historians and revisonists say the numbers were at least 120,000 and they are trying to downplay the event. The Chinese may very well have exaggerated the numbers to 350,000. The IMTFE has estimated the numbers to be 260,000 noncombatants, not soldiers, but noncombatants.
However, I think, whatever the numbers are, we can agree it was a mass stage of rape, murder, and torture rarely seen on this earth. Parcifal also reference the biological warfare the Japanese used against the Chinese. In the book I read, which I completely understand has a pro-Chinese bias, the author wrote about the war in China as a whole.....
"The final death count was almost incredible, between 1,578,000 and 6,325,000 people. R.J. Rummel gives a prudent estimate of 3,949,000 people killed, of which all but 400,000 were civilians. But he points out that millions more perished from starvation and disease caused in large part by Japanese looting, bombing, and medical experimentation."
She points out the biological warfare such as experiments done on the villages that helped the Doolittle attackers, how the Japanese aviators sprayed fleas carrying plague germs over cities like Shanghai, Ningpo, and Changteh, flasks of microbes carrying cholera, dysentery, typhoid, plague, anthrax, and paratyphoid were tossed into rivers, wells, reservoirs, and houses. Cakes were laced with typhoid and were scattered around bivouac areas to entice hungry peasants. You don't think things like this were done without orders?
OTOH Chinese propaganda versions of Nanking were, and even are, still sold as pure fact.
I agree with you on this also. Atrocities happened on a grand scale, no question. Was it to the numbers the Chinese claim? I have my doubts.
300k is 'generally accepted' to the extent it is, from the issue I pointed out. The de facto historiography of Nanking in the West is to accept Chinese (Nationalist, inherited by the Communists) propaganda at face value. Rabe was an eye witness, over the whole period of the incident, and directly involved by being leader of ad hoc international volunteers trying to protect Chinese civilians. He did not see any 'unrelenting massacre' of those civilians, just completely unacceptable degree of control of IJA soliders by their officers, which added up to what he estimated were several 1,000 murders of civlians, and which completely horrified Rabe (who believed Hitler would do something 'if only he knew', that sort of political naif, not by any means an apologist for the Japanese).
Again as I mentioned, the large scale killings were of 'captives', ie Chinese soldiers and those suspected of being. When it comes to mass murder of civilians in an organized way, that's a lot less clear, to say the least.
And the other basic historiograpy problem with Nanking is that no one in China can research it unless they are willing to corroborate the original Chinese propaganda claims, which do still tend to be 'accepted' in the West, but it doesn't make them true. And no really serious Western researcher has looked back into it (the late Iris Chang, an American, does not count, her 'Rape of Nanking' was another simple repetition of Chinese propaganda and second and third hand reports as far as the big picture, it only added any value in terms of oral history by some first hand accounts). The only serious restudies happen to have been Japanese, some by no means all, nor even most of whom were by neo-militarist apologists; some have been radical left type Japanese academics with no agenda to defend Imperial Japan or any element of modern Japan that tries to minimize its crimes. None of those people could find evidence for more than ca. 100k deaths at Nanking at the high end (by doing stuff like statisitcs on actual family records in the area). The 'accepted' number has no backing in any detailed records, it's just 'we say so and you insult the Chinese people if you don't agree'. It's very far from the situation with the Holocaust where there is relatively tight range of accepted *for good historiographical reasons* death toll, which various micro and macro facts all add up to approximately, looked at from a variety of directions.
Anybody at this point is still guessing if they try to exactly categorize the Nanking massacre specifically relative to a specific Soviet crime like the Red Army's behavior in Germany in 1945 (which was absolutely a war crime, you undermine your credibility trying to parse words on that, I would never claim the Japanese actions in the Nanking campaign were not crimes). Again, the obvious reason Soviet officers didn't stand trial at Nuremburg is...they won! German officers were also tried and convicted for actions identical to those of US officers. Doenitz wa convicted simply for unrestricted submarine warfare, something the US Pacific Fleet command ordered immediately against Japan in December 1941. I'm not directly comparing sub ops to massacring civilians by an army, but the point is that Nuremburg cosnsistently defined 'war crime' de facto as something the Axis did, which left a Grand Canyon-size gap in consistency when it came to the Soviets, though also a few gaps when it came to the Wester Allies.
And once you expand Japanese crimes to the whole Sino-Japanese War, you'd have to consider the Soviet regime's massive crimes v humanity inside the Soviet Union as well as in East Europe and Asia in 30's and 40's, which were absolutely deliberate and calculated, as for example to eliminate troublesome groups and classes of people (anti-Soviet Ukranian peasants starved on purpose in millions in the 30's, 100k's Pole deported and died post '39, etc). There's no reasonable argument that Soviet behavior in that period compared well to Japan's, hard to argue it compared well to Germany's either. Of course that doesn't excuse any of them.
Re Buffnut, which crimes of the Soviets in Poland, post '39, or post '45? I was directly referring to the ones post '45, but really both, the body count was probably higher in the first. But the Western propaganda machine didn't crank up about Soviet crimes v humanity in Poland (and a lot of other places) as long as the Soviets were Anglo-American allies or for awhile after, when lack of solid fact was somewhat of a hindrance (for example, it was long 'accepted' in the West to give 'equal time' to the Soviet claim that the Katyn Massacre was committed by the Germans, hard to prove that claim absolutely false till after the fall of the Soviet Union). Whereas Western propaganda about Japanese crimes was fully wound up to speed even during the war, and in wartime mode with less worry about solid facts. And that still influences a comparative discussion of Soviet and Japanese crimes, as we see in this exchange.
Joe
parsifal
Colonel
Hi Joe
No it is incorrect to assert that there is insufficient evidence on which to make the claim of war crimes, or that the case against the IJA in the mistreatment of civilians would not have formed part of the indictment. It is also untrue, and highly revisionist to try and claim the incident as overblown, and the product of some evil communist plot, hatched long after the event. The truth is, the crime was exposed by the west mostly, and the reliable accounts collected and recorded by IMTFE obviate the need for any questionable unsubstantiated claims by known enemy sources to be relied upon…. .
At the end of the war, Prince Asaka was investigated by the Allied war crimes investigatory teams. The commission established a strong prima facie case of war crimes by the IJA not only against the Chinese Army but also against the civil population. The prosecution of Asaka was cancelled, on direct order by Macarthur, not because a lack of evidence, rather because Mac had determined that no members of the Royal Family were to be prosecuted for war crimes….so much for the claim that the allies were siding with the Chinese. Even at this early junction (1946) the US was taking steps to protect the Japanese, not the other way around.
The actions by the by the Tokyo War Crimes make interesting reading, and debunk pretty much all the claims to the effect that the massacre was overblown, or a political propaganda piece by the allies in the post war period. It was none of those. The Japanese Army was guilty of the single biggest civilian massacre in modern history….those words are from the commission, not mine…….
An accurate estimation of the death toll in the massacre is never achieved because most of the Japanese military records on the killings were deliberately destroyed or kept secret shortly after the surrender of Japan in 1945. The International Military Tribunal of the Far East estimates more than 200,000 casualties in the incident China's official estimate is about 300,000 casualties, based on the evaluation of the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal. Estimates from Japanese historians vary widely, in the vicinity of 40,000–200,000. Some Japanese scholars even deny that a widespread, systematic massacre occurred at all, claiming that any deaths were either justified militarily, accidental or isolated incidents of unauthorized atrocities. These negationists claim that the characterization of the incident as a large-scale, systematic massacre was fabricated for the purpose of political propaganda. Virtually no authoritative scholar accepts these claims as realistic however.
From Wiki
The Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal was established in 1946 by the government of Chiang Kai-Shek to judge four Japanese Imperial Army officers accused of crimes committed during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It was one of thirteen tribunals established by the Nationalist government. These trials were authorised by the nationalists, but were ultimately responsible and answerable to SCAP
The accused were Lieutenant General Hisao Tani, company commander Captain Gunkichi Tanaka and Second Lieutenants Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda, made famous by the contest to kill 100 people using a sword.
General Yasuji Okamura was convicted of war crimes in July 1948 by the Tribunal, but was immediately protected by the personal order of Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, who retained him as a military adviser for the Kuomintang (KMT).
While he was questioned by the investigators, he however testified about the Nanking massacre :
"I surmised the following based on what I heard from Staff Officer Miyazaki, CCAA Special Service Department Chief Harada and Hangzhou Special Service Department Chief Hagiwara a day or two after I arrived in Shanghai. First, it is true that tens of thousands of acts of violence, such as looting and rape, took place against civilians during the assault on Nanking. Second, front-line troops indulged in the evil practice of executing POWs on the pretext of (lacking) rations."
End of wiki quote
Hisao Tani was the only officer prosecuted for the Nanking massacre. He was found guilty on 6 February 1947 and executed on 10 March by a firing squad. All the accused (ie noncommissioned ranks) were sentenced to death in 1947.
According to the verdict of the Tribunal for Tani, on 10 March 1947, there were more than 190,000 civilians and Chinese soldiers killed by machine gun whose corpses were burned to destroy proof. Besides, we count more than 150,000 victims of barbarous acts buried by the charity organisms. We thus have a total of more than 300,000 victims. This estimate was made from burial records and eyewitness accounts.
The war crimes trials in China were not directly controlled by the Chinese. They authorised them, however the courts themselves were independent and answerable administratively to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) in Tokyo. The prosecution team was made up of justices from eleven Allied nations: Australia, Canada, China, France, Great Britain, India, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Philippines, the Soviet Union and the United States of America. The Tokyo trial lasted two and a half years, from May 1946 to November 1948. Other war criminals were tried in the respective victim countries. War crime trials were held at ten different locations in China.
Numerous eye-witness accounts of the Nanking Massacre were provided by Chinese civilian survivors and western nationals living in Nanking at the time. The accounts included gruesome details of the Nanking Massacre. Thousands of innocent civilians were buried alive, used as targets for bayonet practice, shot in large groups and thrown into the Yangtze River. Rampant rapes (and gang rapes) of women ranging from age seven to over seventy were reported. The international community estimated that within the six weeks of the Massacre, 20,000 women were raped, many of them subsequently murdered or mutilated; and over 300,000 people were killed, often with the most inhumane brutality. With that weight of evidence, it is hard not to label your response as revisionist and negationist
Why we are trying to rely on the questionable accounts of a known enemy sympathiser, escapes me
A more credible account in easily digestible form can be found easily. I have attached a telegram from the US embassy written in 1938, which confirms estimated casualties to be in excess of 300K
SCAP staff played a primary role to exonerate Emperor Shōwa (Hirohito) and all members of the imperial family implicated in the war such as Prince Chichibu, Prince Tsuneyoshi Takeda, Prince Asaka, Prince Higashikuni and Prince Hiroyasu Fushimi from criminal prosecutions before the Tokyo tribunal.
Subsequently many of the records were suppressed, to further protect the Japanese royal family. This is the primary reason that people like yourself can claim no proof, not that there was never any proof.
No it is incorrect to assert that there is insufficient evidence on which to make the claim of war crimes, or that the case against the IJA in the mistreatment of civilians would not have formed part of the indictment. It is also untrue, and highly revisionist to try and claim the incident as overblown, and the product of some evil communist plot, hatched long after the event. The truth is, the crime was exposed by the west mostly, and the reliable accounts collected and recorded by IMTFE obviate the need for any questionable unsubstantiated claims by known enemy sources to be relied upon…. .
At the end of the war, Prince Asaka was investigated by the Allied war crimes investigatory teams. The commission established a strong prima facie case of war crimes by the IJA not only against the Chinese Army but also against the civil population. The prosecution of Asaka was cancelled, on direct order by Macarthur, not because a lack of evidence, rather because Mac had determined that no members of the Royal Family were to be prosecuted for war crimes….so much for the claim that the allies were siding with the Chinese. Even at this early junction (1946) the US was taking steps to protect the Japanese, not the other way around.
The actions by the by the Tokyo War Crimes make interesting reading, and debunk pretty much all the claims to the effect that the massacre was overblown, or a political propaganda piece by the allies in the post war period. It was none of those. The Japanese Army was guilty of the single biggest civilian massacre in modern history….those words are from the commission, not mine…….
An accurate estimation of the death toll in the massacre is never achieved because most of the Japanese military records on the killings were deliberately destroyed or kept secret shortly after the surrender of Japan in 1945. The International Military Tribunal of the Far East estimates more than 200,000 casualties in the incident China's official estimate is about 300,000 casualties, based on the evaluation of the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal. Estimates from Japanese historians vary widely, in the vicinity of 40,000–200,000. Some Japanese scholars even deny that a widespread, systematic massacre occurred at all, claiming that any deaths were either justified militarily, accidental or isolated incidents of unauthorized atrocities. These negationists claim that the characterization of the incident as a large-scale, systematic massacre was fabricated for the purpose of political propaganda. Virtually no authoritative scholar accepts these claims as realistic however.
From Wiki
The Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal was established in 1946 by the government of Chiang Kai-Shek to judge four Japanese Imperial Army officers accused of crimes committed during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It was one of thirteen tribunals established by the Nationalist government. These trials were authorised by the nationalists, but were ultimately responsible and answerable to SCAP
The accused were Lieutenant General Hisao Tani, company commander Captain Gunkichi Tanaka and Second Lieutenants Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda, made famous by the contest to kill 100 people using a sword.
General Yasuji Okamura was convicted of war crimes in July 1948 by the Tribunal, but was immediately protected by the personal order of Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, who retained him as a military adviser for the Kuomintang (KMT).
While he was questioned by the investigators, he however testified about the Nanking massacre :
"I surmised the following based on what I heard from Staff Officer Miyazaki, CCAA Special Service Department Chief Harada and Hangzhou Special Service Department Chief Hagiwara a day or two after I arrived in Shanghai. First, it is true that tens of thousands of acts of violence, such as looting and rape, took place against civilians during the assault on Nanking. Second, front-line troops indulged in the evil practice of executing POWs on the pretext of (lacking) rations."
End of wiki quote
Hisao Tani was the only officer prosecuted for the Nanking massacre. He was found guilty on 6 February 1947 and executed on 10 March by a firing squad. All the accused (ie noncommissioned ranks) were sentenced to death in 1947.
According to the verdict of the Tribunal for Tani, on 10 March 1947, there were more than 190,000 civilians and Chinese soldiers killed by machine gun whose corpses were burned to destroy proof. Besides, we count more than 150,000 victims of barbarous acts buried by the charity organisms. We thus have a total of more than 300,000 victims. This estimate was made from burial records and eyewitness accounts.
The war crimes trials in China were not directly controlled by the Chinese. They authorised them, however the courts themselves were independent and answerable administratively to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) in Tokyo. The prosecution team was made up of justices from eleven Allied nations: Australia, Canada, China, France, Great Britain, India, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Philippines, the Soviet Union and the United States of America. The Tokyo trial lasted two and a half years, from May 1946 to November 1948. Other war criminals were tried in the respective victim countries. War crime trials were held at ten different locations in China.
Numerous eye-witness accounts of the Nanking Massacre were provided by Chinese civilian survivors and western nationals living in Nanking at the time. The accounts included gruesome details of the Nanking Massacre. Thousands of innocent civilians were buried alive, used as targets for bayonet practice, shot in large groups and thrown into the Yangtze River. Rampant rapes (and gang rapes) of women ranging from age seven to over seventy were reported. The international community estimated that within the six weeks of the Massacre, 20,000 women were raped, many of them subsequently murdered or mutilated; and over 300,000 people were killed, often with the most inhumane brutality. With that weight of evidence, it is hard not to label your response as revisionist and negationist
Why we are trying to rely on the questionable accounts of a known enemy sympathiser, escapes me
A more credible account in easily digestible form can be found easily. I have attached a telegram from the US embassy written in 1938, which confirms estimated casualties to be in excess of 300K
SCAP staff played a primary role to exonerate Emperor Shōwa (Hirohito) and all members of the imperial family implicated in the war such as Prince Chichibu, Prince Tsuneyoshi Takeda, Prince Asaka, Prince Higashikuni and Prince Hiroyasu Fushimi from criminal prosecutions before the Tokyo tribunal.
Subsequently many of the records were suppressed, to further protect the Japanese royal family. This is the primary reason that people like yourself can claim no proof, not that there was never any proof.
