Massacres and Atrocities of World War II - page 4 of 4 -within the Pacific Region.
This 4 page series reports on some occurrences within:
NANKING MASSACRE (December, 1937)
Known historically as the 'Rape of Nanking'. In 1931 (the real start of World War II, with Japans illegal invasion of Manchuria) the Chinese capital Nanking, now Nanjing, had a population of just over one million, including over 100,000 refugees. On December 13, the city fell to the invading Japanese troops. For the next six weeks the soldiers indulged in an orgy of indiscriminate killing, rape and looting. They shot at everyone on sight, whether out on the streets or peeking out of windows. The streets were soon littered with corpses, on one street a survivor counted 500 bodies. Girls as young as twelve, and women of all ages were raped by gangs of 15 or 20 soldiers, crazed by alcohol, who roamed the town in search of women. At the Jingling Women's University, students were carted away in trucks to work in Japanese army brothels. Over a thousand men were rounded up and marched to the banks of the Yangtze river where they were lined up and gunned to death to give practice in machine-gun traversing fire. Thousands of captured Chinese soldiers, many wounded, were simillary murdered. In the following six weeks, the Nanking Red Cross units alone, buried around 43,000 bodies. About 20,000 women and girls had been raped, most were then murdered. Over one hundred girls of the Ginling Girls School were raped. Department stores, shops, churches and houses were set on fire while drunken soldiers indulged in wholesale looting and bayoneting of Chinese civilians for sport. It is estimated that over 150,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers were killed in this, the most infamous atrocity committed by the Japanese army. Many had been shot in the back as they fled the city. In charge of the troops during this time was General Iwane Matsui. At the Tokyo War Crimes Trial, Matsui was found guilty of a war crime unrelated to Nanking and sentenced to death. He was hanged in 1948. After the war, China tried about 800 persons for war crimes including those responsible for the Nanking and Shanghai massacres. The death penalty was given to 149 defendants. (It is known that one of the commanders during the atrocity was Prince Asaka, an uncle of Emperor Hirohito, but none of the Emperor's family was ever tried for war crimes).
German business man and Nazi Party member, John Rabe, who worked for Siemens in Nanking, became a hero to the Chinese when he established a seven square mile Safety Zone in the western side of the city to help protect civilians from the rampaging Japanese. Showing his Swastika armband and huge Nazi flags that adorned important buildings, the Japanese troops were reluctant to enter the zone. Known as the 'Good Nazi' he is reported to have saved the lives of over 200,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers. John Rabe died of a stroke in 1950 in Germany.
YELLOW RIVER FLOOD (1938)
During the Sino-Japanese war, as Japanese forces moved west towards the railroad junction of Chengchow, there to meet up with other Japanese units advancing on Hankow, the Chinese Nationalists blew up the flood dykes of the Yellow River. The resulting flood inundated three provinces and forty-four counties. Between four and five thousand villages and eleven towns were flooded. A total of 3,911,354 people were displaced. Altogether 893,303 lives were lost through drowning. The Chinese Nationalists blamed this atrocity on the invading Japanese. The dikes were rebuilt in 1946 and 1947 and Yellow River returned to its pre-1938 course.
HONG KONG ATROCITIES (December 25, 1941)
The lush island of Hong Kong, thirty-two square miles in area, was formally ceded to Great Britain by the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. Around Christmas, 1941, the peace and tranquillity of this island paradise was shattered when the troops of General Ito Takeo defeated the gallant soldiers of Britain, Canada, and India, and detachments of various other nationalities. Intoxicated with the spirit of victory, the Japanese troops