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 little 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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