Professional Documents
Culture Documents
February 2, 2015
SSO 306 77
The Rape of Nanking
The U.N. Convention on Genocide defines genocide as "acts
committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
ethnical, racial or religious group" ("Convention on Genocide"). From
these standards, what has been researched this semester would seem
to constitute as genocide, though many would argue against this. The
possible genocide being studied this semester is the Nanking
Massacre, otherwise known as the Rape of Nanking. This massacre
began and happened in its entirety during World War II, shortly after
America declared war on Japan on December 7, 1937. The Japanese
had a large superiority complex, believing they should be in control.
Because of this, the Japanese and Chinese had been fighting on
Chinese soil since September 1931, long before America came into
conflict with Japan (Vautrin, Shui-fang, Hualing, and Lian-hong, 1).
There are many questions that can be asked about why these horrific
acts of violence happened. How low did the Japanese view the Chinese
in comparison to themselves to feel that they deserved this treatment?
Why are these gruesome acts seemingly swept under the rug or
forgotten in todays culture?
how many people were raped and killed during this massive massacre.
Some estimate that roughly two hundred thousand prisoners of war
and civilians were killed during this short time period (Cheung). Others
believe the numbers are prominently higher, ranging from the two
hundred thousands to well into the three hundred thousands
(Yamamoto, 1).
Most of the time rape isnt about sex, rape is about power;
exactly what the Japanese had been after the entire war. The Japanese
soldiers sexually assaulted many Chinese women during this time.
There were accounts of the soldiers breaking in to peoples homes and
raping women, sometimes abducting them as well (Yamamoto, 135136). During the day the Japanese soldiers would prowl the safety
zone looking for women, at night the soldiers would come back and
take the women they found desirable, some of them being girls of no
more than eleven or twelve (McCallum and Carroll). Sometimes in just
one night over a thousand women would have been raped (Parachin).
When there were no women to be found nearby, the soldiers would
assault teenaged boys. One of the civilians in Nanking during this time
said that they witnessed Japanese soldiers force a living man to have
sex with a dead woman in the street (Nanking). In the 2007
documentary Nanking, Zhang Xiu Hong, who was age 12 in 1937,
recalled some of the events she witnessed of the rapes during the
invasion:
They would capture dozens of young girls and line them
up, and they would choose the pretty ones. But I had an
idea. I shaved my hair off. The Japanese still kept
harassing me. One of them said, You are a girl, I want to
[makes sexual hand gesture]! I saw them capture
young girls, and these girls always resisted them. After
they had their fill, they would stab the girl in her abdomen
and move the bayonet around in her belly until she finally
died. I saw this happen before my own eyes quite a few
times.
From the other side of the conflict, Japanese soldier Teramoto
Juhei, who is still alive today, didnt seem remorseful for his or the
other soldiers actions during this atrocity during an interview in a
documentary. He actually laughed and smiled while saying the
following quote:
We all drew straws and the man who pulled out the one
marked first, he brushed off her face tenderly and treated
her pretty, and then proceeded to rape her. As their
daughter was being raped, the parents would come outside
and gesture to us, Please spare her! Theyd bang their
heads on the ground and plead with us. Wed take the girl
and five of us would hold her down. Its like that Shed be
foaming at the mouth. (Nanking)
Women became frightened and began taking refuge and hiding
together but this seemed to have only made it easier for the soldiers
to catch and rape many of them at once (Yamamoto, 135-136). The
amount of women raped is also unknown. Some researchers estimate
that approximately twenty thousand Chinese women were gang-raped
by the Japanese soldiers during the Rape of Nanking (Cheung). Others
have estimated that these numbers are drastically greater, projected
to range from twenty thousand to eighty thousand (Yamamoto, 1).
Nanking was the capital of China and therefore had a lot of
people from all around the world, a lot of missionaries from other
countries stayed to help during the Nanking Massacre. One man who is
an example of this is John Rabe, a member of the Nazi party from
Germany. He is quoted to have once said, I have to see these
atrocities with my own eyes so that in the future I can bear witness
and tell others what happened. One must not be silent facing such
cruel deeds. He used his membership in the Nazi party to protect
himself and those he was helping shelter. As soon as the Japanese
soldiers saw his swastika they would immediately leave him alone.
Rabe made films and kept diaries of what he witnessed and once he
left China and went home to Germany, he sent these to Adolf Hitler
himself. The Gustapo arrested Rabe not long after he sent this
information to Hitler (Parachin).
In the 1970s began the Japanese revisionism. All information
on the Nanking Massacre was distorted or completely taken out of
mention in textbooks. The Nanking Massacre was described as a
minor incident by officials, making it out to seem as if what
happened was not important or immoral in any way (Cheung).
Japanese school textbooks were edited and rewritten, saying that the
Nanking Massacre occurred when Japan occupied Nanking, but not
saying what exactly had happened while they were there. The
Japanese word used that is most closely translated to the English
occurred is a word usually used to convey a natural phenomenon, as
if this genocide on the Chinese citizens of Nanking could not have been
stopped (Barnard, 159). The rapes that occurred were described as
something that always happens in wars, as if that excused what had
happened (Cheung).
In a study done by Christopher Barnard from Teikyo University in
Tokyo, only one of the eighty-eight textbooks he studied portrays the
Japanese as the wrongdoers during the Nanking Massacre (Barnard,
165). A lot of books will say the conflict in Nanking did happen, but do
not say to what extent. According to Joanna Pitman, the texts gloss
they did (Cheung). Today, many Japanese people still believe that the
reports from The Rape of Nanking are exaggerations or fabrications
(Nanking). Even while researching the Nanking Massacre or Rape of
Nanking, many articles come up in response to the search that say the
Nanking Massacre was not an actual incident, that the whole thing was
made up by the Chinese or was some kind of strange and bizarre
conspiracy.
Its hard to find much information that is unquestionably
completely accurate on the Rape of Nanking. A big part of this is
probably because of the denial of the severity of what happened or the
complete denial of this atrocity ever happening. The Japanese thought
they should be in charge of all other countries and saw themselves as
above everyone else. The Japanese seemed to have the same type of
mindset as the Aryan race during the holocaust and treated their own
race as such. Though a lot of the information on this subject is skewed
and not completely known, whether you believe in what happened was
as bad as described or not it is fair to say that a lot of people suffered
because of what happened in Nanking in 1937. Today it is up to us to
make sure nothing like this can ever happen again, and especially to
make sure that the information on brutalities such as this isnt
forgotten.
Works Cited
Barnard, Christopher. The Rape of Nanking In Japanese High School
Textbooks: History Texts as Closed Texts. Canaria Journal of
English Studies, n.d. Web. 9 Feb. 2015.
<http://publica.webs.ull.es/upload/REV%20RECEI/40%20%202000/09%20%28Christopher%20Barnard%29.pdf>.
Chang, Iris. "The Rape of Nanking." Google Books. N.p., n.d. Web. 02
Feb. 2015. <http://books.google.com/books?
hl=en&lr=&id=s65PF7g5vk0C&oi=fnd&pg=PP2&dq=why%2Bdid
%2Bnanking%2Bmassacre%2Bhappen&ots=J1RlX7yuV-&sig=8rRtRPgCGs-3FPo1UG8Ug2qpfs#v=onepage&q&f=false>.
Cheung, Chiu-yee, Dr. "The Nanjing Massacre." The Nanjing Massacre.
IEARN, n.d. Web. 03 Feb. 2015.
"Convention on Genocide." Convention on Genocide. N.p., n.d. Web.
06 Feb. 2015. <http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html>.
McCallum, James, and Andrew Carroll. "An American Missionary
Describes 'Beastly' Atrocities in Nanking." Letter. N.d. Reeves
Library.
Nanking. Dir. Bill Gutentag and Dan Sturman. Perf. Hugo Armstrong
and Rosalind Chao. 2007. Netflix.
Parachin, Victor M. "Nazi Party Member John Rabe, the 'Good Man of
Nanking,' Saved Thousands of Lives." World War II 15.5 (n.d.):
n. pag. Reeves Library. Jan. 2001. Web. 16 Feb. 2015.
<http://reeveslib.setonhill.edu:2174/ehost/detail/detail?
vid=7&sid=cf31bacc-36d1-4398-b7cab076a2adcf2a@sessionmgr112&hid=118&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWh
vc3QtbGl2ZQ==#db=afh&AN=3850995>.
Pitman, Joanna. "Repentance." New Republic 206.6 (1992): n. pag.
Reeves Library. Web. 19 Feb. 2015.
<http://reeveslib.setonhill.edu:2174/ehost/detail/detail?
vid=9&sid=cf31bacc-36d1-4398-b7cab076a2adcf2a@sessionmgr112&hid=118&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWh
vc3QtbGl2ZQ==#db=afh&AN=12006799>.
Vautrin, Minnie, Shui-fang Tsen, Hualing Hu, and Lian-hong Zhang.
The Undaunted Women of Nanking: The Wartime Diaries of