Nanjing Massacre - Inhuman Civilian PoW Massacre
The Nanjing Massacre is one of the worst crime cases of systematic mass murder and rape of civilian and PoW against Humanity committed by a country in our modern History.
After losing the 2 infamous Opium War to Britain (For details, click Hong Kong - From Opium War to 1997 and Beyond) in 1841 and 1856, China had become the world's largest worst drug case in Human History. The Opium drug caused a disastrous outflow of China's wealth.
China, a rich country greatly admired by Marco Polo, quickly became a poor country and started to disintegrate.
By the early of this century, China was long since carved into leased colonial chunks belonging to Britain, France, U.S., Russia, Germany, other European countries, and then came the Japan. Foreign countries established their own Spheres of Influence within China
Foreign powers introduced a whole century of humiliation and many humiliating Unequal Treaties (more than 1,100 treaties) onto China. China had become a semi-colony country.
China was not freed from this Unequal Treaty System and the addictive Opium drug until 1943.
The Meiji Restoration had successfully changed Japan from a feudal state to a modern state. Unfortunately, it also transformed Japan from a previous Western Colonial Victim to a Eastern Colonial Aggressor.
In 1872, Japanese Tenno government forcibly carried out the so-called "Ryukyu Disposal" and invaded the centuries old Ryukyu Kingdom.
In 1874, Japan invaded Taiwan, China with the pretext of settling the issue of Ryukyu fishermen killed 3 years earlier. The Qing government accepted the mediation brokered by Britain, but the U.S. and France took side with the Japanese. As a result, the Qing court was forced to sign with Japan the "Special Treaty on Taiwan Affairs", which obligated China to pay Japan an indemnity of $500,000 taels of silver and recognized Ryukyu as part of Japanese territory.
In 1879, Japan forced the annexation of the ancient Ryukyu Kingdom and turned it a colony of the Tenno system under the name "Okinawa Prefecture". Okinawans were subjected to ferocious indoctrination and re-cast into subjects of the Japanese emperor. In the course of becoming Japanese, Okinawans suffered indignities and discrimination in civil rights, economic opportunities, culture and social standing. Japan’s minorities' place in the sun.
In 1887, the director of Japanese Second Bureau of the General Staff, drafted the famous "General Plan for a Military Expedition into the Qing State" which contemplated attacks in Beijing, occupations in the Yangtze River area, annexation of the Eastern Liaoning Peninsula, Taiwan, the Pescadores, etc, and in the meantime divided other parts of China into small countries such as Northeast, North China, Jiangnan, Qing Hai and Tibet, Mongolia, Gansu and Zunhgar, which would be all under the control of Japan.
Japanese Commerce and Agriculture Minister Tani Tateki, after returning from a trip to Europe, sent a memorandum to the Japanese Emperor, "..... as far as Europe is concerned, although we will not be directly involved, we can take advantage of such a European turmoil, and become the master of the East in one big leap ....."
For a very long time, Korea had been China’s traditional tributary state. To assert the control of Korea, Japan had actively penetrated Korea’s political, economic and military affairs. Chinese Qing government was too weak and afraid of getting involved with confrontations with the Western and Japan colonial powers.
In 1894, War of JiaWu finally began in July between China and Japan to assert influences over Korea.
The War of JiaWu ended with signing the Treaty of Maguan (Shimonoseki) on April 17, 1895. Defeated, China was forced to pay a phenomenal huge indemnity 231 million taels of silver, cession of Taiwan, the Pescadores and Liaotung peninsula etc .....
In 1904, Russian-Japanese fought a war inside China to determine who had more "Rights" to colonize China, ended with Treaty of Portsmouth.
In 1910,Japan brutally annexed Korea and started 36 years of brutal colonial governance. Korean culture was suppressed. Newspapers were prohibited from publishing in Korean and the study of Korean history was banned at university. School children were forbidden to speak Korean. Japanese tried to force Koreans to adopt Japanese names, Shinto religion but without much success. 100s of thousands of Koreans were sent to Japan as Slave Labor and more than 100 thousand women were used as Sex Slaves.
With the phenomenal huge Chinese money, Japan's economic took off immediately and was soon ready for the WWII.
In 1915, seizing the opportunity of W.W.I. in Europe, Japan demanded China to surrender her sovereignty with a secret ultimatum comprising 21 Humiliating Demands and backed up by the threat of war.
Although still suffering as a Western colonial victim, during W.W.I, China sent 100,000 laborers to help the allies in France; about 2,500 died. At end of W.W.I. at the peace conference in Paris, China requested: do away with the privileges of the imperialist foreign countries in China, cancel the Japanese "21 Humiliating Demands", take back the privileges in Shandong that Japan had taken from Germany.
However, not willing to give up their forced colonial privileges, U.S., Britain and France rejected China's demands. Instead, Article 156 of Treaty of Versailles transferred German concessions in Shandong, China to Japan rather than returning sovereign authority to China.
China refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles, compounded with the Japanese 21 Humiliating Demands led directly to the first mass movement in modern Chinese history, i.e. the famous First Chinese university student movement : May 4th Movement in Beijing in 1919 and triggered a nationwide Boycott of Japanese Goods. The movement also ignited a wave of searching efforts by the intellectuals for a solution to save China from foreign colonial powers. Some advocated gradual cultural reform, while others introduced Marxism and led to the birth of the Communist Party.
Worried about losing their own established forced colonial privileges in China to Japan, Western countries intervened and later at the Washington Conference, Japan reluctantly agreed to withdraw its troops from Shandong and restore full sovereignty to China.
In 1928, China was still divided by the warlords. Dr. Sun Yat-Sen's government appointed Chiang Kai-shek as the commander-in-chief of the army to unite China. Japan wanted to provoke war while China was still divided, thus dispatched 3,000 soldiers to the Jinan city under the pretext of protecting Japanese residents and killed the Chinese negotiator Tsai Kung-Shi, and massacred several thousands of Chinese civilians and soldiers in Jinan city, known as the "May 3rd Jinan Massacre". Japanese then assassinated the Chinese warlord Chang Tso-lin after he had expressed his intention to surrender Manchuria to the Chinese government that would threaten Japan's economic privileges and its domination in Manchuria.
Chinese government realized the "May 3rd Jinan Massacre" and the assassination were designed by Japan to provoke war while China was still divided. Chiang Kai-shek ordered the his army to avoid Japanese controlled areas, and later effectively unified China under the government based in Nanjing.
Most American think of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor as the beginning of WWII. But in fact, the brutal WWII was already raging in China since 1931, and nowhere was it more brutal than in Nanking (Nanjing), the capital of China at that time.
1931 Sept 18, when China was still engaging in its Civil War, Japan carried out a coup known as the "Mukden Incident" or "918 Invasion" or "Manchurian Incident" and resumed its invasion and occupied much of the Northeastern part of China.
In Nov. 1931, the Chinese communists who had rebelled the ROC government, established a provisional Soviet "government" in Jiangxi Province. Chiang Kai-Shek believed that the Communists must be eliminated before China could effectively repel Japanese invasion. He was determined to carry on the Anti-Communist campaign and ordered the armies to continue to attack. But one army commanded by Chang Hsueh-Liang disobeyed. He flew to Xian on Dec 12, 1936, to confront the general and was arrested by Chang. After a series of negotiations, Chiang Kai-Shek agreed to halt the Civil War and united with the Communist army and fought together against the Japanese invasion, known as the famous "Xian Incident".
1932 Feb 18, Japan declared Manchuria was to be independent from China as "Manchukuo" and set up a puppet state in the name of Puyi who was the last emperor of China.
Japan then moved as many as 2.5 million of Japanese into China over the next few years to prepare for the full invasion.
1937 July 7, Japan fabricated the " China Incident - 77 Marco Polo Bridge Invasion" and launched its full scale invasion into China under the "Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere" banner that paved the way for the bloody colonization of China, the Korean Peninsula and most of Southeast Asia.
Japan claimed that it would take only 3 months for them to conquer the whole China. Yet, not only they had to spend 3 months just to capture Shanghai city, but also suffered great casualties.
The bloody Battle of Shanghai lasted 3 months and involved nearly one million troops. Approx. 200,000 died on both sides.
When the prolonged Battle of Shanghai was finally over in mid-November, in vengeance, Japanese soldiers began wreaking their inflamed animosities on Chinese soldiers and civilians throughout their march to Nanjing, the Chinese capital.
Feeling humiliated for not capturing China within 3 months and suffered huge loss, desperately wanted to break the unexpected Chinese strong will of resistance, Japan turned to extreme State-Terriorism, employed official government policy of Massacre and Rape, developed WMD Biological, WMD Chemical and addictive WMD Drug Warefares.
In Feb. 2000, a road construction team discovered about 20,000 WMD Chemical Weapon metal canisters lay buried atop the Yellow Beard Mountain, Nanjing, showing for the first time that Japanese forces deployed WMD Chemical Weapon during their invasion of the Chinese capital Nanjing.
The size of the WMD Chemical Weapon, experts say, is enough to put Yellow Beard Mountain near the top of the list of places around the world.
Most startling is the fact that the stockpile in Nanjing represents just a tiny fraction of the WMD Chemical Weapon in China left behind by Japanese army.
1937 Dec. 13, Nanjing, the capital of China during the war, finally fell to the Japanese.
The Chinese government had to move its capital to the city of ChongQing. Later in 1940, Japan set up a Chinese puppet government in the conquered capital Nanjing under Wang Jing-Wei.
The retreating Chinese troops started setting fire on some of the buildings as part of their Scorched Earth policy as not to leave anything useful to the enemy. Some of the demoralized Chinese soldiers also started looting.
Archibald Steele of the Chicago Daily News wrote, "feeling that the behavior of the Japanese could not possibly be worse than that of their own defeated army, they were quickly disillusioned."
1937 Dec. 14, Commander of the Sasaki Detachment of the 16th division of the Shanghai Expeditionary Force, Major General Sasaki Touichi under Commander-in-Chief Prince Asaka Yasuhiko issued the official military order - " Kill ALL Captives ".
Japanese military force immediately systematically started murdering civilians and PoWs in China under the military "Three All Policy" -- "Kill All, Loot All, Burn All".
It was a well planned, full scale revenge designed to intimidate and crush the spirit of China. Japanese soldier began an orgy of cruelty seldom, if ever, matched in modern History.
Japanese soldiers under commander-in-chief Prince Asaka Yasuhiko of the Shanghai Expeditionary Force and uncle of Japanese Empress Nagako, looted all the precious Chinese golds and silver, national treasures, ancient artifacts, jades, rugs, porcelain artworks, paintings, antiques and books in the former Chinese capital, for transport to Japan.
In the next 2 - 3 months, Japan committed the infamous "Nanjing Datusha" or "Great Nanjing Massacre", or "Rape of Nanjing".
Frank Tillman Durdin of the New York Times wrote, "I saw the Japanese troops outdo them in a campaign of plunder which the Japanese carried out not only in the shops but in homes, hospitals, and refugee camps."
The sense of end-of-battle relief quickly turned into an immense fear of Death, Rape and Robbery.
C. Yates McDaniel of Chicago Daily Tribune wrote in his "Nanking Horror Described in Diary of War Reporter" :
"My last remembrance of Nanking : Dead Chinese, Dead Chinese, Dead Chinese. "
The New York Times reporter F. Tillman filed his report, "All Captives Slain" on Dec. 18, 1937 :
"The Japanese looting amounted almost to plundering of the entire city. Nearly every building was entered by Japanese soldiers, often under the eyes of their officers, and the men took whatever they wanted. The Japanese soldiers often impressed Chinese to carry their loot ....... The mass executions of war prisoners added to the horrors the Japanese brought to Nanking."
"The army men performing the gruesome job had invited navy men from the warships anchored off the Bund to view the scene. A large group of military spectators apparently greatly enjoyed the spectacle."
"Most of the Chinese soldiers who had been interned in the safety zone were shot in masses. The city was combed in a systematic house to house search for men having knapsack marks on their shoulders or other signs of having been soldiers. They were herded together and executed."
Other atrocities were vividly described by Iris Chang with Nightmare in Nanking in her best selling book "Rape of Nanking - The Forgotten Holocaust" :
"The brutalities included shooting, stabbing, cutting open the abdomen, excavating the heart, decapitation, drowning, punching the body and eye with an awl. Thousands of civilians were buried or burn alive, or used as targets for bayonet practice, shot in large groups and thrown into Yangtze River."
"Not only did live burials, castration, the carving of organs and the roasting of people become routine, but more diabolical tortures were practiced, such as hanging people by their tongues on iron hooks or burying people to their waists and watching them torn apart by dogs."
"An estimated 20,000 - 80,000 Chinese women were raped. Many soldiers went beyond rape to disembowel women, slice off their breasts, nail them alive to walls. Fathers were forced to rape their daughters, and sons their mothers, as other family members watched."
Japanese invented Games of Rape and Massacre, turned Murder into Sport.
"The manner in which these victims met their death was extremely cruel with atrocities of such great magnitude and diversities, so ghastly that it made Nazi's Auschwitz Gas Chamber appear Humane."
In fact, mass murder was carried out systematically by the Japan long before the first Nazi's Auschwitz Gas Chamber were even built.
Soldiers competed in " Bushido - Killing Contest Game" and sent the number of murders back to Nichi-Nichi Shimbun national newspaper in Japan to publish.
" I have never been to Hell , but there is a Hell , it was in this city , " reporter for the Tokyo Times told the killing in Nanjing.
The captured or surrendered Chinese soldiers were all mercilessly killed. Japanese inspected every men in the city to check for any sign of have been a soldier with helmet mark on forehead, calluses on hands or strap mark on shoulders. All suspects regardless were rounded up and immediately executed.
"At one time, after Nanking was captured, more than 30,000 Chinese were driven to the foot of the city wall. Machine guns then swept the crowd and grenades were thrown from atop the wall. The 30,000 people were all killed, most of them were women, children, and elderly." reported Tokyo Asahi Shimbun correspondent Yoshio Moriyama on December 14, 1937.
"Those in the second row were forced to dump the severed bodies into the river before they themselves were beheaded," The Japanese military correspondent, Yukio Omata, wrote, "The killing went on non-stop from morning until night ........".
Okumiya Masatake, was a former Imperial navy pilot and author of "The Nanjing Incident that I Saw". After having taken part in the Dec. 12 bombing and sinking of the USS Panay in the Yangtze River, Okumiya traveled in a chauffeur driven car for several days with an interpreter and a bodyguard to search for downed Japanese aircraft and the bodies and belongings of pilots killed during air raids over the city. "I believe that no other people went around inside and outside the walled city, combing the area like me at that time," Okumiya said.
He remembers a scene at Lake Xuanwu on Dec. 25. "There I saw numerous bodies in the lake and on its shore. They were so many that I could not count them. They were both young and old, and both men and women," Okumiya told The Japan Times. "The Chinese were bound with their hands behind their backs. About 20 soldiers were beheading the Chinese with their Japanese swords, the beheading task successively taken over by other groups of soldiers. The Chinese were forced to sit on the square so their heads would drop into the river..... The execution was like assembly line work. Some people say that in Nanjing, there were no organized or systematic killings by the Japanese army. But what I saw was nothing other than organized and systematic killings."
A December 15, 1937 entry to the diary of a Japanese soldier in the 23rd Regiment of the 18th Division, published in Tokyo Asahi Shimbun on August 4, 1984: "When we were bored, we had some fun killing Chinese. Buried them alive, or push them into a fire, or beat them to death with clubs, or kill them by other cruel means."
"Once you've killed your second or third, you stop thinking about it," Yasuji Kaneko describes how he grew numb to slaughter after bayonet drills using live Chinese prisoners tied to stakes.
"It was ultimately about competition," another interviewed veteran describes throwing babies onto camp fires just for laughs, "how many you killed becomes a standard of achievement."
Former Japanese sergeant major, Masayo Enomoto, says he became so inured to murder that he thought nothing of chopping up a rape victim, cooking her flesh and serving it to his hungry troops.
"Some Japanese soldiers who were hungry had killed the 16 years old Chinese boy and eaten some of his meat and sold the rest to the merchant, and we bought it from that merchant," Shinzaburo Horie said. The 79 year old former Japanese soldier trembled as he excavated his war memories. "I can't forget the fact that I ate a human being," "We should absolutely apologize to China and Korea," Horie said without hesitation. "Absolutely."
"Soldiers impaled babies on bayonets and tossed them still alive into pots of boiling water," Nagatomi Hakudo said with deepest remorse. Nagatomi is now now an acupuncturist in Japan and has built a shrine of remorse in his waiting room. "They gang-raped women from the ages of 12 to 80 and then killed them when they could no longer satisfy sexual requirements. I beheaded people, starved them to death, burned them, and buried them alive, over two hundred in all. It is terrible that I could turn into an animal and do these things. There are really no words to explain what I was doing. I was truly a devil."
Private Tadokoro Kozo of the 114th division said in 1971 interview, " There wasn't . ANY . soldier who didn't Rape. After things were done, usually we killed them ..... We didn't want to leave any trouble behind ....."
Another Japanese army veteran told reporter, "No matter how young or old, none of the women we rounded up could escape being Raped. Each one was allocated to 15 or 20 soldiers for sexual intercourse and abuse. After the Rapes, "we always stabbed them and killed them. Because dead bodies don't talk."
" The women were always killed. When they were being Raped, the women were human. But once the Rape was finished, they became pig's flesh," said Shiro Azuma remosely, "We were taught that we were a superior race since we lived only for the sake of a human god -- our emperor. But the Chinese were not. So we held nothing but contempt for them." Azuma is the first Japanese soldier to publicly admit and apologize for what he did. He told his story by publishing his diaries "My Nanking Platoon" and was sued for libel. But Azuma vows to keep fighting in courts for the right to speak truth, "I am 86 year old now, but I will fight to death like a young man, but this time is not for the Emperor but for the Justice and the History."
Azuma compared the Nanjing Massacre to the Holocaust. " These two were the most inhuman tragedies during the Second World War," said Azuma.
Teruichi Ukita, now 71 years old served in China in the Japanese kenpeitai, the dreaded military police, said in a tremulous voice, "It was when I had two daughters myself, I started to realize what I had done."
He was captured by Russians at the end of the war and sent to Siberia. It was when he saw fellow Japanese being killed, he said, that he belatedly realized the universal value of human life. "Watching Chinese being killed, I had no emotions," Ukita said. "It was like a game. But when I saw Japanese being executed in Siberia for stealing things, I got so angry and emotional."
Witnessed the atrocities, Reverend John Magee used his camera and recorded the Massacre in a 16mm film. It is believed to be the only documentary about this infamous massacre. He was an Episcopal pastor in charge of the so-called Nanjing International Safety Zone created when Japanese army captured Nanjing in 1937.
Angry at the Japanese atrocities, German diplomat Mr. George Rosen sent a copy of Magee's film to the Nazi government. He also included a long report which claimed that the whole Japanese army was a "Violent Killing Machine". In it, he requested that the film be shown to Hitler.
Chinese and Japanese scholars were aware of the film but were unable to locate it. Japanese then said that since there was no proof, the Nanjing Massacre never occurred.
When the German Archive at Botsdam was opened in 1990 after collapsing of the Berlin Wall, the Rosen report surfaced.
After a long search, the four rolls of the film and the diaries were finally found in Yale University Library and in the house of Mr. David Magee, Reverend Magee's son.
According to Magee's dairy, he could only record a very small part of what he witnessed since he was too busy to save lives.
John H. Rabe, top representative of Siemens company, was also the chairman of International Safety Zone (3.3 square miles), recorded this unspeakable Japanese atrocities in his 2,117 pages Diary of War.
Like Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who protected Jews, Mr. Rabe and few other western foreigners risked their life and helped to save 250,000 Chinese refugees from being killed. Chinese called him " The Living Buddha of Nanking".
When the people of Nanjing learned that he was near starvation in postwar Berlin, they immediately collected equivalent US $2,000 in 1948 and the city mayor of Nanking even flew to Switzerland to deliver money and food to Mr. Rabe. They kept sending food every month until China fell to communists in 1949.
As the leader of local Nazi Party and Safety Zone Chairman in Nanjing, Rabe wrote a letter to Hitler about the Japanese War Crimes and asked Hitler to persuade Japan to stop the atrocities.
On Dec. 12, 1996, Ursula Reinhardt, his granddaughter from Berlin, showed the 8 volumes of diary the very first time to the public in New York. It was Iris Chang with Nightmare in Nanking, author of the "Rape of Nanking - The Forgotten Holocaust of WWII, brought the attention of the whole world to this diary.
The English version of his complete diaries of war, is available The Good Man of Nanking - The Diaries of John Rabe
In April 1997, Mr. Rabe's tombstone was moved from Berlin and rested in the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre, Nanjing, China.
"This escapades were quite dangerous," Mr. Rabe wrote in his diary. "The Japanese had pistols and bayonets and I -- as mentioned before -- had only party symbols and my Swastika armband." He also wrote about the retreating Chinese troops, "I then had a humanitarian impulse that I later came to regret .... I advise them that they should drop their weapons and let me take them to the barracks in the safety zone .... I hope these disarmed troops would face no worse fate than being taken prisoner by the Japanese .... every one of these disarmed troops, and thousands more later seeking refuge in the safety zone were singled out .... and immediately taken to be executed. Thousands and thousands were executed by machine gun fire or hand grenades ........"
George A. Fitch was the head of the YMCA, director of Safety Zone and acting Mayor in Nanjing during war. He had also smuggled out the Magee footage and travelled throughout US to give his witness speeches about the horrific Nanjing Massacre. In his book "My Eighty Years in China", he wrote on Dec. 24, 1937 the following diary entry:
"But to have to stand by while even the very poor are having their last possessions taken from them - their last coin, their last bit of bedding (and it is freezing weather), the poor ricksha man his ricksha; while thousands of disarmed soldiers who had sought sactuary with you, together with many hundreds of innocent civilians are taken out before your eyes to be shot, or used for bayonet practice, and to listen to the sound of the guns that are killing them; to have over a thousand women kneel before you crying hysterically, begging you to save them from the beasts who are preying on them ........"
"To commit acts of unbelievable brutality and savagery on the very people they have come to protect and befriend, as they have so loudly proclaimed to the world. In all modern history surely there is no page that will stand so black as that of the Rape of Nanjing ........"
Minnie Vautrin, was an American missionary from a little town of Michigan. She helped found Ginling College in Nanjing. As dean of studies at Ginling College, she shielded the desperate Chinese who sought asylum behind the gates of the college. In unswerving defiance of the Japanese, she turned Ginling into a sanctuary for 10,000 women and girls, who honored her as their "Goddess of Mercy", a "Living Goddess".
"How many thousands were mowed down by guns or bayoneted we shall probably never know," wrote Vautrin in her diary, "For in many cases oil was thrown over their bodies and then they were burned."
When the Japanese soldiers ordered Minnie to leave the campus, she replied: "This is my home. I cannot leave." She spent 21 years of invaluable service as teacher, education department chair and acting president of Ginling. Minnie saved thousands of Chinese through heroic acts but becoming too traumatized to save her own life. She suffered a nervous breakdown in 1940 and returned to the US. She committed suicide in 1941.
Her tombstone bears the words "Ginling Forever". A bronze monument to Vautrin was established at Ginling college in 2002. In Illinois, Governer Rod Blagojevich has declared Sept. 27, "Minnie Vautrin Day".
A book based on her diary, maintained during the entire siege, correspondences, eyewitness, government documents, and interviews with Vautrin's family is available American Goddess at the Rape of Nanking: The Courage of Minnie Vautrin.
Arnold Brackman, a reporter at the Tokyo Trial and author of the book The Other Nuremberg, commented " The Nanjing Massacre was not the kind of isolated incident common to wars. It was deliberate. It was policy. It was known in Tokyo."
"In terms of measures and cruelty of the genocide, its duration and large numbers of people killed," says professor Wu of history of Southern Illinois University "Neither Hiroshima nor Jewish Holocaust can rival the Nanjing Massacre."
Japanese invented Games of Rape and Massacre, turned Murder into Sport.
"The manner in which these victims met their death was extremely cruel with atrocities of such great magnitude and diversities, so ghastly that it made Nazi's Auschwitz Gas Chamber appear Humane."
In fact, mass murder was carried out systematically by the Japan long before the first Nazi's Auschwitz Gas Chamber were even built.
In 1937, Chang Zhiqiang, 10 years old, watched his father and other able-bodied men form a human wall in an attempt to keep Japanese soldiers from getting close to their elders, women and children. He saw his mother bayoneted twice in an attempt to protect her 6 children, and watched his 2 younger brothers suffer a similar death. His 2-year-old youngest brother froze to death over the dead body of his mother, and his elder sister died after being Raped and bayoneted.
Like many other survivors, Mr. Chang rarely speaks of the massacre, not even to his children and grandchildren. "I cannot bear to think of it," and silently weeps. Mr. Chang had never been to the Memorial Hall. On 2 occasions he got as far as the entrance, but was overwhelmed with such sorrow that he had to turn away.
Then, in 1997 he saw on TV that the right-wing Japanese were denying the Nanjing Massacre. Anger motivated him to write down exactly what he saw and experienced. He started to volunteer as guide for the Memorial Hall. "At the beginning, hatred and pain would swell in my heart when I saw Japanese visitors. After they listened to my account of what happened, they just broke down and cried. Some knelt before me and some bowed. At first I was taken aback and felt uneasy. Gradually, as my hatred ebbed, I was able to face them with an eased heart."
On the 3rd day of Japanese occupation of Singapore, the Japanese General ordered all those Chinese, age from 18 to 55, who fought against the Japanese invading force to be interned and then were truck away and never to be heard from since. It was reported in the Japan East Asia Annual published in 1942, that over 70,000 anti-Japanese Chinese in Singapore were interned and killed eventually. A Monument was built and dedicated on February 15, 1967 by then Singapore Premier Lee Kwonyu.
It should be of no surprise that many similar Japanese atrocities occurred elsewhere in thoughout South East Asia.
Sex Slaves - Inhuman Sexual Crime
This military Sex Slaves is definitely the worst and only known war crime case of systematic mass violation of women rights against Humanity committed by a country in our modern History.
Nearly all of the 2.5 Million Japanese soldiers who surrended to the Allies in 1945 would have known about the Sex Slaves. However, after the war the Sex Slave issue quickly faded from public consciousness, and for years the issue received little attention.
On Feb 24 2001, in the Hague War Crimes Court, the International Tribunal has convicted the 3 Serb commanders in the Bosnian town of Foca in 1992 and 1993, where hundreds of women were abducted and sexually enslaved by Bosnian Serb soldiers. They received prison terms of 28, 20 and 12 years. The 3-judge panel ruled that Mass Rape is a crime against Humanity, the 2nd most serious category of international Crimes after Genocide.
In 1980s, the outcry of the former Sex Slaves started capturing the world wide attention, and slowly has gained the wide international support.
In 1988, Professor Yun Chung Ok of Ehwa Women's University in Korea began to lead an activist group that conducted and presented research about the Comfort Women.
In 1990, 37 women's groups in Korea formed the Voluntary Service Corps Problem Resolution Council and demanded apology and compensation from Japan.
In the beginning, Japanese Government refused to admit any involvement of the state, as illustrated by Japan's position stated in the house of councilor's Budget Committee Session of June 1990 that "Comfort Women" were recruited by private sector operators.
On 16 Jan. 1992, Japanese history professor Yoshiaki Yashimi of Chuo University unearthed 6 official war documents from the Library of the National Institute for Defense Studies in Tokyo confirmed the involvement of Japanese military authorities in both establishing and operating the comfort stations..
The unrefutable proof forced the Japanese Government to acknowledge the involvement and issued an apology but continues to deny by saying that the women were not forcibly recruited.
Humiliated and ashamed, Sex Slave survivors remained silent for decades before finally speaking out in the early 1990s in response to persistent denials by Japan of its involvement.
August 1991, Kim Hak Sun became the first Korean woman to give public testimony to her life as a Sex Slave. She was one of the 3 Korean former Sex Slaves women filed the first lawsuit against the Japanese government in Dec. 1991. Her lawsuit had attracted worldwide attention. Similar lawsuits followed by South Korea women had finally shed some light to the worst case "Rape Camps" against women's human rights in this century.
Japan did not even admit to the Sexual Salvery until 1993.
Japanese military also in cooperation with the Japanese organized criminal organization Yakuza, ran thousands of brothels for Japanese soldiers, kidnapping and forcing hundreds of thousands of women into "Comfort Women" - Sex Slaves.
Using the Sex Slaves, Japanese Army extorted large sums of money from the women's families in exchange for their Sex Slavery.
The Japan's first wartime "Facility for Sexual Comfort" was opened in Nanjing, China in 1938.
Hundreds of thousands Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Filipina, Malaysian, Dutch, East Timorese women were forced into Sex Slavery. In Shanghai alone, the Japanese military set up 90 sex stations, with about 500 women serving soldiers at each station.
Research has shown that the previous estimated 200,000 by U.N. did not take into account of China, because China came into the research picture much later than its Asian neighbors. In Shanghai alone, the Japanese military set up 90 sex stations, with about 500 women serving soldiers at each station.
The total actual number of Sex Slaves could be close to 400,000.
Despite the widespread prevalence of what was essentially institutionalized Rape, the issue of Sex Slaves was ignored by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, set up after the WWII to prosecute Japan's war criminals.
Kim Yoon Shim, a former Sex Slave, now 69 years old, told the cast of Hanako that she was 13 years old when she was abducted by Japanese outside her village in Cholla province. She said it was common for young women to have to offer sexual services 20 to 50 times a day. Many tried to commit suicide; others attempted escape.
During a rainstorm, Kim tried to flee. She sought refuge in a house - only to discover it was occupied by Japanese soldiers. "I was beaten up and tortured," she recounted. "My feet were broken and my spine cracked. They hung me upside down, poured water in my nostrils and stuck pins in me."
As a result of the torture, Kim's hearing is permanently damaged. When she was later reunited with her family, she said her mother suggested that it might have been better if she had died rather than survive with "that kind of past".
Kim's past followed her into her future. She was abandoned by her first husband because she could not have children. She underwent surgery in an attempt to repair the damage to her body. When she married a second time, she gave birth to a daughter with serious handicaps. Gonorrhea and syphilis contracted from Japanese soldiers had been passed to her baby. "To this day, my daughter cannot hear or talk," Kim said. "She doesn't know what happened to me."
In Filippine, Sex Slaves are known as the "Lolas", the Grandmothers. When "Lola Nenita" resisted the first assault, she was severely beaten. During their "rest periods" the women had to cook and do the laundry for their captors -- but they were never allowed to talk. They escaped when the Americans came and "Lola Nenita" returned home only to be thrown out by her husband and ostracized by relatives. She had brought dishonor to the family. Her children were forbidden from calling her Mother.
Many Sex Slaves became sterile from the repeated rapes. Women who became pregnant or infected with a sexually transmitted disease were given a shot of the antibiotic terramycin, which the women referred to as "Number 606", the drug made the women's bodies swell up and would usually induce an abortion." If a girl did get pregnant, soldiers would occasionally sit on the girl’s stomach until the unborn baby came out, then they would kill the baby. The girl who had just given birth was not allowed a recovery period, and she was forced to have sex again right away. If a girl became too ill, a guard would wrap her up in a blanket and carry her away. Kim Yoon-shim, a former comfort woman reported, " I did not see any of the sick girls ever come back.”
Lee Ok Soon, now 76, still suffers from the Sexual Slavery of her teens, "My two sisters feel quite ashamed of me and say that it was all my fault. They won’t visit me at all." Although Lee married later, but she never revealed her past to her husband for fear of rejection, "I got so many injections of 606 that I was unable to have children ..... He didn’t know." she explained.
Jang Jomdol, 83, gave the tearful testimony, "It's so shameful just to think of what had happened to me when I was young serving as a Sex Slave of the colonial Japanese troops. It makes me sick," She said, "At first I felt so ashamed of my humiliating experiences I couldn't come out. It was really agonizing to bring myself up to tell the truth, but I finally decided to let the world know what really happened, contrary to the continued denial of this truth by the Japanese authorities."
She was abducted in 1938 at age 16 and forced to be Sex Slave of 40 to 50 Japanese soldiers daily on average for almost 2 years with repeated pregnancies and miscarriages alternately. She made several futile escape attempts, each time ending in beatings until she fell into unconsciousness. She saw 2 of her Sex Slave friends commit suicide and the memory haunts her even these days. "I won't be able to close my eyes even at my deathbed, unless I hear Japan apologize for its barbarism." she emphasized.
University of Victoria Japanese history professor John Price says that After the war, the Japanese Army went to great lengths to cover up its connection to the Sex Slaves. Thousands of them were killed by the fleeing Imperial soldiers.
Of the approx. 400,000 Sex Slaves, only fraction lived through the ordeal and just about 500 are believed alive today. They were forced to serve up to 40 men a day.
No one knows the true figure.
Most have concealed their past, considering it too shameful.
In Feb. 1992, the "Comfort Women" issue was first taken up at the U.N. by attorney Etsuro Totsuka at the commission of Human Rights adopted a resolution criticizing all form of violence against women in war situation.
In Nov. 1992, the International Commission of Jurists recommended that the Japanese Government should pay state compensation of US $20,000 to each of the victims for their physical and emotional damages.
The Japanese Government insisted that the recommendation from U.N. do not imply any legal binding, therefore, Japan has no obligation to comply with them.
In Aug. 1994, Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama annonunced a project for "Peace and Friendship Exchanges" tried to solve this issue. The proposal was criticized both at home and aboard that Japan is not taking its responsibility of state compensation to the victims.
In July. 1995, Japanese government established a private sector fund called "Asian Women's Fund" (AWF) tried to settle the "Comfort Women" issue privately. However, the fund has been rejected by most of the victims of military sex slavery by Japan and their support groups.
Victims strongly opposed the "Asian Women Fund" because the private fund covers up the war crime of Japanese government and the systematic sexual violence again women committed by a country.
Most victims have refused it and say, "We want no charity, but dignity".
On Jan. 4 1996, the U.N. Human Rights Commission released an official report, submitted by the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women by Radhika Coomaraswamy, on the wartime Sex Slavery, report by International Commision of Jurists, Geneva Comfort Women : An Unfinished Ordeal, and also another report by Special Rapporteur Ms. Gay J. McDougall in 1998 : Systematic Rape, Sexual Slavery and Slavery-like practices during armed conflict.
The reports are founded on years investigation and recommends that Japanese government should assume state responsibility and
1. Acknowledge its violation of international law.
2. Make a public apology in writing to individual women.
3. Pay compensation to individual women.
4. Amending educational curricula to reflect true historical realities.
5. Full disclosure of related documents
6. Identify and punish, as far as possible, involved perpetrators
In April 1996, the delegate to U.N. from China, for the first time, stated that Japan should pay state compensation to the victims of Sex Slavery by Japan during WWII.
With the financial support from Japanese government, the AWF has been actively exploring its canvassing, large scale advertisement and disunited activities in victimized countries.
In Aug. 1996, 5 Filipino victims became the first group to receive 2 million yen each from AWF, together with a letter from Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto. However, the 5 Filipino victims refused the letter and declared that they will continue their fight to demand official apology and compensation because the money from the private fund was not meant as a redress because Japanese government had not made state compensation.
To encourage victims to accept the "offer of atonement", Japanese government decided in Jan. 1997, to pay out extra money to be used for medical care and welfare through the AWF. Still, most victims have rejected the offer and only few accepted.
But how can one put a dollar amount on a war crime that stigmatised an estimated 400,000 women ? Lured by false promises of employment or violently abducted from their homes in the Phillipines, East Timor, Malaysia, Taiwan, Burma, China, Indonesia, and especially North and South Korea, these women were forced under threat of death to stay in so-called "Comfort Stations" across Asia.
In Sept. 1997, Taipei Women's Rescue Foundation in Taiwan held an unprecedented fund raising with the support of a famous Taiwanese historian and writer Lee Auh. It successfully raised and distributed 500,000 NT (2 million yen) each to 42 victims going against AWF. In Dec. 1997, Taiwan government matched the fund and distributed another 2 million yen each to all victims rejecting AWF.
In May 1998, South Korea paid 34.5 million won (about 3.5 million yen) to 12 victims. In May 8, 1998 the payment made by the Health and Welfare ministry, comprised 31.5 million won from state coffers and 3 million won from an additional 6.5 million won donated by non-government organizaiton. South Korea will continue making payments to the remaining victims through welfare section of Korean local government.
Japan has always denied any official approval of the brothels, arguing they were created by civilians. But according to a recently declassified US report from the National Archives obtained under the US Freedom of Information Act, issued by General Headquarters, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers on Nov. 15, 1945, the 36-page report offers the most detailed account yet of how the Japanese military brothels were run.
According to the report, Sex Slaves were given room and board but had to split medical expenses for treating their sexually transmitted diseases with the brothel operators, and had to buy clothes and grooming out of a small stipend they were to have received. But the women, abducted or tricked into the brothels by agents for the Japanese government, never received any payment, former Sex Slaves told researchers.
The report is expected to assist human rights activists who have been fighting for reparations for the surviving Sex Slaves of what some scholars refer to as the "Pacific Holocaust".
Last year 2003, a list of Korean victims compulsorily mobilized by the Japanese imperialists was made public display in Seoul for the first time. The list of 413,407 people was the result of the efforts for 30 years of the Investigation Team on the Truth about Forced Korean Laborers in Japan, composed of Korean and Japanese scholars and researchers. Congresswoman Kim stressed, “The number of victims including forced laborers, those drafted for military service, sex slaves, is about 7.5 millions." About 15 % of visitors found their names on the list.
“I do not want money, but just a formal apology. Give back my youth.” said Hwang Gun Ju, now 81. When she was 20 years old, she was forced to be a Sex Slave for about 4 years. There were the names of 147 “Korean Sex Slaves” on the list. Their real names were withheld in consideration of their privacy. " Is the Japanese government waiting for us to die ? I will not die before I win the apology” she added.
"Some Japanese, unofficially, have spoken openly of what they term the "Biological Solution", said Christopher Simpson, an associate professor at American University studied the comfort women issue for years, "In other words, waiting until the women die."
In 1995 Kim Hak Sun, the first former Sex Slave to give public testimony, told the anthropologist that she thought the Japanese tactics would be to stall the legal proceedings until all the litigants were dead. Her words proved tragically prophetic. She died on December 16, 1997.
Her funeral procession was routed to pass in front of the Japanese Embassy, where it halted for a symbolic demonstration of her struggle against the Japanese Government.
15 Sex Slaves tell their story.
Oct. 2005 In a comprehensive report entitled " Still Waiting After 60 years: Justice for Survivors of Japan's Military Sexual Slavery System" by Amnesty International. the report outlines the brutal treatment suffered by Sex Slaves and the excuses given by Japan over the years to deny responsibility for their suffering, called on the Japanese government to accept full responsibility for Sexual Crimes.
The Japanese government has argued that Rape was not a war crime until 1949, when it was incorporated into the 4th Geneva Convention. Amnesty International argues in its report, that there is a wealth of evidence that Rape in the context of armed conflict was a crime under customary international law during the entire period in which the Japanese government operated its system of sexual slavery.
Of the 215 Korean survivors who registered with the Korean Council, only 122 are left.
Since 1992, Korean Sex Slaves have been demonstrating every Wednesday in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul, South Korea, calling for justice.
"Now you want a witness to my rape ? I am a witness. I am my own witness. I was the one Raped. I was the one ruined." said Lola Julia Porras, held captive in a tunnel in the Philippines and Raped by Japanese forces in 1942 when she was 13 years old.
In a statement on Sex Slaves during the 51st session of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in 1996, Karen Parker said the following :
"Mr. Chairman, How much compensation do you think ought to be paid to a woman who was Raped 7,500 times ???
What would the members of the Commission want for their daughters if their daughters had been Raped even once ??
One victim recounted how she was kidnapped; she was placed in a cubicle, where her hands were tied behind her back, and her legs were spread and tied to posts. They lined themselves outside our cubicles and as soon as one of them had satisfied his sexual desires another would come and have his turn."
Japanese Government earned hundred of millions by forcing hundreds of thousands of girls and women into Sex Slaves as pay service to its soldiers.
U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Karen Parker, confirmed victims’ testimonies, and added her findings during the 51st session of the U.N. Commission of Human Rights in 1996, Parker states,
"Our research shows that more than 50 % of the girls and women died as a direct result of the treatment they received"
"There was at least 100,000 Rapes per Day , arranged by the Japanese Government , and carried out by its soldiers , 100,000 Rapists per Day".
"Even assuming only 5 years of program, there were at least 125 Million Rapes , 125 Million Rapes against the women of Korea, Philippines, Burma, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Netherlands."
Addressing at a public forum held in Tokyo in June, 1999, Ms. Gay J. an American international law specialist who issued a report endorsed at the 50th session of the U.N. Human Rights Subcommission on Aug. 21, 1998 : Systematic Rape, Sexual Slavery and Slavery-like practices during armed conflict, calling for Japan’s reparation to wartime Sex Slaves, denounced the Japanese military abuse of Asian women as “One of the most egregious examples of wartime systematic Rape and Sex Slavery in History.”
McDougall rebuffed Japanese argument and said, “Statute of Limitations are in-applicable to Slavery, Crimes against Humanity and other gross violations of customary international law."
Dec 1, 2004 Women's organisations from Asia, Europe and North America agreed to act together from next year, the 60th anniversary of WWII to made Abducted Sex Slaves By Japan To Become Global Issue In 2005. "We'll launch a million-signature campaign worldwide to demand an apology and compensation from the Japanese government," said Suda Kaori, a Japanese member of the Korea Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sex Slavery by Japan.
Aug 10, 2005 Women's groups rally across Asia, Manila, Seoul, Taipei, Tokyo, Osaka and other Japanese cities, urged Japan to apologize and compensate Sex Slaves. "Japan abducted me and forced me to become a Sex Slave," 76-year-old Korean Lee Yong-soo said, "The Japanese government should have come to my home and kneel down to apologize."
In Seoul, Kim Yun-ok said, " The Japanese soldiers enshrined at the Yasukuni Shrine are the very ones who Raped our grandmothers."
More than 86 % of the enshrined Japanese soldiers were from WWII. Private Tadokoro Kozo of the 114th division said in 1971 interview, " There wasn't . ANY . soldier who didn't Rape. After things were done, usually we killed them ..... We didn't want to leave any trouble behind ....."
Daughter EILEEN: It was a perfectly kept secret. There was some things that didn't make any sense - like, my mother always used to say, when it was her birthday or Mother's Day, and we'd say, "What do you want for a present?" And she'd say, "Just don't give me flowers. They're such a waste of money. Don't give me flowers." And we couldn't understand that. Everybody loves flowers. Every mother loves getting flowers.
Mother JAN: In 1992, 50 years on, I remember hearing on the news that the War in Bosnia had broken out, and women were being Raped. Then I saw on television the Korean comfort women. The South Korean comfort women were the first ones to speak out. And I watched them here in my living room. And they wanted justice and compensation and an apology, more than anything else. They wanted an apology from the Japanese government. And they weren't getting anywhere. They were getting nowhere. And I thought, I must back up these women. Now it's time to speak out...... But before I could do that, of course, I had to tell my family. I had to tell Eileen and Carol. You know, how can you tell your daughters ? The shame was still so great, you know. I knew I had to tell them, but I couldn't tell them face to face.
Daughter EILEEN: One day, my mother came up to my husband's shop and gave him an envelope and just mysteriously said, "Oh, give this to Eileen to read tonight." So I opened the envelope up, and there was two articles from Dutch newspapers with headlines about shocking revelations of Dutch women being used as Sex Slaves during the war. And I....I just couldn't associate...."Why have I been given this to read ? What is this about ? Why has my mother given me this ? And as I read the articles, I just got so angry inside. I can feel it now. Anger just surged up inside me. I could see there was also a large amount of hand written notes by my mother, which was, in fact, 30 pages.
Daughter EILEEN: And as it so turned out, it was exactly what I had feared. And all the time as I was reading, I was saying, "No! Not this! Not this!" And I was throwing the sheets of paper. And I can't believe the anger, because I'm not an angry person. Tears were just streaming down my face. I don't think I've ever cried so much in my whole life.
Daughter CAROL: What I really felt was horror, shock and horror, that these things could have happened to such a beautiful person as my mother.
Daughter EILEEN: All I'm thinking was, "No! Not my...No, this is not my mother. My mother is this beautiful...is this beautiful, strong person. Nobody could do that to her. That's not what's happened. That's not what I've heard. That's not...that's not the story of prison camp that I know."
More .........
However, in defiance to all Sex Slave victims, and the comprehensive report entitled "Still Waiting After 60 years: Justice for Survivors of Japan's Military Sexual Slavery System" compiled by the Amnesty International, and the Human Rights recommendations of Systematic Rape, Sexual Slavery by the United Nations which Japan is now applying for the permanent membership of U.N. Security Council, the
Japan's largest national newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun has called on its readers to celebrate the New History Textbooks of cutting out ALL mentions about the Sex Slaves.
Jun 13, 2005 Japan's Minister of Education and Culture, Nariaki Nakayama praised the recent deletion of Sex Slaves from History Textbooks.
Jul 12, 2005 Japanese Education Minister: "comfort women" have no place in Textbooks.