The Massacre of Nanjing

The Year: 1937. The place: Nanjing, China, home of the government of the Republic of China. 2 years before most history books record the start of WWII, and 4 years before Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese, the Empire of the Rising Sun launched the first attacks of the most gruesome war in history. Technologically and strategically superior to the divided Chinese armies, the Japanese quickly swept through Shanghai and seized the capital Nanjing. What followed was a shocking atrocity - in 6 short weeks, 300,000 citizens of Nanjing were brutally killed.

In Nanjing, I visited the memorial to the massacre, a large, solemn memorial and museum on the burial site of one of the massacres. The massacres are both a sore point for the Chinese people and a rallying cry of nationalistic angst. Many of my students refuse to accept that the Japanese ever apologized for this dark point in history, yet evidence is to the contrary, as the Japanese Prime Minister has done so on numerous occasions. Although it would seem time for the Chinese to let their anger pass, there is no doubt they have reason to grieve the horrific events of 1937.

After seizing the city, the Japanese decreed that many soldiers had likely taken off their uniforms to blend in with the civilians, a claim which the Japanese said gave them license to round up and murder thousands of civilians. One story of a rickshaw-puller explained how Japanese soldiers had set upon him while he was cooking, claiming that he must be a soldier because he had calluses on his hands (no doubt from pulling a heavy rickshaw all day). He was lead into a field with over a hundred other men, who were then shot down en mass by the soldiers. The young rickshaw driver only survived because he was shot in the arm first and fainted, only to awaken later among a pit of bodies. Horrible stories like this were too common in the museum.

Yet the murders are not all. Over 80.000 cases of rape have been reported, concerning women from the age of 12 to 70. Daughters were raped in front of fathers, mothers in front of sons. Brutality of this sort is hard to forgive, but not to be forgotten.

A few things shocked me during my visit. The most notable was that the most staunch defenders of the public, the people who brought sense to the madness and who helped ease the death toll, were mostly German. The leader of the international committee which created a 'safe zone', was a Nazi representative, sent my the 3rd Reich to oversee business interest in the region. The Red Swastika League buried countless bodies, providing decency and preventing outbreaks. How a few years later Germans would become known for their own holocaust, while preserving so many lives in China was unexpected.

Also shocking was the purveyors of brutality. I have studied bits and pieces of WWII, and my impression is that while it takes a nation to be complacent in a holocaust, the killing done by the Nazis was carried out by a select crew of SS officers, specially hardened and warped. Yet in Nanjing, the mode of execution was no gas chamber, but the end of a rifle. And the killings were not carried out by special, hardened madmen, but large, general parts of the Japanese Army. These were the regular soldiers committing unspeakable acts against civilians - had none of them morals?! Was the mindset of the average Japanese so far removed from humanity that it could produce huge squadrons of executioners? I feel the horror of Nanjing lies as much in the scale of the victims as it does in the scale of the criminals.

There is no doubt Japan should be sorry for what it has done, and perhaps it hasn't been enough. China has every right to be upset by the past. But why neither nation seems wiling to find common ground only lays the seeds for more unspeakable disasters.