The Rape Of Nanjing

I’ve read Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanjing. Words never felt so real. I’ve also watched the documentary, Nanking. Words can’t translate what my heart felt. I’ve visited The Nanjing Massacre Museum and I walked through it with watery eyes and a crying soul. The museum is dedicated to the 300,000 men, women and children who died at the whim of Japanese soldiers.

The museum’s ambiance reflected the aftermath of The Rape of Nanjing – eerily quiet and lifeless. I could almost feel the 300,000 spiritual beings hovering nearby. There walls upon walls of anecdotes and obituaries of those who were killed and raped and burned and looted and there were stories and faces of those who did the killing and raping and burning and looting.

Iris Chang refers to The Rape of Nanjing as the forgotten Holocaust. In fact, there were many genocides throughout history that can be considered forgotten. But they are not forgotten to the people who lived through it and to the people who’s ancestors suffered. Like any genocide, the Rape of Nanjing was inhumane and barbaric. Chang cited anecdotes from survivors about the pure brutality of the Japanese soldiers. Although her book is only one source of the events that took place, it is not the only source to rely on.

The International Military Tribunal for the Far East estimated that 20,000 women were raped, including infants and the elderly.A large portion of these rapes were systematized in a process where soldiers would search door-to-door for young girls, with many women taken captive and gang raped. The women were often killed immediately after the rape, often through explicit mutilation or by stabbing a bayonet, long stick of bamboo, or other objects into the vagina.

In his diary kept during the aggression to the city and its occupation by the Imperial Japanese Army, the leader of the Safety Zone, John Rabe, wrote many comments about Japanese atrocities. For the 17th December:

“Two Japanese soldiers have climbed over the garden wall and are about to break into our house. When I appear they give the excuse that they saw two Chinese soldiers climb over the wall. When I show them my party badge, they return the same way. In one of the houses in the narrow street behind my garden wall, a woman was raped, and then wounded in the neck with a bayonet. I managed to get an ambulance so we can take her to Kulou Hospital. (…) Last night up to 1,000 women and girls are said to have been raped, about 100 girls at Ginling College Girls alone. You hear nothing but rape. If husbands or brothers intervene, they’re shot. What you hear and see on all sides is the brutality and bestiality of the Japanese soldiers.“

There are also accounts of Japanese troops forcing families to commit acts of incest. Sons were forced to rape their mothers, fathers were forced to rape daughters. One pregnant woman was gang-raped by Japanese soldiers gave birth only a few hours later; although the baby appeared to be physically unharmed (Robert B. Edgerton, Warriors of the Rising Sun). Monks who had declared a life of celibacy were also forced to rape women.

On 10 February 1938, Legation Secretary of the German Embassy, Rosen, wrote to his Foreign Ministry about a film made in December by Reverend John Magee to recommend its purchase. Here is an excerpt from his letter and a description of some of its shots, kept in the Political Archives of the Foreign Ministry in Berlin.

“On December 13, about 30 soldiers came to a Chinese house at #5 Hsing Lu Koo in the southeastern part of Nanking, and demanded entrance. The door was open by the landlord, a Mohammedan named Ha. They killed him immediately with a revolver and also Mrs. Ha, who knelt before them after Ha’s death, begging them not to kill anyone else. Mrs. Ha asked them why they killed her husband and they shot her dead. Mrs. Hsia was dragged out from under a table in the guest hall where she had tried to hide with her 1 year old baby. After being stripped and raped by one or more men, she was bayoneted in the chest, and then had a bottle thrust into her vagina. The baby was killed with a bayonet. Some soldiers then went to the next room, where Mrs. Hsia’s parents, aged 76 and 74, and her two daughters aged 16 and 14. They were about to rape the girls when the grandmother tried to protect them. The soldiers killed her with a revolver. The grandfather grasped the body of his wife and was killed. The two girls were then stripped, the elder being raped by 2-3 men, and the younger by 3. The older girl was stabbed afterwards and a cane was rammed in her vagina. The younger girl was bayoneted also but was spared the horrible treatment that had been meted out to her sister and mother. The soldiers then bayoneted another sister of between 7-8, who was also in the room. The last murders in the house were of Ha’s two children, aged 4 and 2 respectively. The older was bayoneted and the younger split down through the head with a sword. (…)”

Pregnant women were a target of murder, as they would often be bayoneted in the stomach, sometimes after rape. Tang Junshan, survivor and witness to one of the Japanese army’s systematic mass killings, testified:

“The seventh and last person in the first row was a pregnant woman. The soldier thought he might as well rape her before killing her, so he pulled her out of the group to a spot about ten meters away. As he was trying to rape her, the woman resisted fiercely…The soldier abruptly stabbed her in the belly with a bayonet. She gave a final scream as her intestines spilled out. Then the soldier stabbed the fetus, with its umbilical cord clearly visible, and tossed it aside.” – Wikipedia

The stories and anecdotes are endless. The Nanjing Massacre Museum displays model scenes that depict some of the transgression of the Japanese soldiers. Surrounding the outside of the museum is a row of carved stone statutes that depicts the lives of the Chinese during the Japanese invasion. At the end of the museum, there is an open pool that reflects a statute of an angel. Under the angel is the word 安平, which means peace in Chinese. Every evening, the museum burns paper and incense to commemorate the dead. By sunset, ashes can be seen floating in the air.