After the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, the aggressive and disciplined Japenees troops had already managed to take Shanghai, and had just taken the city of Nanking (Nanjing), the capital of Nationalist China. With a retreat of Chinese forces the Japanese took the city with relative ease.
After the city had fallen, Iwane Matsui, the commander of the Japanese forces, allowed his troops to have free will with the people of Nanjing, as a complete destruction of the city would help give the Japanese a psychological advantage over Nationalist China.
Over the next six weeks, the exhausted Japanese Army absolutely destroyed the people of Nanjing. An estimated 300,000 people were killed in that time span, with nearly all of them being Chinese women, children, and the elderly. Men were forced to rape their families, children were beaten with rifles for wearing traditional Chinese clothes, children were buried alive while they watched soldiers rape their mothers, and thousands were slaughtered meaninglessly by firing squads and dumped into mass graves.
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East estimated that 20,000 women, including some children and the elderly, were raped during the occupation. A large number of rapes were done systematically by the Japanese soldiers as they went from door to door, searching for girls, with many women being captured and gang raped. The women were often killed immediately after being raped, often through explicit mutilation or by penetrating vaginas with bayonets, long sticks of bamboo, or other objects. Young children were not exempt from these atrocities and were cut open to allow Japanese soldiers to rape them.
On 19 December 1937, the Reverend James M. McCallum wrote in his diary:
I know not where to end. Never I have heard or read such brutality. Rape! Rape! Rape! We estimate at least 1,000 cases a night and many by day. In case of resistance or anything that seems like disapproval, there is a bayonet stab or a bullet.… People are hysterical… Women are being carried off every morning, afternoon and evening. The whole Japanese army seems to be free to go and come as it pleases, and to do whatever it pleases.
During the Japanese reign of terror in Nanking – which, by the way, continues to this day to a considerable degree – the Reverend John Magee, a member of the American Episcopal Church Mission who has been here for almost a quarter of a century, took motion pictures that eloquently bear witness to the atrocities committed by the Japanese.…
On December 13, about 30 soldiers came to a Chinese house at No. 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. 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 [were]. 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.
There are also accounts of Japanese troops forcing families to commit incestuous acts. Sons were forced to rape their mothers, and fathers were forced to rape their daughters.
One of the most disturbing tales from the Nanjing massacre was the “sword contest”. A race between the two officers to see who could kill 100 people first using only a sword—was covered much like a sporting event with regular updates on the score over a series of days
After six weeks of torture, rapes, murders, executions, and misery, the Japanese executed 4,000 alleged plain-clothes Chinese troops and pursued the rest of the Chinese army further south. Although the Chinese eventually won the war, the Nanjing Massacre was, without doubt, one of the darkest periods of our history. Within little over a month the Japanese killed over 300,000 innocent people.
After the war some Japanese commanders responsible for the attack, including Matsui, were charged with war crimes and executed. However, many survivors did not come forward with evidence that could have brought justice to the thousands of soldiers that perpetrated this attack. Even today the Japanese government denies the amount of casualties estimated by the Chinese government, and many of the Nanjing commanders are enshrined in a memorial to fallen Japanese soldiers.