Is Japan a thorn in Asia's development/corporation?
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There is something called justice and dignity not to be forgotten...Originally posted by dragg:singapore is a small country with a small population. we have enough worries to last a few lifetimes.
why do we want to be concerned about something that happened half a century ago? -
i noticed you are very concerned about the china-japan world wall ii issue. this is not the first time you are criticising singaporeans.Originally posted by NuLife:Singapore has no history thus its people cannot understand.
Morever, sporean are well-known to be self-centred.
Nevertheless, on the official level,
the Japan government had not done enough.
Simply compare that with Germany,
those thinking people should see the difference.
And if you had been following asia news,
particularly Japans politics, you should know what is going on,
which is the reason why i post this thread.
are you a singaporean?
why dont you answer this question? -
you are absolutely right, it is the fear within some of us, out of ignorance or did we do anything wrong?.Originally posted by snow leopard:no, it is ourselves ...
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he sounds like a chicomm. don't feed the troll.Originally posted by dragg:i noticed you are very concerned about the china-japan world wall ii issue. this is not the first time you are criticising singaporeans.
are you a singaporean?
why dont you answer this question? -
I am a singaporean and I am concerned about the pro american hawkish attitude displayed by some singaporean on the china-japan issue. It is not to the benefit of singapore to take side on the power balance in this part of the world. A continuing quarrel between china, korea vs japan is no good for the region.Originally posted by dragg:i noticed you are very concerned about the china-japan world wall ii issue. this is not the first time you are criticising singaporeans.
are you a singaporean?
why dont you answer this question?
As for the comment on "self centered singaporean", your idea of " if drugs smuggled via singapore for australia doesn't concerns us cause the drug will not affect us" and "why bother about events that happened half a century ago" fit in very well.
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i agree. i believe nobody can ever forget it. but bringing it up time and again does not solve the problem.Originally posted by dreameryb:There is something called justice and dignity not to be forgotten...
it certainly does not make one feel better thinking about it. -
You are definitely right. But think about it: who actually brings those things up again and again? It's the perpetrator itself. If Japanese Prime Minister does not insist on paying tribute to that shrine again and again, would Korea and China have made such a fuss?Originally posted by dragg:i agree. i believe nobody can ever forget it. but bringing it up time and again does not solve the problem.
it certainly does not make one feel better thinking about it. -
you don't want people to argue over it, yet you have posted so many things yourself. please walk your talk or else shut up.Originally posted by dragg:i am suggesting that all read the postings so nobody needs to argue all over again.
it is not possible for you to convince fatum or for fatum to convince you. -
that is exactly why i dont want people to argue over it.Originally posted by snow leopard:you don't want people to argue over it, yet you have posted so many things yourself. please walk your talk or else shut up.
if you dont have better things to say dont post anything. why do you have to ask me to shut up?
you go fark yourself!! -
Well, peace is always the best option.It would be best that the Northern nations come together and bury their disagreements in the futureOriginally posted by sgdiehard:I am a singaporean and I am concerned about the pro american hawkish attitude displayed by some singaporean on the china-japan issue. It is not to the benefit of singapore to take side on the power balance in this part of the world. A continuing quarrel between china, korea vs japan is no good for the region.
As for the comment on "self centered singaporean", your idea of " if drugs smuggled via singapore for australia doesn't concerns us cause the drug will not affect us" and "why bother about events that happened half a century ago" fit in very well.
But the biggest question is that if one day we are forced to take sides, who would you choose? -
so you are not self centered and very concerned about the world. then it makes you better?Originally posted by sgdiehard:I am a singaporean and I am concerned about the pro american hawkish attitude displayed by some singaporean on the china-japan issue. It is not to the benefit of singapore to take side on the power balance in this part of the world. A continuing quarrel between china, korea vs japan is no good for the region.
As for the comment on "self centered singaporean", your idea of " if drugs smuggled via singapore for australia doesn't concerns us cause the drug will not affect us" and "why bother about events that happened half a century ago" fit in very well.
gimme a break. -
I don't think so. They lead us in terms of creation. Most of the products seem useless, but someone will find a way to use it in the future.Originally posted by NuLife:as above.
personally. i feel it is.
think i shud add: a thorn in asia nation's peaceful developement and corporation.
As for peaceful development, I am not sure. Given the tension between China, Japan and Korea, there's no guarantee as to what will happen. And the recent happenings with US, could worsen the situation. -
They paid us already. We owe part of our success today to Japan.Originally posted by NuLife:I feel, Japan had not paid for what it did in WW2 til this day.
Spore Government kept quiet, becos Japan had "Paid" us
(and we are only a tiny dot on the map without much say).
But not China and Korea, which are the 2 growing major powerhouse in asia. -
yuan yuan xiang bao he shi liaoOriginally posted by NuLife:I feel, Japan had not paid for what it did in WW2 til this day.
Spore Government kept quiet, becos Japan had "Paid" us
(and we are only a tiny dot on the map without much say).
But not China and Korea, which are the 2 growing major powerhouse in asia.
It's over and Japan too has suffered the effects of the war, especially the atomic bombs after effects.
They got their own retribution, haven't they?
I think you are talking about the comfort women, aren't you? I personally feel that the women have done no wrong, to be raped and be prostitutes and cannot get married and have a normal family. And some unfortunately got STDs. -
You maybe right. But what makes you so sure that we don't care? The only thing is that even if they still hate Japan for the WWII atrocities, they don't dare to say. Hatred will bring nothing but hurt only, why not forget it?Originally posted by NuLife:Singapore has no history thus its people cannot understand.
Morever, sporean are well-known to be self-centred.
Nevertheless, on the official level,
the Japan government had not done enough.
Simply compare that with Germany,
those thinking people should see the difference.
And if you had been following asia news,
particularly Japans politics, you should know what is going on,
which is the reason why i post this thread. -
The horror of the atomic bombings have done more than any call for apology.
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Originally posted by dreameryb:
http://www.gendercide.org/case_nanking.html
There is a false analogy in your "very simple argument" between human lineage and the succession of government. A child does not have to pay for his father's crimes because they are independent human beings who are responsible for their own actions. A government, however, is an extension and continuation of its predecessor in many respects and thus has to assume responsibilities for what happened in previous administrations. This is why the German government still expresses remorse for what happened in Hitler's times. This is why in any historical account about a government, there is normally a chronological account of it previous administrations. However, an autobiography of a human being stops when the person dies. You do not go on and include the life of his children.
Hope you get the point.
[quote]Originally posted by Fatum:
[b]I shall only use a very simple argument, one that i've used many many times over here ... suppose a man kills somebody ... do we jail the man ... or go after his children ? ... do you think it's fair to judge these children for what their father did ? ....
[/b]
Case Study:
The Nanjing Massacre,
1937-38
Summary
The Nanjing Massacre, also known as "The Rape of Nanking," is a rare example of simultaneous gendercides against women and men. It is generally remembered for the invading forces' barbaric treatment of Chinese women. Many thousands of them were killed after gang rape, and tens of thousands of others brutally injured and traumatized. Meanwhile, approximately a quarter of a million defenseless Chinese men were rounded up as prisoners-of-war and murdered en masse, used for bayonet practice, or burned and buried alive.
The background
The Second World War began in Asia. Japan's military dictators had long viewed China as the main outlet for their imperial and expansionist ambitions (for an overview, see Saburo Ienaga, The Pacific War 1931-1945). Japanese forces invaded and occupied Manchuria in northeast China in 1931, setting up the puppet state of Manchukuo. After the manufactured "Marco Polo Bridge Incident" of July 1937, the Japanese launched a fullscale invasion of China, capturing Shanghai on 12 November and the imperial capital, Nanjing, on 13 December. Numerous atrocities were committed en route to Nanjing, but they could not compare with the epic carnage and destruction the Japanese unleashed on the defenseless city after Chinese forces abandoned it to the enemy.
The gendercide against Chinese women
Murdered Chinese women and children are strewn
across the steps of a Nanjing building.
Women were killed in indiscriminate acts of terror and execution, but the large majority died after extended and excruciating gang-rape. "Surviving Japanese veterans claim that the army had officially outlawed the rape of enemy women," writes Iris Chang. But "the military policy forbidding rape only encouraged soldiers to kill their victims afterwards." She cites one soldier's recollection that "It would be all right if we only raped them. I shouldn't say all right. But we always stabbed and killed them. Because dead bodies don't talk ... Perhaps when we were raping her, we looked at her as a woman, but when we killed her, we just thought of her as something like a pig." (Chang, The Rape of Nanking, pp. 49-50). Kenzo Okamoto, another Japanese soldier, recalled: "From the time of the landing at Hangzhou Bay, we were hungry for women! Officers issued a rough rule: If you mess with a woman, kill her afterwards, but don't use bayonets or rifle fire. The purpose of this rule was probably to disguise who did the killing. The military code with its punishment of execution was empty words. No one was ever punished. Some officers were even worse than the soldiers." (Yin and Young, The Rape of Nanking, p. 188 )
One eyewitness, Li Ke-hen, reported: "There are so many bodies on the street, victims of group rape and murder. They were all stripped naked, their breassts cut off, leaving a terrible dark brown hole; some of them were bayoneted in the abdomen, with their intestines spilling out alongside them; some had a roll of paper or a piece of wood stuffed in their vaginas" (quoted in Yin and Young, The Rape of Nanking, p. 195). John Rabe, a German (and Nazi) businessman who set up a "Nanking Safety Zone" in the city's international settlement and thereby saved thousands of Chinese lives, described in his diary the weeks of terror endured by the women of Nanjing. Though young and conventionally attractive women were most at risk, no woman was safe from vicious rape and exploitation (often filmed as souvenirs) and probable murder thereafter. "Groups of 3 to 10 marauding soldiers would begin by traveling through the city and robbing whatever there was to steal. They would continue by raping the women and girls and killing anything and anyone that offered any resistance, attempted to run away from them or simply happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. There were girls under the age of 8 and women over the age of 70 who were raped and then, in the most brutal way possible, knocked down and beat up." (Chang, The Rape of Nanking, p. 119.) In addition to those killed after the violation, historian David Bergamini notes that "Many immature girls were turned loose in such a manhandled condition that they died a day or two later. ... Many young women were simply tied to beds as permanent fixtures accessible to any and all comers. When they became too weepy or too diseased to arouse desire, they were disposed of. In alleys and parks lay the corpses of women who had been dishonored even after death by mutilation and stuffing." (Yin and Young, The Rape of Nanking, p. 195.)
Not all of the victims of rape were female. "Chinese men were often sodomized or forced to perform a variety of repulsive sexual acts in front of laughing Japanese soldiers," writes Chang. "At least one Chinese man was murdered because he refused to commit necrophilia with the corpse of a woman in the snow. The Japanese also delighted in trying to coerce men who had taken lifetime vows of celibacy to engage in sexual intercourse. ... The Japanese drew sadistic pleasure in forcing Chinese men to commit incest -- fathers to rape their own daughters, brothers their sisters, sons their mothers ... those who refused were killed on the spot." (Chang, The Rape of Nanking, p. 95.)
The gendercide against Chinese men
Young Chinese men, their hands bound, are
led away for mass execution.
On 5 December, even before Nanjing's fall, Prince Yasuhiko Asaka -- uncle of Emperor Hirohito -- issued a secret order to "Kill all captives." When Nanjing was taken, "All military-age men among the refugees were taken prisoner," whether or not they had actually been soldiers (Yin and Young, The Rape of Nanking, p. 76. Note that the Chinese Nationalist government's press-ganging of young men was possibly the most brutal and gendercidal in history -- see the case-study of Military Conscription).
At wharves along the Yangtze River, tens of thousands of these prisoners -- up to 150,000 in all -- were massacred in cold blood. A typical order, issued to the 66th Regiment 1st Battalion on 13 December, read as follows:
Battalion battle report, at 2:00 [p.m.] received orders from the Regiment commander: to comply with orders from Brigade commanding headquarters, all prisoners of war are to be executed. Method of executed: divide the prisoners into groups of a dozen. Shoot to kill separately. ... It is decided that the prisoners are to be divided evenly among each company ... and to be brought out from their imprisonment in groups of 50 to be executed. ... The vicinity of the imprisonment must be heavily guarded. Our intentions are absolutely not to be detected by the prisoners. Every company is to complete preparation before 5:00 p.m. Executions are to start by 5:00 and action is to be finished by 7:30. (Quoted in Yin and Young, The Rape of Nanking, pp. 110, 115.) -
continued from above
According to Iris Chang, "The Japanese would take any men they found as prisoners, neglect to give them water or food for days, but promise them food and work. After days of such treatment, the Japanese would bind the wrists of their victims securely with wire or rope and herd them out to some isolated area. The men, too tired or dehydrated to rebel, went out eagerly, thinking they would be fed. By the time they saw the machine guns, or the bloodied swords and bayonets wielded by waiting soldiers, or the massive graves, heaped and reeking with the bodies of the men who had preceded them, it was already too late to escape." (Chang, The Rape of Nanking, p. 83.) The Japanese held grotesque killing contests, including "a competition to determine who could kill the fastest. As one soldier stood sentinel with a machine gun, ready to mow down anyone who tried to bolt, the eight other soldiers split up into pairs to form four separate teams. In each team, one soldier beheaded prisoners with a sword while the other picked up heads and tossed them aside in a pile. The prisoners stood frozen in silence and terror as their countrymen dropped, one by one." (Chang, The Rape of Nanking, p. 85)
Atrocious tortures were also inflicted on the captive men. "The Japanese not only disemboweled, decapitated, and dismembered victims but performed more excruciating varieties of torture. Throughout the city they nailed prisoners to wooden boards and ran over them with tanks, crucified them to trees and electrical posts, carved long strips of flesh from them, and used them for bayonet practice. At least one hundred men reportedly had their eyes gouged out and their noses and ears hacked off before being set on fire. Another group of two hundred Chinese soldiers and civilians were stripped naked, tied to columns and doors of a school, and then stabbed by zhuizi -- special needles with handles on them -- in hundreds of points along their bodies, including their mouths, throats, and eyes. ... The Japanese subjected large crowds of victims to mass incineration. In Hsiakwan [along the Yangtze] a Japanese soldier bound Chinese captives together, ten at a time, and pushed them into a pit, where they were sprayed with gasoline and ignited." (Chang, The Rape of Nanking, pp. 87-88.)
How many died?
After the war, the International Military Tribunal of the Far cited "indicat[ions] that the total number of civilians and prisoners-of-war murdered in Nanking and its immediate vicinity during the first six weeks of the Japanese occupation was over 200,000. That these estimates are not exaggerated is borne out by the fact that burial societies and other organizations counted more than 155,000 bodies which they buried ... these figures do not take into account those persons whose bodies were destroyed by burning or by throwing them into the Yangtze River or otherwise disposed of by [the] Japanese." As well, "According to Japanese Lieutenant colonel Toshio Ohta's statement, between December 14 and December 18 the Japanese commanding headquarters of Nanjing Port disposed of 100,000 bodies while other troops disposed of 50,000." (Yin and Young, The Rape of Nanking, pp. 78, 90.) With the sole exception of the Nazi gendercide against Soviet POWs, this was the most concentrated massacre of prisoners-of-war in recorded history. The rapes and rape-murders of women were also of staggering proportions. "Certainly it was one of the greatest mass rapes in world history," writes Iris Chang. She notes that "it is impossible to determine the exact number of women raped in Nanking. Estimates range from as low as twenty thousand to as high as eighty thousand." (Chang, The Rape of Nanking, p. 89)
Who was responsible?
Senior members of the Japanese high command bearing direct responsibility for the mass atrocities in China included the Emperor Hirohito, who made all major military decisions, including the one to invade China in 1937; Hirohito's uncle, Prince Asaka, who issued the order to "Kill all captives" and was thus the main architect of the gendercide against Nanjing's men; General Yanagawa Heisuke; and Lieut. General Nakajima Kesago, commander of the 16th division, who "supervised the beheading of two prisoners-of-war to test his new sword, thus setting an example for his troops in mass-scale killing in Nanking" (Yin and Young, The Rape of Nanking, p. 284).
The aftermath
The massacres and mass rapes in Nanjing continued for a full six weeks, extending into January 1938. Eventually the genocidal rampage was replaced by a brutal occupation conducted under a puppet authority, the "Nanking Self-Government Committee." Life began to return to the city, and its population eventually re-stabilized at around 700,000, two-thirds of the prewar population. In August 1945, after atomic-bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese surrendered to the United States and other allies. The Second World War was over.
In 1946-47, war-crimes trials were held in Nanjing. "Only a handful of Japanese war criminals were tried in Nanking," notes Chang, "but they gave the local Chinese citizens a chance to air their grievances and participate in mass catharsis." (Chang, The Rape of Nanking, p. 170.) Tani Hisao, a commander of the 6th Division which had committed many atrocities in Nanjing and elsewhere, was sentenced to death in March 1947 and executed the following month. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East tried nearly 30 key Japanese commanders, including Matsui Iwane, commander of the Central China Expeditionary Force. Iwane, however -- according to Chang -- "may have served as the scapegoat for the Rape of Nanking. A sickly and frail man suffering from tuberculosis, Matsui was not even in Nanking when the city fell" (Chang, The Rape of Nanking, p. 174). He was nonetheless executed along with six other "class A" war criminals in this Japanese equivalent of the Nuremberg trials. General Yanagawa Heisuke and Lieut. General Nakajima Kesago, two of the main Japanese field commanders in charge of the occupation of Nanjing, died of natural causes in 1945, and thus could not be prosecuted. Controversially, the Japanese imperial family, including Emperor Hirohito and Prince Asaka, received immunity.
A conscious attempt has been made by "revisionists" in Japan to deny or downplay the involvement of the Japanese military in massive atrocities during World War II. In September 1986, the Japanese education minister, Fujio Masayuki, referred to the Rape of Nanking as "just a part of war." In 1988, a 30-second scene depicting the Rape of Nanking was removed from Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor by the film's Japanese distributor. In 1991, censors at the Ministry of Education "ordered textbook authorities to eliminate all reference to the numbers of Chinese killed during the Rape of Nanking because authorities believed there was insufficient evidence to verify those numbers" (Chang, The Rape of Nanking, p. 208 ). And General Nagano Shigeto, a Second World War veteran appointed justice minister in Spring 1994, told a Japanese newspaper that "the Nanking Massacre and the rest was a fabrication." -
continued from above
Until the recent resurgence of interest in the Nanjing Massacre, the atrocities and their survivors had been largely forgotten. "After the war some of the survivors had clung to the hope that their government would vindicate them by pushing for Japanese reparations and an official apology. This hope, however, was swiftly shattered when the People's Republic of China (PRC), eager to forge an alliance with the Japanese to gain international legitimacy, announced at various times that it had forgiven the Japanese." Despite the fact that "the PRC has never signed a treaty with the Japanese relinquishing its right to seek national reparations for wartime crimes," no such reparations have been sought -- or offered. Overseas Chinese have, however, mounted increasing activist efforts. "The 1990s saw a proliferation of novels, historical books, and newspaper articles about the Rape of Nanking ... The San Francisco school district plans to include the history of the Rape of Nanking in its curriculum, and prints have even been drawn up among Chinese real estate developers to build a Chinese holocaust museum." (Chang, The Rape of Nanking, pp. 223-24.) Chang concludes her book, itself an important contribution to the revival of interest in these ghastly events, with a call for justice, however delayed:
Japan carries not only the legal burden but the moral obligation to acknowledge the evil it perpetrated at Nanjing. At a minimum, the Japanese government needs to issue an official apology to the victims, pay reparations to the people whose lives were destroyed in the rampage, and, most important, educate future generations of Japanese citizens about the true facts of the massacre. These long-overdue steps are crucial for Japan if it expects to deserve respect from the international community -- and to achieve closure on a dark chapter that stained its history. (Chang, The Rape of Nanking, p. 225.) -
we should decide only when we adsolutely have to.Originally posted by LazerLordz:Well, peace is always the best option.It would be best that the Northern nations come together and bury their disagreements in the future
But the biggest question is that if one day we are forced to take sides, who would you choose?
Taking side now or having preconceived idea will not help us in the future, but working on a peaceful coexistance and finding a balance of power will prevent us from being forced to take side. -
thank you for your acknowledgement.Originally posted by dragg:so you are not self centered and very concerned about the world. then it makes you better?
gimme a break.
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yes that's we..Originally posted by sgdiehard:we should decide only when we adsolutely have to.
Taking side now or having preconceived idea will not help us in the future, but working on a peaceful coexistance and finding a balance of power will prevent us from being forced to take side.
however our policymakers are hard at work looking at all sides
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It is very hard to find balance even if you want to. Even if you take a neutral stand, there is still some parts of you that will swayed towards one side. You may not feel so, but it is true.Originally posted by sgdiehard:we should decide only when we adsolutely have to.
Taking side now or having preconceived idea will not help us in the future, but working on a peaceful coexistance and finding a balance of power will prevent us from being forced to take side.
I always think that I am taking a neutral stand for this WWII thingy, but I still find myself getting angry when the newspapers report. -
http://www.moreorless.au.com/heroes/rabe.html
hero file
John Rabe
AKA 'The Good Nazi', AKA 'The Good Man of Nanjing', AKA 'The Living Buddha of Nanjing'.
Country: China and Germany.
Cause: The rescue of more than 250,000 Chinese from slaughter during the 'Rape of Nanjing'.
Background: The final collapse of the Chinese Imperial Government at the start of the 20th Century brings in a 30-year period of instability to China during which the nationalist Guomindang (Kuomintang or KMT - the National People's Party, or Nationalist Party), headed by Chiang Kai-shek, battle the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), headed by Mao Tse-Tung, for ultimate control.
Across the East China Sea, Japan becomes progressively more nationalistic and militaristic, seeing in China an opportunity to expand on territory occupied in Manchuria (now Dongbei Pingyuan, north of Korea) and Shandong Province (across the Yellow Sea from Korea) after the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95) and during the First World War.
Mini biography: Born on 23 November 1882 in Hamburg, Germany. His father is a sea captain. Rabe pursues a career in business, serving as an apprentice with a merchant in Hamburg then working in Africa.
1908 - Rabe travels to China.
1910 - He is employed in the Beijing office of the Siemens China Corporation.
1927-29 - Japanese troops are sent to China to obstruct attempts by the Guomindang to unify the country. In June 1928 officers in the Guandong Army, the Japanese Army unit stationed in Manchuria, begin an unauthorised campaign to secure Japanese interests and precipitate a war with China. Both the Japanese high command and the Chinese refuse to mobilise.
1931 - In September, conspirators in the Guandong Army stage the 'Manchurian Incident', blowing up a section of railway track in the south of Manchuria then blaming Chinese saboteurs. With the Japanese Government powerless to intervene, the Guandong Army mobilises, taking nearby Mukden (now Shenyang) then, in January 1932, attacking Shanghai, south of their territory in Shandong Province.
A truce is reached in March 1932. The Japanese then establish the puppet state of Manchukuo, centred on Manchuria and headed by the last Chinese emperor, Puyi.
Meanwhile, in November 1931 Siemens transfers Rabe to their office in Nanjing. Now the company's senior representative in China, he sells telephones, turbines and electrical equipment to the Guomindang government.
1932 - The Japanese military effectively takes control of the Japanese Government in May when the prime minister is assassinated. Manchukuo is formally recognised by the military-controlled regime.
1933 - In Germany the Nazi Party seizes power on 30 January when their leader Adolf Hitler is appointed chancellor. The Nazis quickly take control of the entire state apparatus. Rabe will join the party, becoming head of the local party branch in Nanjing.
1936 - In November, Japan and Germany sign the 'Anti-Comintern Pact', an agreement to fight the spread of communism. Italy joins a year later.
1937 - The Second Sino-Japanese War breaks out on 7 July following a skirmish between Chinese and Japanese troops outside Beijing. Chinese forces evacuate Beijing on 28 July.
The Japanese overrun Tianjin (100 km southeast of Beijing) on 30 July then attack Shanghai on 13 August. After a three-month siege, Shanghai falls and the Guomindang forces withdraw to the northwest towards their capital Nanjing (also known as Nanking). The Japanese pursue.
The foreign community and much of the Nanjing's Chinese population, including the government, are evacuated from the city during November. Rabe is ordered by Siemens to leave. He sends his family away but refuses to go himself.
Instead, he stays behind with several dozen other foreign nationals (mostly German and American missionaries, scholars, doctors and businessmen) to establish a temporary 'Safety Zone' to provide Chinese refugees with food, clothing and shelter during the confusion that is anticipated when the Japanese enter the Nanjing. Rabe is made head of the 15-member international committee that is founded on 22 November to administer the zone.
Twenty-five hostels are established in an area measuring around seven square kilometres in the western district of the city, with centres located in all of the foreign embassies and at the University of Nanjing. Rabe also opens his own property, which will shelter about 650 refugees.
On 1 December the international committee is authorised by the mayor of Nanjing to take over the administration of the city once he and his staff are evacuated.
The Japanese ground assault on Nanjing begins on 10 December after the Chinese troops assigned to defend the city refuse to withdraw. When Nanjing finally falls on 13 December, just hours after the Chinese forces have fled, the Japanese begin a bloodthirsty massacre that will last for six weeks. -
continued from above
Rabe and other members of the international committee meet the Japanese as they enter the city and attempt to explain the situation within the safety zone, asking that its boundaries be respected. However, their appeal will have limited effect.
"If I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would not have believed it," Rabe writes in his diary on that day. "They (Japanese soldiers) smash open windows and doors and take whatever they like. ... I watched with my own eyes as they looted the café of our German baker Herr Kiessling. ... Of the perhaps one thousand disarmed soldiers that we had quartered at the Ministry of Justice, between 400 and 500 were driven from it with their hands tied. We assume they were shot since we later heard several salvos of machine-gun fire. These events have left us frozen with horror."
The Rape of Nanjing (in Chinese, 'Nanjing Datusha' or 'Great Nanjing Massacre') results in the indiscriminate murder of between 200,000-350,000 Chinese civilians and surrendered soldiers. It is the worst single massacre of unarmed troops and civilians in the history of the 20th Century.
Japanese troops loot and burn the city and surrounding towns, destroying more than a third of the buildings. Chinese captives are tortured, burnt alive, buried alive, decapitated, bayoneted and shot en masse.
Between 20,000 and 80,000 Chinese women and girls of all ages are raped. Thousands are murdered after their ordeal. Thousands more are forced into sexual slavery. It is one of the worst ever recorded single cases of mass rape.
About 250,000 Chinese find refuge in the safety zone, which quickly becomes a permanent rather than temporary facility. Among the refugees are Chinese soldiers who were unable to leave the city during the general retreat. The Japanese demand that they be handed over and forcibly enter the safety zone on several occasions to apprehend suspects.
Rabe and his fellow zone administrators attempt to stop the atrocities occurring in the city while working to ensure that the refugees within the safety zone are fed and nursed. They also petition international governments to intervene and document the events for the world media.
Rabe uses his Nazi credentials to prevent the atrocities wherever possible. He writes repeatedly to Hitler asking that something be done to stop the killing. Along with other members of the international committee he records the actions of the Japanese troops and passes on reports to the Japanese embassy, which is also lobbied to intervene. Rabe also records his experiences in his diary.
"Groups of three to ten marauding soldiers would begin by travelling through the city and robbing whatever there was to steal," he writes at one point. "They would continue by raping the women and girls and killing everything and everyone that offered any resistance, attempted to run away from them, or simply happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. During their misdeeds, no difference was made between adults and children. There were girls under the age of eight and women over the age of 70 who were raped and then, in the most brutal way possible, knocked down and beat up. We found corpses of women on beer glasses and others who had been lanced by bamboo shoots. I saw the victims with my own eyes - I talked to some of them right before their deaths and had their bodies brought to the morgue at Kulo Hospital so that I could be personally convinced that all of these reports had touched on the truth.
"You would have thought it impossible, but the raping of women even occurred right in the middle of the women's camp in our zone, which held between 5,000 and 10,000 women. We few foreigners couldn't be at all places all the time in order to protect against these atrocities. One was powerless against these monsters who were armed to the teeth and who shot down anyone who tried to defend themselves. They only had respect for us foreigners - but nearly every one of us was close to being killed dozens of times. We asked ourselves mutually, 'How much longer can we maintain this 'bluff'?'"
On 19 December Rabe writes, "Six Japanese climbed over my garden wall and attempted to open the gates from the inside. When I arrive and shine my flashlight in the face of one of the bandits, he reaches for his pistol, but his hand drops quickly enough when I yell at him and hold my swastika armband under his nose. Then, on my orders, all six scramble back over the wall. My gates will never be opened to riffraff like that. Â… The 300 to 400 refugees here in my garden - I no longer know how many there really are - Have used straw mats, old doors, and sheets of tin to build huts for a little protection from the snow and cold."
On 24 December he writes, "I have had to look at so many corpses over the last few weeks that I can keep my nerves in check even when viewing these horrible cases. It really doesn't leave you in a 'Christmas' mood; but I wanted to see these atrocities with my own eyes, so that I can speak as an eyewitness later. A man cannot be silent about this kind of cruelty!"
And on 30 January, "My car is stopped on Hankow Road by a group of about 50 Chinese, who asked me to rescue a woman whom a Japanese soldier had led away to rape. Â… I find the house completely looted, the floor covered with all sorts of debris. In one of the open rooms is a coffin on a bier, and in the room adjoining, lying on a floor covered with straw and junk, I see the soldier, who is about to rape the woman. I manage to pull the soldier out of the room and into the entryway. When he sees all the Chinese and my car, he pulls away and disappears somewhere in the ruins of nearby buildings. The crowd stands at the door, murmuring, but quickly disperses when I tell them to, so as not to attract more Japanese soldiers."
The 1,200-page diary is forgotten after the Second World War, but will later resurface to furnish proof that the atrocities at Nanjing did in fact occur.
It is estimated that more than 250,000 are saved by the actions of Rabe and the other zone administrators, who are subjected to constant threats and intimidation, including violence, from the Japanese.