OT - Paper on rape of Nanking. Need some help

[Timotheus]

In the next few weeks I am going to be writing a paper on the rape of Nanking and the continual refussal by the Japanese as a government or people to fully take responsibility for their actions.

I plan on writing a paper that focuses on all of the atrocities and war-crimes of the Japanese of WW2. My arguement will be simple. The Japanese cannot admit or accept Nanking because they refuse to accept any of the atrocities they commited and accepting this one basically the first and worst of them all would make it impossible then to ignore/deny the rest.

To this end I need as complete as possible a list of Japanese WW2 atrocitie and war-crimes. This is what I have come up with so far. If there are any that I missed please let me know.

Rape of Nanking
Bataan Death-March
Detachment 751
Plague bombs in China
Medical experimentation on Allied POWs
Torture and execution of Allied POWs after the dropping of the atomic bomb
Use of POW for forced labor often to their death
Machine-gunning of parachuting allied airmen.


I know these are on a wide range of scale. Some killed thousands or more like Nanking while others killed little to no one like the plague bombs that basically failed. I want though to have as complete a list as possible.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Narukami]

Greetings Timotheus!

That is an ambitious project to say the least.

No doubt you have read the book "The Rape of Nanjing" but another book you should obtain (if you have not already) is "Retribution: The Battle For Japan 1944-45" by Max Hastings.

http://www.amazon.com/Retribution-Battl ... 238&sr=8-1

You will find information in there about the Japanese conduct during the Battle of Manila that will add to your list.

Also you should take a look at (again if you have not already done so) the book "War Without Mercy" by John Dower. This book too will add to your list but also throw into stark relief the conduct and motivations of several Allied units and commanders.

http://www.amazon.com/War-Without-Mercy ... 573&sr=1-1

You have selected a very interesting topic, but an extremely complex one, particularly as regards modern Japanese attitudes.

A friend of my wife's family was a survivor of the Death March -- it was a very ugly event of which he spoke seldom and only briefly, and I should add never in my presence. I know of it only from what he said to my wife's parents. He never expressed any resentment of the Japanese, at least in my presence, and in Hawai'i it is impossible to avoid things Japanese. (We always had sushi at parties -- it is a Hawaiian staple so to speak.) Even so he found it interesting that my wife was studying Japanese theatre in graduate school. Perhaps he had come to terms with the ghosts of the past -- I 'll ask and see if I can find out more.

If I can think of anything that might be of use to you I will send it your way.

Good luck with the paper.

:wink:

Narukami

[Timotheus]

How is the Max Hastings book? I started to read "The Korean War" by Max Hastings and I found the book to be horribly biased. I felt like he was trying to constantly put down the American military just make the British military look better.

[Narukami]

Hastings, like most (if not all) historians, does have an agenda when he writes. In his books on the war in Europe he seems to be acting as a counter to the Stephen Ambrose school "The kids of democracy beat the kids of fascisms" by focusing on the German military. Likewise his book on the final year of the war in Europe brings up the many Allied violations of the Rules of War, but I did not find him particularly hard on the US in favor of the UK.

Likewise, his book on the Pacific War has an agenda -- that the use of the Atomic bombs was necessary to bring about the Japanese Surrender. Again he points out crimes committed by all sides but does not seem to favor one nation at the expense of another. If he is "hard" on anyone it is the Japanese. But "hard" is the wrong word really -- he is just holding them to account for their actions as he does the Allies in Europe.

I have not read his book on Korea (I did read Toland's) so can not offer an opinion there but I know he has received mixed reviews, particularly on his view that dropping the Atomic bomb was necessary.

Be that as it may I do think the book has good information in it that will be of use to you on your current project. You might also check out Toland's landmark book "The Rising Sun."

On another note...

My wife sent me an e-mail saying that indeed their many friends who suffered through the Japanese occupation of the Philippines hated the Japanese, so much so that when her uncle returned from duty in Japan, with the Army of Occupation, his Japanese bride was not well liked and it took several years for the family to warm to her as a person and not hate her for what her fellow countrymen had done. In fact the family friends, I now am informed, did not know what my wife was working on in grad school -- in this case some details were best left unsaid.

One of the family friends was castrated by the Japanese during the Death March -- it was truly barbaric.

In listening to these survivors talk it was my wife's impression that the Japanese soldiers felt themselves to be racially superior and therefore their actions were not crimes at all.

That sense of certainty in their Racial Superiority reminds me of Jacob Bronowski and what he had to say in relation to knowldege and certainty.

The Principle of Uncertainty or, in my phrase, the Principle of Tolerance, fixed once for all the realization that all knowledge is limited. It is an irony of history that at the very time when this was being worked out, there should rise, under Hitler in Germany and other tyrants elsewhere, a counter-conception: a principle of monstrous certainty. When the future looks back on the 1930s, it will think of them as a crucial confrontation of culture as I have been expounding it – the ascent of man against the throwback to the despots' belief that they have absolute certainty.

It's said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That's false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.

Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you in the bowels of Christ: Think it possible you may be mistaken."

I owe it as a scientist to my friend Leo Szilard, I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died here, to stand here as a survivor and a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.

From the "Knowledge or Certainty" episode from The Ascent of Man

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mIfatdNqBA


Clearly, as a country, the Japanese have not come to terms with their past in the same way or to the same degree as have the Germans.

Hope this info, meager as it is, helps.

Good luck!

:wink:

Narukami

[Gaius Decius Aquilius]

My mom wrote a book on the Bataan Death March, and captivity to the end of the war Beyond Courage (ISBN 1881325148), focusing on the New Mexico National Guard. My stepfather survived Bataan, the Hell Ships, and being a POW. About half the unit did not. He is still alive. There are only about a dozen left now. I heard some hard talk about the prison guards, but very little directed against the Japanese people. Most of the comments seem to center around receiving an apology from the Japanese government for the brutal treatment they received, but they know they will probably never get one. Curiously, my Japanese relations by marriage are from my stepfather's side of the family.

The New Mexico National Guard shot down the first Japanese aircraft of the Phillippines campaign. This particular anti-aircraft gun was manned by members of the Pueblo tribes. One of the gunners became the Governor of Taos Pueblo. This Japanese attack was supposed to coincide with Pearl Harbor, but got delayed by weather.

A number of things that occurred and were common knowledge growing up in the midst of former POWs that are about the Death March, and captivity, probably cannot be desctribed in accurate detail given modern sensitivities. I know I was heavily censored and criticised for mentioning attrocities I saw the north vietnamese commit, which I was an eyewitness to. This, and many of the details that are in my mom's book would not be allowed to be posted on RAT.

If you want, send me a PM and I will see if I can get you some inside info. You might add The Hell Ships to your list.


Ralph Izard

[Timotheus]

Question for people.

Would you consider the Japanese government and military telling its citizens that the American soldiers will rape and torture them and that suicide in the name of the Emperor is how they should die?

Hundreds of Japanese families commited mass suicide during the invasion of Saipan because of what they were told.

[Magnus]

That's a tough question for Westerners to answer, since our social rules are quite different than that of the Japanese. To understand their mentality you need to research back about 250 years at least, to the institution of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Their societal values and rules are much, much different than western ones, though the different class systems were somewhat similar to that of our feudal eras.

I'm not sure how you are phrasing your question though...is there a question in your last post Timothy?

I wouldn't commit sepuku, if that is what you're asking. I'd rather go down fighting. But, if my belief in my emperor is that great, and my cultural beliefs tell me there is honour in suicide then so be it.

[Timotheus]

That's a tough question for Westerners to answer, since our social rules are quite different than that of the Japanese. To understand their mentality you need to research back about 250 years at least, to the institution of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Their societal values and rules are much, much different than western ones, though the different class systems were somewhat similar to that of our feudal eras.

I'm not sure how you are phrasing your question though...is there a question in your last post Timothy?

I wouldn't commit sepuku, if that is what you're asking. I'd rather go down fighting. But, if my belief in my emperor is that great, and my cultural beliefs tell me there is honour in suicide then so be it.

If I remember my reading right they were told that the American soldiers would rape and murder them and that is why they should instead commit suicide.

[P. Clodius Secundus]

You might want to include The use of "Comfort Women" and the execution of the construction workers on Wake Island. The first is an example of a pervasive official policy, as opposed to a localized/isolated attrocity. The latter, though much smaller in the grand scheme of things does show the lack of differentition between the civilian and military. The encouragement of suicide rather than surrender does not seem to qualify as an attrocity per se. It was the official expression of a pathological need to avoid shame. To western eyes kamikazee attacks and banzai charges have redeeming value similar to our traditions (Leonidas and the 300, Horatius at the Bridge etc..). Sepuku is merely wrapping an essientially selfish act in ceremony to regain honor when there is none to be found in sticking around to clean up the mess. Is not entirely supprising to me that those who were indoctrinated in that mentality and then failed to measure up cannot bear the added weight of accepting responsibility. In this respect I find much to admire in Emperor Hirohito's actions at the end of the war. It would have been much easier to play the martyr.

[Narukami]

Well, there are a lot of ideas and concepts here, all springing from your question, and it will take some time to formulate a cogent response.

However, a couple of thoughts spring to mind.

"... be resolved that duty is heavier than a mountain, while death is lighter than a feather." -- First Precept of the Imperial Rescript to Soldiers & Sailors

Thus is the Samurai code of Bushido interpreted for a modern Japanese military -- the honor of death.

On the other hand John Dower, writing in his landmark study of the Pacific War "War Without Mercy" points out the following (page 68 )

What is often overlooked, however, is that countless thousands of Japanese perished because they saw no alternative. ... [as an OWI report stated] "surrender being made difficult by the unwillingness to take prisoners" on the part of Allied fighting men.

This is a very complex topic full of shades of grey.

As my schedule permits I will attempt to add more to the discussion.

Narukami

[Timotheus]

Well, there are a lot of ideas and concepts here, all springing from your question, and it will take some time to formulate a cogent response.

However, a couple of thoughts spring to mind.

"... be resolved that duty is heavier than a mountain, while death is lighter than a feather." -- First Precept of the Imperial Rescript to Soldiers & Sailors

Thus is the Samurai code of Bushido interpreted for a modern Japanese military -- the honor of death.

On the other hand John Dower, writing in his landmark study of the Pacific War "War Without Mercy" points out the following (page 68 )

What is often overlooked, however, is that countless thousands of Japanese perished because they saw no alternative. ... [as an OWI report stated] "surrender being made difficult by the unwillingness to take prisoners" on the part of Allied fighting men.

This is a very complex topic full of shades of grey.

As my schedule permits I will attempt to add more to the discussion.

Narukami

Was thre an extra hatred of Japanese soldiers? Or simple logic. A surrendering Japanese soldier is much more likely to have a grenade so as to kill himself and a few more hated American soldiers tha any German soldier would.

After you see your buddy blown up by the grenade of a "surrendering" Japanese soldier are you going to try and ever take a prisoner?

[P. Clodius Secundus]

Was thre an extra hatred of Japanese soldiers? Or simple logic. A surrendering Japanese soldier is much more likely to have a grenade so as to kill himself and a few more hated American soldiers tha any German soldier would.

After you see your buddy blown up by the grenade of a "surrendering" Japanese soldier are you going to try and ever take a prisoner?

There are many who emphasize the racial component in the percentages of Japanese killed rather than captured. One thing they often overlook is that the island-hopping nature of much of the fighting ensured that without hope of escape or rescue the defenders would tend to fight with greater desperation. From personal experience I can tell you that when faced with enemy units that have a reputation for fanaticism there is much less interest in taking prisoners.

[Timotheus]

Was thre an extra hatred of Japanese soldiers? Or simple logic. A surrendering Japanese soldier is much more likely to have a grenade so as to kill himself and a few more hated American soldiers tha any German soldier would.

After you see your buddy blown up by the grenade of a "surrendering" Japanese soldier are you going to try and ever take a prisoner?

There are many who emphasize the racial component in the percentages of Japanese killed rather than captured. One thing they often overlook is that the island-hopping nature of much of the fighting ensured that without hope of escape or rescue the defenders would tend to fight with greater desperation. From personal experience I can tell you that when faced with enemy units that have a reputation for fanaticism there is much less interest in taking prisoners.

Well they are kinda right. The Japanese felt themselves racially superior to the Americans, Chinese, etc, etc.This is a pretty large part of the reason they were able to treat prisoners the way they did at every level. So there was racism involved in the brutality of the Pacific. It just is not the brutality the left wing nutters want to bring up.

I wonder what the Geneva Convention says about taking prisoners. Do you have to try and take prisoners even when it becomes well known that Japanese soldiers would "surrender" just to get another chance to kill an enemy in an explosion that will kill themself as well.

[Narukami]

"Was there an extra hatred of Japanese soldiers? Or simple logic. A surrendering Japanese soldier is much more likely to have a grenade so as to kill himself and a few more hated American soldiers that any German soldier would."

Simple logic? Perhaps for some that was the case, perhaps for most, but there was also a large degree of hate fed by racism whipped up by war time propaganda.There was race hatred on both sides of the line with each certain that they were the superior race / civilization and the Other was the inferior / barbarous race deserving of destruction.

In his book "War Without Mercy" John Dower goes to great lengths documenting this hatred -- it is too extensive to quote here at length (without transcribing the entire book) so I can only recommend again that you pick up this book. (See page 34 for a discussion of why the Japanese were more hated than the Germans.)

"So there was racism involved in the brutality of the Pacific. It just is not the brutality the left wing nutters want to bring up."


I'm not certain how brutality brought up by "left wingers" differs from brutality as it occurred in World War Two (or any other war for that matter) but I doubt veterans of that war make such a distinction.

E.B. Sledge, a marine veteran of Peleliu and Okinawa recalls Marines collecting gold teeth from Japanese dead and records "an even more excruciating scene of a wounded Japanese thrashing on the ground as a Marine slit his cheeks open and carved his gold-crowned teeth out with a kabar." (Dower, p.65)

Dower goes on to point out that most combatants did not engage in such souvenir hunting and it was ridiculed by Leatherneck Magazine. However the killing of enemy soldiers attempting to surrender was wide spread.

An equally grim butchery took place on March 4, 1973, the day after the three day battle of the Bismark Sea, when US and Australian aircraft systematically searched the seas for Japanese survivors and strafed every raft and lifeboat they found. 'It was rather a sloppy job,' a US major from the 5th Bomber Command wrote in his official report, 'and some of the boys got sick. But that is something you have to learn. The enemy is out to kill you and you are out to kill the enemy. You can't be sporting in a war." (Dower, p.67)

Charles Lindbergh, writing in his wartime diary, reported "the slaughter of all inmates of a Japanese hospital, and went on to mention that the Australians often threw Japanese out of airplanes on their way to prison compounds and then reported that they had committed hara-kiri." (dower, p,71)

Such incidents have little to do with the unique nature of Island Warfare and everything to do with the all too common nature of war itself.

"From personal experience I can tell you that when faced with enemy units that have a reputation for fanaticism there is much less interest in taking prisoners."

Although I did serve in the US Army I am not a combat veteran and so can not comment from first hand experience as can P Clodius Secundas above. What he says sounds quite logical.

Finally, just to bring ancient Rome into this, I offer the following:

Carthage, sacked and razed by the Romans in 146 BC, struck the more historically minded as an apt model for Japan. Admiral William Leahy, Roosevelt's chief of staff, described Japan as "our Carthage" to Henry Wallace in September 1942, meaning "we should go ahead and destroy her utterly." Some months later, Collier's ran an editorial entitled "Delenda est Japonia," taking the motto from Cato the Elder's practice of ending every one of his speeches to the Roman Senate for eight years with the line "Delenda est Carthego," or "Carthage must be destroyed." (Dower, p.54)

And so it was.

Narukami

[emerald_trout aka Sue]

Timothy , add STARVATION and Canabalism.
Instead of second hand sources, use first hand sources while they are still alive. Offer proof for everything you state, proof that someone following you can trace and verify.
What will someone 50 years from now want to know?
Or right after the last veteran has died, what is the question you will have? A question that only someone who was there could answer - a question that will forever go unanswered, unless you ask now and get an answer.

The American Historical Collection in the Rizal library at the Ateneo de Manila University is set up to facilitate the research of scholars. Write your needs and wants to the AHC. Write in the subject space, “research assistance" and send the email to [email protected] . They will look up and tell you what they have; scan and email documents, maps, and records (those that can be scanned) for a set fee that goes to the AHC. It is quick , easy, and inexpensive, and donations of any amount are always gratefully received for preservation of materials.

You need a veteran to interview, state so and why to these groups:
American Defenders of Bata’an and Corregidor (ADBC)
http://www.west-point.org/family/adbc/
And "not related" to the above are these
http://www.west-point.org/family/japanese-pow/
http://www.west-point.org/family/japane ... stserv.htm

http://Philippine-Scouts.org (message board).
and publications
Gavin Daws' Prisoners of the Japanese : Pows of World War II in the Pacific
Yuki Tabaka's Hidden Horrors: Japanese war Crimes in World War II
Iris Chang's Rape of Nanking
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6185442.stm Japanese doctor admits POW abuse
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRel ... RN20080715 for the outspoken Dr Lester Tenney
Documentary film Manila 1945: The Forgotten Atrocities http://chickparsons.com
For your use: http://www.archives.gov/iwg/japanese-wa ... essays.pdf