• English Site
• >World
• >World War II
• >

  China's Trauma: Seventy Years after the 'Rape of Nanking'

China's Trauma Seventy Years after the 'Rape of Nanking'

By Wieland Wagner

Part 2: Barbarism in the Far East

As early as the first Sino-Japanese war in 1894-95, Japan acquired control over Taiwan; in World War I, Tokyo took over German-controlled Tsingtao. Then in 1932, the Japanese created the puppet state of Manchukuo -- a region historically known as Manchuria -- under Puyi, the last emperor of China.

But they also wanted to subjugate the rest of China and in 1932, Japanese forces continued their assault by attacking Shanghai. The actual war with China, however, finally broke out on July 7, 1937 -- with a night-time skirmish with Chinese troops at the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing providing the pretext. Emperor Hirohito and his advisors hoped to conquer the country in just a few months, as part of what they hoped would become a Japanese-controlled "new order" in East Asia. They also wanted to put a stop to Chiang Kai-shek, the enigmatic General and bitter enemy of the Communists who, with his Kuomintang troops, had largely managed to unite the fragmented country. Chiang challenged the Japanese invaders and lured them to Shanghai, in the hopes that Western powers, heavily represented in the economic metropolis at the time, would join the battle.

In August 1937, Kuomintang airplanes attacked Japanese warships in the Huangpu River, but they badly missed their targets. From the hotel bars on the Bund, Shanghai’s pleasant promenade, foreign businesspeople watched in disbelief as Chinese airplanes bombarded their own city. Some 2,000 people were killed in the tragic attack.

Celebrating Pearl Harbor

The eventual Japanese victory came after a long, hard struggle with an estimated 200,000 Chinese falling victim to Japanese attacks. Chiang Kai-shek retreated far inland, first to the capital city of Nanjing, then through Wuhan to Chongqing. The Chinese dismantled entire factories in the east to have them shipped west along the Yangtze.

Chiang took up residence on a small hill in the city he used as his war headquarters; the gray-camouflaged villas are now a museum. Here, on the Dec. 7, 1941, he celebrated the Japanese attack on the US naval base in Pearl Harbor -- now, as China had hoped, the American superpower would officially enter World War II against Japan.

Chiang’s hopes for a swift victory over the Japanese were to be dashed, however. The US did send the harried general more supplies and money, but American help for the dictator was ultimately half-hearted -- victory over the Third Reich was the priority for Washington. In addition, the US advanced on Japan mainly from the Pacific Islands, with relatively few operations launched from China.

The second Sino-Japanese War dragged on. After their first victories, the Japanese got bogged down in the depths of China. Unable to break resistance themselves, even with the help of the puppet regime that they had installed in Nanjing in 1940, they resorted to increasingly brutal methods.

Many of the techniques used in Europe during World War II aimed at wreaking mass destruction, such as systematic air attacks on populous inner cities, had previously been used by the Japanese. The bombardment of Chongqing began in spring 1938, killing over 5,000 civilians in just two days. According to witnesses, the dead lay piled on the streets.

Japan’s "scorched earth" strategy fired up the excesses of the Japanese imperial soldiers, leading to behavior like that seen in Nanjing. The soldiers may not have been officially commanded to carry out the massacre, but the indoctrination of unconditional obedience to the god-like Tenno encouraged them to abuse the Chinese as an inferior race. They were, however, almost as merciless with themselves. "From when we were small, we were raised to die for the Emperor," says Sho Mitani, a former marine rifleman who later participated in the bomb attack on Chongqing as an engineer.

Brutal Cooperation between Japan and Germany

The Japanese also used poison gas and biological weapons against their enemies; the infamous "Unit 731" in Pingfang in northeastern China killed thousands of Chinese prisoners in brutal human medical experiments. The Unit’s director, Shiro Ishii, had brought back the idea for the experiments from a trip to Germany.

During the war on China, the Japanese military doctors then exchanged their experiences with their Nazi allies: On Hitler’s recommendation, German medical officers traveled to East Asia in February 1938 to research the effects of new combat techniques. German doctors later provided Unit 731 with the yellow fever virus, so that the Japanese could test it in China -- a macabre cooperation intended to exterminate huge numbers of people. The criminals in the white coats were never brought to trial in Japan. The occupying US forces later promised Shiro Ishii immunity so that he would provide them with the results of his research. The American authorities still keep material from Unit 731 under wraps and used some of the Japanese findings for their campaigns in Vietnam.

Wu Xuelong is still suffering the consequences of the Japanese "dirty bombs." In his ramshackle brick hut in Jinhua, in the Zhejiang province, Wu lifts his trousers and shows his legs. From the shins to the feet they are blackish in color, as though carbonized. Wu, a farmer, is one of many victims in Zhejiang. The majority lived beside the railway line along which the Japanese dropped bombs during their attacks. Like Wu, they have symptoms that point to the use of anthrax. "The doctors want to amputate my legs," says Wu with a bitter smile. "But I still need them."

Wu can expect no compensation from Japan. Although a Japanese court acknowledged the damages caused by biological weapons, Chinese law disallowed the decision: Individuals have no right to file for compensation incurred by war.

The dispute over the past has thus become an increasingly moral one. But in the 70th year after the massacre of Nanjing, sweeping gestures of reconciliation from Tokyo remain unlikely -- not a single Japanese prime minister has yet visited Nanjing.