In December of 1937, the Japanese
Imperial Army marched into China's capital city of Nanking and proceeded to
murder 300,000 out of 600,000 civilians and soldiers in the city. The six weeks
of carnage would become known as the Rape of Nanking and represented the single
worst atrocity during the World War II era in either the European or Pacific
theaters of war.
After finally defeating the
Chinese at Shanghai in November, 50,000 Japanese soldiers then marched on
toward Nanking. Unlike the troops at Shanghai, Chinese soldiers at Nanking were
poorly led and loosely organized. Although they greatly outnumbered the
Japanese and had plenty of ammunition, they withered under the ferocity of the
Japanese attack, then engaged in a chaotic retreat. After just four days of
fighting, Japanese troops smashed into the city on December 13, 1937, with
orders issued to "kill all captives."
After the destruction of the POWs,
the soldiers turned their attention to the women of Nanking and an outright
animalistic hunt ensued. Old women over the age of 70 as well as little girls
under the age of 8 were dragged off to be sexually abused. More than 20,000
females (with some estimates as high as 80,000) were gang-raped by Japanese
soldiers, then stabbed to death with bayonets or shot so they could never bear
witness.
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Pregnant women were not spared. In several instances, they were raped, then had their bellies slit open and the fetuses torn out. Sometimes, after storming into a house and encountering a whole family, the Japanese forced Chinese men to rape their own daughters, sons to rape their mothers, and brothers their sisters, while the rest of the family was made to watch.
The invaders, though, didn’t even stop at simply murder. They made these women suffer in the worst ways possible. Pregnant mothers were cut open and rape victims were sodomized with bamboo sticks and bayonets until they died in agony.
The destruction of Nanjing
was ordered by Matsui Iwane, commanding general of the Japanese Central China
Front Army. Japanese soldiers carried out Matsui’s orders, perpetrating
numerous mass executions and tens of thousands of rapes. The army looted and
burned the surrounding towns and the city, destroying more than a third of the
buildings.
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Although war rape has been a recurrent feature in conflicts throughout human history, it has usually been looked upon as a by-product of conflict and not an integral part of military policy.