THE JAPANESE strategy for Nanking
was
simple.The imperial army exploited
the fact that the city was blocked by wa-
ter in two directions. The ancient capital
lay
south of a bend in the Yangtze River that
first
coursed northward and then turned to flow
east. By converging upon Nanking in a semi-
circular front from the southeast, the Japan-
ese could use the natural barrier of the
river
to complete the encirclement of the capital
and cut off all escape.
In late November, three parallel
Japanese
troops rushed toward Nanking. One force
traveled west under the southern bank of
the
Yangtze River. Its troops poured into the
Yangtze Delta, through the Paimou Inlet
northwest of Shanghai, and along the
Nanking-Shanghai railway, where the Japan-
ese air force had already blasted away most
of the bridges. These troops were led by
Naka-
jima Kesago, who had worked as a member
p.37
of Japanese army intelligence in France and
later as chief of the
Japanese secret police for Emperor Hirohito.
Not much has
been written about Nakajima, but what has
been written is
over whelmingly negative. David Bergamini,
author of Japan's Imperial Conspiracy, called him a "small Himmler of a man, a
specialist in thought control, intimidation and torture"
and
quoted others describing Nakajima as a sadist
who packed for
his journey to Nanking special oil for burning
bodies. Even his
biographer, Kimura Kuninori, mentioned that
Nakaiima had
been described as "a beast" and "a violent man."
Another force readied itself
for a bold amphibious assault
across Tai Hu, a lake situated halway between
Shanghai and
Nanking. This force moved west from Shanghai
in a route south
of Nakaiima's troops. Directing the movement
was General
Matsui lwane, a frail, slight, tubercular
man with a tiny mustache.
Unlike Nakajima, Matsui was a devout Buddhist
from a scholarly
family. He was also the commander-in-chief
of the Japanese
imperial army for the entire Shanghai-Nanking
region.
A third force traveled further
south of Matsui's men and
swerved northwest toward Nanking. Heading
this force was
Lieutenant General Yanagawa Heisuke, a bald,
short man with
literary interests. Perhaps to a greater
degree than most other
Japanese involved in the Rape of Nanking,
his life during the
invasion is veiled in mystery. According
to his biographer,
Sugawara Yutaka, the fascist clique that
took control of the
Japanese military had expelled Yanagawa from
their ranks be-
cause he attempted to stop their 1932 coup.
After his marginal-
ization and demotion to the reserves, Yanagawa
served as a
commanding officer in China and performed
"great military
achievements... including the surrounding
of Nanking," but
the military withheld his name and photograph
from publica-
tion at the time. Thus Yanagawa was known
to many in Japan
as "the masked shogun."
Little was spared on the path
to Nanking. Japanese veterans
re-
member raiding tiny farm communities, where
they clubbed or
bayoneted everyone in sight. But small villages
were not the only
casualties; entire cities were razed to the
ground. Consider
the example of Suchow' (now called Suzhou), a city on
the east bank
p.38
of Tai Hu Lake. One of the oldest cities
of China, it was prized
for its delicate silk embroidery, palaces,
and temples. Its canals
and ancient bridges had earned the city its
Western nickname as
"the Venice of China". On November
19, on a moming of pour-
ing rain, a Japanese advance guard marched
through the gates of
Suchow, wearing hoods that prevented Chinese
sentries from
recognizing them. Once inside, the Japanese
murdered and plun-
dered the city for days, burning down ancient
landmarks and ab-
ducting thousands of Chinese women for sexal
slavery. The invasion, according to the China Weekly Review,
caused the popu-
lation of the city to drop from 350,000 to
less than 500.
A British correspondent had
the opportunity to record
what
was left of Pine Bay, a suburban city of
Shanghai, nine weeks
after the Japanese had passed through it.
"There is hardly
a building standing which has not been gutted by fire,"
he wrote.
"Smoldering ruins and deserted streets present
an eerie specta-
cle, the only living creatures being dogs
unnaturally fattened
by feasting on corpses. In the whole of Sungchiang,
which
should contain a densely packed population
of approximately
100,000, I saw only five Chinese, who were
old men, hiding in
a French mission compound in tears. "
ASAKA TAKES COMMAND
But the worst was still to come.
On December 7, as the Japanese troops zeroed
in on
Nanking, General Matsui grew feverishly ill
in his field head-
quarters at Suchow---another flare-up of
his chronic tuberculo-
sis. The illness struck Matsui right when
power shifted from his
command to that of a member of the imperial
family. Only
five days earlier Emperor Hirohito had promoted
Matsui out of
the action while dispatching his own uncle,
Prince Asaka Ya-
suhiko, to the front to replace him. Under
the new order, Mat-
sui would be in charge of the entire central
China theater,
while Asaka, a lieutenant general with a
thirty-year tenure in
the military, would take responsibility as
the new commander-
in-chief of the army around Nanking. As a
member of the royal
p.39
family, Asaka possessed power that would
override all other
authority on the Nanking front. He was also
closer to Lieu-
tenant General Nakajima and General Yanagawa
than to Mat-
sui because he had spent three years in Paris
with them as a
military intelligence officer.
Little is known as to why Hirohito
chose at this critical
mo-
ment to give Asaka this position, though
Bergamini believes it
was done to test Asaka, who had sided with
the emperor's
brother Chichibu against Hirohito on a political
issue during
the February 1936 army mutiny. On the palace
rolls, Hirohito
had singled out Asaka as the one member of
the royal family
who possessed an attitude that was "not good" and
apparently
gave his uncle the appointment at Nanking
as an opportunity
to redeem himself.
At the time it seemed like a
trivial change, but later,
for the
lives of hundreds of thousands of Chinese,
it would prove to
be a critical one.
It is hard to describe what
really happened behind the
scenes in the Japanese army because many
of the details were
given by Matsui and his colleagues years
later at their war
crimes trial, or by sources who may be unreliable,
and they are
therefore cited with caution. But if their
testimony can be be-
lieved, this is what we learn. Wary of the
imperial newcomer
and the potential for abuse of power, Matsui
issued a set of
moral commandments for the invasion of Nanking.
He or-
dered his armies to regroup a few kilometers
outside the city
walls, to enter the Chinese capital with
only a few well-disci-
plined battalions, and to complete the occupation
so that the
army would "sparkle before the eyesof the Chinese
and make
them place confidence in Japan." He also
called a meeting of
staff officers before his sickbed and proclaimed:
The entry of the Imperial Army into a foreign
capital is a great
event in our history... attracting the attention
of the world.
Therefore let no unit enter the city in a
disorderly fashion.
... Let them know beforehand the matters
to be remembered
and the position of foreign rights and interests
in the walled
city. Let them be absolutely free from plunder.
Dispose sentries
p.40
as needed. Plundering and causing fires,
even Carelessly, shall
be punished severely. Together with the troops
let many mili-
tary police and auxiliary military police
enter the walled city
and thereby prevent unlawful conduct.
But events were brewing
elsewhere over which Matsui
had
no control. On December 5, the story goes,
Prince Asaka left
Tokyo by plane and arrived on the front three
days later. In an
abandoned country villa near field headquarters
some ten
miles southeast of Nanking, Prince Asaka
met with General
Nakajima, his colleague from his Paris days,
who was now re-
covering from a flesh wound in his left buttock.
Nakajima told
Asaka that the Japanese were about to surround
three hundred
thousand Chinese troops in the vicinity of
Nanking and that
preliminary negotiations revealed that they
were ready to sur-
render.
After Asaka heard this report,
it was said that his headquar-
ters sent out a set of orders, under his
personal seal, marked
"Secret, to be destroyed." We now know that
the clear message
of these orders was.. "KILL ALL CAPTIVES."
What is not clear is
whether Asaka himself issued the orders.
*
* Taisa lsamo, Asaka's staff officer for
intelligence, later confessed
to friends
that on his own initiative he had forged
the order. Another Japanese
officers,
Tanaka Ryukichi, said that in April 1938,
Taisa, then the head of the
74th
wing of the Japanese army, told him an interesting
tale. Taisa told him that
when his troops landed at Hangchow (of Hangzhou)
Bay and pushed in-
land, nearly 300,000 Chinese troops were
cut off from retreat, so they
threw
away their weapons and surrendered to the
Japanese. ”To arrange for so
many prisoners, to feed them, was a huge
problem, " Taisa reportedly
said.
As the story goes, Taisa seized
upon a quick-fix solution
to eliminate the
food problem: "I immediately issued orders
to all troops.. 'We must
entirely
massacre these prisoners!' Using the name
of the military commander,
I sent
these orders by telegram. The wording of
the order was to annihilate."
We will never know if this story
is true, but it must
be noted that even if
Taisa had indeed forged the kill order on
his own, this. does not absolve
Prince Asaka of responsibility for the massacre.
Asaka could have issued
an
order to cancel the massacre once it started
and court-martialed his
intelli-
gence officer.
p.41
By the time Japanese troops
entered Nanking, an
order to
eliminate all Chinese captives had been not
only committed to
paper but distributed to lower-echelon officers.
On December
13, 1937, the Japanese 66th Battalion received
the following
command:
BATTALION BATTLE REPORTER, AT 2:00 RECEIVED
ORDER
FROM THE REGIMENT COMMANDER: TO COMPLY WITH
ORDERS FROM BRIGADE COMMANDING HEADQUARTERS,
ALL PRISONERS OF WAR ARE TO BE EXECUTED.
METHOD
OF EXECUTION: DIVIDE THE PRISONERS INTO GROUPS
OF A DOZEN. SHOOT TO KILL SEPARATELY.
3:30 P.M. A MEETING IS CALLED TO GATHER COMPANY
COMMANDERS TO EXCHANGE OPINIONS ON HOW TO
DISPOSE OF POWS. FROM THE DISCUSSION IT IS
DECIDED THAT THE PRISONERS ARE TO BE DIVIDED
EVENLY AMONG EACH COMPANY (1ST, 2ND AND 4TH
COMPANY) AND TO BE BROUGHT OUT FROM THEIR
IMPRISONMENT IN GROUPS OF 50 TO BE EXECUTED.
1ST
COMPANY IS TO TAKE ACTION IN THE GRAIN FIELD
SOUTH OF THE GARRISON; 2ND COMPANY TAKES
ACTION
IN THE DEPRESSION SOUTHWEST OF THE GARRISON;
AND 4TH COMPANY TAKES ACTION IN THE GRAIN
FIELD
SOUTHEAST OF THE GARRISON.
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. EXECUTIONS ARE TO START BY 5:00 AND
ACTION IS
TO BE FINISHED BY 7:30.
There was a ruthless logic to
the order. The captives could
not be fed, so they had to be destroyed.
Killing them would
not only eliminate the food problem but diminish
the possi-
bility of retaliation. Moreover, dead enemies
could not form
up into guerrilla forces.
p.42
But executing the order
was another matter. When
the
Japanese troops smashed through the walls
in the early
predawn hours of December 13, they entered
a city in which
they were vastly outnumbered. Historians
later estimated that
more than half a million civilians and ninety
thousand Chi-
nese troops were trapped in Nanking, compared
to the fifty
thousand Japanese soldiers who assaulted
the city General
Nakajima knew that killing tens of thousands
of Chinese cap-
tives was a formidable task: "To deal with crowds of
a thou- sand, five thousand, or ten thousand, it is tremendously
difficult even just to disarm them.... It
would be disastrous if
they were to make any trouble."
KILLING THE PRISONERS OF WAR
Because of their limited manpower, the Japanese
relied heavily
on deception. The strategy for mass butchery
involved several
steps: promising the Chinese fair treatment
in return for an
end to resistance, coaxing them into surrendering
themselves
to their Japanese conquerors, dividing them
into groups of one
to two hundred men, and then luring them
to different areas
near Nanking to be killed. Nakajima hoped
that faced with the
impossibility of further resistance, most
of the captives would
lose heart and comply with whatever directions
the Japanese
gave them.
All this was easier to
achieve than the Japanese
had antici-
pated. Resistance was sporadic; indeed, it
was practically
nonexistent. Having thrown away their arms
when attempting
to flee the city as the Japanese closed in,
many Chinese soldiers
simply turned themselves in, hoping for better
treatment
Once the men surrendered and permitted their
hands to be
bound, the rest was easy.
Perhaps nowhere is the
passivity of the Chinese
soldiers bet-
ter illustrated than in the diary of the
former Japanese soldier
Azuma Shiro, who described the surrender
of thousands of
Chinese troops shortly after the fall of
Nanking. His own
troops Were assigning sentry and billet in
a city square when
p.43
they suddenly received an order to round
up about 20,000
prisoners of war.
.
Azuma and his countrymen Walked
some nine or ten miles
in search of the prisoners. Night fell, and
the Japanese finally
heard a rumbling, froglike noise. They also
saw numerous ciga-
rette lights blinking in the darkness. "It was a magnificent view," Azuma wrote. "Seven thousand prisoners all
in one
place, gathering around the two white flags
attached to a dead
branch, which flew in the night sky." The
prisoners were a
ragged assortment of men wearing blue cotton
military uni-
forms, blue cotton overcoats, and caps. Some
covered their
heads with blankets, some carried mat-rush
sacks, and some
carried futons on their backs. The Japanese
lined the prisoners
up into four columns, with the white flag
at the head. This
group of thousands of Chinese soldiers had
waited patiently
for the Japanese to fetch them and direct
them to the next Step
in the surrender process.
The reluctance of the Chinese
army to fight back stunned
Azuma. To a man who came from a military
culture in which
pilots were given swords instead of parachutes,
and in which
suicide was infinitely preferable to capture,
it was incompre-
hensible that the Chinese would not fight
an enemy to the
death. His contempt for the Chinese deepened
when he dis-
covered that the prisoners' numbers exceeded
those of the cap-
tors.
"It was funny yet pitiable when
I imagined how they gath-
ered whatever white cloth they could find,
attached it to a dead
twig, and marched forward just to surrender,"
Azuma wrote.
I thought, how could they become prisoners,
with the kind of
force they had---more than two battalions---and
without even
trying to show any resistance. There must
have been a consid-
erable number of officers for this many troops,
but not a single
one remained, all of them having slipped
away and escaped, I
thought. Although we had two companies, and
those seven
thousand prisoners had already been disarmed,
our troops
could have been annihilated had they decided
to rise up and
revolt.
p.44
A welter of emotions filled
Azuma. He felt sorry
for the Chi-
nese soldiers, thirsty and frightened men
who constantly asked
for water and reassurance that they would
not be killed. But at
the same time their cowardice disgusted him.
Azuma suddenly
felt ashamed for ever having been secretly
afraid of the Chinese
in previous battles, and his automatic impulse
was to dehu-
manize the prisoners by comparing them to
insects and ani-
mals.
They all walked in droves, like ants crawling
on the ground.
They looked like a bunch of homeless people,
with ignorant
expressions on their faces.
A herd of ignorant sheep,
with no rule or order,
marched on
in the darkness, whispering to each other.
They hardly looked like
the enemy who only yesterday
was
shooting at and troubling us. It was impossible
to believe that
they were the enemy soldiers.
It felt quite foolish
to think we had been fighting
to the
death against these ignorant slaves. And
some of them were
even twelve- or thirteen-year-old boys.
The Japanese led the prisoners
to a nearby village.
Azuma re-
called that when some of the Chinese were
herded into a large
house, they hesitated to enter, looking upon
the place as if it
were "a slaughter house." But finally they
gave in and filed
through the gate. Some of the prisoners struggled
with the
Japanese only when the latter tried to take
away their blankets
and bedding. The next morning Azuma and his
comrades re-
ceived an order to patrol another area; they
later leaned that
while they were on patrol the Chinese prisoners
had been as-
signed to companies in groups of two to three
hundred, then
killed.
Probably the single largest
mass execution of prisoners
of
war during the Rape of Nanking took place
near Mufu Moun-
tain. The mountain lay directly north of
Nanking, between the
city and the south bank of the Yangtze River;
an estimated fifty- seven thousand civilians and former soldiers were
executed.
The killing proceeded
in stealth and in stages.
On December
16, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper correspondent Yokoto re-
p.45
ported that the Japanese had captured 14,777
soldiers near the
artillery forts of Wulong Mountain and Mufu
Mountain and
that the sheer number of the prisoners posed
problems. "The [Japanese] army encountered great difficulties since
this was
the first time that such a huge number of
POWs were cap-
tured," Yokoto wrote. "There were not enough
men to handle
them."
According to Kurihara
Riichi, a former Japanese
army corpo-
ral who kept diaries and notes of the event,
the Japanese dis-
armed thousands of prisoners, stripped them
of everything but
their clothes and blankets, and escorted
them to a row of
straw-roofed temporary buildings. when the
Japanese military
received orders on December 17 to kill the
prisoners, they pro-
ceeded with extra caution. That morning the
Japanese an-
nounced that they were going to transport
the Chinese
prisoners to Baguazhou, a small island in
the middle of the
Yangtze River. They explained to the captives
that they needed
to take special precautions for the move
and bound the cap-
tives' hands behind their backs---a task
that took all morning
and most of the afternoon.
Sometime between 4:00
and 6:00 P.M., the Japanese
divided
the prisoners into four columns and marched
them to the
west, skirting the hills and stopping at
the riverbank. "After three or four hours waiting and not knowing what
was going
on, the prisoners could not see any preparations
for crossing
the river," the corporal wrote. "It was then
growing dark. They
did not know... that Japanese soldiers already
encircled them
in a crescent formation along the river and
they were in the
sights of many machine guns. "
By the time the executions
began, it was too late
for the Chi-
nese to escape. "Suddenly all kinds of guns
fired at once, " Kuri-
hara Riichi wrote. "The sounds of these firearms
mingled with
desperate yelling and screams." For an hour
the Chinese strug-
gled and thrashed about desperately, until
there were few
sounds still coming from the group. From
evening until dawn
the Japanese bayoneted the bodies, one by
one.
Body disposal posed a
mammoth problem for the Japanese.
only a fraction of the total number of men
who perished in
p.46
and around Nanking were slaughtered at Mufu
Mountain, yet
the cleanup there took days. Burial was one
method of dis-
posal, but General Nakajima complained in
his diary that it
was hard to locate ditches large enough to
bury heaps of seven
to eight thousand corpses. Cremation was
another, but the
Japanese often lacked sufficient fuel to
do a proper job. After
the Mufu Mountain massacre, for instance,
the Japanese
poured large drums of gasoline on the bodies
to burn them,
but the drums ran out before fires could
reduce the remains to
ashes. "The result was a mountain of charred corpses,"
a Japan-
ese corporal wrote.
Many bodies were simply
dumped into the Yangtze
River.
THE MURDER OF CIVILIANS
After the soldiers surrendered en masse, there was virtually
no
one left to protect the citizens of the city.
Knowing this, the
Japanese poured into Nanking on December
13, 1937, occupy-
ing government buildings, banks, and warehouses,
shooting
people randomly in the streets, many of them
in the back as
they ran away. Using machine guns, revolvers,
and rifles, the
Japanese fired at the crowds of wounded soldiers,
elderly
women, and children who gathered in the North
Chungshan
and Central roads and nearby alleys. They
also killed Chinese
civilians in every section of the city: tiny
lanes, major boule-
vards, mud dugouts, government buildings,
city squares. As
victims toppled to the ground, moaning and
screaming, the
streets, alleys, and ditches of the fallen
capital ran rivers of
blood, much of it coming from people barely
alive, with no
strength left to run away.
The Japanese systematically
killed the city dwellers
as they
conducted house-to-house searches for Chinese
soldiers in
Nanking. But they also massacred the Chinese
in the nearby
suburbs and countryside. Corpses piled up outside the
city
walls, along the river (which had literally
turned red with
blood), by ponds. and lakes, and on hills
and mountains. In
villages near Nanking, the Japanese shot
down any young man
p.47
who passed, under the presumption that he
was likely to be a
former Chinese soldier. But they also murdered
people who
could not possibly be Chinese soldiers---elderly
men and
women, for instance---if they hesitated or
even if they failed to
understand orders, delivered in the Japanese
language, to move
this way or that.
During the last ten days
of December, Japanese motorcycle
brigades patrolled Nanking while Japanese
soldiers shoulder-
ing loaded rifles guarded the entrances to
all the streets, av-
enues, and alleys. Troops went from door
to door, demanding
that the doors be opened to welcome the victorious
armies.
The moment the shopkeepers complied, the
Japanese opened
fire on them. The imperial army massacred
thousands of peo-
ple in this manner and then systematically
looted the stores
and burned whatever they had no use for.
THE JAPANESE JOURNALISTS
These atrocities shocked many of the Japanese
correspondents
who had followed the troops to Nanking. A
horrified Nichi Mainichi Shimbun reporter watched the Japanese line up Chi-
nese prisoners on top of the wall near Chungshan
Gate and
charge at them with bayonets fixed on rifles.
"One by
one the prisoners fell down to the outside of the
wall,"
the reporter
wrote. "Blood splattered everywhere. The
chilling atmosphere
made one's hair stand on end and limbs tremble
with fear. I
stood there at a total loss and did not know
what to do."
He was not alone in his
reaction. Many other reporters---
even seasoned war correspondents---recoiled
at the orgy of vio-
lence, and their exclamations found their
way into print. From
Imai Masatake, a Japanese military correspondent:
On Hsiakwan wharves, there was the dark silhouette
of a
mountain made of dead bodies. About fifty
to one hundred
people were toiling there, dragging bodies
from the mountain
of corpses and throwing them into the Yangtze
River. The bod-
ies dripped blood, some of them still alive
and moaning
p.48
weakly, their limbs twitching. The laborers
were busy working
in total silence, as in a pantomime. In the
dark one could
barely see the opposite bank of the river.
On the pier was a
field of glistening mud under the moon's
dim light. Wow!
That's all blood!
After a while, the coolies
bad done their job of
dragging
corpses and the soldiers lined them up along
the river. Rat-tat-
tat machine-gun are could be beard. The coolies
fell backwards
into the river and were swallowed by the
raging currents. The
pantomime was over.
A Japanese officer at the sane
estimated that 20,000 per-
sons had been executed.
From the Japanese military
correspondent Yukio Omata,
who saw Chinese prisoners brought to Hsiakwan
and lined up
along the river:
Those in the first row were beheaded, those
in the second row
were forced to dump the severed bodies into
the river before
they themselves were beheaded. The killing
went on non-stop,
from morning until night, but they were only
able to kill 2,000
persons in this way. The next day, tired
of killing in this fash-
ion, they set up machine guns. Two of them
raked a cross-fire
at the lined-up prisoners. Rat-tat-tat-tat.
Triggers were pulled.
The prisoners fled into the water, but no
one was able to make
it to the other shore.
From the Japanese photojournalist Kawano
Hiroki:
Before the "Ceremony of Entering the City,"
I saw fifty to one
hundred bodies drifting down the Yangtze
River. Did they die
in battle, or were they killed after being
taken prisoner? Or
were they slaughtered civilians?
I remember there was a pond just outside
Nanking. It
looked like a sea of blood---with splendid
colors. If only I had
color film... what a shocking shot that would
have been!
Sasaki Motomasa, a Japanese
military correspondent at
Nanking, observed, "I've seen piled-up bodies in
the Great
Quake in Tokyo, but nothing can be compared
to this."
p.49
Next, the Japanese turned their attention
to the women.
"Women suffered most, " Takokoro
Kozo, a former soldier in
the 114th Division of the Japanese army in
Nanking, recalled.
"No matter how young or old, they all could
not escape the
fate of being raped. We sent out coal trucks
from Hsiakwan to
the city streets and villages to seize a
lot of women. And then
each of them was allocated to 15 to 20 soldiers
for sexual, inter-
course and abuse."
Surviving Japanese veterans claim
that the army had offi-
cially outlawed the rape of enemy women.
But rape remained
so deeply embedded in Japanese military culture
and supersti-
tion that no one took the rule seriously.
Many believed that
raping virgins would make them more powerful
in battle. Sol- diers were even known to wear amulets made from the
pubic
hair of such victims, believing that they
possessed magical
powers against injury.
The military policy forbidding
rape only encouraged
sol-
diers to kill their victims afterwards. During
an interview for
the documentary In the Name of the Emperor, Azuma Shiro, a
former Japanese soldier, spoke candidly about
the process of
rape and murder in Nanking:
At first we used some kinky words like Pikankan.
pi means
"hip," kankan means "look." Pikankan means,
"Let's see a
woman open up her legs." Chinese women didn't
wear under-
pants. Instead, they wore trousers tied with
a string. There was
no belt. As we pulled the string, the buttocks
were exposed. We
"pikankan." We looked. After a while we would
say something
like, "It's my day to take a bath," and we
took turns raping
them. 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.
Takokoro Kozo shared Azuma's
bluntness in discussing
the issue. "After raping we would also kill them,"
he recalled.
'Those women would start to flee once we
let them go. Then
we would 'bang!' shoot them in the back to
finish them up."
p.50
According to surviving veterans, many of
the soldiers felt re-
markably little guilt about this. "Perhaps when we were
rap- ing her, we looked at her as a woman," Azuma wrote,
"but
when we killed her, we just thought of her
as something like
a pig."
This behavior was not
restricted to soldiers. Officers
at all
levels indulged in the orgy. (Even Tani Hisao,
the senior gen-
eral and commander of the Japanese 6th Division,
was later
found guilty of raping some twenty women in Nanking.)
Some
not only urged soldiers to commit gang rape
in the city but
warned them to dispose of the women afterwards
to eliminate
evidence of the crime. "Either pay them money or kill
them in
some out-of-the-way place after you have
finished, " one officer
told his underlings.
THE ARRIVAL OF MATSUI IWANE
The killing and raping
subsided when Matsui Iwane, still weak
from his illness, entered the city on the
morning of December
17 for a ceremonial parade. After recovering
from his bout of
tuberculosis, he traveled upriver on a naval
launch and rode by
car to the triple archway of the Mountain
Gate on the east side
of Nanking. There he mounted a chestnut horse,
wheeled it to
face the direction of the imperial palace
in Tokyo, and led a
triple banzai for the emperor for Japan's
national radio broad-
casting company: "Great Field Marshal on the Steps of Heaven---banzai---ten thousand years of life! "
He
rode down a
boulevard that was carefully cleared of dead
bodies and
flanked by tens of thousands of cheering
soldiers and arrived
at the Metropolitan Hotel in the northern
part of town, which
held a banquet for Matsui that evening.
It was sometime
during this banquet, the record
suggests,
that Matsui suspected that something had
gone terribly amiss
at Nanking. That evening he called a staff
conference and or-
dered all unnecessary troops transferred
out of the city. The next day the Western news media reported that the
Japanese
army was engaged in a giant conspiracy of
silence against Mat-
p.51
sui to prevent him from knowing the full
truth of the Nanking
atrocities.
When Matsui began to comprehend
the full extent of the
rape, murder, and looting in the city, he
showed every sign of
dismay. On December 18, 1937, he told one
of his civilian
aides: "I now realize that we have unknowingly wrought
a
most grievous effect on this city. When I
think of the feelings
and sentiments of many of my Chinese friends
who have fled
from Nanking and of the future of the two
countries, I cannot
but feel depressed. I am very lonely and
can never get in a
mood to rejoice about this victory." He even
let a tinge of re-
gret flavor the statement he released to
the press that morning:
"I personally feel sorry for the tragedies to the
people, but the
Army must continue unless China repents.
Now, in the winter,
the season gives time to reflect. I offer
my sympathy, with deep
emotion, to a million innocent people."
Later that day, when the
Japanese command held a
burial
service for the Japanese soldiers who died
during the invasion,
Matsui rebuked the three hundred officers,
regimental com-
manders, and others on the grounds for the
orgy of violence in
the city. "Never before," Matsumoto, a Japanese correspondent
wrote, "had a superior given his officers
such a scathing repri-
mand. The military was incredulous at Matsui's
behavior be-
cause one of the officers present was a prince
of Imperial
descent. "
By Sunday, December 19,
Matsui was moved to Asaka's
headquarters outside the city and put on
a destroyer the fol-
lowing day to be sent back to Shanghai. But
once there he
made an even more shocking move, one perhaps
driven by
desperation: he confided his worries to the
New York Times and
even told an American foreign correspondent
that "the
Japan- ese army is probably the most undisciplined
army
in the world
today." That month he also sent a bold message
to prince
Asaka's chief of staff. "It is rumored that unlawful
acts con- tinue," he wrote. "Especially because prince Asaka
is our com-
mander, military discipline and morals must
be that much
more strictly maintained. Anyone who misconducts
himself
must be severely punished. "
p.52
On New Year's Day, Matsui
was still upset about
the behav-
ior of the Japanese soldiers at Nanking.
Over a toast he con-
fided to a Japanese diplomat: "My men have done something very wrong and extremely regrettable. "
But the raping went on,
and the killing went on.
Matsui
seemed incapable of stopping it. If one can
believe the story
Matsui told years later, his brief visit
to Nanking even reduced
him to tears in front of his colleagues.
"Immediately
after the memorial services, I assembled the higher officers
and wept
tears of anger before them, " Matsui told
his Buddhist confessor
before his hanging in 1948. "Both Prince
Asaka and Lieutenant
General Yanagawa... were there. I told them
everything had
been lost in one moment through the brutalities
of the sol-
diers. And can you imagine it, even after
that, those soldiers
laughed at me."
THE COMFORT WOMEN: THE LEGACY OF NANKING
One of the most bizarre consequences of the
wholesale rape
that took place at Nanking was the response
of the Japanese
government to the massive outcry from Western
nations.
Rather than stifle or punish the soldiers
responsible, the
Japanese high command made plans to create
a giant under-
ground system of military prostitution---one
that would draw
into its web hundreds of thousands of women
across Asia.
"The Japanese Expeditionary Force in Central
China
issued an
order to set up comfort houses during this
period of time,"
Yoshimi Yoshiaki, a prominent history professor
at Chuo Uni-
versity, observes, "because Japan was afraid
of criticism from
China, the United States of America and Europe
following
the cases of massive rapes between battles
in Shanghai and
Nanking. "
The plan was straightforward.
By luring, purchasing,
or kid-
napping between eighty thousand and two hundred
thousand
women---most of them from the Japanese colony
of Korea but
many also from China, Taiwan, the Philippines,
and Indone-
sia---the Japanese military hoped to reduce
the incidence of
p.53
random rape of local women (thereby diminishing
the oppor-
tunity for international criticism), to contain
sexually transmit-
ted diseases through the use of condoms,
and to reward
soldiers for fighting on the battlefront
for long stretches of
time. Later, of course, when the world learned
of this plan, the
Japanese government refused to acknowledge
responsibility,
insisting for decades afterwards that private
entrepreneurs, not
the imperial government, ran the wartime
military brothels.
But in 1991 Yoshimi Yoshiaki unearthed from the Japanese
De-
fense Agency's archives a document entitled
"Regarding the Re-
cruitment of Women for Military Brothels."
The document
bore the personal stamps of leaders from
the Japanese high
command and contained orders for the immediate
construc-
tion of "facilities of sexual comfort" to
stop troops from raping
women in regions they controlled in China.
The first official comfort
house opened near Nanking
in
1938. To use the word comfort in regard to either the women
or the "houses" in which they lived is ludicrous,
for it conjures
up spa images of beautiful geisha girls strumming
lutes, wash-
ing men, and giving them shiatsu massages.
In reality, the
conditions of these brothels were sordid
beyond the imagina-
tion of most civilized people. Untold numbers
of these
women (whom the Japanese called "public toilets")
took their
own lives when they learned their destiny;
others died from
disease or murder. Those who survived suffered
a lifetime of
shame and isolation, sterility, or ruined
health. Because most
of the victims came from cultures that idealized
chastity in
women, even those who survived rarely spoke
after the war---
most not until very recently---about their
experiences for fear
of facing more shame and derision. Asian
Confucianism---
particularly Korean Confucianism---upheld
female purity as a
virtue greater than life and perpetuated
the belief that any
woman who could live through such a degrading
experience
and not commit suicide was herself an affront
to society.
Hence, half a century passed before a few
of the comfort
women found the courage to break their silence
and to seek fi-
nancial compensation from the Japanese government
for their
suffering.
p.54
THE MOTIVES BEHIND NANKING
Now we come to the most disturbing question
of all---the state
of the Japanese mind in Nanking. What was
inside the mind of
the teenage soldier handed a rifle and bayonet
that propelled
him to commit such atrocities?
Many scholars have wrestled
with this question and found
it
almost impossible to answer. Theodore Cook,
who coauthored
the book Japan at War: An Oral History with his wife Haruko
Taya Cook, admits that the brutality of the
Rape of Nanking
baffles him. He finds no parallels in the
history of civil war in
Japan; rather, systematic destruction and
mass slaughter of ur-
ban populations appear to be part of Mongol
rather than
Japanese history. Trying to examine the mind-set
of the Japan-
ese at Nanking, he said, was like peering
into "a black
hole."
Many find it difficult
to reconcile the barbarism
of Nanking
with the exquisite politeness and good manners
for which the
Japanese are renowned. But certain military
experts believe
that these two seemingly separate behaviors
are in reality en-
twined. They point to the awesome status
of the ancient samu-
rai, who for centuries possessed the power
to lop off the head
of a peasant if he failed to give the warrior
a polite answer to
his questions. "To this day," an American naval intelligence
of-
ficer wrote of Japanese culture during World
War II, "the Japan-
ese idea of a polite answer is one satisfactory
to the questioner.
Is it surprising that good manners are a
national trait with the
Japanese? "
Other experts have attributed
Japanese wartime atrocities
to
Japanese culture itself. In her book The Chrysanthemum
and the Sword, the American anthropologist Ruth Benedict
wrote that
because moral obligations in Japanese society
were not univer-
sal but local and particularized, they could
be easily broken on
foreign soil. Other experts blame the non-Christian
nature of
Japanese religion, claiming that while Christianity
puts forth
the idea that all humans are brothers---indeed,
that all things
were created in God's image---Shintoism in
Japan purports
that only the emperor and his descendants
were created in
God's image. Citing such differences, these
experts have con-
p.55
cluded that some cultures, however sophisticated
they become,
remain at their core tribal, in that the
obligations the individ-
ual owes to others within the tribe are very
different from those
owed to outsiders.
There is an inherent danger
in this assumption, for it
has
two implications: one, that the Japanese,
by virtue of their reli-
gion, are naturally less humane than Western
cultures and
must be judged by different standards (an
implication I find
both irresponsible and condescending), and
two, that Judeo-
Christian cultures are somehow less capable
of perpetrating
atrocities like the Rape of Nanking. Certainly
Nazis in Ger-
many, a devoutly Christian country, found
a way in the 1930s
and 1940s to dehumanize the German psyche
and even demo-
nize peoples they had declared to be enemies
of the Germans.
what resulted were some of the worst crimes
against humanity
this planet has ever seen.
Looking back upon millennia
of history, it appears
clear
that no race or culture has a monopoly on
wartime cruelty. The
veneer of civilization seems to be exceedingly
thin---one that
can be easily stripped away, especially by
the stresses of war.
How then do we explain
the raw brutality carried
out day af-
ter day after day in the city of Nanking?
Unlike their Nazi
counterparts, who have mostly perished in
prisons and before
execution squads or, if alive, are spending
their remaining days
as fugitives from the law, many of the Japanese
war criminals
are still alive, living in peace and comfort,
protected by the
Japanese government. They are therefore some
of the few peo-
ple on this planet who, without concern for
retaliation in a
court of international law, can give authors
and journalists a
glimpse of their thoughts and feelings while
committing
World War II atrocities.
Here is what we learn.
The Japanese soldier was
not simply
hardened for battle in China; he was hardened
for the task of
murdering Chinese combatants and noncombatants
alike. In-
deed, various games and exercises were set
up by the Japanese
military to numb its men to the human instinct
against killing
people who are not attacking.
For example, on their
way to the capital, Japanese
soldiers
p.56
were made to participate in killing competitions,
which were
avidly covered by the Japanese media like
sporting events. The
most notorious one appeared in the December
7 issue of the
Japan Advertiser under the headline "Sub-Lieutenants
in Race to
Fell 100 Chinese Running Close Contest. "
Sub-Lieutenant Mukai Toshiaki and Sub-Lieutenant
Noda
Takeshi, both of the Katagiri unit at Kuyung,
in a friendly con-
test to see which of them will first fell
100 Chinese in individ-
ual sword combat before the Japanese forces
completely
occupy Nanking, are well in the final phase
of their race, run-
ninig almost neck to neck. On Sunday [December
5]... the
"score," according to the Asahi, was: Sub-Lieutenant
Mukai,
89, and Sub-Lieutenant Noda, 78
A week later the paper reported that neither
man could decide
who had passed the 100 mark first, so they
upped the goal to
150. "Mukai's blade was slightly damaged
in the competition, "
the Japan Advertiser reported. "He explained that this was the
result of cutting a Chinese in half, helmet
and all. The contest
was 'fun' he declared."
Such atrocities were not
unique to the Nanking area.
Rather,
they were typical of the desensitization
exercises practiced by
the Japanese across China during the entire
war. The following
testimony by a Japanese private named Tajima
is not unusual:
One day Second Lieutenant Oho said to us,
"You have never
killed anyone yet, so today we shall have
some killing practice.
You must not consider the Chinese as a human
being, but only
as something of rather less value than a
dog or cat. Be brave!
Now, those who wish to volunteer for killing
practice, step for-
ward."
No one moved. The lieutenant
lost his temper.
"You cowards!" he shouted.
"Not one of you is fit
to call
himself a Japanese soldier, So no one will
volunteer? Well
then, I'll order you." And he began to call
out names, ''Otani---
Furukawa---Ueno---Tajima! " (My God---me
toot )
I raised my bayoneted
gun with trembling hands,
and---
directed by the lieutenant's almost hysterical
cursing---I walked
slowly towards the terror-stricken Chinese
standing beside the
p.57
pit---the grave he had helped to dig. In
my heart, I begged
his
pardon, and---with my eyes shut and the lieutenant's
curses in
my ears---I plunged the bayonet into the
petrified Chinese.
When I opened my eyes again, he had slumped
down into the
pit. "Murderer! Criminal! " I called myself.
For new soldiers, horror
was a natural impulse. One
Japan-
ese wartime memoir describes how a group
of green Japanese
recruits failed to conceal their shock when
they witnessed sea-
soned soldiers torture a group of civilians
to death. Their com-
mander expected this reaction and wrote in
his diary: "All
new recruits are like this, but soon they will be doing
the same
things themselves. "
But new officers also
required desensitization.
A veteran of-
ficer named Tominaga Shozo recalled vividly
his own transfor-
mation from innocent youth to killing machine.
Tominaga
had been a fresh second lieutenant from a
military academy
when assigned to the 232nd Regiment of the
39th Division
from Hiroshima. When he was introduced to
the men under
his command, Tominaga was stunned. "They had evil eyes,"
he
remembered. "They weren't human eyes, but
the eyes of leop-
ards or tigers."
On the front Tominaga
and other new candidate officers
un-
derwent intensive training to stiffen their
endurance for war. In
the program an instructor had pointed to
a thin, emaciated
Chinese in a detention center and told the
officers: "These are
the raw materials for your trial of courage."
Day after day the
instructor taught them to how to cut off
heads and bayonet liv-
ing prisoners.
On the final day, we were taken out to the
site of our trial.
Twenty-four prisoners were squatting there
with their hands
tied behind their backs. They were blindfolded.
A big hole had
been dug---ten meters long, two meters wide,
and more than
three meters deep. The regimental commander,
the battalion
commanders, and the company commanders all
took the seats
arranged for them. Second Lieutenant Tanaka
bowed to the reg-
imental commander and reported, "We shall
now begin." He
ordered a soldier on fatigue duty to haul
one of the prisoners
p.58
to the edge of the pit; the prisoner was
kicked when he resisted.
The soldiers finally dragged him over and
forced him to his
knees. Tanaka turned toward us and looked
into each of our
faces in turn. "Heads should be cut off like
this," he said, un-
sheathing his army sword. He scooped water
from a bucket
with a dipper, then poured it over both sides
of the blade.
Swishing off the water, he raised his sword
in a long arc. Stand-
ing behind the prisoner, Tanaka steadied
himself, legs spread
apart, and cut off the man's head with a
shout, "Yo!" The head
flew more than a meter away. Blood spurted
up in two foun-
tains from the body and sprayed into the
hole.
The scene was so appalling
that I felt I couldn't
breathe.
But gradually, Tominaga
Shozo learned to kill. And as
he
grew more adept at it, he no longer felt
that his men's eyes
were evil. For him, atrocities became routine,
almost banal.
Looking back on his experience, he wrote:
"We made them like
this. Good sons, good daddies, good elder
brothers at home
were brought to the front to kill each other.
Human beings
turned into murdering demons. Everyone became
a demon
within three months. "
Some Japanese soldiers
admitted it was easy for
them to kill
because they had been taught that next to
the emperor, all in-
dividual life---even their own---was valueless.
Azuma Shiro,
the Japanese soldier who witnessed a series
of atrocities in
Nanking, made an excellent point about his
comrades' behav-
ior in his letter to me. During his two years
of military training
in the 20th Infantry Regiment of Kyoto-fu
Fukuchi-yama, he
was taught that "loyalty is heavier than a mountain,
and our
life is lighter than a feather." He recalled
that the highest honor
a soldier could achieve during war was to
come back dead: to
die for the emperor was the greatest glory,
to be caught alive by
the enemy the greatest shame. "If my life
was not important,"
Azuma wrote to me, "an enemy's life became
inevitably much
less important.... This philosophy led us
to look down on the
enemy and eventually to the mass murder and
ill treatment of
the captives. "
In interview after interview,
Japanese veterans
from the
Nanking massacre reported honestly that they
experienced a
p.59
complete lack of remorse or sense of wrongdoing,
even when
torturing helpless civilians. Nagatomi Hakudo
spoke candidly
about his emotions in the fallen capital:
I remember being driven in a truck along
a path that had been
cleared through piles of thousands and thousands
of slaugh-
tered bodies. Wild dogs were gnawing at the
dead flesh as we
stopped and pulled a group of Chinese prisoners
out of the
back. Then the Japanese officer proposed
a test of my courage.
He unsheathed his sword, spat on it, and
with a sudden
mighty swing he brought it down on the neck
of a Chinese boy
cowering before us. The head was cut clean
off and tumbled
away on the group as the body slumped forward,
blood spurt-
ing in two great gushing fountains from the
neck. The officer
suggested I take the head home as a souvenir.
I remember smil-
ing proudly as I took his sword and began
killing people.
After almost sixty years
of soul-searching, Nagatomi
is a
changed man. A doctor in Japan, he has built
a shrine of re-
morse in his waiting room. Patients can watch
videotapes of
his trial in Nanking and a full confession
of his crimes. The
gentle and hospitable demeanor of the doctor
belies the horror
of his past, making it almost impossible
for one to imagine
that he had once been a ruthless murderer.
"Few know that soldiers impaled babies
on bayonets and
tossed them still alive into pots of boiling
water," Nagatomi
said. "They gangrened women from the ages
of twelve to
eighty and then killed them when they could
no longer satisfy
sexual requirements. I beheaded people, starved
them to
death, burned them, and buried them alive,
over two hundred
in all. It is terrible that I could turn
into an animal and do
these things. There are really no words to
explain what I was
doing. I was truly a devil."
NOTES
CHAPTER 2: SIX WEEKS OF TERROR
37."specialist
in thought control, intimidation and torture": David
Bergamini, Japan's
Imperial Conspiracy (New York: William
Morrow and Company,
1971), p. 16.
37. "a beast":
Kimura Kuninori Koseiha Shogun Nakajima Kesago [Nakajima Kesago,
General of the Individualist Faction]. (Tokyo:
Kojinsha, 1987), p.
212.
37. "masked
shogun": Sugawara Yutaka, Yamatogokoro; Fukumen Shogun Yanagawa
Heisuke Seidan [Spirit of Japan: Elevated
Con- versation from the
Masked Shogun Yanagawa Heisuke]. (Tokyo:
Keizai Oraisha, 1971),
p. 9.
37. Consider
the example of Suchow: Wu Tien-wei, "Re-study of the
Nanking Massacre, "
Journal of Studies of China's Resistance War against Japan (China Social Science Academy), no. 4 (1994):
43. Central Archive
Bureau, China No. 2 Historical Archive
Bureau; Jilin Province
Social Science Academy, ed., Pictorial Evidence of the
Nanjing Massacre (Changchun, PRC: Jilin Peo-
ple's Publishing House,
1995), p. 31; Dick Wilson, When Tigers Fight: The
Story of the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945
(New York:Viking, 1982),
p. 69.
38. The
invasion, according to the China Weekly Review: China Weekly Review (March
1938).
38."There
is hardly. a building standing": Manchester Guardian re-
porter Timperley wrote
this account, which was telegraphed
to London by another
correspondent on January 14, 1938.
38. On
December 7, as the Japanese troops: For this section on
Asaka's replacement
of Matsui, see Bergamini, Japan's Imperial Conspiracy,
ch. 1, p. 22.
39. "not
good": Kido, Nikki, 468, quoted in ibid., p. 23.
39. "sparkle
before the eyes": Nakayama Yasuto, testimony before
IMTFE, "Proceedings,"
p. 21893 (see also pp. 33081ff.,
37238ff., and 32686
[Canberra]), quoted in ibid., p. 23.
39."The
entry of the Imperial Army": Quoted in ibid.; see also
IMFTE judgment, pp.
47171 -73, National Archives.
40. After
Asaka heard this report: Bergamini, Japan's Imperial Conspir- acy, p. 24;
Information on footnote on Tanaka Ryukichi comes
from Pictorial Evidence
of the Nanjing Massacre, p. 35. (Bergamini's
book is poorly footnoted
so it must be used with caution.
However, the citation
suggests that he interviewed Tanaka.)
41. "BATTALION
BATTLE REPORTER": Quoted in Jilin Province
Social Science Academy,
ed., Pictorial Proof of the Nanking Mas- acre, p. 62. The English translation of this
command appears
in Yin and Young,
The Rape of Nanking, p.115.
42. "To deal with crowds of a thousand":
Kimura, "The Battle of
Nanking: Diary of
16th Division Commander
Nakaiima," Chuo
Kouron Sha [Tokyo]
(November 24, 1984). Nakajima's
diary ap-
peared in a December
1984 supplement to the
Japanese peri-
odical Historical
Figures. The English translation
of parts of his
diary appears in
Yin and Young, The Rape of Nanking, p 106.
43. "It was a magnificent view": Azuma Shiro, Waga Nankin Pura-
toon [My Nanjing Platoon] (Tokyo: Aoki Haruo, 1987).
44. fifty-seven thousand: IMTFE verdict.
45. "The [Japanese] army encountered great
difficulties": Quoted in
Honda Katsuichi,
Studies of the Nanking Massacre (Tokyo: Ban-
sei Sha Publishing,
1992), p. 129.
45. "After three or four hours": Kurihara Riichi, Mainichi Shimbun,
August 7,
1984.
46. "The result was a mountain of charred
corpses": Honda Kat-
suichi, The Road to Nanking (Asahi Shimbun, 1987), quoted
in Yin and
Young, p. 86.
46.After the soldiers surrendered en masse:
For this section, "The
Murder of Civilians,"
see Gao Xingzu, Wu Shimin,
Hu Yun-
gong, and Zha Ruizhen
(History Department,
Nanjing Uni-
versity), "Japanese
Imperialism and the Massacre
in Nanjing-
An English
Translation of a Classified
Chinese Document on
the Nanjing Massacre,
" translated from Chinese
into English
by Robert P. Gray
(pgray@pro.net). See, also China News Di- gest, special issue on the Nanjing massacre,
part 1 (March 21,
1996).
46.Corpses piled up outside the city walls:
Gao Xingzu, "On the
Great Nanking Tragedy,"
Journal of Studies of Japanese Aggres- sion Against China (November 1990):70.
47. These atrocities shocked many of the Japanese
correspondents: The
English translations
of the Japanese journalists'
accounts of
the Nanking massacre
appear in Yin and Young, The Rape of Nanking, pp. 52-56.
47."One by one the prisoners fell down": Ibid.
47."On Hsiakwan wharves": Imai Masatake, "Japanese
Aggression
Troops' Atrocities
in China, " China Military Science Institute,
1986, pp.
143-44.
48."Those in the first row were beheaded": Omata Yukio, Reports and Recollections of Japanese Military Correspondents (Tokyo:
Tokuma Shoten,1985).
48."Before the 'Ceremony of Entering the City'":
Quoted in
Moriyama Kohe, The Nanking Massacre and
Three-All Policy: Lessons Learned from History (Chinese-language
edition,
People's Republic
of China: Sichuan Educational
Publishing,
1984), p. 8.
48. "I've seen piled-up bodies": Quoted
in Yang Qiqiao, "Refutation
of the Nine-Point
Query by Tanaka Masaaki,"
Baixing (Hong
Kong), no.
86 (1985).
49."Women suffered most": Quoted in Hu Hua-ling,
"Chinese
Women Under
the Rape of Nanking," Journal
of Studies of Japanese Aggression Against China
(November 1991 ): 70.
49. Surviving Japanese veterans claim:
Azuma Shiro, undated letter
to the author,
1996.
49.Soldiers were even known to wear amulets:
George Hicks, The Comfort Women: Japan's Brutal Regime of
Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War (New York: Norton,
1994), p. 32.
49."At first we used some kinky words": Interview
with Azuma Shiro
in In the Name of the Emperor (film),
produced by Nancy Tong
and co-directed
by Tony and Christine Choy,
1995.
49."After raping, we would also kill them":
Quoted in Hu Hua-ling,
"Chinese Women Under
the Rape of Nanking,"
p. 70.
50."Perhaps when we were raping her": Shiro
Azuma, undated let-
ter to the
author, 1996.
50.raping some twenty women: "The Public Prosecution
of Tani
Hisao, one of the
Leading Participants in
the Nanking Mas-
sacre," Heping Daily, December 31,
1946.
50."Either pay them money or kill them": Quoted
in Bergamini,
Japan's Imperial Conspiracy,
p. 45.
50. "Great Field Marshal on the Steps of Heaven":
Quoted in
Bergamini, Japan's Imperial Conspiracy,
p. 39.
50. The next day the Western news media:
Hallett Abend, "Japanese
Curbing Nanking
Excesses," New York
Times, December 18, 1937.
51. "I now realize that we have unknowingly
wrought": Okada
Takashi, testimony
before IMTFE, p. 32738.
51."I personally feel sorry": Ibid., pp. 3510-11.
51."Never before": Dick Wilson, When Tigers
Fight, p. 83.
51."the Japanese army is probably the most undisciplined
army":
lbid., p.83.
51."It is rumored that unlawful acts continue":
Bergamini, Japan's Imperial Conspiracy, p. 43; IMTFE
exhibit no. 2577; "Proceed-
ings" (Canberra),
p.47187.
52."My men have gone something very wrong":
Hidaka Shun-
rokuro's testimony,
IMTFE, p. 21448.
52."Immediately after the memorial services":
Hanayama, p. 186,
quoted in
Bergarmini, p. 41.
52."The Japanese Expeditionary Force in Central
China": Yoshimi
Yoshiaki,
"Historical Understandings
on the 'Military Com-
fort Women'
Issue," in War Victimization
and Japan: Interna- tional Public Hearing Report (Osaka-shi,
Japan: Toho Shuppan,
1993), p.
85.
53.But in 1991 Yoshimi Yoshiaki unearthed:
For English-language
information
on Yoshimi's discovery in
the Defense Agency's
archives,
see Journal of Studies
of Japanese Aggression Against China (February 1992): 62. The
discovery made the front
page of the
Asahi Shimbun just
as Prime Minister Miyazawa
Kiichi was
visiting Seoul, South Korea,
in January 1992.
54."a black hole": Theodore Cook, telephone
interview with the
author.
54."To this day": "Some Notes, Comparisons,
and Observations
by Captain
E. H. Watson, USN (Ret) (Former
Naval Attaché)
After an Absence
of Fifteen Years from
Japan," Office of the
Chief of Naval
Operations, Division
of Naval Intelligence,
general correspondence,
1929-42, folder
P9-2/EF16#23, box
284, record
group 38, National Archives.
54.In her book The Chrysanthemum and the Sword:
Ruth Bene-
dict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword:
Patterns of Japanese Culture (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1946).
56. "Sub-Lieutenants in Race": Bergamini, Japan's
Imperial Conspir- acy, p. 21. The Osaka newspaper
Mainichi Shinbun as well as
the Tokyo
newspapers Nichi Nichi
Shinbun and the Japan Ad-
vertiser (English
edition) all reported
this killing competition.
56."One day Second Lieutenant Ono said to us":
Quoted in Wilson,
When Tigers Fight, p. 80.
57."All new recruits are like this": Ibid.
57."They had evil eyes": Oral history interview
with Tominaga
Shozo, in
Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore
F. Cook, Japan at War: An Oral History (New York:
New Press, 1992), p. 40.
58."loyalty is heavier than a mountain": Azuma
Shiro, undated let-
ter
to the author, 1996.
59."I remember being driven in a truck": Quoted
in Joanna Pitman,
"Repentance,"
New Republic, February
10, 1992, p. 14.
59."Few know that soldiers impaled babies":
Ibid.
