Nanking: Devil Personified
The Forgotten Holocaust
By Lucino C. Soriano
EVERY time we hear the word ‘HOLOCAUST’ (Greek holos means whole, and kaustos, burnt), the systematic killing of 5,000,000 to 6,000,000 innocent Jews during the Nazi Regime under the command of Adolf Hitler flashes in our mind. Even today, this atrocious chapter in the dark pages of our history can never be forgotten by millions, especially those whose loved ones were once victims of senseless killings, torture and injustice.
Yet 77 years after the capture of Nanking on December 13, 1937, most of humanity may have already forgotten the indescribable torture and mass murder committed by the Japanese military to about 300,000 Chinese, mostly civilians, in Nanking, China (the former capital, and now known as Nanjing) during the second Sino-Japanese War.
The number and scope of deaths may not be as pronounced as those committed by the German soldiers during World War II, but the indescribable atrocities forcibly committed by the invading Japanese soldiers during the period could easily be summed up in two words: DEVIL PERSONIFIED!
Pingfan Unit 731
Just the mere mention of ‘Unit 731’ brings intense fear in the heart of any Chinese who have read its accounts from history books, or those whose ancestors survived the Nanking massacre. Because it was here where inhuman biological experiments were conducted by Japanese medical staff – second to none in ruthlessness - which may put even the much-feared Beelzebub into shame.
There were no survivors out of more than 12,000 victims - composed of men, women, children and infants; even pregnant women or those in labor were not spared. After the war, a former member of Unit 731 had testified that to eliminate any chances of leaking out the secret of construction of the 'Square Buildings' by the laborers, they were all imprisoned and used as first batch of test objects.
Disguised as Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Unit, the Pingfan facility was set up by Japan, circa 1937 on orders of Emperor Hirohito, mainly to develop biological weapons to be used during the war. Units 731 and 100 were used in biological experiments while Unit 516, for creation of weapons of mass destruction, or biological weapons. The complex - which was administered by General Shiro Ishii - had 150 buildings including two secret prisons and three crematoria. It was reported to be the largest and most organized biological weapons research center in the world during that period.
WARNING: IF YOU HAVE A WEAK HEART OR STOMACH, PLEASE DO NOT READ THIS PART ANYMORE!
Here are some accounts of the brutal biological experiments in Nanking as culled by our sources from various reports and documents including journals and diaries, and actual testimony of a number of the medical staff who performed the experiments.
· "The fellow knew that it was over for him, and so he didn't struggle… But when I picked up the scalpel that's when he began screaming. I cut him open from the chest to the stomach, and he screamed terribly, and his face was all twisted in agony. He made this unimaginable sound, he was screaming so horribly. But then finally he stopped," said a former Japanese medical assistant who explained the reason for the vivisection after the Chinese prisoner was deliberately infected with what appeared to be a flesh-eating virus.
· Men, women and children were dissected alive, frozen to death, burned alive, electrocuted, injected with animal blood, boiled, or pierced with sharp steel bars imbedded in their ribs, or hung upside down while being tortured until they died. But few other prisoners were just ‘very lucky’ because they were shot to death and did not experience the slow, extremely painful and agonizing death.
· The other prisoners, who were accused of being a spy were operated on despite being healthy – to teach student doctors surgical techniques; while a huge number were sealed inside pressure chambers that caused their eyes to pop out.
· In one of the experiments, a prisoner was taken outside and tied to a post, in a sub-zero temperature. Then, his lower arm was poured with water until it froze. The technicians then tested the frostbite treatment - the lower arm was amputated. The same process was repeated on the other extremities until the victim died a horrifying death.
· Shrieking women’s reproductive organs were cut open so that these could be examined, while children, young as three years old were being stabbed with needles and then submerged in icy water. The other victims’ arms were amputated and reattached on the opposite sides, sans anesthesia.
· A group of prisoners were denied food or water for long periods to determine the maximum length of survival, or mummified alive in total dehydration experiments. Some were put into hot water and gradually increased the temperature to study degree of burns and the relationship between temperature and survival.
· Victims were burned with flame throwers, blown up with shrapnel, bombarded with lethal doses of X-ray, spun to death in centrifuges, exposed to syphilis, surgically removed their stomachs with the esophagus then attached to the intestines, amputated their arms and reattached on the opposite side, gassed to death in chambers. Graphic description of these demonic acts would make any reader vomit or go through chronic nightmares and intense hatred to the Japanese perpetrators.
· The doctors experimented on children and babies, even a three-day-old baby, measured the temperature with a needle stuck inside the infant's middle finger to keep it straight to prevent the baby's hand clenching into a fist.
Other acts of atrocities in a more graphic detail are not included here for obvious reasons.
Nanking Safety Zone
During the siege of Nanking, there were a huge numbers of foreigners who were living in the city, mostly traders and religious missionaries, but most of them left hurriedly, leaving only 27 foreigners. Five of these were journalists who left the city on December 16, 1937. While the remaining 15 of the 22 formed the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone or ‘Safety Zone,’ located in the western quarter of the city. John Rabe, a German businessman was elected leader because of his being a member of the Nazi Party. Prior to this, a German-Japanese alliance was signed. For this reason, the Japanese government had agreed not to attack the city, provided there were no Chinese military troops present in the area.
On December 1, 1937, Ma Chao-chun, Nanking Mayor ordered the remaining Chinese citizens to move to the ‘Safety Zone.’ It was reported that more than 200,000 Chinese who sought shelter here survived.
At the height of war, hundreds of students of medicine, nursing, and paramedics from different colleges and universities in Japan were brought to Nanking to perform actual operations, vivisections, and other medical experiments to living prisoners without using any anesthetic agent.
After the war, these medical students became heads of educational and research institutions, pharmaceutical companies, government officials and other responsible positions, yet none of them were made to answer in the courts of law for the unforgivable crimes that they had committed to civilians in Nanking.
Weapons of Mass Destruction
Documents translated from Japanese to English showed that the Ping Fan facility alone could, in a month, turn out as much as 300 kilos of plague bacteria, 500-600 kilos of anthrax germs, 800-900 kilos of typhoid, paratyphoid, or dysentery germs, or as much as one ton of cholera germs. The total volume of pathogens manufactured could be several times higher if these were produced simultaneously.
Biological weapons were dropped by plane or balloon in Nanking, Dalien, Beijing, and other thickly-populated areas, resulting to over 200,000 deaths. Not contented, the Japanese forces sprayed poison on some crops, causing hundreds of residents to die after ingesting food harvested from these farms.
A number of experiments were conducted using rats, fleas, and the plague. Rats that were earlier fed with wheat mixed with plague-carrying fleas were air dropped over Zheijiang and Hunan Province from 1940-42. Hours or days after, residents dropped like flies that were sprayed with insecticide, their bodies swollen black and dark blue. Those who buried their dead were infected and spread the disease when they came home. The Chinese government claimed that more than 250,000 were killed here but the figure was disputed by historians.
It was reported that some 10,000 prisoners at Unit 731 who were used as guinea pigs died shortly after they were infected with anthrax, syphilis, bubonic plague, typhoid, cholera, or a variety of other viruses and diseases.
An Orgy of War Crimes Documented
Westerners and Chinese present at Nanking in the six-week-period following the fall of the city attested that Japanese troops wantonly engaged in rape – as much as 2,000 a day and night, sodomy were also performed in men, in addition to murder, theft, arson, widespread looting and other serious war crimes. Some of the vivid description of the terrifying incidents were lifted by historians from the diaries of John Rabe and Minnie Vautrin, film footage of American missionary John Magee and the surviving field diaries of Japanese military personnel. These were supported by a huge number of photographs taken by the Western press, which can be viewed today on www.time.com and other Websites.
About 20,000 women were raped including children and women in their 70s. According to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Japanese soldiers would search every house and took captive women and then gang rape them, even on the streets in broad daylight. After the rape, victims were killed immediately, often through painful mutilation and stabbing of long bamboo sticks or other objects into their private parts. Even the vagina of your children were cut open to allow Japanese soldiers to rape them.
“Rape! Rape! Rape!,” wrote Reverend James McCallum in his diary, dated December 19, 1937. “We estimate at least 1,000 cases a night, and many by day. In case of resistance or anything that seems like disapproval, there is a bayonet stab or a bullet ... People are hysterical. Women are being carried off every morning, afternoon and evening. The whole Japanese army seems to be free to go and come as it pleases, and to do whatever it pleases.”
A Japanese journalist embedded with Imperial forces at the time admitted, "The reason that the (10th Army) is advancing to Nanking quite rapidly is due to the tacit consent among the officers and men that they could loot and rape as they wish."
On March 7, 1938, Robert O. Wilson, a surgeon at the University Hospital in the Safety Zone, wrote, part of which reads as follows:
“The slaughter of civilians is appalling. I could go on for pages telling of cases of rape and brutality almost beyond belief. Two bayoneted corpses are the only survivors of seven street cleaners who were sitting in their headquarters when Japanese soldiers came in without warning or reason and killed five of their number and wounded the two that found their way to the hospital.”
Only a Grain of Justice for the Victims
A Japanese scholar confirmed that the U.S. still has in its possession more than 600 pages of medical records and other documents and probably human tissue samples from Unit 731.
After the war, the U.S. and its Allies agreed not to prosecute Prince Yushiko Asaka and all members of Imperial Family after they were granted immunity, based on a pact between General Douglas MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito.
“Did MacArthur receive gold in exchange for immunity?” asked a historian. “It was very unlikely to give immunity to the Imperial family for nothing,” he concluded.
Ten years after the Nanking Holocaust or on November 12, 1948, the Nanking War Crimes Tribunal sentenced to death by hanging Japanese Foreign Minister Koki Hirota, Gen. Matsui and five other convicted war criminals, while 18 others received lesser punishment. It was reported that the other key perpetrators were spared in exchange for medical records of all biological experiments conducted which were turned over to the U.S. military.
To raise awareness on the Nanking Massacre, the Nanking Municipal Government built the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall in 1985.
Two Post-War Nanking Victims?
Irish Chang who lives in the U.S. wrote The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. Even though some critics cited a number of inaccuracies, the book, written in English, became a bestseller in 1997, and was translated into several major languages.
The publication of this nonfiction book resulted into fame for Chang, but shortly, she received a number of hate mails and threats from die-hard Japanese nationalists. Chang believed that she was being persecuted and people who hate her never stopped hounding her. Her mother admitted that the book “made Iris sad.” As a result, she suffered from depression and was later diagnosed with brief reactive psychosis and, in 2004, was prescribed with medication to stabilize her. On November 9, 2004 Iris committed suicide.
Minnie Vautrin, who protected Chinese women and children during the Japanese occupation of Nanking, suffered nervous breakdown in 1940, returned to the U.S. the following year and, it was reported that without any provocative reason, she committed suicide.
China Ready to Strike Back?
Since the late 90s, China has been arming itself to defend its sovereignty and has been spending billions of dollars in creating a powerful military arsenal at its disposal – over 1,600 fighter jets, bombers and other combat aircraft, thousands of tanks, an aircraft carrier and a flotilla of new-generation frigates, submarines and other warships, on top of more than 3.5 million soldiers including reservists.
If the worsening conflict today between China and Japan intensifies into a shooting war, will China recreate history, invade part of Japan and do what the Japanese did at Nanking in 1937-38?
References:
Chang, Iris, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, Basic Books, 1997
Gray, Robert P. Japanese Imperialism and the Massacre in Nanjing, February 1996.
McHenry, Robert, General Editor, The New Encyclopedia Britannica, 2010, Chicago, et. al.
Image: www.time.com
EVERY time we hear the word ‘HOLOCAUST’ (Greek holos means whole, and kaustos, burnt), the systematic killing of 5,000,000 to 6,000,000 innocent Jews during the Nazi Regime under the command of Adolf Hitler flashes in our mind. Even today, this atrocious chapter in the dark pages of our history can never be forgotten by millions, especially those whose loved ones were once victims of senseless killings, torture and injustice.
Yet 77 years after the capture of Nanking on December 13, 1937, most of humanity may have already forgotten the indescribable torture and mass murder committed by the Japanese military to about 300,000 Chinese, mostly civilians, in Nanking, China (the former capital, and now known as Nanjing) during the second Sino-Japanese War.
The number and scope of deaths may not be as pronounced as those committed by the German soldiers during World War II, but the indescribable atrocities forcibly committed by the invading Japanese soldiers during the period could easily be summed up in two words: DEVIL PERSONIFIED!
Pingfan Unit 731
Just the mere mention of ‘Unit 731’ brings intense fear in the heart of any Chinese who have read its accounts from history books, or those whose ancestors survived the Nanking massacre. Because it was here where inhuman biological experiments were conducted by Japanese medical staff – second to none in ruthlessness - which may put even the much-feared Beelzebub into shame.
There were no survivors out of more than 12,000 victims - composed of men, women, children and infants; even pregnant women or those in labor were not spared. After the war, a former member of Unit 731 had testified that to eliminate any chances of leaking out the secret of construction of the 'Square Buildings' by the laborers, they were all imprisoned and used as first batch of test objects.
Disguised as Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Unit, the Pingfan facility was set up by Japan, circa 1937 on orders of Emperor Hirohito, mainly to develop biological weapons to be used during the war. Units 731 and 100 were used in biological experiments while Unit 516, for creation of weapons of mass destruction, or biological weapons. The complex - which was administered by General Shiro Ishii - had 150 buildings including two secret prisons and three crematoria. It was reported to be the largest and most organized biological weapons research center in the world during that period.
WARNING: IF YOU HAVE A WEAK HEART OR STOMACH, PLEASE DO NOT READ THIS PART ANYMORE!
Here are some accounts of the brutal biological experiments in Nanking as culled by our sources from various reports and documents including journals and diaries, and actual testimony of a number of the medical staff who performed the experiments.
· "The fellow knew that it was over for him, and so he didn't struggle… But when I picked up the scalpel that's when he began screaming. I cut him open from the chest to the stomach, and he screamed terribly, and his face was all twisted in agony. He made this unimaginable sound, he was screaming so horribly. But then finally he stopped," said a former Japanese medical assistant who explained the reason for the vivisection after the Chinese prisoner was deliberately infected with what appeared to be a flesh-eating virus.
· Men, women and children were dissected alive, frozen to death, burned alive, electrocuted, injected with animal blood, boiled, or pierced with sharp steel bars imbedded in their ribs, or hung upside down while being tortured until they died. But few other prisoners were just ‘very lucky’ because they were shot to death and did not experience the slow, extremely painful and agonizing death.
· The other prisoners, who were accused of being a spy were operated on despite being healthy – to teach student doctors surgical techniques; while a huge number were sealed inside pressure chambers that caused their eyes to pop out.
· In one of the experiments, a prisoner was taken outside and tied to a post, in a sub-zero temperature. Then, his lower arm was poured with water until it froze. The technicians then tested the frostbite treatment - the lower arm was amputated. The same process was repeated on the other extremities until the victim died a horrifying death.
· Shrieking women’s reproductive organs were cut open so that these could be examined, while children, young as three years old were being stabbed with needles and then submerged in icy water. The other victims’ arms were amputated and reattached on the opposite sides, sans anesthesia.
· A group of prisoners were denied food or water for long periods to determine the maximum length of survival, or mummified alive in total dehydration experiments. Some were put into hot water and gradually increased the temperature to study degree of burns and the relationship between temperature and survival.
· Victims were burned with flame throwers, blown up with shrapnel, bombarded with lethal doses of X-ray, spun to death in centrifuges, exposed to syphilis, surgically removed their stomachs with the esophagus then attached to the intestines, amputated their arms and reattached on the opposite side, gassed to death in chambers. Graphic description of these demonic acts would make any reader vomit or go through chronic nightmares and intense hatred to the Japanese perpetrators.
· The doctors experimented on children and babies, even a three-day-old baby, measured the temperature with a needle stuck inside the infant's middle finger to keep it straight to prevent the baby's hand clenching into a fist.
Other acts of atrocities in a more graphic detail are not included here for obvious reasons.
Nanking Safety Zone
During the siege of Nanking, there were a huge numbers of foreigners who were living in the city, mostly traders and religious missionaries, but most of them left hurriedly, leaving only 27 foreigners. Five of these were journalists who left the city on December 16, 1937. While the remaining 15 of the 22 formed the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone or ‘Safety Zone,’ located in the western quarter of the city. John Rabe, a German businessman was elected leader because of his being a member of the Nazi Party. Prior to this, a German-Japanese alliance was signed. For this reason, the Japanese government had agreed not to attack the city, provided there were no Chinese military troops present in the area.
On December 1, 1937, Ma Chao-chun, Nanking Mayor ordered the remaining Chinese citizens to move to the ‘Safety Zone.’ It was reported that more than 200,000 Chinese who sought shelter here survived.
At the height of war, hundreds of students of medicine, nursing, and paramedics from different colleges and universities in Japan were brought to Nanking to perform actual operations, vivisections, and other medical experiments to living prisoners without using any anesthetic agent.
After the war, these medical students became heads of educational and research institutions, pharmaceutical companies, government officials and other responsible positions, yet none of them were made to answer in the courts of law for the unforgivable crimes that they had committed to civilians in Nanking.
Weapons of Mass Destruction
Documents translated from Japanese to English showed that the Ping Fan facility alone could, in a month, turn out as much as 300 kilos of plague bacteria, 500-600 kilos of anthrax germs, 800-900 kilos of typhoid, paratyphoid, or dysentery germs, or as much as one ton of cholera germs. The total volume of pathogens manufactured could be several times higher if these were produced simultaneously.
Biological weapons were dropped by plane or balloon in Nanking, Dalien, Beijing, and other thickly-populated areas, resulting to over 200,000 deaths. Not contented, the Japanese forces sprayed poison on some crops, causing hundreds of residents to die after ingesting food harvested from these farms.
A number of experiments were conducted using rats, fleas, and the plague. Rats that were earlier fed with wheat mixed with plague-carrying fleas were air dropped over Zheijiang and Hunan Province from 1940-42. Hours or days after, residents dropped like flies that were sprayed with insecticide, their bodies swollen black and dark blue. Those who buried their dead were infected and spread the disease when they came home. The Chinese government claimed that more than 250,000 were killed here but the figure was disputed by historians.
It was reported that some 10,000 prisoners at Unit 731 who were used as guinea pigs died shortly after they were infected with anthrax, syphilis, bubonic plague, typhoid, cholera, or a variety of other viruses and diseases.
An Orgy of War Crimes Documented
Westerners and Chinese present at Nanking in the six-week-period following the fall of the city attested that Japanese troops wantonly engaged in rape – as much as 2,000 a day and night, sodomy were also performed in men, in addition to murder, theft, arson, widespread looting and other serious war crimes. Some of the vivid description of the terrifying incidents were lifted by historians from the diaries of John Rabe and Minnie Vautrin, film footage of American missionary John Magee and the surviving field diaries of Japanese military personnel. These were supported by a huge number of photographs taken by the Western press, which can be viewed today on www.time.com and other Websites.
About 20,000 women were raped including children and women in their 70s. According to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Japanese soldiers would search every house and took captive women and then gang rape them, even on the streets in broad daylight. After the rape, victims were killed immediately, often through painful mutilation and stabbing of long bamboo sticks or other objects into their private parts. Even the vagina of your children were cut open to allow Japanese soldiers to rape them.
“Rape! Rape! Rape!,” wrote Reverend James McCallum in his diary, dated December 19, 1937. “We estimate at least 1,000 cases a night, and many by day. In case of resistance or anything that seems like disapproval, there is a bayonet stab or a bullet ... People are hysterical. Women are being carried off every morning, afternoon and evening. The whole Japanese army seems to be free to go and come as it pleases, and to do whatever it pleases.”
A Japanese journalist embedded with Imperial forces at the time admitted, "The reason that the (10th Army) is advancing to Nanking quite rapidly is due to the tacit consent among the officers and men that they could loot and rape as they wish."
On March 7, 1938, Robert O. Wilson, a surgeon at the University Hospital in the Safety Zone, wrote, part of which reads as follows:
“The slaughter of civilians is appalling. I could go on for pages telling of cases of rape and brutality almost beyond belief. Two bayoneted corpses are the only survivors of seven street cleaners who were sitting in their headquarters when Japanese soldiers came in without warning or reason and killed five of their number and wounded the two that found their way to the hospital.”
Only a Grain of Justice for the Victims
A Japanese scholar confirmed that the U.S. still has in its possession more than 600 pages of medical records and other documents and probably human tissue samples from Unit 731.
After the war, the U.S. and its Allies agreed not to prosecute Prince Yushiko Asaka and all members of Imperial Family after they were granted immunity, based on a pact between General Douglas MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito.
“Did MacArthur receive gold in exchange for immunity?” asked a historian. “It was very unlikely to give immunity to the Imperial family for nothing,” he concluded.
Ten years after the Nanking Holocaust or on November 12, 1948, the Nanking War Crimes Tribunal sentenced to death by hanging Japanese Foreign Minister Koki Hirota, Gen. Matsui and five other convicted war criminals, while 18 others received lesser punishment. It was reported that the other key perpetrators were spared in exchange for medical records of all biological experiments conducted which were turned over to the U.S. military.
To raise awareness on the Nanking Massacre, the Nanking Municipal Government built the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall in 1985.
Two Post-War Nanking Victims?
Irish Chang who lives in the U.S. wrote The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. Even though some critics cited a number of inaccuracies, the book, written in English, became a bestseller in 1997, and was translated into several major languages.
The publication of this nonfiction book resulted into fame for Chang, but shortly, she received a number of hate mails and threats from die-hard Japanese nationalists. Chang believed that she was being persecuted and people who hate her never stopped hounding her. Her mother admitted that the book “made Iris sad.” As a result, she suffered from depression and was later diagnosed with brief reactive psychosis and, in 2004, was prescribed with medication to stabilize her. On November 9, 2004 Iris committed suicide.
Minnie Vautrin, who protected Chinese women and children during the Japanese occupation of Nanking, suffered nervous breakdown in 1940, returned to the U.S. the following year and, it was reported that without any provocative reason, she committed suicide.
China Ready to Strike Back?
Since the late 90s, China has been arming itself to defend its sovereignty and has been spending billions of dollars in creating a powerful military arsenal at its disposal – over 1,600 fighter jets, bombers and other combat aircraft, thousands of tanks, an aircraft carrier and a flotilla of new-generation frigates, submarines and other warships, on top of more than 3.5 million soldiers including reservists.
If the worsening conflict today between China and Japan intensifies into a shooting war, will China recreate history, invade part of Japan and do what the Japanese did at Nanking in 1937-38?
References:
Chang, Iris, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, Basic Books, 1997
Gray, Robert P. Japanese Imperialism and the Massacre in Nanjing, February 1996.
McHenry, Robert, General Editor, The New Encyclopedia Britannica, 2010, Chicago, et. al.
Image: www.time.com