wikipedia The Nanking Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking, was an episode of mass murder and mass rape committed by Japanese troops against Nanking (current official spelling: Nanjing) during the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. The massacre occurred during a six-week period starting December 13, 1937, the day that the Japanese captured Nanking, which was then the Chinese capital. (See Republic of China). During this period, tens of thousands, if not more, of Chinese civilians and disarmed combatants were murdered by soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army.[1][2] Widespread rape and looting also occurred.[3][4] The death toll is actively contested among scholars, with typical estimates ranging from 40,000 to over 300,000.[5][6] Several of the key perpetrators of the atrocities, at the time labelled as war crimes, were later tried and found guilty at the International Military Tribunal of the Far East and the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal, and were executed. Another key perpetrator, Prince Asaka, a member of the Imperial Family, escaped prosecution by having earlier been granted immunity by the Allies. The event remains a contentious political issue, as various aspects of it have been disputed by some historical revisionists and Japanese nationalists,[2] who have claimed that the massacre has been either exaggerated or wholly fabricated for propaganda purposes.[7][8] As a result of the nationalist efforts to deny or rationalize the war crimes, the controversy surrounding the massacre remains a stumbling block in Sino-Japanese relations, as well as Japanese relations with other Asia-Pacific nations such as South Korea and the Philippines. An accurate estimation of the death toll in the massacre has not been achieved because most of the Japanese military records on the killings were deliberately destroyed or kept secret shortly after the surrender of Japan in 1945. The International Military Tribunal of the Far East estimates around 200,000 casualties in the incident.[9] By contrast, John Rabe, Chairman of the International Committee and Nanking Safety Zone, estimated that between 50,000 and 60,000 people were killed.[10] Chinas official estimate is about 300,000 casualties based on the evaluation of the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal, though mainstream historians concur that this estimate is exaggerated.[11][12] Although the Japanese government has admitted to the acts of killing of a large number of non-combatants, looting, and other violence committed by the Imperial Japanese Army after the fall of Nanking,[13][14] a small but vocal minority within both the Japanese government and society have argued that the death toll was military in nature and that no such crimes ever occurred. Denial of the massacre (and a divergent array of revisionist accounts of the killings) has become a staple of Japanese nationalism.[15] In Japan, public opinion of the massacres varies, and few deny the occurrence of the massacre outright.[15] Nonetheless, recurring attempts by negationists to promote a revisionist history of the incident have created controversy that periodically reverberates in the international media, particularly in China, South Korea, and other East Asian nations.[16]
Posted on: Thu, 27 Feb 2014 17:58:22 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015