27 Tragic Photos From The Rape Of Nanking

 27 Tragic Photos From The Rape Of Nanking

Many Westerners know full well about the horrors that have happened on their side of the world throughout history. But, all too often, when an atrocity happens on the other side of the world, most people in the West don't hear much about it or think much of it.To get more news about nanjing massacre photos, you can visit shine news official website.

Alongside all of the catastrophes that plagued Europe during World War II, the atrocities committed in Asia were every bit as disturbing — even if many people in the West hardly ever learn about them in school.

And few acts of barbarity committed in Asia during the war were as terrible as the Nanking Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking.

While Europe was struggling to hold off the Nazi war machine, China was falling victim to the Japanese invasion that first launched in late 1937. The Japanese Empire sought to conquer much of East Asia and the Pacific — and fought with almost unimaginable brutality to make that happen.

In the end, China lost as many as 20 million lives (the second most of any country involved in the war), according to the National World War II Museum. And as many as 17 million Chinese casualties weren't soldiers. They were civilians, and many of them were put through hell before they were killed.
Some of the worst of it occurred over the six weeks after the Japanese stormed into the Chinese capital of Nanking (now known as Nanjing) in December 1937. And the city would never be the same again.

The Brutal March Before The Rape Of Nanking
The rape and murder that would soon envelop Nanking started before the Japanese Army ever reached the city walls. The Japanese Army was moving through China at the outset of their invasion, massacring and looting with strict orders to "kill all captives." The Japanese didn't stop there, though.

Among the invading army, nothing was forbidden, and this would pave the way for many of the soldiers to indulge in their most violent fantasies.One Japanese journalist, traveling with the 10th Army, wrote that he believed the army moved forward with such strength because of the "tacit consent among the officers and men that they could loot and rape as they wish."

When the Japanese Army reached Nanking, their brutality continued unabated. They burned down the city's walls, people's homes, the surrounding forests, and even whole villages situated in their path.

They looted nearly every building that they could find, stealing from the poor and the rich alike. They then slaughtered scores of people that they happened upon. Some victims of the Nanking Massacre were thrown into mass, unmarked graves. Others were simply left to rot in the sun.

To the invading army, the Rape of Nanking was sometimes even a game. Japanese magazines bragged about a contest between two soldiers, Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda, who had challenged one another in a race to see who could slaughter 100 people with their swords first.

Worse yet, the people who these two men cut open weren't enemy combatants killed on the battlefield. By the men's own admission, the victims were unarmed, defenseless people. According to the book The Nanjing Massacre, Noda admitted, after the war ended: "We'd line them up and cut them down, from one end of the line to the other."

What's more, this admission wasn't an apology. Just seconds before, Noda had scoffed at his victims for letting him kill them, saying, "The Chinese soldiers were so stupid." He also added, "Afterward, I was often asked whether it was a big deal, and I said it was no big deal."
In the six weeks during which the Japanese perpetrated the Nanking Massacre starting on December 13, 1937, an estimated 20,000 to 80,000 Chinese women were brutally raped and sexually assaulted by the invading soldiers, according to the book The Rape Of Nanking. They sometimes went door-to-door, dragging out women and children and gang-raping them. Then, once they'd finished with their victims, they often murdered them.

Such killing wasn't just an act of senseless barbarity, either — these men were following orders. "So that we will not have any problems on our hands," one commander told his men, referring to any women they've raped, "either pay them money or kill them in some obscure place after you have finished."

And the invaders didn't kill their victims quickly during the Rape of Nanking. Instead, they often made these women and children 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.