lishesquex (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lishesquex) wrote2007-03-27 08:43 pm
lishesquex) wrote2007-03-27 08:43 pm
Entry tags:
More depressing history
I was reading my Making China Modern textbook on the train. Specifically, the chapter on the Sino-Japanese War. And all the way home I couldn't stop thinking about how fucked up people can be.
***
Some snippets from my textbook:
The Japanese reached Chaing [Kai Shek]'s capital, Nanjing, in December and unleashed one of the twentieth century's most terrifying war crimes. From the Tokyo War Crimes trial:
[On December 15], 2,000 of the city's police force, having been captured by the Japanese army, were marched toward an area... where they were systematically machine-gunned. Those who were wounded were subsequently buried alive... [On the next day], 5,000 refugees who had gathered in the Overseas Chinese Reception Center... were systematically machine-gunned and their bodies thrown into the river.
On December 14, Yao [Jailong], a native of Nanjing,... was ordered to watch the performance when Japanese soldiers took turns raping his wife. When his eight-year-old son and three-year-old daughter pleaded for mercy on behalf of their mother, the rapists picked them up with their bayonets and roasted them to death over a camp fire.
[Between] December 13 [and] 17, a large number of Japanese troops took turns raping a young [girl] in the street outside Zhonghua Gate, and when a group of Buddhist monks passed by, they were ordered to rape this girl too. After the monks had refused to comply with this order, the Japanese cut off their penises, an act which caused the monks to bleed to death.
To their families, troops sent photographs of beaming soldiers alongside naked women they were about to rape or had raped and of smiling soldiers holding up severed heads. Altogether an estimated two hundred to three hundred thousand Chinese were killed; an estimated twenty thousand women were raped.
Items, published in the Japan Advertiser, a Tokyo English language newspaper on December 7 and 14, 1937:
Sub-lieutenant[s] Toshiaki Mukai and... Takeshi Noda,... in a friendly contest to see which of them will first fell 100 Chinese in individual sword combat before the Japanese forces completely occupy Nanjing, are running neck and neck. On Sunday when their unit was fighting outside of Kuyung, the "score"... was... Mukai, 89 and Noda, 78.
The winner of the competition [over] who would be the first to kill 100 Chinese with his Yamato sword has not been decided.... Mukai has a score of 106 and his rival has dispatched 105, but the two... found it impossible to determine which passed the 100 mark first. Instead of settling it with a discussion, they are going to extend the goal by 50.
Mukai's blade was slightly damaged in the competition. He explained that this was the result of cutting a Chinese in half, helmet and all. The contest was "fun", he declared....
These events were reportedly part of the atrocity now known as the Rape of Nanjing at the beginning of the eight-year-long Sino-Japanese War. An estimated twenty million Chinese died in that war. Many more were wounded; more yet became homeless refugees. The war, coming at the end of a century-long trauma of imperialist depredations, was China's worst nightmare. In the end, it paved the way for the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) to triumph at last and put in motion the revolution that they hoped would establish a modern socialist state....
***
From Schoppa, Keith R. "The Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945." In Revolution and Its Past - Identies and Change in Modern Chinese History. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc., 2006.
I'd always vaguely known about the Sino-Japanese War so I wasn't expecting to be shocked. But reading a detailed account of it, I was shocked, and completely sickened by it. And then I was just angry. Angry at the Japanese, obviously, for their actions. Angry at Chiang Kai-Shek for retreating to inner China (all the while keeping troops stationed against the Chinese Communist forces but doing shit all about the Japanese) while the Japanese raped and burned and murdered their way across the country. Angry at misogyny and the patriarchy and men in general for their disgusting treatment of women during wartime (and any time, for that matter). Angry at the rest of the world (except Russia) who did practically nothing until the latter part of World War II when they started to feel threatened by Japanese expansion. Angry at the Japanese government who to this day denies or plays down many of the atrocities that happened. Angry at Douglas McArthur who granted immunity to the physicians of Unit 731 in exchange for providing America with the data they had collected from their "research" on biological warfare using human test subjects. Angry at humanity for being capable of this. So much anger. And nowhere for it all to go because it's pointless to be angry at things I can't change. Full of rage and nothing I can take it out on. Except my LJ.
My LJ is like a stress ball. *squishes it*
*sigh*
I hate being a History major sometimes.
***
Some snippets from my textbook:
The Japanese reached Chaing [Kai Shek]'s capital, Nanjing, in December and unleashed one of the twentieth century's most terrifying war crimes. From the Tokyo War Crimes trial:
[On December 15], 2,000 of the city's police force, having been captured by the Japanese army, were marched toward an area... where they were systematically machine-gunned. Those who were wounded were subsequently buried alive... [On the next day], 5,000 refugees who had gathered in the Overseas Chinese Reception Center... were systematically machine-gunned and their bodies thrown into the river.
On December 14, Yao [Jailong], a native of Nanjing,... was ordered to watch the performance when Japanese soldiers took turns raping his wife. When his eight-year-old son and three-year-old daughter pleaded for mercy on behalf of their mother, the rapists picked them up with their bayonets and roasted them to death over a camp fire.
[Between] December 13 [and] 17, a large number of Japanese troops took turns raping a young [girl] in the street outside Zhonghua Gate, and when a group of Buddhist monks passed by, they were ordered to rape this girl too. After the monks had refused to comply with this order, the Japanese cut off their penises, an act which caused the monks to bleed to death.
To their families, troops sent photographs of beaming soldiers alongside naked women they were about to rape or had raped and of smiling soldiers holding up severed heads. Altogether an estimated two hundred to three hundred thousand Chinese were killed; an estimated twenty thousand women were raped.
Items, published in the Japan Advertiser, a Tokyo English language newspaper on December 7 and 14, 1937:
Sub-lieutenant[s] Toshiaki Mukai and... Takeshi Noda,... in a friendly contest to see which of them will first fell 100 Chinese in individual sword combat before the Japanese forces completely occupy Nanjing, are running neck and neck. On Sunday when their unit was fighting outside of Kuyung, the "score"... was... Mukai, 89 and Noda, 78.
The winner of the competition [over] who would be the first to kill 100 Chinese with his Yamato sword has not been decided.... Mukai has a score of 106 and his rival has dispatched 105, but the two... found it impossible to determine which passed the 100 mark first. Instead of settling it with a discussion, they are going to extend the goal by 50.
Mukai's blade was slightly damaged in the competition. He explained that this was the result of cutting a Chinese in half, helmet and all. The contest was "fun", he declared....
These events were reportedly part of the atrocity now known as the Rape of Nanjing at the beginning of the eight-year-long Sino-Japanese War. An estimated twenty million Chinese died in that war. Many more were wounded; more yet became homeless refugees. The war, coming at the end of a century-long trauma of imperialist depredations, was China's worst nightmare. In the end, it paved the way for the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) to triumph at last and put in motion the revolution that they hoped would establish a modern socialist state....
***
From Schoppa, Keith R. "The Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945." In Revolution and Its Past - Identies and Change in Modern Chinese History. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc., 2006.
I'd always vaguely known about the Sino-Japanese War so I wasn't expecting to be shocked. But reading a detailed account of it, I was shocked, and completely sickened by it. And then I was just angry. Angry at the Japanese, obviously, for their actions. Angry at Chiang Kai-Shek for retreating to inner China (all the while keeping troops stationed against the Chinese Communist forces but doing shit all about the Japanese) while the Japanese raped and burned and murdered their way across the country. Angry at misogyny and the patriarchy and men in general for their disgusting treatment of women during wartime (and any time, for that matter). Angry at the rest of the world (except Russia) who did practically nothing until the latter part of World War II when they started to feel threatened by Japanese expansion. Angry at the Japanese government who to this day denies or plays down many of the atrocities that happened. Angry at Douglas McArthur who granted immunity to the physicians of Unit 731 in exchange for providing America with the data they had collected from their "research" on biological warfare using human test subjects. Angry at humanity for being capable of this. So much anger. And nowhere for it all to go because it's pointless to be angry at things I can't change. Full of rage and nothing I can take it out on. Except my LJ.
My LJ is like a stress ball. *squishes it*
*sigh*
I hate being a History major sometimes.
no subject
oh. my. god.
*picks up jaw from floor*
fuck me.
< /speechless>
no subject
yeah...
You are right to be angry, that's for sure. It's terrible - I can't understand how people can get into that state of mind.
There really is no excuse, reason or anything for it... all I can offer is that perhaps you can take your anger, and channel it into something you want to (and perceivably can) change.
Parts of the world are terrible, and parts are wonderful - but I think we have to love the world as a whole all the same. I think if we can still love our world, those who do such evil have failed.
*group hug* We shall spread the love, lish. :)
(yuck)