A Different Date, to Live in Infamy

[Shodan]

Many recognize Dec. 7, 1941 as the date the Empire of Japan attacked the US. And we, quite rightly, remember that date. But there is another date coming up, that represents events equally or more horrible.

On December 13, 1937, the Japanese invaded the city of Nanking. The defending forces scattered, and General Iwane Matsui in command of the Japanese Central China Area Army entered the city. The course of that army was marked by appalling atrocities, including killing contests and the massacre of whole villages. When they entered the city, it got worse. For example -

...the Nanqiantou hamlet near Wuxi was set on fire, with many of its inhabitants locked within the burning houses. Two women, one a 17-year-old girl and the other pregnant, were raped repeatedly until they could not walk. Afterwards, the soldiers rammed a broom into the teenager's vagina and stabbed her with a bayonet, then "cut open the belly of the pregnant woman and gouged out the fetus". A crying two-year-old boy was wrestled from his mother's arms and thrown into the flames, while the hysterically sobbing mother was bayoneted and thrown into a creek. The remaining thirty villagers were bayoneted, disemboweled, and also thrown into the creek.

Prince Yasuhiko Asaka was installed as temporary commander in the campaign. He issued an order - "kill all prisoners".

Estimates of the number slaughtered range from the most common of 100,000 to 200,000. And then there were the rapes. Tens of thousands of them.

Japanese soldier Takokoro Kozo recalled:

Women suffered most. No matter how young or old, they all could not escape the fate of being raped. We sent out coal trucks to the city streets and villages to seize a lot of women. And then each of them was allocated to fifteen to twenty soldiers for sexual intercourse and abuse. After raping we would also kill them.[86]

The women were often killed immediately after being raped, often through explicit mutilation,[87] such as by penetrating vaginas with bayonets, long sticks of bamboo, or other objects. For example, a six-months pregnant woman was stabbed sixteen times in the face and body, one stab piercing and killing her unborn child. A young woman had a beer bottle rammed up her vagina after being raped, and was then shot.

Pearl Harbor was bad enough, but at least it was a military target. Nanking wasn't war. It was demonic.

There were other casualties. Minnie Vautrin was a missionary in Nanking, who tried desperately to save as many as she could, sheltering them in the school she headed. She saved many, but she could do nothing for the others. In 1941, she was able to return to the US after 28 years of missionary service in China. But, haunted by the memories of those she could not save, she took her own life.

Over the entrance to Dachau it says, "Forgive, but never forget". On December 13, let's forgive. But we must never forget.

Regards,
Shodan