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in category South East Asia

Was Japan a force for good in the world?

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It is worth considering the "Rape of Nanjing" in order to answer this question. After world war two, Japan was demilitarised so it is difficult to say what it's true role would have been had that not happened.

The events known as the "Nanjing Massacre" or the "Rape of Nanjing" estimate around 20,000 women including children and the elderly were raped during the occupation of the Chinese nationalist capital Nanjing when it fell in December 1937 to the Japanese army. The massacre occurred over a period of six weeks starting on 13 December 1937. The Government of Japan and Japanese veterans who served there admitted to the killing of many non-combatants, looting and other violence committed by the Imperial Japanese Army.

The Japanese were infuriated by the strength of Chinese resistance and when they took Nanjing Japanese troops immediately slaughtered thousands of Chinese soldiers who had surrendered. The Japanese then rounded up about twenty thousand young Chinese men and transported them in trucks outside the city walls where they were killed in a massive slaughter. Japanese troops were then encouraged by their officers to loot Nanjing and slaughter and rape the Chinese population of the city. Rapes were conducted systematically by the Japanese soldiers as they went from door to door searching for girls. Women on being captured were gang raped and usually killed immediately afterwards.

Was Japan a force for good in the world?

For six weeks, life for the Chinese in Nanjing became a nightmare. Bands of drunken Japanese soldiers roamed the city, murdering, raping, looting, and burning at whim. Chinese civilians who were stopped on the street and found to possess nothing of value were immediately killed. During this period, soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army murdered Chinese civilians the numbers of which are estimated to be in the range of 40,000 to 300,000+.

The bodies of thousands of victims of the slaughter were dumped into the Yangtze River until the river was red with their blood. After looting the city, the Japanese started fires that gutted around a third of the city.


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