“Nanking”. A beautiful name, isn’t it? In Chinese, it means ‘Southern Capital’, similiar to how ‘Peking’ means ‘Northern Capital’. In the 21st Century, the city of Nanjing (it’s modern spelling) is one of the biggest and most important cities in all of China, just as it was back in the 1930s, when soldiers from the Japanese Imperial Army overran the city and murdered, burned, raped and pillaged it to the ground in one of the most horrendous war-crimes in the history of the world. The infamous ‘Rape of Nanking’ is one of the most brutal and controversial war-crimes ever. But what actually happened?
For the purposes of continuity, the original Wade-Giles spelling of ‘Nanking‘ will be used throughout this posting.
What Was Nanking?
Nanking was and is one of the most important cities in China. Built along the famous Yangtze River in southern China, it has been a major center for culture, trade, commerce, politics and government for centuries. After the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the last of the great Imperial Chinese dynasties, which for countless centuries, had ruled over the lands of ‘Zhongguo‘…the Central Kingdom…the new Republic of China nationalist government, the Kuomintang, set up shop in Nanking. This ancient and proud city was to be the capital of the new, capitalist, democratic China. After much thumb-twiddling, um-ing, ah-ing and foot-shuffling, in 1927, Nanking became the new capital of the new China.
Nanking, like almost every other major city in China at the time, played host to a significant Western expatriate community. Just like in Peking and Shanghai, Western businessmen, religious leaders, reporters, journalists, artists, writers and families descended on Nanking, carving out their own portions of the city where they lived alongside the local and native Chinese population.
The Second Sino-Japanese War
In 1931, the Japanese began their assault on China. By degrees, they claimed larger and larger swathes of Chinese land for themselves, starting with Manchuria in 1931. In 1932, they unwisely attempted to invade the city of Shanghai, an important sea-port. The Chinese Nationalist Army fought them off and kept the city safe for another five years.
In August, 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army invaded Chinese Shanghai. The city was then divided into two sectors – the Chinese sector on the outsides of town, and the famous Shanghai International Settlement, the vast expatriate zone, in the heart of the city. Not wanting to draw Western powers into the war (yet), Japanese troops only attacked Chinese Shanghai. After fierce fighting for three months, the city fell in October of 1937. Thousands of Shanghai Chinese fled into the Settlement, secure in the knowledge that the Japanese would not dare attack them within its boundaries, for fears of bringing British and American troops on their heads.
After the fall and occupation of Chinese Shanghai, and the road now clear into the interior, the Japanese headed westwards, seeking out the Nationalist capital, the ancient Chinese city of Nanking.
The Battle of Nanking
Nanking was the next great city that the Japanese attacked, after capturing Peking and Shanghai. The battle started on the 9th of December, 1937.
Back in September, the Japanese had carried out extensive air-raids on Nanking, softening it up for the impending invasion. Heavy raids were carried out for weeks on end. When Shanghai fell in October, the Nationalist Army abandoned the city and retreated to Nanking, to try and defend the capital.
It was soon realised that defending the capital against hardened Japanese troops was pointless. Although most Chinese officers had received the most modern military training (mostly in Russia), the majority of regular soldiers were uneducated peasants or working-class Chinese with only mediocre training, hardly fit to take on the strength of the Japanese.
Rather than risk his entire army being gobbled up by the Japanese, Chiang Kai-Shek ordered it to retreat even further into the Chinese interior, while leaving a small force behind to stall the Japanese.
By November, bombing-raids on Nanking had intensified and it was at this time that everyone who could leave, did leave. Wealthy Chinese of means, businessmen, Western expatriates and anyone who could find a car, boat, bicycle, horse and cart or had a decent pair of shoes fled the city to escape the Japanese.
The Japanese overran Nanking in a matter of weeks. The Chinese defense-strategies collapsed as inexperienced Chinese soldiers fled from the Japanese. Although there were pockets of resistance, the Japanese annihilated Nanking even easier than Shanghai. In early December, the city was placed under siege. The Chinese defenders were given an ultimatum of surrendering the city, or facing an all-out Japanese assault. When a surrender was not given, the Japanese began their invasion-proper, of the city of Nanking.
The city’s ancient defensive walls were blasted aside by the Japanese. Once they’d gained control of the city by mid-December, 1937, the most infamous Japanese war-crime in history began.
The Rape of Nanking
It’s called by many names. The ‘Nanking Incident’, the ‘Nanjing Massacre’…but most people will know it by its most famous name.
The Rape of Nanking.
Starting on the 13th of December, 1937, and lasting for six weeks until the end of January, Japanese soldiers raped, killed, pillaged, looted, burned and destroyed anything and everyone left within the confines of the city of Nanking. Men, women, children, the elderly, the babies, the walking-wounded, were all shot, clubbed, bayoneted, raped, burned alive, buried alive, decapitated or drowned in an orgy of destruction that went for a month and a half without end. Estimates of victims range from 40,000…to 200,000….to 320,000 Chinese civilians of all ages. That sounds even bigger when you consider the fact that in 1937, the population of Nanking about a million people.
It was the most horrific Japanese war-crime ever. And even today, seventy years later, it’s still not taught in Japanese schools. Japanese schoolchildren have never heard of it. Never read about it in their textbooks, and their teachers have never told them about it. They’ll learn about the battle and the siege and the invasion…but the rape is suspiciously absent.
During the war, the Japanese Imperial Army was notorious for ignoring the rules of war, more commonly known as the Geneva Conventions. Chinese prisoners of war were executed along with civilians, and no quarter was given to anyone.
The Chinese civilians still left within the confines of Nanking would search for anywhere to hide. Cellars, bunkers, bombed out buildings…but most famously, about 250,000 of them managed to find security…for a time at least…in the unofficial D.M.Z. in the middle of Nanking.
The Nanking Safety Zone
With the Japanese invasion imminent, Western expatriates still within the city (mostly religious leaders, diplomats and medical staff) took it upon themselves to try and set up a D.M.Z within the city…a demilitarised zone.
It was given the rather misleading title of the “Nanking Safety Zone”.
It might be a zone.
It might be in Nanking.
But it certainly didn’t guarantee safety.
The Japanese were not willing to attack Western institutions or persons, for fear of bringing Western powers into ‘their war’. To try and use this to their advantage, the Westerners attempted to set up a safety-zone in the middle of Nanking. The Japanese had said that they would not attack any part of Nanking where no threat existed (i.e: Where there weren’t any Chinese soldiers).
To that end, Chinese soldiers evacuated an area of the city about 8.5 square kilometers in size. Within that space were established about twenty to thirty individual refugee-camps, which took up about 3.8 square kilometers. For the sake of comparison, Central Park in Manhattan is 3.4 square kilometers in area.
Into this space was crammed roughly 250,000 Chinese refugees. Surveying the entire project were all the Western expatriates then left in the city, about 27-30 of them, all told.
One of the men who was central to the establishment and operation of the Nanking Safety Zone was a German. His name was John Rabe. He was a businessman, which some people might know…and he was a Nazi, which some people might not know.
Despite the name, the Nanking Safety Zone, the zone did not automatically provide ‘safety’.
The Japanese agreed not to attack any place which did not pose a threat to their interests. But at the same time, they did not recognise the fact that the Safety Zone existed at all. To them, it was just another part of the city for them to loot and pillage. So remaining within the Safety Zone did not mean that you were entirely secure. The Japanese were well-known for entering the Zone when it took their fancy, snatch up a few hundred men and women and either haul them off and execute them or rape them, or just shoot them dead where they stood. Unlike the International Settlement in Shanghai, the Japanese had no qualms about just going in and causing havoc.
At the end of January, 1938, the Japanese claimed to have ‘restored order’ to Nanking. The Nanking Safety-Zone was forcibly disbanded and everyone was made to return to their homes. Although not entirely effective, John Rabe, commonly known as the “Good Nazi of Nanking“, is credited with saving the lives of approximately 250,000 people.
Want to know more?
I suggest you read this website dedicated to the Battle of Nanking.