The Japanese have their own mentality, their own culture, their own religion. In many ways, these components that determine the face of a nation differ from European values. But all nations have one thing in common. At times they show pathological cruelty towards other peoples. At one time, the Spanish conquistadors committed atrocities in South America, the French and British destroyed blacks in Africa, the Red Army soldiers massacred entire villages in the Tambov region. The whole world knows the atrocities of the Nazis and Chinese during the Cultural Revolution. The Land of the Rising Sun did not stand aside. The atrocities of the Japanese in the first half of the 20th century are no less terrible and make modern people shudder.
As we all remember very well, in 1868 there was a radical change of power in Japan. The centuries-old rule of the shogunate ended, and all power was concentrated in the hands of the emperor and the new progressive government. The samurai have lost all levers of power. Many of them were destroyed, and the survivors were forced to accept the new order.
However, political and military reforms turned Japan into a militaristic state. It set itself the goal world domination and began to fight with other countries. In 1894-1895 there was a war with China. It ended with the victory of the land of the rising sun. The same thing happened after Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905.
In 1918, Japan took part in the war against Bolshevik Russia. Until 1920, its army was in Transbaikalia, and Vladivostok was liberated only at the end of October 1922. During the occupation of Russian lands, the invaders systematically exterminated local residents. In Khabarovsk, the population decreased from 55 thousand people to 30 thousand. 7 thousand Russian settlers died in Vladivostok. In Transbaikalia, the number of people decreased by 33%. In January-April 1920, in the Amur region, militarists burned 25 villages along with their residents.
Japanese soldiers were ready to carry out any order
Let us remember the death of Sergei Lazo in June 1920. According to the current version, he was stuffed into a bag and thrown alive into a locomotive firebox. True, the Japanese only arrested him, and the execution was carried out by the Cossacks. However, everyone understands that it is impossible to put a wriggling body into a locomotive firebox: the hole is small. But you can put in a corpse. Therefore, the version that seems more plausible is that the Japanese shot this Bolshevik back in April after his arrest, and burned the corpse. But, in any case, terrible legends are not born out of nowhere.
On December 13, 1937, 2 Japanese divisions entered chinese city Nanking. In the following days of the month, the occupiers carried out mass brutal murders of the local population. They went down in history as the Nanjing Massacre..
All murders were carried out with pathological cruelty. Thousands of people were herded into one place and bayoneted to death. Their heads were also cut off and buried alive in the ground. Men, women and children were killed. The women were raped before they died. Little girls were also raped, after which they were also killed. All this horror continued for many days.
During those bloody days, Jon Rabe was in Nanjing. This is a German, a member of the National Socialist Party of Germany. Thanks to him, the Nanjing Security Zone was organized. In it, the Chinese were protected from Japanese tyranny. It is believed that 200 thousand people were saved in this way. According to the same Jon Rabe and his comrades, about 500 thousand people died in the terrible massacre. This number of victims is denied by the Japanese government. Politicians in the Land of the Rising Sun claim that only 30 thousand people were killed in Nanjing.
Singapore was occupied by Japan in February 1942. They also carried out illegal actions against the Chinese there. Moreover, all these events were in no way inferior in cruelty to the atrocities in Nanjing. A similar situation repeated itself in Manila in February 1945. 110 thousand people were brutally killed there.
Japanese atrocities continued in the Kwantung Army. There, a special unit conducted experiments on bacteriological weapons. The experimental samples were living people. These were Russians, Chinese, Mongols, Koreans. They all died a painful death. Organs were removed from living people one by one. First less vital, then more vital. The person undergoing the operation experienced terrible agony.
Soviet soldiers arrested soldiers of the Kwantung Army
All this bloody orgy was put to an end in August 1945. Soviet troops under the command of the legendary Marshal Vasilevsky began the Manchurian operation on August 9. Already on August 20, almost a million strong group of the best Japanese troops capitulated. And on September 2, 1945, the act of surrender of the Japanese Empire was signed.
Thus ended a terrible period in the history of the land of the rising sun. Nowadays, her policy is based on humanism and love for people. What can I say, different times, different morals. The world today is completely different from what it was 60 years ago. But everything flows, everything changes. And only the Lord God knows what will happen next.
Marching from Shanghai
In August 1937, the Japanese entered Shanghai and were opposed by a larger Chinese army. However, having suffered heavy losses (approximately 70 thousand people out of 300 thousand), the Japanese were still able to take the city. Poorly equipped elite units of the Chinese army lost 60% of their personnel in the urban meat grinder. In one battle, 25 thousand junior officers trained between 1929 and 1937 were lost. The Central Army was never able to recover from such losses. The rest of the Chinese army was poorly trained, illiterate peasants of yesterday.
Japanese losses were also high, so the decision was made not to expand military operations. However, on December 1, it was decided to take the capital of the Republic of China, Nanjing. The fierce Japanese advanced on the city, led by General Iwane Matsui, who commanded the front. The Chinese, however, understood that the fall of Nanjing was inevitable, so the best units were withdrawn from there in advance, and the government was evacuated. Meanwhile, it was officially reported that the city would heroically defend itself. There were 100 thousand untrained soldiers left in the capital, some of whom had seen the cruelty of the Japanese in Shanghai. To stop the population from fleeing the city, soldiers were ordered to guard the port. The army blocked roads, destroyed boats and burned surrounding villages, preventing a large-scale evacuation.
"Competition to kill 100 people with a sword." (wikimedia.org)
The Japanese moved decisively. According to a Japanese journalist assigned to the imperial army at this time, “the reason that the advance towards Nanjing is quite rapid is the tacit understanding among the soldiers and officers that along the way they can rob and rape as and whomever they want.” Perhaps the most famous of the atrocities was a killing contest between two Japanese officers, which appeared in Tokyo's Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun and the English-language Japan Advertiser. The competition consisted of two officers trying to kill a hundred people as quickly as possible, using only swords, and competing with each other to achieve the result on speed. It was covered by the Japanese press as a sporting event with daily reports on points scored.
Assault on Nanjing
Fifteen Europeans who remained in Nanjing during the capture of the city organized a Security Zone, which, by prior agreement, was not attacked by the Japanese military - there were no Chinese soldiers in this zone. The head of the committee that managed the Security Zone was the German businessman Jon Rabe, chosen, among other things, because he was a member of the NSDAP, and the Anti-Comintern Pact was concluded and was in force between Germany and Japan. Foreigners tried their best to save the lives of local Chinese. However, 15 people (there were 22 foreigners in total at the beginning of the massacre) can do little when the number of victims runs into the thousands. Nevertheless, they managed to save about 200 thousand Chinese.
A Japanese soldier with the Chinese he killed. (wikimedia.org)
During the assault, the Chinese found themselves in the thick of it: the Japanese launched artillery fire and aerial bombardment, during which the meager remnants of the Chinese army, called upon to defend the city, fled. At noon on December 9, the Japanese military scattered leaflets over the city, demanding its surrender within 24 hours and threatening destruction if it refused. The Japanese expected a response to their ultimatum, but none came. General Iwane Matsui waited another hour after the deadline expired and then ordered the city to be stormed. The Japanese army attacked from several directions simultaneously. The Japanese, led by Prince Asaka, began clearing the city.
Atrocities
As already mentioned, the number of victims varies among sources. Japanese historians, depending on the time period and geographical limitations they accept in each case, give a wide range of estimates of the number of civilian deaths - from several thousand to 200,000 people. A 42-part Taiwanese documentary published between 1995 and 1997 entitled An Inch of Blood For An Inch of Land estimates that 340,000 Chinese died in Nanjing as a result of the Japanese invasion: 150 000 from bombing and artillery shelling during the five days of the battle itself and 190,000 during the massacres. These studies are based on materials from the Tokyo Trial.
A Japanese soldier killed a baby. (wikimedia.org)
Jon Rabe's diary, which he kept during the battle for the city and its occupation by the Japanese army, describes numerous cases of Japanese cruelty. Entry dated December 17:
“Two Japanese soldiers climbed over the wall and were about to break into my house. When I showed up, they said that they allegedly saw two Chinese soldiers climbing over the wall. When I showed them the party badge, they disappeared in the same way. In one of the houses on a narrow street outside the wall of my garden, a woman was raped and then wounded in the neck with a bayonet. I managed to call an ambulance and we sent her to the hospital... They say that last night, about 1,000 women and girls were raped, about a hundred girls in Jinling College alone... You hear nothing but rape. If husbands or brothers intervene, they are shot. All you see and hear is the cruelty and atrocities of the Japanese soldiers.”
Victims of the massacre. (wikimedia.org)
Case #5 from the missionary's film: On December 13, 1937, about 30 Japanese soldiers killed 9 out of 11 Chinese in house number 5 in Xinlongkou. A woman and her two teenage daughters were raped, with the Japanese stuffing a bottle and a cane into her vagina. The eight-year-old girl suffered a stab wound, but she and her sister survived. Two weeks after the murders, they were discovered by an elderly woman (seen in the photo). The bodies of the dead are also visible in the photograph.
The number of raped people, according to historians, averages 20 thousand, excluding children and old women. Girls were simply dragged out of their homes and gang-raped. After this, they were most often abused in the most sophisticated ways: many died from having their genitals torn apart with bayonets, bottles or bamboo sticks. The book “Nanjing Massacre” by Chinese-American writer Iris Chan describes cases in which the Japanese forced entire families to commit incest, forced celibate monks to rape women under threat of death, and in a group they themselves raped a girl who was preparing for childbirth.
On February 10, 1938, German Embassy Secretary Rosen wrote to the Foreign Office about the film made by Reverend John Magie, recommending its purchase. Excerpts from his letter, kept in the Political Archives in Berlin:
“On December 13, about 30 Japanese soldiers came to a Chinese household at Xingliugu #5 in the southeastern part of Nanjing and demanded to be let in. The door was opened by the landlord, a Mohammedan named Ha. They shot him with a revolver, and then Mrs. Ha, who, after killing Ha, begged them on her knees not to kill anyone else. Mrs. Ha asked them why they killed her husband and was also killed. Ms. Xia was pulled from under a table in the guest room, where she had tried to hide with her one-year-old child. She was stripped and raped by one or more men and then bayoneted in the chest and had a bottle shoved into her vagina. The child was killed with a bayonet. Some soldiers then moved to the next room, where Ms. Xia's parents, ages 76 and 74, and her two daughters, ages 16 and 14, were present. They were about to rape the girls when the grandmother tried to protect them. The soldiers shot her with a revolver. Grandfather grabbed her body and was killed. The girls were raped, the eldest by 2-3, and the youngest by 3 men. The older girl was then stabbed to death and a cane was shoved into her vagina. The youngest was also stabbed to death, but escaped the terrible fate of her sister and mother. Then the soldiers bayoneted another sister, aged 7-8, who was also in the room. The last to be killed in the house were two children Ha, 4 and 2 years old. The older one was stabbed to death, and the younger one’s head was cut off with a sword.”
Pregnant women were specifically targeted and their bellies were pierced with bayonets, often after rape. Tang Junshan, a survivor of the massacre, said:
“The seventh and last one in the front row was a pregnant woman. The soldier decided that he could rape her before killing her and, separating her from the group, dragged her about ten meters to the side. When he tried to commit rape, the woman offered desperate resistance... The soldier sharply hit her in the stomach with a bayonet. She let out a final moan as her intestines spilled out. Then the soldier stabbed the fetus, its umbilical cord was clearly visible, and threw it aside.”
During the “campaign,” the Japanese followed a scorched earth tactic. On August 6, 1937, Emperor Hirohito personally approved the army's proposal to remove obstacles limiting freedom of action regarding Chinese prisoners of war within the framework of international law. The directive also recommended that staff officers cease using the term "prisoners of war" itself.
Immediately after the fall of Nanjing, the Japanese began a manhunt for Chinese soldiers, during which thousands of young people were detained. Many of them were driven into the Yangtze River, where they were shot with machine guns. On December 18, perhaps the largest massacre of prisoners of war took place on the banks of the Yangtze, which became known as the Straw String Gorge Massacre. Japanese soldiers spent most of the morning tying the prisoners' hands together; at dusk they divided the Chinese into four columns and opened fire on them. Unable to escape, the prisoners screamed and fought in despair. It took about an hour for the sounds of the killing to subside, and then the Japanese continued to finish off the survivors with bayonets. Most were thrown into the river. It is believed that 57,500 Chinese died in this massacre.
Torture of the Chinese. (wikimedia.org)
The Japanese herded 1,300 Chinese - soldiers and civilians - to the Taiping Gate and killed them there. The victims were first blown up with mines, and then doused with fuel and burned. Those who survived after this were bayoneted. American journalist Tillman Durdin, who worked for The New York Times, drove around Nanjing before leaving the city. He heard constant machine gun fire and witnessed the Japanese gunning down 200 Chinese within ten minutes. Two days later, in his report for The New York Times, the journalist reported that the streets were littered with corpses, including women and children.
Japanese soldiers practice bayonet fighting against the Chinese. (wikimedia.org)
In terms of property destruction, a third of the city was destroyed by fires caused by arson. It was reported that Japanese troops threw torches at both new government buildings and residential buildings. The areas outside the city walls were also seriously damaged. The soldiers robbed both rich and poor. The lack of resistance from the Chinese meant that they could take whatever they wanted, which resulted in widespread looting and pillaging.
End of the massacre
On December 13, the massacre began; a few days later, on December 18, 1937, Imperial General Iwane Matsui began to understand the scale of rape, murder and looting in the city. He became increasingly alarmed by what was happening. The general was reported to have told one of his civilian aides: “I now realize that we have, unwittingly, brought about the saddest effect. When I think about the feelings of many of my Chinese friends who left Nanjing and the future of the two countries, I can only feel depressed. I’m very lonely and I can’t even rejoice at this victory.”
The few Europeans remaining in Nanjing tried to save the Chinese population. An international committee was created, headed by Jon Rabe. The committee organized the Nanjing Security Zone, in which about 200 thousand people took refuge.
Bodies of Chinese killed in Nanjing. (wikimedia.org)
At the end of January 1938, the Japanese army forced all refugees from the Nanjing Security Zone to return to their homes, immediately declaring that “order had been restored.” After the start of the weixin zhengfu (collaborationist government) in 1938, order did return to Nanjing, and Japanese atrocities were seriously reduced.
Japanese soldiers bury Chinese prisoners of war alive. (wikimedia.org)
On November 12, 1948, Iwane Matsui and Japanese Foreign Minister Koki Hirota, along with five other "Class A" war criminals, were sentenced to death by hanging. Eighteen other defendants received lesser sentences. General Hisao Tani was sentenced to death by the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal. Prince Asaka escaped punishment because he was guaranteed immunity under the terms of the surrender.
There is no clear explanation of what made the Japanese like animals. Historian Jonathan Spence writes: “Japanese soldiers, expecting an easy victory, instead fought for months and suffered far more serious losses than expected. They were tired, angry, frustrated and tired. There was no one to protect Chinese women; men were either absent or powerless. The war, still undeclared, had no clear and measurable goals. Perhaps they considered all Chinese, regardless of gender or age, to be suitable victims."
This is what the unlimited power of money leads to... Why are Japanese hated in neighboring countries?
During World War II, it was common for Japanese soldiers and officers to cut down civilians with swords, bayonet them, rape and kill women, kill children and the elderly. That is why, for the Koreans and Chinese, the Japanese are a hostile people, murderers.
In July 1937, the Japanese attacked China, starting the Sino-Japanese War, which lasted until 1945. In November-December 1937, the Japanese army launched an attack on Nanjing. On December 13, the Japanese captured the city, there was a massacre for 5 days (the killings continued later, but not as massive), which went down in history as the “Nanjing Massacre.” During the massacre carried out by the Japanese, more than 350 thousand people were slaughtered, some sources cite the figure as half a million people. Tens of thousands of women were raped, many of them killed. The Japanese army acted on the basis of 3 “clean” principles:
The massacre began when Japanese soldiers took 20,000 Chinese of military age out of the city and bayoneted them all so that they would never be able to join the Chinese army. The peculiarity of the massacres and abuses was that the Japanese did not shoot - they conserved ammunition, killed and maimed everyone with cold steel.
After this, massacres began in the city; women, girls, and old women were raped and then killed. Hearts were cut out from living people, bellies were cut, eyes were gouged out, they were buried alive, heads were cut off, even babies were killed, madness was happening in the streets. Women were raped right in the middle of the streets - the Japanese, intoxicated with impunity, forced fathers to rape their daughters, sons to rape their mothers, samurai competed to see who could kill the most people with a sword - a certain samurai Mukai won, killing 106 people.
After the war, the crimes of the Japanese military were condemned by the world community, but since the 1970s, Tokyo has been denying them; Japanese history textbooks write about the massacre that many people were simply killed in the city, without details.
Singapore massacre
On February 15, 1942, the Japanese army captured the British colony of Singapore. The Japanese decided to identify and destroy “anti-Japanese elements” in the Chinese community. During Operation Purge, the Japanese checked all Chinese men of military age; the hit lists included Chinese men who participated in the war with Japan, Chinese employees of the British administration, Chinese who donated money to the China Relief Fund, Chinese natives of China, etc. d.
They were taken out of the filtration camps and shot. Then the operation was extended to the entire peninsula, where they decided not to “ceremoniously” and, due to the lack of people for the inquiry, they shot everyone. Approximately 50 thousand Chinese were killed, the remaining ones were lucky, the Japanese did not complete Operation Purge, they had to transfer troops to other areas - they planned to destroy the entire Chinese population of Singapore and the peninsula.
Massacre in Manila
When in early February 1945 it became clear to the Japanese command that Manila could not be held, the army headquarters was moved to the city of Baguio, and they decided to destroy Manila. Destroy the population. In the capital of the Philippines, according to the most conservative estimates, more than 110 thousand people were killed. Thousands of people were shot, many were doused with gasoline and set on fire, the city's infrastructure, residential buildings, schools, and hospitals were destroyed. On February 10, the Japanese carried out a massacre in the Red Cross building, killing everyone, even children, and the Spanish consulate was burned along with its people.
The massacre also took place in the suburbs; in the town of Calamba, the entire population was destroyed - 5 thousand people. Monks and nuns of Catholic institutions and schools were not spared, and students were also killed.
Comfort station system
In addition to the rape of tens, hundreds, thousands of women, the Japanese authorities are guilty of another crime against humanity - the creation of a network of brothels for soldiers. It was common practice to rape women in captured villages; some of the women were taken away, few of them were able to return.
In 1932, the Japanese command decided to create “comfortable station houses”, justifying their creation by the decision to reduce anti-Japanese sentiment due to mass rape on Chinese soil, by caring for the health of soldiers who needed to “rest” and not get sexually transmitted diseases. First they were created in Manchuria, in China, then in all the occupied territories - in the Philippines, Borneo, Burma, Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and so on. In total, from 50 to 300 thousand women passed through these brothels, and most of them were minors. Before the end of the war, no more than a quarter survived, morally and physically disfigured, poisoned with antibiotics. The Japanese authorities even created the proportions of “service”: 29 (“clients”): 1, then increased to 40: 1 per day.
Currently, the Japanese authorities deny this data; previously, Japanese historians spoke about the private nature and voluntariness of prostitution.
Death Squad - Squad 731
In 1935, as part of the Japanese Kwantung Army, the so-called. "Detachment 731", its goal was to develop biological weapons, delivery vehicles, and testing on humans. It worked until the end of the war; the Japanese military did not have time to use biological weapons against the United States, and indeed the USSR, only thanks to the rapid advance of Soviet troops in August 1945.
Shiro Ishii - Commander of Unit 731
victims of unit 731
More than 5 thousand prisoners and local residents became “experimental mice” of Japanese specialists; they called them “logs.”
People were cut alive in " scientific purposes", they were infected with the most terrible diseases, then they were "opened up" while still alive. They conducted experiments on the survivability of “logs” - how long would they last without water and food, scalded with boiling water, after irradiation with an X-ray machine, withstand electrical discharges, without any cut out organ, and much more. other.
The Japanese command was ready to use biological weapons on Japanese territory against the American landing force, sacrificing the civilian population - the army and leadership had to evacuate to Manchuria, to Japan’s “alternate airfield”.
The Asian people have still not forgiven Tokyo, especially in light of the fact that in recent decades Japan has refused to acknowledge more and more of its war crimes. Koreans recall that they were even forbidden to speak native language, ordered to change their native names to Japanese ones (policy of “assimilation”) - approximately 80% of Koreans accepted Japanese names. Girls were taken to brothels; in 1939, 5 million people were forcibly mobilized into industry. Korean cultural monuments were taken away or destroyed.
Sources:
http://www.battlingbastardsbataan.com/som.htm
http://www.intv.ru/view/?film_id=20797
http://films-online.su/news/filosofija_nozha_philosophy_of_a_knife_2008/2010-11-21-2838
http://www.cnd.org/njmassacre/
http://militera.lib.ru/science/terentiev_n/05.html
Massacre in Nanjing.
Like any crime of capitalism and state ambitions, the Nanjing massacre should not be forgotten.
Prince Asaka Takahito (1912-1981), it was he who issued the order to “kill all prisoners”, giving official sanction to the “Nanking Massacre”
In December 1937, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army brutally murdered many civilians in Nanjing, then the capital of the Republic of China.
Despite the fact that after the war a number of Japanese soldiers were convicted of the Nanjing massacre, since the 1970s the Japanese side has pursued a policy of denying the crimes committed in Nanjing. Japanese school history textbooks simply write vaguely that “many people were killed” in the city.
The Japanese began by taking 20 thousand men of military age out of the city and bayoneting them so that in the future they “could not take up arms against Japan.” Then the occupiers moved on to exterminating women, old people, and children.
In December 1937, a Japanese newspaper describing the exploits of the army enthusiastically reported on a valiant competition between two officers who bet who would be the first to kill more than a hundred Chinese with their sword. The Japanese, as hereditary duelists, requested additional time. A certain samurai Mukai won, killing 106 people against 105.
Mad samurai completed sex with murder, gouged out eyes and tore out the hearts of still living people. The murders were carried out with particular cruelty. Firearms, which was in service with Japanese soldiers, was not used. Thousands of victims were stabbed with bayonets, their heads were cut off, people were burned, buried alive, women had their bellies ripped open and their insides turned out, and small children were killed. They raped and then brutally killed not only adult women, but also little girls and old women. Witnesses say that the sexual ecstasy of the conquerors was so great that they raped all the women in a row, regardless of their age, in broad daylight on busy streets. At the same time, fathers were forced to rape their daughters, and sons were forced to rape their mothers.
A peasant from Jiangsu province (near Nanjing) tied to a post to be shot.
In December 1937, the capital of Kuomintang China, Nanjing, fell. Japanese soldiers began to practice their popular "three out" policy:
“burn it clean,” “kill everyone clean,” “rob it clean.”
When the Japanese left Nanjing, it turned out that the transport ship could not land on the shore of the river bay. He was disturbed by thousands of corpses floating along the Yangtze. From memories:
“We just had to use the floating bodies as a pontoon. To board the ship, we had to walk over the dead.”
In just six weeks, about 300 thousand people were killed and more than 20,000 women were raped. Terror exceeded all imagination. Even the German consul, in an official report, described the behavior of the Japanese soldiers as “brutal.”
The Japanese bury living Chinese in the ground.
A Japanese soldier entered the monastery courtyard to kill Buddhist monks.
In 2007, documents from one of the international charitable organizations who worked in Nanjing during the war. These documents, as well as records confiscated from Japanese troops, show that Japanese soldiers killed more than 200,000 civilians and Chinese troops in 28 massacres, and at least another 150,000 people were killed on separate occasions during the infamous massacre in Nanjing. The maximum estimate of all victims is 500,000 people.
Japanese soldiers raped 20,000 people, according to evidence presented to the Tokyo war crimes court. Chinese women(an underestimate), many of whom were subsequently killed.
It is widely believed that Japan is a unique Eastern civilization, the quintessence of all that is best in Asia. Maybe. But not only the best.
The atrocities of the Japanese in the period from 1900 to 1945 in all the territories they occupied - from our Sakhalin and Primorye to China, Korea, and the island states of the Pacific Ocean - are difficult to even describe.
In New Guinea, Japanese soldiers had a division of human flesh into white and black “pork”. The first meant Americans and Australians, the second meant Asians
An excerpt from Valentin Pikul’s book “Katorga”: “Refugees from Southern Sakhalin began to make their way to Aleksandrovsk on Gilyak boats, on foot or on pack horses, carrying children, through mountains and impassable swamps, and at first no one wanted to believe their monstrous stories about samurai atrocities: “They kill everyone. They show no mercy even to small children. And what unchrists! First he will give you some candy, pat him on the head, and then... then your head will hit the wall. We gave up everything we had to earn just to stay alive...” The refugees were telling the truth. When earlier bodies of Russian soldiers mutilated by torture were found in the vicinity of Port Arthur or Mukden, the Japanese said that this was the work of the Honghuz of the Chinese Empress Cixi. But there were never Honghuzes on Sakhalin, and the inhabitants of the island saw the true appearance of a samurai. It was here, on Russian soil, that the Japanese decided to save their cartridges: they pierced soldiers or combatants who were captured with cutlasses, and cut off the heads of local residents with sabers. According to an exiled political prisoner, in the first days of the invasion alone they beheaded two thousand peasants.”
The villages of Mazhanovo, Sokhatino and Ivanovka on Sakhalin fully learned what the real way of Bushido is. The occupiers burned houses along with people, brutally raped women, shot and bayoneted residents, and cut off the heads of defenseless people with swords. In 1918, Japan began an intervention in the Far East, predatory in its goals and punitive in its actions. In Transbaikalia, the population of the region decreased from 55 thousand to 30 thousand people. Seven thousand Russians died in Vladivostok. From January to April 1920 alone, in the Amur Region, the occupiers burned 25 villages along with their residents. A terrible massacre was carried out by the Japanese in Khabarovsk on the night of April 4-5, 1920. All Koreans living in the city were burned alive.
Local authorities had to conclude an agreement with the interventionists, nicknamed the “Far Eastern Brest”, to stop the fighting and withdraw troops from Japanese garrisons and railway remaining under their control. But in the captured cities: Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, Nikolsk-Ussuriysk, Blagoveshchensk, murders and abuses of the living and the dead continued. During World War II, it was commonplace for Japanese soldiers and officers to cut down civilians with swords, bayonet them, rape and kill women, children, old people. The Kwantung Army had "Basic Rules" that taught how to "correctly" torture prisoners of war. For example, paragraph 65 read: “Methods of torture must be such that they are easy to apply, so that great and prolonged suffering can be maintained without a feeling of pity, and so that as a result there are no wounds or scars left... Torture should be methodically continued and instilled in thought: “Now you will be killed.” The following are some types of torture. “Putting the interrogated person on his back, drip water into his nose and mouth at the same time... Or put the interrogated person on his side and trample on his ankle...”
In July 1937, the Sino-Japanese War began (lasting until 1945). On December 13, Nanjing was captured and massacres continued for five days. The Japanese army acted on the basis of three “clean” principles: burn, kill, plunder. Some sources estimate the number of victims of the Nanjing massacre at half a million. Tens of thousands of Chinese women were raped, many of them killed. In the verdict of the International Military Tribunal for Far East the events in Nanjing are described as follows: “By the time the Japanese army entered the city on the morning of December 13, 1937, all resistance had ceased. Japanese soldiers roamed the city in droves, committing various kinds of atrocities... Many were drunk, they walked through the streets, indiscriminately killing Chinese men, women and children, until the squares, streets and alleys were littered with corpses. Even teenage girls and old women were raped. Many women were raped, killed, and their bodies were disfigured. After robbing shops and warehouses, Japanese soldiers often set them on fire.” Iris Chan’s book “The Rapes of Nanjing” is dedicated to these events. The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II" (The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II). Just one of the episodes: “The Japanese began by taking 20 thousand men of military age out of the city and bayoneting them to death so that in the future they would not be able to take up arms against Japan. Then the occupiers moved on to exterminating women, old people, and children. The maddened samurai completed the sex with murder, gouged out eyes and tore out the hearts of still living people.”
Since the 70s, Tokyo has denied crimes committed in China. Some Japanese politicians call the Nanjing massacre a hoax. However, in December 1937, a Japanese newspaper, describing the exploits of the army, enthusiastically reported on a valiant competition between two officers who bet who would be the first to hack to death more than a hundred Chinese. The samurai Mukai won, killing 106 people against 105. Even the German consul in an official report described the behavior of the Japanese soldiers as brutal. It is known that the massacre was led by the senior military commander of the Japanese - the emperor’s uncle, Prince Asaka Takahito. The murders were carried out with particular cruelty. The victims were stabbed with bayonets, their heads were cut off, people were burned, buried alive, women's bellies were ripped open and their insides were turned out. They raped and then brutally killed girls and old women. The Japanese widely used weapons mass destruction. They didn't care about the consequences at all. Chemical weapons were used from 1937 to 1945 in 18 provinces of China. Jing Xide, a professor at the Institute of Japanese Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, writes: “More than two thousand battles in which the use of chemical weapon, which caused the death of over 60 thousand people. The real number of victims is much higher: according to Japanese statistics, chemical weapons were used much more often.” In July 1938, the Japanese dropped a thousand chemical bombs on the city of Woqu, Shanxi Province, and during the Battle of Wuhan, 48 thousand shells with poisonous gas. In March 1939, chemical weapons were used against the Kuomintang troops stationed in Nanchang - the entire staff of two divisions died as a result of poisoning. Since August 1940, chemical weapons have been used 11 times in Northern China along railway lines, causing more than 10,000 military casualties.
In detachment 731, special unit Japanese army, developed bacteriological weapon. Experiments were carried out on people (prisoners of war, kidnapped). Vaccines against typhus, cholera, anthrax and dysentery were tested on them, and sexually transmitted diseases were studied (on women and their fetuses). The test subjects were called "logs." People were slaughtered for “scientific purposes”, infected with the most terrible diseases, and then dissected while still alive. They conducted experiments on the survivability of “logs”: how long they would last without water and food, scalded with boiling water, after X-ray irradiation, electric shocks, without any cut out organ. Diseases among prisoners of war were fought simply: the entire camp where the infected were encountered was burned. The story of a miraculously surviving American, a war veteran on Pacific Ocean: “A Japanese motorcycle began to overtake a crowd of prisoners on the island of Baatan. One of the Japanese attached a bayonet to his rifle, pointed it at the throat level of the Americans standing on the side of the road, and the motorcycle accelerated.” When problems arose with provisions, the Japanese soldiers decided that eating prisoners was not considered something sinful or shameful. Eyewitnesses say that “gourmets” cut pieces of meat from living people. By the end of the war, cannibalism had become commonplace. Officers in distant theaters of war urged their subordinates to eat only killed enemies. Since the Japanese switched to guerrilla warfare tactics in the Pacific Islands, special “hunter groups” were created, and the game was enemy soldiers and local residents. In New Guinea, the occupiers divided human flesh into white and black “pork.” The first meant Americans and Australians, the second meant Asians. Although eating one's comrades was strictly prohibited, such cases occurred in the Philippines. On Chichijima, the Japanese ate eight American pilots. The case turned out to be documented, since not only the officers, but also the top army brass were treated to the treat. In 1946, 30 people were put on trial in this case. Five were hanged: General Tachibama, Admiral Mori, Major Matoba, Captain Ishi, doctor Teraki. Interestingly, the article for cannibalism in international law missing, but lawyers found a way out - the cannibals were executed for “obstructing an honorable burial.” From the memoirs of the Indian Lens Naik Khatam Ali, who was captured in New Guinea: “Every day the soldiers killed and ate one prisoner. I myself saw how this happened. About a hundred prisoners were eaten.” Experts note: the soldiers committed atrocities not because they followed orders - they liked to bring pain and torment. There is an assumption that cruelty towards the enemy is caused by the interpretation of the military code of Bushido: no mercy to the vanquished, captivity is worse than death, enemies should be exterminated so that they cannot take revenge in the future. Opinion of ex-USSR Ambassador Alexander Panov: “The Japanese do not recognize many atrocities that were committed in China, as well as against Koreans. There is a statement at the highest level, including that made by Prime Minister Abe, that there is no clear definition of aggression in international law and it all depends on the actions of which country is called into question.”
Inhumanity, elevated to the absolute, was and remains one of the main “virtues” in Japan. Shinto theorists consider this the "firm, unshakable spirit" of the Land of the Rising Sun, which gives the emperor's subjects the right, associated with the samurai code of honor, to special place among powerful of the world this. The barbaric extermination of innocent people is more than a peculiar idea of \u200b\u200bhonor.
Anatoly Ivanko
