Crimes Against Humanity
The Japanese were the dictators in this situation and commited many wrongful crimes against the Chinese people. THe Japanese army forced themselves upon women and children, raping and harming women many times over. The girls being raped were often as young as the age of twelve. No respect was ever shown for these women by the Japanese army. Their methods of killing included: Stabbing, bayonette, beating them to death, Raping women and children, working to death, and other disgusting crimes against humanity. When the soldiers killed the women, they would often leave them naked in the middle of the streets, and other men would often rape the dead bodies. A surviving women gives a statement, '"Surviving Japanese veterans claim that the army had officially outlawed the rape of enemy women," writes Iris Chang. But "the military policy forbidding rape only encouraged soldiers to kill their victims afterwards." She cites one soldier's recollection that "It would be all right if we only raped them. I shouldn't say all right. But we always stabbed and killed them. Because dead bodies don't talk ... Perhaps when we were raping her, we looked at her as a woman, but when we killed her, we just thought of her as something like a pig." Kenzo Okamoto, another Japanese soldier, recalled: "From the time of the landing at Hangzhou Bay, we were hungry for women! Officers issued a rough rule: If you mess with a woman, kill her afterwards, but don't use bayonets or rifle fire. The purpose of this rule was probably to disguise who did the killing. The military code with its punishment of execution was empty words. No one was ever punished. Some officers were even worse than the soldiers."' (Yin and Young, The Rape of Nanking, p. 188) Chinese men were forced to preform embarrassing sexual tasks in front of many of the Japanese soldiers often for their own enjoyment. The men would all get rounded up and taken away from their families by the Japanese. They would use them often for workers, but if they were not fit enough to serve then they would get lined up and shot at like beer cans for target practice. When the men were taken away they would be tied u at the wrists and added on to the already huge line of men the Japanese were carting around. Many Chinese soldiers were terrified by the Japanese, and would abandon their uniforms and change into their street clothes just to try and avoid the wrath that they would have to face.
Many of the Japanese soldiers often made bets to see how many Chinese people they each could kill, whoever had killed the most won. Prince Yasuhiko Asaka had then issued a secret order where the soldiers had been ordered to kill all of the captives when Nanjing was first taken over. This order stated that all men of military age were to be taken as prisoners, even if they were not soldiers. A typical order, issued to the 66th Regiment 1st Battalion on 13 December, read as follows:Battalion battle report, at 2:00 [p.m.] received orders from the Regiment commander: to comply with orders from Brigade commanding headquarters, all prisoners of war are to be executed. Method of executed: divide the prisoners into groups of a dozen. Shoot to kill separately. ... It is decided that the prisoners are to be divided evenly among each company ... and to be brought out from their imprisonment in groups of 50 to be executed. ... The vicinity of the imprisonment must be heavily guarded. Our intentions are absolutely not to be detected by the prisoners. Every company is to complete preparation before 5:00 p.m. Executions are to start by 5:00 and action is to be finished by 7:30. (Quoted in Yin and Young, The Rape of Nanking, pp. 110, 115.) When the soldiers were taken, the Japanese would promise them food, and a place to work, but in the end, they would end up neglecting giving them food, water or anything to survive off of. This treatment went on for a few days, and then when the men were too exhausted they would tie them up with wire by the wrists and send them away.