Thursday, January 8, 2004

Edge of the Earth.
You might get offended by the following. If you read the following along with this warning and become offended, keep your dumbass ways to yourself please.



Bloody History Day

In 'honor' of former emperor Hirohito, who died on January 7th, 1989; I bring to you another episode of Bloody History Day, the third to be exact.

The following is from what I have gathered from several sources and is of my own writing.

On December 13th, 1937 roughly 50,000 Japanese soldiers entered the Chinese capital city, Nanking. Many of the people had already fled the city, but the exact population of the city is impossible to determine since, in a time of war, it would be fluctuating so rapidly.

The Japanese army was given an order to execute all captives- that is what you would hope, however. It seems to be mentioned in only 1 out of 14-15 sources that they were given an 'order' to carry out what followed at Nanking. Nevertheless, the Japanese had killed so many men, women and children with machetes that they had to stop and rest before continuing on because their arms were quite sore.

The soldiers used machine guns, bayonets, live burial and fire aside from the popular method of decapitation. Eye witness accounts say that the heads of some of the Chinese were even fed to dogs. Competitions took place between Japanese soldiers to see how many Chinese could be killed in a day.

The estimates on the number dead from the massacre are volatile- most modern day historians rest on the figure of between 200,000 and 300,000 dead. Of this figure there were only an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 Chinese POWs.

Aside from the slaughter, there were an approximate 20,000 women raped- forced to do 'bizarre' sexual acts, and then, apparently, killed. Fathers were forced to rape their daughters, sons, and their mothers. Chinese men were forced to rape corpses.

This continues on for around six to eight weeks- unstopped, unchallenged. Would justice come? Would the great, freedom fighting allies set all wrongs right?

That is where the dense fog becomes a wall. Several articles mention a trade between Japan and the US- Japan had a chemical/germ warfare program that was quite advanced for it's time. The articles mention that in exchange for this knowledge, the blunt of Japanese war crimes in Asia [not just the Nanking massacre] were not brought up in the war trials that followed WW2.

To this day the information that was acquired has not been declassified.

I can't confirm much, the basic facts remain that a large number of Chinese were massacred at Nanking- it appears to be in a, at the very least, merciless way. That is the only truth to be found. It is a very blunt fog- it affects alot of people, yet half the things you read are estimations, eyewitness accounts or otherwise.

Regardless, the Japanese committed many war crimes. One article stated that during the occupation of China by Japan between 10-30 million Chinese died.

I, however, remain somewhat pessimistic about these figures. All the major nations in World War 2 committed war crimes- Dresden, the Holocaust, Nanking, the Soviet execution of Poles. All of them. The figures are probably bloated- still, many, many, people died in a way that is apparently beyond anything anyone can imagine.

As for the US trade, that I wouldn't doubt- I'm not saying it is likely, but if it happened don't expect me to make a "O_O" face.

Anyway, regardless, I hope you leave enlightened.



PS.) I remain stalwart in the "war is necessary" side of things. I would hate to see all the comments be pacifistic "I'm going to generalize all of war based on some bad people and say that it is all so horrible" comments. ^_~
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