Gaki N Me If you love to talk about the world, love Asian idols, this is the place.

If you talk to Asians whose ancestors have once been subjected to the atrocities of the Japanese military during the World War II, you would hear how they hate the Japanese because they were cold-blooded, cruel and barbaric. 
 

If you go onto any message boards from China, Japan Today, be they in English or Chinese, you would see the fighting, the hatred and name calling of each other more by the day.    
 

http://forum.japantoday.com/
http://bbs.chinadaily.com.cn/
http://comment.news.163.com/bbs/index.jsp?url=http://comment.news.163.com/news_guoji_bbs/1DGUT84D0001121Q.html (Chinese)

So what did the Japanese do to deserve our hatred? 
 

In the book The Rape of Nanking, Iris Chang, the author, and daughter of parents who lived through those years, detailed how the Japanese military killed countless civilians along its war path as they tried to conquer China.  Starting from 1931, Japan set its goal of military domination of Asia and they began with Manchuria.  By 1937, Peking, Tientsin, Shanghai and finally Nanking fell.  What made Nanking stood out was that between a short period of 3-8 weeks, the Japanese army massacred over 350,000 people: soldiers, moms and dads, children in the most ruthless way possible.

Here are some of the methods and could be disturbing reading so please skip or be warned.  Quoted from The Rape of Nanking. 

"Chinese men were used for bayonet practice and in decapitation contests.  An estimated 20,000 ?80,000 Chinese women were raped.  Many soldiers went beyond rape to disembowel women, slice off their breasts,, nail them alive to walls. Fathers were forced to rape their daughters, and sons their mothers, as other family members watched.  Not only did live burials, castration, the carving of organs, and the roasting of people become routine, but more diabolical tortures were practiced, such as hanging people by their tongues on iron hooks or burying people to their waists and watching them get torn apart by German shepherds. So sickening was the spectacle that  even the Nazi's were horrified, one proclaiming the massacre to be the work of "bestial machinery".

The book went on with a lot more details and eyewitnesses from foreigners who were there to set up Safety Zone and victims who survived. 
 

Why did the Japanese kill over 350,000 people? 

The war theatre was originally run by General Iwane Matsui but he was struck by illness at Suchow the China headquarters for the Japanese military.  Emperor Hirohito dispatched his own uncle, Prince Asaka Yasuhiko, as lieutenant general to the front to replace him.   It was believed that Matsui ordered that for the invasion of Nanking, his armies were to regroup outside the city walls and to enter the Chinese capital with only a few well-disciplined battalions and to complete the occupation so that the army would "sparkle before the eyes of the Chinese and make them place confidence in Japan."    Prince Asaka arrived on the front and his commander was ready to surround three hundred thousand Chinese trops in the vicinity of Nanking and that preliminary negotiations revealed that they were ready to surrender. After hearing this report, Asaka was set to have sent a set of orders under his personal seal marked "Secret, to be destroyed."  The message now reconstructed was  "Kill All Captives".  It is not clear if Asaka himself issued the orders because  

"Asaka's staff officer for intelligence, Taisa Isamo, later confessed to friends that on his own initiative he had forged the order.  The 300,000 Chinese troops were cut off from retreat so they away their weapons and surrendered to the Japanese.  "To arrange for so many prisoners, to feed them, was a huge problem," Taisa reportedly said...I immediately issued orders to all troops:'We must entirely massacre these prisoners!'  Using the name of the military commander, I sent these orders by telegram.  The wording of the order was to annihilate.""

As you continue to read the book, you would ask if the Nationalist leader Chiang Kai Shek had not ordered his leader Tang Sheng-Chih who was heading the defense of Nanking to retreat, perhaps this would not have happened.  Tang retreated with great reluctance only to see his soldiers fell as he crossed the river.

  
You wondered why the Chinese did not fight back.  There were half a million of residents and 90,000 soldiers trapped in Nanking when it fell and only 50,000 Japanese troops.  Rounding the Chinese up to execute was problematic for the Japanese and so they relied on trickery. 
 

In general, the Chinese people were meek as most citizens of the world were.  The Chinese soldiers were tired and did not want to fight, thinking that the Japanese would treat the prisoners of war fairly.

Japanese occupied territories up to 1941(Click here for larger view)

Then why were the Japanese so brutal? 
 

According to Tanaka Yuki, author of Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II, not all Japanese people could stomach such atrocious acts.  But the Japanese army inflict arbitrary and cruel treatment on its own officers and soldiers.  Plus the hierachical nature of Japanese nature of Japanese society, in which status was dictated by proximity to the emperor.  So it was suggested that those with the least power are often the most sadistic if given the power of life and death over people even lower on the pecking order, and the rage engendered by this rigid pecking order was suddenly given an outlet when Japanese soldiers went abroad?and it is easy to see how years of suppressed anger, hatred, and fear of authority could have erupted in uncontrollable violence at Nanking? 
 

Coupled with the fact that Japanese had contempt for the Chinese after  years of propaganda at home, believed that the emperor was the natural ruler of the world, and that their violence was therefore imbued with a holy meaning, the Japanese military went wild on its rape. 
 

Should we hate the Japanese as a result?

Such atrocities were not limited to Nanking.  If you go around Asia which once was occupied by the Japanese military, the older generation would recount similar horrors.  Yet, most of the Asian countries have forgiven Japan for their war crimes and moved on with economic cooperation with Japan long time ago.   
 

My father at around 10 years old went through those days of Japanese occupation in Hong Kong where he witnessed pregnant women being raped and then disemboweled and decapitated and other forms of cruelties.  He almost got shot on the spot but one Japanese soldier let him go.  He told of his hatred for the Japanese as we grew up and warned that we should never marry a Japanese.  Yet, he built his business on Japanese textile orders.  He visited Japan once and liked the people and thought they were kind.

 
Then why are the Chinese people still at the throat of Japan?   
 

Animosity toward Japan is again the rage in China 
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-02-23-china-japan_x.htm

Open hostility toward Japanese gains ground throughout PRC

http://www.etaiwannews.com/Perspective/2005/02/21/1108949968.htm

Because the Chinese press has not publicized enough the fact that Japan, its cabinet and its Emperor has signed statements of apology to Asia for its war crimes. 

Japan on three occasions has issued apology to Asia, though not specifically to China alone.  And the Chinese people want a direct apology.   Yet the Chinese government has acknowledged the apology and wanted to move on.  Read this thread at Japan Today forum to see the discussion.

http://forum.japantoday.com/m_308856/mpage_1/key_/tm.htm

  
I think the Chinese people, especially the ultra nationalists, wanted war reparations and apology to settle the score once and for all.  The fact that the press also accused the Japanese for whitewashing the war crimes in their textbook didn't help.  The press is stoking the fire.  Japanese textbooks do include the mention of war crimes but those in the left wing tried to whitewash a small percentage of the textbooks.

  
The Chinese people were angry that the royal family, the Emperor and Prince Asaka were guaranteed immunity from the war tribunal by the US in return for ceasefire.  Yeah, blame it on the US (again!).  Twenty eight of its officers were executed but some of the others in power did not get caught.  The Chinese people probably were angry that the Chinese government did not insist on war reparations.

So should we hate the Japanese? 
 

An emphatic NO.  The generation we are dealing with now has militarism bred out of them.  For the last 50 years, they had only maintained a military for self defence only.  The Japanese people are like you and me who desire nothing but peace.  When people live comfortably, they would not want war.
 

Then why is China always being so threatening to Japan?

If you keep up with the news at the news links I post on the on the right navigational bar, you see China always warning or expressing disgruntle against Japan.  The Chinese government would show displeasure against the Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visiting Yasukuni Shrine where Japan's militaristic past is glorified and the war dead hosted, including convicted war criminals from World War II.  The Chinese government warns of military buildup as the US fortifies its military alliance with Japan.  It gives you a feeling that China is always criticizing Japan.  And when recently, the Chinese government is not stopping demonstrations in front of the Japanese embassy for their war crimes, it goes to show that as China increases its economic power, it may assert its political power and threatening Japan is one way to show it.

So what should we do about it? 
 

I think as peaceful citizens, we should not engage in bitter arguments any longer about the war crimes of Japan.  It's the past.  If China wants to ask for reparations or apology, go for it and be done with it.  Using these as pretext of military buildup and political snubbing only brings instability to the world.
  
China is ambitious.  No doubt about it.  But that's another story. 

P.S. It has been said that Iris Chang has made numerous mistakes in her book plus it is alleged that she had plagiarized David Bergamini's Japan's Imperial Conspiracy.  Read this article closely at 4. Shameless Plagiarism.
http://www.edogawa-u.ac.jp/~tmkelly/research_review_nanking.html
 

Be sure to read the following article China's New Thinking on Japan to get the Chinese view of things.

http://www.turkishweekly.net/comments.php?id=159

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Zen at War

Zen at War is a courageous and exhaustively researched book by Brian Victoria, a western Soto Zen priest and instructor at the University of Auckland. Victoria reveals the inside story of the Japanese Zen establishment's dedicated support of the imperial war machine from the late 1800's through World War II. He chronicles in detail how prominent Zen leaders perverted the Buddhist teaching to encourage blind obedience, mindless killing, and total devotion to the emperor. The consequences were catastrophic and the impact can still be felt today. This is a must read to understand why the people of Japan were following the Emperor's orders.  The article also shows that hypocrisy is not just in the Western religions.