Are the Japanese being hypocritical?

     Many Japanese say that dropping the A bomb was inhumane and a vicious way to attempt ending the war. These words are hypocritical especially coming from the Japanese, due to the fact that in their attempt to gain political power they would become beastlike and blood thirsty. R.J. Rummel is a professor of political, who studied up on World War II and claims that from 1937 to 1945, three to ten million people were murdered by the Japanese Army. He was able to come up with this number by calculating the number of casualties of such events as: the Rape of Nanking, the Bataan Death March, the Sook Ching massacre, and the Manila massacre. There are many more horrific massacres and battles, but these are where the majority of mass killings took place.

Rape of Nanking:
     The Nanking Massacre also known as the Rape of Nanking was a mass murder that took place over a six week period in China. In December of 1937, the Japanese Army marched into China’s capital (at the time), Nanking. The invading Japanese army murdered 300,000 out of 600,000 civilians and soldiers in the city. The Chinese were murdered in some of the most sadistic ways; whether they were shot with a machine gun or bayonets, poison gas was used, people got buried alive, and worst of all the Japanese poured gasoline onto captives and burned them alive. Not only were people murdered but women were also raped. It has been estimated that over 20,000 women were raped by Japanese soldiers, girls even younger than age ten had reported being raped. It got so bad that some fathers were forced to rape their own daughters. Once the soldiers were done raping them, they were usually brutally murdered. This unfortunate event in history is also known as the forgotten holocaust of WWII.

"I was playing jump-rope in front of my house when an automobile pulled over. I had never seen a car before in my village. When the driver offered me a ride, I, curious and naive, climbed in with my friend. Immediately, that car rolled on with us in it and then kept on going and going, never returning me to my village...." Ms. Kim Yoon Shim. She was a woman who was abducted at the age of fourteen and repeatedly raped during the Nanking Massacre.

Aftermath of the Rape of Nanking:

     Since the Japanese government was able to control the news media during the war, most civilians didn’t know about the Nanking Massacre, or the other crimes committed in China. When the Japanese civilians came home they even considered the soldiers that were in China to be heroes. Once the Tokyo trial took place, that’s when the Japanese civilians found out what really happened. The Tokyo Trial, which was tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. The trial accused people in Japan, high ranking officers were tried and some found guilty. It was at this time that the Japanese found out who their so called heroes truly were and the horrible things that they did.

Below is a picture of the Japanese Army entering Nanking in January of 1938.

Bataan Death March:

     The Bataan Death March was a sixty mile long forced march of American and Filipino prisoners of war by the Japanese Army in 1942.Approximately 72,000 prisoners of war marched after their three month long defeat at the Battle of Bataan. The Japanese claimed that this sixty mile stretch would only take two or three days to walk by foot, however, they did not take in that the prisoners were malnourished. During this march, the Japanese would shoot any of the prisoners for stopping to fill up water, helping out a fallen comrade, or even if they thought the soldier gave them a dirty look. To make matters worse, the prisoners of war were denied food and water, because of this many collapsed and died from starvation. Some prisoners even say that they watched people get buried alive. A total of 18,000-20,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war died on the Bataan Death March.

Below is a picture of just a handful of the prisoners of war that died during the march.

Aftermath of Bataan Death March:

     During the Tokyo Trial, the Japanese commander in charge of Bataan, General Homma, was tried for war crimes. At the trial, he claimed that he did not know that the death toll was so high until months after the march itself. General Homma was found guilty and executed on April 3, 1946.

Above is a picture of General Homma, the Japanese Commander who was in charge of the Bataan Death March.

    




Sidenote: After 65 years, American apologized for the dropping of the atomic bombs. Japan however is yet to admit to their mistakes and apologize for all of the unecessary brutal massacres that their Army carried out,