Part II. Japanese Atrocities on Trial: Condemnation and Justice from China and International Community
The serious crimes committed by the Japanese imperialists in Nanjing were wholly contrary to international law, the law of war, and fundamental humanitarian principles, and drew widespread concern and condemnation from the international community. The group of people from the United States and various European countries remaining in Nanjing included more than 20 missionaries, teachers, doctors, reporters, and businessmen. They spontaneously organized themselves, quickly setting up the Nanjing Safety Zone and the International Committee of the Nanjing Safety Zone to extend humanitarian relief to the suffering general public of Nanjing. The International Committee of the Nanjing Safety Zone was established on November 18, 1937, choosing as its chairman John H. D. Rabe, the representative of the Nanjing subsidiary of Siemens, the German company. They defined the borders of the Safety Zone as north to Shanxi Road, west to Xikang Road, south to Hanzhong Road, and east to Zhongshan Road. This centrally located area included the University of Nanking(1), Jinling (Ginling) Women's College, Jinling Theological Seminary, and Drum Tower (Gulou) Christian Hospital, as well as many foreign embassies, expatriate residential areas, and residences of senior Chinese officials.
After the Safety Zone was designated, there was a continuous influx of large numbers of refugees, totaling more than 250,000. There were 25 refugee camps; the University of Nanjing and Jinling Women's College became important camp locations. John Rabe housed more than 600 refugees in the courtyard of his own residence. These foreign expatriates upheld the spirit of humanitarianism under extremely difficult conditions, undertaking whatever relief activities they could for the suffering citizens of Nanjing. They helped refugees survive day to day, and more importantly, they launched a struggle for justice in the face of the atrocities committed by the Japanese army against the people of Nanjing. They continually protested the Japanese violence and did everything possible to quickly disseminate information about the Nanjing atrocities internationally.
The United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and other Western governments made serious protests to the Japanese government when the Japanese continuously bombed Nanjing. On September 22, 1937, the US State Department said in protest, “This Government holds the view that any general bombing of an extensive area wherein there resides a large populace engaged in peaceful pursuits is unwarranted and contrary to principles of law and of humanity,” and also stated, “The American Government, therefore, reserv[es] all rights on its own behalf and on behalf of American nationals in respect to dangers which might result from Japanese military operations in the Nanking area....”(2) As the Japanese army was about to invade Nanjing on December 12, Japanese aircraft sunk the US gunboat Panay, which was anchored 25 miles upstream from Nanjing, along with three accompanying steamships belonging to the Standard Oil company. After occupying Nanjing, the Japanese constantly ransacked and looted the US embassy and property in American residences. Joseph C. Grew, the American ambassador to Japan, repeatedly expressed the US government's strenuous protests to Japan.(3)
Japan attempted to cover up or whitewash the series of grave crimes committed by its army in Nanjing. They set up press censors in the occupied areas of China and did everything they could to detain news released by various media about Japanese atrocities, including the dispatch cables of Harold J. Timperley, China correspondent for the renowned British newspaper, the Manchester Guardian. He reported on the Japanese army massacring civilians, looting the property of Chinese and foreign persons, and raping women in Nanjing. The Japanese press censors believed that these reports “may endanger military morale” and refused to allow them to be sent out.(4) In another example, after the US gunboat Panay was sunk by the Japanese, Japan “announced that the Japanese military authorities will take steps to ban foreign correspondents in China from sending news reports to foreign newspapers that would be detrimental to the Japanese army and navy.”(5)
China's domestic news media also produced a great many reports exposing the Japanese army's bloody violence in Nanjing, including the Central News Agency, the Central Daily News, the Ta Kung Pao (Hankou edition), the Wuhan Daily, and Shun Pao (Shanghai News), along with the Communist Party newspapers New China Times and Xinhua Daily. They reported on the first-hand experiences and tear-stained denunciations of Chinese refugees fleeing Nanjing, and some newspapers condemned the Nanjing Massacre in their editorials. After fleeing the city, some witnesses, including surviving soldiers and refugees, recorded memoirs and oral and written materials about their experiences. The military doctor Jiang Gonggu, for example, witnessed the tragic situation in Nanjing and wrote Xian Jing sanyue ji (Three months trapped in Nanjing), in diary format, in August 1938; training corps officer Sun Baoxian wrote Nanjing lunxian qianhou ji beinan tuoxian jingguo xiangqing shiji (Detailed account of my experiences before and after the fall of Nanjing and my difficult escape).(6) An anonymous author, who had hidden in a refugee zone, wrote Diyu zhong de Nanjing (Nanjing in hell), also in diary form, which was published in May 1938.(7) There are also the memories and accusations of the victims.(8)
No matter what means they used, the Japanese army could not blockade news of the numerous crimes committed by Japanese troops in Nanjing. News of the atrocities spread through various channels throughout China and countries around the world, further inciting the Chinese people to engage in a war of resistance and also enhancing sympathy on the part of people of all nations toward China's struggle against the Japanese invasion.
After the victories in the World War II and the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan, people of many nations strongly called for an accounting of the fascist crimes committed by the Japanese militarists. Eleven countries—China, the Soviet Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and the Philippines—therefore organized the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) in Tokyo. The IMTFE conducted trials for Tōjō Hideki, Matsui Iwane, and other Japanese war criminals. Meanwhile, the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal (NWCT) was organized in Nanjing, at which Japanese war criminals like Tani Hisao were tried. Prosecutors in these trials presented a great number of incontrovertible facts and evidence about these war crimes. The Japanese war criminals were given just and fair verdicts, which had important historical significance and far-reaching political implications.
The IMTFE was an international judicial institution that formulated a charter and trial procedures in strict accordance with the basic principles of international law and with the Kellogg-Briand Pact (officially the General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy) signed in Paris on August 27, 1928, and to which 63 countries acceded.(9), (10) When the tribunal opened, nine judges were nominated from Australia, Canada, China, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The IMTFE followed the principles of justice in allowing witnesses to appear to testify for the prosecution, but also allowing the defendants to hire attorneys for their defense and summon witnesses appear in court. With regard to the Nanjing Massacre, the IMTFE collected evidence in various ways and introduced the testimony of numerous survivors of and eyewitnesses to the incidents, thereby laying a fair and accurate foundation for the trials and verdicts.
The IMTFE's trials of Class A Japanese war criminals began on April 29, 1946, in Tokyo. There were 28 men prosecuted for crimes against peace and crimes against humanity. “The accusations against these 28 defendants include a series of actual military aggressions, beginning with planning and preparing to launch a war of aggression in 1928, as well as launching an attack on Manchuria in 1931.”(11) The 28 war criminals included Tōjō Hideki, Araki Sadao, Doihara Kenji, Hata Shunroku, Itagaki Seishirō, Matsui Iwane, Muto Akira, Hirota Kōki, Shigemitsu Mamoru, Umezu Yoshijirō, and others. The Tokyo trials ended on November 12, 1948, lasting two and a half years. There were 818 hearings, 419 witnesses appeared to testify, 779 people submitted written testimony, 4,336 pieces of evidence were admitted, and the written verdicts totaled 1,213 pages.
The judgment for Matsui Iwane stated,
Before the fall of Nanking, the Chinese forces withdrew and the occupation was of a defenseless city. Then followed a long succession of most horrible atrocities committed by the Japanese Army upon the helpless citizens. Wholesale massacres, individual murders, rape, looting and arson were committed by Japanese soldiers. Although the extent of the atrocities was denied by Japanese witnesses, the contrary evidence of neutral witnesses of different nationalities and undoubted responsibility is overwhelming. This orgy of crime started with the capture of the City on the 13th December 1937 and did not cease until early in February 1938. In this period of six or seven weeks, thousands of women were raped, upwards of 100,000 people were killed, and untold property was stolen and burned. At the height of these dreadful events, on 17th December, Matsui made a triumphal entry into the City and remained there from five to seven days. From his own observations and from the reports of his staff, he must have been aware of what was happening...He must be held criminally responsible for his failure to discharge this duty.(12)
There is no doubt that Matsui had primary culpability in the Nanjing Massacre.
In its judgment on Japan's violations of the law of war in committing the atrocities in Nanjing, the IMTFE stated,
The total number of civilians and prisoners of war murdered in Nanking and its vicinity during the first six weeks of the Japanese occupation was over 200,000. That these estimates are not exaggerated is borne out by the fact that burial societies and other organizations counted more than 155,000 bodies which they buried. They also reported that most of those were bound with their hands tied behind their backs. These figures do not take into account those persons whose bodies were destroyed by burning, or by throwing them into the Yangtze River, or otherwise disposed of by the Japanese.(13)
The IMTFE's just verdicts confirm that what the Japanese army implemented in Nanjing was a large-scale massacre.
China was the greatest victim of the war of aggression launched by Japan. With reference to the Potsdam Declaration of July 26, 1945, between China, the United States, and the United Kingdom, China's Nationalist Government announced, “We do not intend to enslave the Japanese race or destroy their country, but those guilty of war crimes (including the abuse of our prisoners of war) will be judged according to the law,” and decided to organize the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal.(14) As agreed among the Allied nations, the NWCT primarily tried Class B and C Japanese war criminals.
The Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal was established in Nanjing on February 15, 1946, and strictly complied with the provisions of international conventions such as the Hague Convention Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, as well as the principles of Chinese criminal law, in carrying out trials of war criminals who committed atrocities during war and in occupied areas. Such crimes included the murder, massacre, torture, and deliberate starvation of civilians, rape, the imprisonment and inhumane treatment of people, looting, imposing collective punishments, wanton destruction of property, intentional bombing of undefended areas, abuse of prisoners and sick and injured persons, and collective arrests. To ensure that the trials were grounded in fairness and accuracy, the Chinese government promulgated the Guanyu chuli zhanfan gangyao (Outline for handling war criminals), Guanyu zhanfan shenpan tiaoli (Regulations on war crimes trials), and Guanyu zhanfan shenpan banfa shishi xize (Measures for the implementation of the rules on trials of war criminals).(15) To obtain a broad grasp of the facts of the Nanjing Massacre, the Nanjing Provisional Council and other entities also created a Commission of Inquiry on the Nanjing Massacre, which visited neighborhoods and residences to survey the Japanese army's atrocities.(16) Many persons who experienced or witnessed the events appeared to testify during the course of the trials. After a detailed, in-depth investigation, on March 10, 1947, the NWCT issued its judgment and a death sentence for Lieutenant General Tani Hisao, a major war criminal in the Nanjing Massacre as the commander of the Japanese 6th Division. Death sentences were also handed down for Mukai Toshiaki and Noda Tsuyoshi, officers of the Japanese 16th Division who held killing contests during the invasion of Nanjing, and Tanaka Gunkichi, a 6th Division officer who slaughtered more than 300 Chinese citizens during the operations.(17)
The judgment for Tani Hisao stated,
The most tragic period of the massacre was between December 12 and 21, 1937, which was within the period in which Tani Hisao's troops were stationed in Nanjing. The Japanese shot captured Chinese soldiers and civilians in groups with machine guns and burned their bodies to destroy the evidence. In this way, they killed Shan Yaoting and over 190,000 others outside of Zhonghua Gate at Huashen Temple, Baota Bridge, Shi Guanyin, and Caoxie Gorge at Xiaguan. In addition, they committed sporadic killings, and the bodies of more than 150,000 persons were buried by charitable organizations. The total killed amounted to three hundred thousand or more. There were corpses everywhere, a brutal and tragic scene that a writer could hardly bear to describe.(18)
Although the verdicts of the Nanjing and Tokyo trials of Japanese war criminals contained inconsistent statements concerning the number of Nanjing Massacre victims, they both determined that it was a large-scale massacre. The two tribunals protected human dignity and upheld justice through their just verdicts on the war crimes and crimes against humanity by the Japanese war criminals, which were widely supported by the governments and peoples of many countries.
(1) The university of Nanking, the official English name of a private university (known in Chinese as Jinling Daxue) operating from 1888 to 1952, is used here to distinguish that institution from the present-day public Nanjing University.—Trans.
(2) US Department of State, “The American Ambassador in Japan (Grew) to the Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs (Hirota) (September 22, 1937), Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Japan: 1931—1941 (Vol. 1), 504—505, University of Wisconsin Digital Collections, http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/FRUS.FRUS193141v01.
(3) “Meiguo lingshi zhengshi tichu kangyi” [Formal protests by US diplomats], in Zhang and Zhang, Historical Collection, Vol. 6, 207.
(4) “Riben xinwen jiancha kouxia suoyou guanyu baoxing de baodao” [Japanese news censorship withheld all reports about atrocities], in Zhang and Zhang, Historical Collection, Vol. 6, 147. Timperley was furious and gathered further facts from foreign missionaries in Nanjing concerning the Japanese atrocities in order to write a book, What War Means: The Japanese Terror in China. It was published in the United Kingdom and the United States in July 1938 (London: Victor Gollancz, Ltd.), informing the Western world of Japan's atrocities.
(5) Ibid., 149.
(6) Originally published in Nanjing wenxian [Nanjing documentation] no. 26 (Nanjing: Annals of Nanjing Museum Documentation Committee, 1949). See Zhang Xianwen and Zhang Lianhong, eds., Nanjing Da Tusha shiliaoji, di 3 ce: Xingcunzhe de riji yu huiyi [Nanjing Massacre historical collection, Vol. 3: Diaries and memories of survivors] (Nanjing: Jiangsu People's Publishing, Ltd., 2005), 47—85.
(7) The original document is stored in the University of California at Berkeley Library. See Zhang and Zhang, Historical Collection, Vol. 3, 95—117.
(8) Originally published in Banyue wenzhai [Semimonthly digest], Vol. 2 (6), May 1938. See Zhang and Zhang, Historical Collection, Vol. 3, 86—91.
(9) Zhang Xianwen and Yang Xiaming, eds., Nanjing Da Tusha shiliaoji, di 7 ce: Dongjing Shenpan [Nanjing Massacre historical collection, Vol. 7: Tokyo Tribunal] (Nanjing: Jiangsu People's Publishing, Ltd., 2005), 1—6.
(10) Zhang and Yang, Historical Collection, Vol. 7, 6—28.
(11) “Lianheguo Zhanzheng Zuixing Weiyuanhui baogao” [The report of the United Nations War Crimes Commission], in Zhang and Yang, Historical Collection, Vol. 7, 18.
(12) “Judgment of the International Military Tribunal of the Far East,” in Documents on the Rape of Nanking, ed, Timonthy Brook (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 265—266.
(13) “Weifan zhanzheng fagui de fanzui” [Crimes in violation of the law of war], in Zhang and Yang, Historical Collection, Vol. 7, 607—608.
(14) “Zhong Mei Ying sanguo ‘Bocitan Gonggao' (1945 nian 7 yue 26 ri)” [The Potsdam Declaration between China, the United States, and the United Kingdom (July 26, 1945)], in Nanjing Da Tusha shiliaoji, di 24 ce: Nanjing Shenpan [Nanjing Massacre historical collection, Vol. 24: Nanjing Tribunal], ed. Zhang Xianwen and Hu Jurong (Nanjing: Jiangsu People's Publishing, Ltd., 2006), 3.
(15) Zhang and Hu, Historical Collection, Vol. 24, 12—15.
(16) Ibid., 28—45.
(17) Ibid., 388—395, 495—498.
(18) “Junshi Fating dui zhanfan Gu Shoufu de panjueshu ji fujian (1947 nian 3 yue 10 ri)” [Document and appendices of Military Tribunal judgment against war criminal Tani Hisao (March 10, 1947)], in Zhang and Hu, Historical Collection, Vol. 24, 389.