"...He is a cheerful old farmer who jokes as he serves rice cakes made by his wife and then he switches easily to explaining what it is like to cut open a 30-year-old man who is tied naked to abed and dissect him alive, without anesthetic.
"The fellow knew that it was over for him and so he didn't struggle when 'they led him into the room and tied ,him down," recalled the 72-year-old farmer, then a medical assistant in a Japanese army unit in China in World War II. "But when I picked up the scalpel, that's when he began screaming
"I cut him open from the chest to the stomach and he screamed terribly and his face was all twisted in agony. He made this unimaginable sound, he was screaming so horribly. But then finally he stopped. This was all in a day's work for the surgeons, but it really left an impression on me because it was my first time."
Finally, the old man, who insisted on anonymity, explained the reason for the vivisection: The prisoner, who was Chinese, had been deliberately ~ infected with the plague, as part of a research project, the full horror of which is only now emerging, to develop plague bombs for use in World War II. After infecting him, the researchers decided to cut him open to see what the disease does to a man's inside."
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"The Japanese government’s rationale for needing sexual slaves for its troops can be traced back to 1932. It begins with documentation of Japanese Lieutenant-General Okamura Yasuji’s proposal for a “shipment” of comfort women to be sent to Shanghai, China as a solution for 223 reported rapes by his troops. The solution was obviously to systematically negate the growing tension caused by the Japanese military’s brutality on its colonies.
However, the proliferation of state mandated sexual slavery began with the Nanjin Massacre in 1937. After the merciless slaughter of thousands of Chinese, and the pillaging and arson that followed, (as if this were not enough) they set upon the barbarous act of raping an insurmountable number of women. As a result of the Nanjin Massacre, anti-Japanese sentiments grew and it became harder for Japan to fully occupy their frontiers. "Comfort Houses" were set up at a fast rate in order to 'settle down' disorderly Japanese troops. The Japanese Army used comfort stations extensively until the war ended in the Pacific in 1945.
The estimated number of victims varies: according to different sources, between 80,000 to 200,000 girls and women, of which more than 80% were Korean women, were kidnapped, forced, or deceived into working at ‘manufacturing plants’ for imperial Japan. “I was raped by three Japanese soldiers and then taken away in a truck,” a former comfort woman testified at International Criminal Court.
Another victim recounted how she was kidnapped; she was placed in a cubicle, where her hands were tied behind her back, and her legs were spread and tied to posts. “They (Japanese soldiers) lined themselves outside our cubicles and as soon as one of them had satisfied his sexual desires another would come and have his turn,” she testified (Yu, 6). According to the victims, comfort women were restricted to confines of the ”Comfort Houses” by strict security and had to ‘receive’ men as many as 10 to 25 times per day."
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John Rabe, a NAZI on the scene at Nanking, was so overwhelmed by the vileness, he actually tried to SAVE LIVES...
"If I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would not have believed it," Rabe writes in his diary on that day. "They (Japanese soldiers) smash open windows and doors and take whatever they like. ... I watched with my own eyes as they looted the café of our German baker Herr Kiessling. ... Of the perhaps one thousand disarmed soldiers that we had quartered at the Ministry of Justice, between 400 and 500 were driven from it with their hands tied. We assume they were shot since we later heard several salvos of machine-gun fire. These events have left us frozen with horror."
The Rape of Nanjing (in Chinese, 'Nanjing Datusha' or 'Great Nanjing Massacre') results in the indiscriminate murder of between 200,000-350,000 Chinese civilians and surrendered soldiers. It is the worst single massacre of unarmed troops and civilians in the history of the 20th Century.
Japanese troops loot and burn the city and surrounding towns, destroying more than a third of the buildings. Chinese captives are tortured, burnt alive, buried alive, decapitated, bayoneted and shot en masse.
Between 20,000 and 80,000 Chinese women and girls of all ages are raped. Thousands are murdered after their ordeal. Thousands more are forced into sexual slavery. It is one of the worst ever recorded single cases of mass rape.
About 250,000 Chinese find refuge in the safety zone, which quickly becomes a permanent rather than temporary facility. Among the refugees are Chinese soldiers who were unable to leave the city during the general retreat. The Japanese demand that they be handed over and forcibly enter the safety zone on several occasions to apprehend suspects.
Rabe and his fellow zone administrators attempt to stop the atrocities occurring in the city while working to ensure that the refugees within the safety zone are fed and nursed. They also petition international governments to intervene and document the events for the world media.
Rabe uses his Nazi credentials to prevent the atrocities wherever possible. He writes repeatedly to Hitler asking that something be done to stop the killing. Along with other members of the international committee he records the actions of the Japanese troops and passes on reports to the Japanese embassy, which is also lobbied to intervene. Rabe also records his experiences in his diary.
"Groups of three to ten marauding soldiers would begin by travelling through the city and robbing whatever there was to steal," he writes at one point. "They would continue by raping the women and girls and killing everything and everyone that offered any resistance, attempted to run away from them, or simply happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. During their misdeeds, no difference was made between adults and children. There were girls under the age of eight and women over the age of 70 who were raped and then, in the most brutal way possible, knocked down and beat up. We found corpses of women on beer glasses and others who had been lanced by bamboo shoots. I saw the victims with my own eyes - I talked to some of them right before their deaths and had their bodies brought to the morgue at Kulo Hospital so that I could be personally convinced that all of these reports had touched on the truth.
"You would have thought it impossible, but the raping of women even occurred right in the middle of the women's camp in our zone, which held between 5,000 and 10,000 women. We few foreigners couldn't be at all places all the time in order to protect against these atrocities. One was powerless against these monsters who were armed to the teeth and who shot down anyone who tried to defend themselves. They only had respect for us foreigners - but nearly every one of us was close to being killed dozens of times. We asked ourselves mutually, 'How much longer can we maintain this 'bluff'?'"
On 19 December Rabe writes, "Six Japanese climbed over my garden wall and attempted to open the gates from the inside. When I arrive and shine my flashlight in the face of one of the bandits, he reaches for his pistol, but his hand drops quickly enough when I yell at him and hold my swastika armband under his nose. Then, on my orders, all six scramble back over the wall. My gates will never be opened to riffraff like that. … The 300 to 400 refugees here in my garden - I no longer know how many there really are - Have used straw mats, old doors, and sheets of tin to build huts for a little protection from the snow and cold."
On 24 December he writes, "I have had to look at so many corpses over the last few weeks that I can keep my nerves in check even when viewing these horrible cases. It really doesn't leave you in a 'Christmas' mood; but I wanted to see these atrocities with my own eyes, so that I can speak as an eyewitness later. A man cannot be silent about this kind of cruelty!"
And on 30 January, "My car is stopped on Hankow Road by a group of about 50 Chinese, who asked me to rescue a woman whom a Japanese soldier had led away to rape. … I find the house completely looted, the floor covered with all sorts of debris. In one of the open rooms is a coffin on a bier, and in the room adjoining, lying on a floor covered with straw and junk, I see the soldier, who is about to rape the woman. I manage to pull the soldier out of the room and into the entryway. When he sees all the Chinese and my car, he pulls away and disappears somewhere in the ruins of nearby buildings. The crowd stands at the door, murmuring, but quickly disperses when I tell them to, so as not to attract more Japanese soldiers."
posted on August 9, 2005 07:55:55 PM new
Tom-meant to ask ya-the history channel had a nice re-enactment-on the bombing of Hiroshima a couple of days ago-did you happen to catch it?
posted on August 9, 2005 09:34:14 PM new
I saw it and was struck by how upset the libs were going to be:
virtually every JAPANESE interviewed told about the horrible things they saw, but also mentioned how they were in daily military training and were today astounded that they could believe THEN that with fierce determination and sacrifice, Japan would ultimately be victorious!
