Six Weeks of Horror
On the day that the Japanese troops entered the city, any remaining hope held by Nanking's residents was wiped out. Men, women, children... All were killed regardless of their actions. Those who fled were shot in the back just as those who fought were shot in the face. Crude as it may seem, those who were simply shot and killed truly were the lucky ones. Many people were rounded up alive and executed en masse, or frequently, subjected to horrifying forms of torture.
The Japanese troops were ruthless. Sculpted in a society that taught them their own lives were worth nothing compared to the emperor's, they saw the Chinese as the most insignificant of life-forms. Japanese troops cheerfully slaughtered civilians left and right, considering the act little more than on-the-job training. They would even use live captives for sword and bayonet practice, as pictured at left. |
When the troops got bored of merely executing the Chinese civilians, they began making sport of it. The troops would force their captives to stand in lines and then hold contests to see who could behead a whole line the fastest. These "killing contests" were no rarity, and were even publicized in Japanese newspapers, in articles that hailed the victors as honorable role models. As bad as this seems, it was still one of the quickest forms of death allowed by the Japanese troops. Many Chinese civilians suffered far worse fates at the hands of soldiers who saw them as little more than playthings. They were mice before cats, and as long as they could still weep and beg for their lives, they were of interest to their oppressors. Some were forced to dig their own graves before being buried alive within them. Countless civilians were soaked in gasoline and set afire, or mutilated with specially designed instruments of torture, or crucified on electrical posts. Some were nailed to boards and run over with tanks, or buried up to their waists and set upon by Japanese attack dogs. There was no limit to the savagery of the Japanese army in Nanking.
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I will include no image for the widespread rape of Chinese civilians that occurred during the Nanking Massacre. Suffice to say that such an orgy of forced sex by an organized army has never occurred within modern history; possibly not within history at all. The Japanese saw the Chinese as nothing more than objects to be used for whatever purpose one desired, and that included sex. Most victims were killed after the rape's conclusion, but some were kept as slaves, often dying later of any of a variety of horrible causes, ranging from starvation to sexually transmitted infection. No words can describe the horrors experienced by those who fell into the hands of the brutal, merciless troops of the Japanese army.
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