The Rape Of Nanking Case Study

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During the first half of the 20th century, Japanese soldiers committed many atrocities against Chinese civilians and prisoners of war. Most notable is the Rape of Nanking where 260,000-350,000 non-combatants were raped, tortured, and or killed. No age or status was safe, children, pregnant women, and grandmothers were all raped. Babies were put on the ends of bayonets and boiled, and whether you were rich or poor, none of it mattered. And this is only one of multiple other incidents were extreme cruelty against Chinese citizens was shown (Chang). There were also the ‘comfort women’ who were kidnapped for prostitution and raped until they died or became too diseased, and the changjiao massacre where 30,000 Chinese civilians were killed in four days (Japanese). There were many incidents like this throughout China during their occupation by Japan, and many people struggle to comprehend how one person could do things like this to another without some kind of personal vendetta. Yet, the motivations becomes clear when you look at certain variables,…show more content…
Famously, a Japanese boy once cried over having to dissect a frog so his teacher hit him and told him to stop crying over one lousy frog when one day he would have to kill hundreds of chinks. Once in the armed forces the Japanese soldier was further hardened to bear the task of killing Chinese citizens, both combatants and non-combatants. They would set up exercises and games to numb soldiers, like killing competitions, that way the Chinese were just numbers rather than people just like them. The racism was so intense that Japanese soldiers didn’t even see them as people any more. It was said by one soldier that, perhaps when they would rape a Chinese woman they would see her as a woman, but when they killed her after they just thought of her as something like a pig
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