Star Beacon Lifestyles Section
Weekly column appearing Fridays in the Star Beacon
Readers may reach Joe Cook in one of four ways:
DEAR FRIEND,
I guess that is a strange way for a columnist to start his weekly column. But, with me, that is what I have been calling you over the past 340 weeks as I have tried to write about topics which would be of interest to you. I have considered you, wherever you might be, to be my friends.
Because of this relationship, I want to share with you a decision I made about two months ago. As I was proceeding through the series about the Rape of Nanking, which was completed last week, the thought "It's time, Joe" came to me.
When one takes on the responsibility of writing a weekly newspaper column, or any undertaking, it is not possible to determine how and when the duty will come to an end unless it has been previously stated. I never really thought of discontinuing my weekly column because there was no need to do so.
Everything has been going well. The Star Beacon has always given me complete reign in selecting the subjects about which I have written. The trust they've had in me was shown most recently when they allowed the 19-part serialization of the book "The Rape of Nanking: An Undeniable History in Photographs" which could have been quite controversial. Maybe it was, but it was published without any restrictions as to what would be printed.
Even before I started freely donating this weekly column, I have had nothing but the highest admiration and respect for the Star Beacon and its management: Ed Looman, publisher; Neil Frieder, editor; and Nicki Wilpula, my editor for all of my 341 columns.
By now, I guess you have caught on to the purpose of this letter. It is to tell you that this is my last weekly column. I will submit articles from time to time; but, they will not be written on a weekly basis after this week. I have a list of additional topics and there are some topics which have been germinating in my subconscious; but, even those will have to wait because "it's time, Joe."
This decision was not made because of any disagreement or anything in my personal life. Working all day, seven days a week in our store on Bridge Street has left me very little time for my family and other concerns which have sort of taken a back seat over these past six and a half years.
When I helped form The Harbor Coalition in 1986 and then moved back to Ashtabula from New York City in 1988 to devote my time to the organization, I meant what I said I would do, "help the Harbor help itself." Over these past years, the Coalition has been doing its job and I have been able to extend myself into other organizations and concerns while still serving as the Coalition's executive director.
However, for the past several years, Harbor businesses have felt the effects of the inroads made by the large number of new, big businesses which have seriously affected the economy and continued growth of the Harbor, which had been improving for a number of years. This is a serious problem which needs to be addressed if the businesses in the Harbor are to survive.
Also, the matter of the future of Harbor High School has become more and more prominent, not only in the press but also in the lives of many persons living in the Harbor area or attending this fine high school from which many famous students have graduated. This entire situation should be opened for discussion by all concerned as soon as possible.
It has been my feeling that my weekly column should not be used to advance my personal projects or to convince others to my way of thinking. Also, because of my being a so-called "celebrity," I have avoided expressing my opinions in my column. There have been times when I have had to write a letter to the editor to get my personal point across. But, even then, I have hesitated because I did not want to upset my relationship with my readers. The same has held true as regards my relationship with The Harbor Coalition and its objectives.
I have been blessed by having this weekly column. From the very early days, starting on Dec. 20, 1991, people have stopped me or come over to me and told me how much they enjoyed my column. I remember a time back in 1992 when Joe Laveck was driving east on West 10th Street and I was walking up Ohio Avenue. He stopped his car, in the middle of the street, rolled down his window and told me how much he enjoyed reading my articles. It was times like that that gave me the incentive to go on and to do the best I could.
It's been sort of fun watching strangers glance at me and whisper to each other in a questioning manner so as to ask if I was "that guy." I would nod and they would smile. Even those occasions have been instrumental in my doing my best because my audience was so varied and located in so many different places from border to border and coast to coast through the newspaper itself and, most recently, also through the Star Beacon's worldwide Internet website. I could never conceive of writing to 23,000 readers, that's why I think of friends like you as I pound away with my two fingers on my 12-year-old Tandy "Co-Co" keyboard.
I have had some wonderful experiences over these past six and a half years. When I was developing a special series about someone, I would have personal interviews with people like Bruno and Gerry DeGeorge of the Lakeway Restaurant; Harold (Butch) and Ruth Miller; Harry Buonomo; Ethel and George Turner; Walter and Dorothy McMorris about the McMorris Dairy; Soon and Chang Yoon about their lives and their Mandarin House Restaurant; Don and Lou Amzibel; the family of Paul Hakala; the volunteers of Camp Stigwandish; Bert Laird about the Laird Lumber Co.; the members of the Ashtabula Kiwanis Club; and other persons, families and organizations I featured in a special series.
Remember the five-part "Tilby Smith Murder Case" back in October of 1992, which was referred to me by my friend, the late Mike Corbissero? That was like a weekly "cliff hanger" at the Harbor theater. People were asking me about the outcome as the series progressed.
I also enjoyed doing those other stories that ran as a series like the 14-part series about the Great Lakes Blizzard of 1913; the five-part Laird Lumber Co. series; the three-part Dick Tienvieri series; the local Indians series; Harbor memories series; the 18-part history of Ashtabula Harbor series; the 28-part "Great Ashtabula Train Disaster of 1896;" the 40-part series honoring the Merchant Marine and Navy Armed Guard of World War II; the four-part Fighting 778th series; the 24-part series about my return to Europe in 1984.
The 10-part series about the Early Days of Ashtabula County and the Western Reserve; the six-part series about William E. Wenner, superintendent of Harbor High School; the 10-part story devoted to the Marine Bank Robbery; the four-part series about Camp Stigwandish; the three-part series about the sinking of the Carferry Ashtabula; the three-part 1903 train disaster series; the two-part Bill Rainnie series; the six-part series devoted to the May 27, 1996, Harbor Memorial Day Observance; the three-part series about Harbor music director George Wahlstrom; the three-part Ashtabula Blizzard of April 18, 1901; the Ashtabula Tornado of 1924 three-part series; the Center Street fire of 1878; the recent 19-part series about the Rape of Nanking; and other series.
Some of my columns and series have been made available in spiral-bound books, such as: "An Honored Soldier Recalls His Life," (the Don Amzibel story); "Through the Year 1992 with Joe Cook"; "Through the year 1993 with Joe Cook"; "Through the Year 1994 with Joe Cook"; "The Growing of Ashtabula Harbor, Ohio"; "The Great Lakes Blizzard of 1913"; "The History of the Fighting 778th"; and "Ex-GI Returns to European Front." More bound volumes will be available now that I will have more time to devote to this long-overdue work.
Over these years, I guess I have had the pleasure to speak before more than 25 organizations about a wide range of subjects. I have even been given the title of historian, even though I have not claimed to being one. When I have reported what others have said about certain historical events, I have stated that fact when using someone else's material.
All in all, I would say that these past 341 weeks have been wonderful! For a guy who is not a professional writer, this has been a very rewarding experience. Perhaps my primary thought when approaching this opportunity was a quotation I used to have on my office wall which said, "Begin, Be Bold and Venture to Be Wise." I guess it worked all right!
As I close, I want to express my sincere thanks to my wife, Alice Trumbull Cook, for her understanding the importance to me of writing my weekly columns over the past six and a half years and the time it took away from my family each week to keep my deadlines.
Also, I want to sincerely thank you for your many kindnesses over these past years. I hope you have enjoyed my columns as much as I have enjoyed preparing them for you. This is not "Goodbye" but "So long! I'll see you around." Keep reading the Star Beacon as I plan to come back once in a while. God bless you and yours.
Best wishes,
Joe Cook
The existence of the infamous Unit 731 marks another dark chapter in Japan's military history. According to "The New York Times," Unit 731's research program was one of the great secrets of Japan during and after World War II: a vast project to develop weapons on biological warfare, including plague, anthrax, cholera and a dozen other pathogens. (38)
What is more appalling and has not been known until recently is the fact that Unit 731 used humans as subjects of their experiments. Among the human guinea pigs were an undetermined number of American soldiers, captured during the early part of the war and confined in POW camps in Mukden (now Shenyang), as well as Chinese captives, Koreans and Russian expatriates living in China. These human subjects, called "marutas," or logs, were often injected with bubonic plague, typhoid, syphilis and other diseases. The "marutas" were routinely dissected alive without any anesthesia to determine the effect of the diseases on their organs. (39)
Unit 731's ugly story would have no direct link to this book had it not spared Emperor Hirohito and his family from war crimes prosecution. As a principal author of the war, Hirohito's avoidance of war crimes prosecution puzzled many members of the IMTFE. Sir William Flood Webb, president of the tribunal, wrote:
"Before the trial I took the view that the Emperor, as an absolute monarch, was responsible `prima facie' for authorizing the war. The evidence brought out at the trial confirmed my `a priori' finding and revealed that the Emperor had, indeed, authorized the war and so was responsible for it." (40)
Owen Cunningham, one of the Tribunal's defense counsels, asked:
"If the prosecution wanted the truth as to individual responsibilities, why did they not call the Emperor of Japan to the witness stand?" (41)
Henri Bernard, the French member of the IMTFE, wrote:
"It cannot be denied, the declaration (of war) had a principal author who escaped all prosecution and of whom, in any case, the present defendants would only be considered as accomplices." (42)
The members of the Tribunal remained puzzled, but nearly half a century later, it was revealed that one of the most important reasons for the decision not to try the Emperor as a war criminal was a shameful secret deal to acquire Unit 731's tissue samples and data from their experiments.
Following is a story by Ken McLaughlin, staff writer, printed in the San Jose Mercury News (Sept. 30, 1995), revealing how the U.S. government helped Hirohito and Unit 731 to avoid prosecution for war crimes:
"Responding to pressure to release information on alleged Japanese biological warfare experiments on American prisoners during World War II, the Pentagon has declassified a series of post-war cables that show how Washington protected Emperor Hirohito and Japanese war criminals from the Soviets.
"In releasing the cables, which do not mention wartime atrocities against Americans, a top Pentagon official echoed a recent pledge from President Clinton to release all government information on germ-warfare data released to American POWs.
"The disclosures follow an Aug. 13 Mercury News story about a U.S. counterintelligence file that demonstrated American intelligence agents did not pursue leads indicating that American POWs in Mukden, Manchuria, were used as human guinea pigs. Their reluctance to investigate apparently stemmed from a secret deal granting Japanese officers immunity from war-crimes prosecution in exchange for tissue samples and reports on human experimentation that the United States hoped would give it a germ-warfare advantage over the Soviets.
"`We believe the Pentagon is making a good-faith effort,' said a White House official who requested anonymity. `They've been especially diligent lately, since it's come to their attention. The president has expressed an interest in the issue and relayed that sentiment to the Pentagon.'
"Melvin Routt, national commander of the POW group American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor, said Clinton assured him Sept. 2 in Honolulu that he would help ex-POWs expose war-time violations of international law.
"`He told me that there would be more declassifications coming up; and that the whole story will be coming out a little at a time,' said Routt, who lives in Tracy.
"`We're going to release everything we can to make sure that documents are available,' said Maj. Steve Manuel, a Pentagon spokesman. `As we locate them, we'll declassify and release them. There are probably thousands of documents out there that haven't been located yet.'
"The newly declassified cables were between Washington and the Supreme Allied commander Gen. Douglas MacArthur. They were released to Rep. Pat Williams, D-Mont., who has tried for 15 years to help Makden survivors find out if they were subjected to experimentation.
"In a letter to Williams, Maj. Gen. Jerry C. Harrison vowed to let him review sensitive intelligence files requested by Greg Rodriquez Jr., a Washington-based researcher whose father was one of about 1,500 American soldiers imprisoned at Mukden.
"The newly released cables reveal that top U.S. officials were worried that the Australian government's determined search for Japanese war criminals would make it harder for the United States to deny the Soviet's request to extradite Hirohito and four Japanese generals to the Soviet Union for trial.
"All of the generals -- Shiro Ishii, Yukio Kasahara, Masaji Kiltano and Yujiro Wakamatsu -- were wanted by the Soviets for carrying out experiments on POWs. The experiments, also performed on Korean and Chinese civilians and soldiers, often entailed injections of bubonic plague, typhoid, syphilis and other diseases. The prisoners were routinely dissected alive without anesthesia to determine the effect of the diseases on their organs.
"Much of the cable traffic focused on a request from the Australian government for the apprehension of a few dozen suspected lower-level war criminals. One Feb. 9, 1950, cable from MacArthur's headquarters shows concern that `favorable action on Australian request might be seized upon by Soviet Government as precedent on which to base request for transfer (of) Emperor Hirohito and four generals to USSR for trial.'
"`These were some of the greatest villains of the 20th century,' said Sheldon Harris, a southern California historian who has spent the past eight years researching the immunity deal. Harris estimates that Ishii and his men killed at least 10,000 people in the laboratory and at least 200,000 Chinese civilians.
"`It's an amazing story of coverup,' said Harris, author of the 1994 book `Factories of Death.' `Our government just didn't want anything out, even if that meant lying to allies such as the Australians.'
"One Army cable, dated March 14, 1959, shows how the State Department continued to believe `that under no circumstances should Soviet requests for trial of Emperor or Gens be acceded to.'
"The extradition of Hirohito and the generals, the cable said, would give the Soviets the opportunity to `elicit trumped up but nonetheless highly damaging `evidence' against Emperor or Gens and, by direct implication, against SCAP -- MacArthur's headquarters and U.S.'
"A cable sent the next day to the Army by W.J. Sebald, chief of SCAP's diplomatic section, indicates that he and MacArthur agreed that responding to the Soviets would be a bad idea.
"`Gen. MacArthur and I concur fully in (the State) Department's plan to send no reply,' Sebald said."
The question of "why" can hardly escape anyone who reads this history: Why did the Rape of Nanking occur? Why did the Japanese Army employ horrible and inhuman means to torture and annihilate innocent people?
H.J. Timperley, the China correspondent of the "Manchester Guardian," addressed this question in this book "What War Means: The Japanese Terror In China." "One is thus forced to conclude either that a considerable section of the Japanese Army was out of control or that it was the wish of the Japanese High Command to strike terror into the hearts of the Chinese people in the hope that thereby the latter would be cowed into submission." (15)
Timperley wrote this in 1938. Facts revealed by studies of Japanese military history in later years proved that the "High command's wish" is the correct explanation and it can be traced all the way to the Imperial Household.
Historian David Bergamini wrote in 1971: "(The) rape of Nanking began... on Dec. 14 (1937); it continued for six weeks; and it was not stopped, despite worldwide protest, until Prince Konoye admitted to Hirohito that there was no longer any hope of unseating Chiang Kai-shek." (16)
Historian Edward Behr wrote in 1989: "Japan's `positive' Chinese policy, inaugurated at Nanking on an unprecedented scale, had a name, used in inner cabinet and military conclaves but never in the Japanese press _ China's `war on punishment.' This catch-phrase has a far more brutal connotation in Japanese than it does in translation...To what extent was Hirohito aware of the various aspects of this `war of punishment?' There is no doubt that he was familiar with its terminology, for it was mentioned in his presence time and time again." (17)
The deepest roots of the Japanese atrocities lie in the fanaticism of fascist militarism and its feverish "loyalty to the Emperor." Japanese fascism from its very beginning was grounded in feudalism. In theory and practice, it had an essential pre-requisite: Upholding feudal dictatorship. The Army, as the vanguard of Japanese fascism, had become a ruthless and savage force under "bushido" militarism.
In January 1933, the Japanese Army Academy distributed a brochure to infantry soldiers titled "Studies of Battle Strategy Against China." A paragraph from this pamphlet reads: "China does not have a complete system of household registration. There won't be much problem if its people are killed or exiled. Therefore Japanese soldiers should not hesitate if killings are necessary." (18)
In 1937, a former Japanese 12th Army petty officer named Maseo Tsukagoshi attended the 50th anniversary seminar of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident hosted by the North American 20th Century Historical Society in New York. Through profuse tears, Tsukagoshi told his story. "When I became a petty officer and a calvary squad leader commanding 26 soldiers," he said, "I was allowed to carry a sword. What was the meaning of carrying a Japanese sword? You start to want to kill and there was a program to test new swords with beheadings." Tsukagoshi said he spent more than four years in China during the war and killed 106 Chinese. (19)
Lt. Gen. Kesago Nakajima, the sadistic former "kempei" (20) commander and the commander of the Japanese Army 16th Division, supervised the beheading of two prisoners of war to test this new sword, thus setting an example for his troops in mass-scale killing in Nanking. (21)
Another high-ranking officer, Lt. Gen. Heisuke Yanagawa, declared to his New 10th Army upon his troops' landing at Hangzhou Bay:
"Grass and woods, mountains and rivers are all our enemies. " Consequently, the New 10th Army's "Points of Attention of the Chief of Staff" including this point -- Attention regarding Chinese civilians: "In battlefields of Northern China, especially Shanghai battlefields, common Chinese civilians, even the elderly, women, children, are mostly enemy spies. They will either disclose our troops position to the enemy, or try to kill our scattered soldiers. These things have happened before. We, especially our troops in the rear ares, must not neglect and must pay close attention. These kinds of deeds cannot be forgiven and the perpetrators need to be executed with strict methods once discovered." (22)
What was Hirohito's function during the war?
He was the ruler of the Japanese Empire as well as commander-in-chief of all Imperial armed forces.
As the supreme commander of the entire Imperial Army, Hirohito attended important military meetings and dressed in full military uniform when he inspected his armed forces. According to a report of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), (24) on the eve of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hirohito spent the night of Dec. 7 to 8, 1941, fully dressed in his admiral's uniform, as he monitored radio transmissions from the flagship of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. (25)
In fact, all important military decisions were made by Hirohito.
Less than half a year after being enthroned in May 1927, Hirohito approved the dispatch of troops to China's Shandong Province. The following May, he sanctioned Japan's second and third military expeditions to Shandong. From then on to August 1945, when Japan surrendered, the 18 years of Hirohito's rule were marked by Japan's waging wars of aggression against China. (26)
On Aug. 13, 1937, the day the staged Hong Qiao Airfield "Incident" broke out and led to the battle of Shanghai, Hirohito appointed his uncle, Prince Higashikuni, commander of the Japanese Army Air Force. (27)
On Aug. 15, 1938, when the Battle of Shanghai was only one day old, Gen. Iwane Matsui was summoned by the Emperor to the Imperial Palace to be proclaimed commander-in-chief of the Imperial Army Shanghai Expeditionary Force.
After repeated deep bows, Matsui left the palace together with Prince Konoye, (28) the new prime minister appointed by Hirohito just two months earlier. "There's no solution," said the soldier to the prime minister, "except to break the power of Chiang Kai-shek by capturing Nanking. That is what I must do." (29)
This fact is verified by a revealing Hirohito interview published in the December 1990 issue of "Bungai Shunju (Literary Spring & Autumn)." In the interview, Hirohito further revealed his own role as the actual commander-in-chief of Japan's war against China: "At the time, Prime Minister Fuminaro Konoye advocated a non-expansion policy. But I thought our forces in Shanghai were weak and therefore I consistently urged the Army Ministry to send reinforcements to Shanghai..." (30)
Only a few days before his troops' drive westward to Nanking from Shanghai, in November 1937, "Hirohito had established his Grand Imperial Headquarters to follow all major subsequent battles and from which politicians, even the prime minister, were rigidly excluded." (31)
Indeed, Hirohito paid close attention to developments in the Battle of Nanking. He soon dispatched his uncle, Prince Asaka, to replace Matsui as Commander of the Japanese Army Shanghai Expeditionary Force _ aa clear move to tighten his royal control over the Army.
When Prince Asaka assumed his command on Dec. 5, 1937, at the Nanking front, he issued a series of orders signed and sealed by himself. All bore the notation "Top secret, destroy after review." The orders were very clear and simple: "Execute all captives."
At this time, Iwane Matsui, old and tubercular, was moved to a higher but more or less figurehead position as Commander of the Central China Theater. In fact, Matsui became powerless once Nanking was conquered, as David Begamini reports in his "Japanese Imperial Conspiracy."
Indeed, during that December Prince Lt. General Asaka was promoted to Senior General which put him at the same rank as Matsui, whose orders were now more likely to be challenged, especially by a royal with equal rank. Asaka first entered Nanking on 14 Dec. 1937. He formally moved his headquarters into the city on Christmas Day, after Matsui left the Nanking area for Shanghai.
Through his royal connection in Tokyo, Asaka planted his 16th Division, commanded by a longtime colleague from his years in Europe, the sadistic Gen. Kesago Nakajima, in Nanking proper. Asaka stayed in Nanking until Feb. 10 of the next year. It is ironic that Matsui, whose stay in Nanking totaled less than three days (Dec. 17 to 19), was sentenced to be hanged by the IMTFE whereas Prince Asaka, "who was in direct command at Nanking and physically present there during most of the terror, was never summoned into court to testify even as a witness, much less as a defendant." (33)
If, as some may argue, Hirohito simply did not know about his troops' atrocities in Nanking at the time they happened, why did he do nothing when his cousin, Prince Kaya, (34) who in previous years was an admiring emissary to Adolf Hitler, paid Nanking a visit and returned in late January 1938 to give the Emperor a full report on what he had seen? Moreover, why did Hirohito do nothing later _ after he was apprised of the facts by his own brother, Mikasa _ to condemn crimes and prevent future atrocities?
On the contrary, on Feb. 26, 1938, Hirohito received three generals directly associated with the Rape of Nanking _ Matsui, Asaka and Yanagwa _ at the imperial summer villa Hayama to recite and praise their accomplishments in Nanking. Each general was given a pair of silver vases inlaid with the royal symbol, the chrysanthemum. (35)
Then he went on to play golf with Prince Asaka, to attend weekly showings of newsreels from China and later to send three more of his family members to the war to important army commands. (36)
The Rape of Nanking was not an isolated phenomenon, or an impulsive, temporary aberration by the Japanese Army. "Too close to focus on the Rape of Nanking," wrote authors Meirion and Susie Harries in their "Soldiers of the Sun: The Rise and fall of the Imperial Japanese Army," "obscures the fact that it was only one tidemark left by the sea of atrocities inflicted by the Imperial Army on the Chinese." (37)
The historical photographs included in the book make their own silent statement: Atrocities by the Japanese army did not originate in Nanking; they did not cease to happen after Nanking.
If Hirohito was not responsible for Japanese atrocities that took place before Nanking, he is certainly responsible for the events that happened in Nanking and he is undeniably responsible for Japanese war crimes committed after Nanking. His responsibility was far greater than that of the three generals. To claim that it was the generals and not the emperor who bore primary responsibility for these crimes against humanity is equivalent to depicting Adolf Hitler as a passive observer of the Holocaust.
After Nanking, the Sino-Japanese war became one of the first in which chemical and bacteriological weapons were used on a vast scale and in time the Japanese were to become the world's most advanced practitioners of this form of warfare.
For more than half a century, students of the Rape of Nanking have sought to determine responsibility for this historic tragedy, but often have failed to pursue it to its source; the late Emperor Hirohito's and his relatives' heavy and intimate involvement with Japan's aggression during World War II. All along, Japanese governments and the Imperial Household have never ceased to cover up or distort the war crimes committed by their troops.
A faddish denial of the Nanking Massacre was stirred up in Japan in the 1980s, beginning with the Education Ministry's mandate to alter the contents of Japan's history textbooks. In 1982, in the altered version, Japanese aggression was whitewashed; Japanese atrocities were omitted.
An anonymous Education Ministry official penned his comments on a proposed history textbook about the Sino-Japanese war; "In treatment of the causes of the Sino-Japanese war, it reads as if Japan did something wrong. Mention the wrongs on the other side." "The illustrations of `anti-Japanese slogans' in China are humiliating to the nation. This is a Japanese textbook." (1)
This distortion of history caused an international uproar, especially in countries like China, Korea, the Philippines and Malaysia where people suffered the most from Japanese war crimes.
On Aug. 26, 1982, the Japanese government was forced by the international indignation to announce that corrected schoolbooks would be issued "in two years." (2) But the denials and distortions did not stop.
In April 1988, Land Agency Minister Seisuko Okuno, in the presence of a senior representative of Emperor Hirohito, spoke at a ceremony at the Yasukuni Shrine to an assembly of veterans; "Japan was not the aggressor during World War II. The fact is that white people wanted to turn Asia into their colonies; Japan was only fighting to protect herself..." (3)
In September 1988, Director-General Ishiki of the Military History Agency, said that he, as a participant in the war and after careful study of its history, did not think Japan's invasion of China was aggression. (4)
In September 1990, Shintaro Ishihara, a former member of the Diet and author of "The Japan That Can Say No," said when interviewed by "Playboy" magazine: "People say that the Japanese made a holocaust there (in Nanking), but that is not true. It is a story made up by the Chinese. It has tarnished the image of Japan, but it is a lie." (5)
In January of 1991, Ishihara published an article in "Bunget Shunju (Literary Spring & Autumn," once again denying the Rape of Nanking. (6)
In May 1994, Japan's Minister of Justice, Shigeto Nagano told "Mainichi Shimbun"; "The so-called Rape of Nanking and related atrocities supposedly committed by the Japanese military are fabrications." Nagano, a WWII veteran and former Chief of Staff of the Japanese Army, also told the newspaper that Japan was not an aggressor in the war.(7)
In August 1994, Shin Sakurai, director-general of Japan's Environment Agency, said: "Japanese never intended to launch aggressions during World War II. It was only for the benefit of those neighboring countries (that) Japan invaded." (8)
These officials' denials echoed what the Japanese public and soldiers had been taught during the war years. A large number of older conservatives and the political right wing advocate similar views.
Despite these denials, the preceding chapters of this book include more than 400 historical photographs, many of which were taken by Japanese soldiers themselves during the Rape of Nanking. Also included are reports by western and Japanese journalists and eyewitness accounts by missionaries and others, as well as, confessions by Japanese perpetrators.
In addition, there are 444 carefully authenticated cases of murder, mass slaughter, rape, arson and pillage filed by the Safety Zone Committee which the office of Prince Asaka, the Emperor's surrogate in Nanking, while the terror was in progress. There is also the black-and-white film shot by the Rev. John G. Magee, who after the war became chaplain of Yale University and finally, the recollections of Nanking survivors. All these provide us with irrefutable proof of the historical fact of Japanese war crimes against the innocent and defenseless people of Nanking in 1937-38.
More evidence keeps coming out: Japanese scholar Kenji Ono, a resident of Fukushima Prefecture, where most soldiers of the 65th Regiment, 13th Division were recruited during the war, visited hundreds of ex-soldiers and discovered 20 volumes of their diaries. These diaries reveal, from the perpetrators' point of view, the indisputable fact that a large number of POWs (about 30,000) were slaughtered in a matter of two or three days by this regiment alone (see chapter 8). Ono's book, "The Nanking Massacre in the Imperial Army Soldiers' Diaries," was published in March 1996 in Japan by Otsuksi Shoten Publishers.
On Dec. 12, 1996, at a press conference in New York, Ursula Reinhardt, granddaughter of John H.D. Rabe, presented his 1,200-page diary, written in Nanking 59 years ago. Discovered by Iris Chang, a Sunnyvale, Calif., author, the Rabe diary immediately attracted international attention.
A major scholarly figure among those who seek to deny the Rape of Nanking is Masaaki Tanaka, a lecturer at Takushoku University, Tanaka published a book in January 1984 titled "The Fiction of the Nanking Massacre," intended to totally erase this ugly chapter in the history of Japanese militarism. One of Tanaka's major arguments was that "The population of Nanking at the time was no more than 200,000, including foreigners. The claim that more than 300,000 were killed is indeed ridiculous!" Another message states: "At the time there were only 200,000 citizens and 50,000 defending troops; how can the number of killed be 300,000?" (9)
What in fact was Nanking's population in December 1937? We have already learned from a top-secret report of a Japanese espionage agency, the Southern Manchuria Railway Affairs Corp., that Nanking's population right before the occupation was 1.08 million (see Chapter 8).
Now let's look at the 1937 Census kept at the Nanking Bureau of Archives, which not only substantiates the espionage agency's findings, but is nearly identical.
From the graphics (illustrated on page 275 of the book) we see that Nanking's population had approached 900,000 in 1935; it reached more than a million in January 1936. Now let's look at the numbers before and after the Massacre. The following is quoted from a speech at a seminar hosted by the newspaper "Asahi Shimbun" in Shanghai on April 27, 1939, by Wong Hong-en, a legislator in the collaborationist Nanking government during the Japanese occupation:
"Now I'd like to give a brief report of the painful situations suffered by Nanking citizens during the Incident (Rape of Nanking). Before the Incident, during the prosperous period of the KMT (Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Party) government, Nanking's population reached 1.07 million whereas after the Incident the population dropped to 170,000. The difference is almost 900,000. The major reason for the population reduction is that some people, influenced by Chiang Kai-shek's propaganda fled Nanking before the Incident. The rest were killed or missing by mistake or unfortunate reasons.
"According to our census statistics, about 200,000 people, including civilians, military personnel and government employees fled Nanking (before the Incident). Another 200,000, mainly rich merchants who were influenced by the KMT's propaganda, fled to different provinces. The rest of the population, excluding out-of-towners who had been working in Nanking and returned to their home towns, all died or cannot be accounted for." (10)
Wong Hong-en demonstrated from the collaborationist government's Census that there was a population of 1.07 million people before "The Incident." Of the 1.07 million, about 400,000 were accounted for: They fled Nanking. The remainder, a total of 600,000 to 700,000 people, was Nanking's population just before the Massacre. If we subtract from this figure the out-of-towers who returned home, the population of Nanking at the time must have been no less than 500,000 to 600,000. (1)
From this level before "the Incident," the population dropped to a mere 170,000 in April 1939. What accounts for the difference is simple: mass murder; a holocaust.
The Holocaust of European Jewry, with the definite article and the capital H, was a unique event of modern times, a genocidal extermination rooted in racist ideology and implemented with the most up-to-date means of industrial planning and technology. By contrast, Japan's bloodletting in Nanking was largely retail, with individual soldiers and units freed by their superiors to murder at will for what they believed was the greater glory of Japan and the emperor. Even so, the Japanese killing machine was quite efficient: At Auschwitz, between 1940 and January 1945, an average of 879 persons were murdered daily; in Nanking, in a mere six weeks, the daily toll of victims averaged 8,794. (12)
Pertinently for the present discussion, wartime demonology, at least in the United States, made Hitler's Japanese counterpart not the Emperor, but the Prime Minister, Gen. Hideki Tojo. (13)
Ugly as the Japanese war crimes committed in the Emperor's name were, the continuing effort to deny and distort the facts is uglier still. For more than 50 years, Hirohito escaped responsibility for the atrocities in Nanking and elsewhere on the supposition that he did not know about them and successive Japanese governments and military interests have steadily sought to reduce the number of Nanking victims to near-insignificance. Truly shocking, however, is the fact that as early as January 1938, only a month after the Imperial Army entered Nanking, the Japanese government had already acknowledged that the number of people killed there was more than 300,000.
The widespread international indignation caused by the Rape of Nanking became a main topic of concern among Japanese diplomats and staff officers throughout January and February 1938. This newly declassified cable is only the latest irrefutable evidence of the Japanese government's intimate knowledge of the horror that had unfolded there. This cable, together with the secret report of a Japanese espionage agency, both dated 1938, make any attempt to deny the massacre or to reduce the number of victims appear ill-informed, if not preposterous.
The question of how many people were actually killed during the Rape of Nanking has become a crucial issue in studies of this dark page of human history. Quite apart from those who deny that anything unusual took place at all, various scholars and politicians in Japan, China and the United States have estimated the death toll at anywhere from 38,000 to 400,000. As early as 1946, the Nanking Military Court, using all data available at the time, put the number at 300,000. (1) The International Military Tribunal for the Far East in 1948 settled on a verifiable figure of 200,000, (2) which has been widely accepted.
Professor Tian-wei Wu at Southern Illinois University, after years of research, concluded that the death toll reached 340,000. (3)
Ahira Fujiwara, Kenji Ono and Tokushi Kasahara, three prominent Nanking Massacre scholars in Japan, put the death toll at 150,000 to 200,000.
Ying-shih Yu, professor of history at Princeton University, agrees with the number calculated for the first edition of this book, 354,870 _ the first attempt at 2nd-digit accuracy.
Gao Xingzu and Sun Zhaiwei, two distinguished Nanking Massacre scholars in China, prefer the approximation of "more than 300,000" for impregnability.
But ambiguity creates more controversy as well as opportunities for those who would like to erase the Rape of Nanking from history books.
There were 50 major sites in and around the city during the Rape of Nanking. Because of the catastrophic conditions in the city and the fact that may victims' bodies were tossed into the Yangtze River immediately after mass killings, it is obviously very difficult to settle this issue.
We have, however, found a way out of this morass. It is quite feasible to establish an accurate minimum number of victims of the massacre, i.e., the lowest incontrovertible number. Doing so is too important and indispensable to history to be put off any longer as this century draws to its end. Our method involves recorded burials by Chinese and international agencies and officially reported dispositions of bodies by the Japanese military. We conclude that no fewer than 369,366 civilians and POWs were killed.
The Rape of Nanking encompasses a number of mass murders, mainly during December 1937 and numerous murders of individuals and small groups of civilians and prisoners that lasted until February 1938. According to the Chinese government's statistics, more than 190,000 died of mass killings and more than 150,000 died of random killings of individuals and small groups, including the murders of race victims. (40)
A simple tabulation of these numbers totals 324,529 for mass killings only. Add the 150,000 killed at random and small-scale murders counted by the Chinese government and the total is 474,529.
The question is, how accurate are these numbers?
To this day, studies of the Rape of Nanking ar hobbled by this problem: These numbers are round numbers. We relied on similar figures to reach the estimated 354,870 published in the first edition of this book. But terms like "tens of thousands" and "more than 500" were often used by eyewitnesses and survivors who were unlikely to have been able to do a close estimate in conditions like those that prevailed in Nanking in December 1937. Accuracy becomes even more remote when it comes to random and small-scale killings which were less well documented and took place over a much longer period.
Moreover, there are likely overlaps between these numbers: For instance, the same killing, because of its magnitude, may appear totally different when recounted by different survivors and eyewitnesses: or a number reported by a Japanese Army regiment might be included in the total reported by the division it belonged to, especially when the Japanese Army made no distinction between fighting battles and executing POWs.
Therefore, we have taken an new approach, putting aside these reports of killings and using only the records of burial societies, municipal agencies and Japanese officers reporting disposals of human remains. There are four major advantages to this method:
1) it includes mass killings as well as random killings, as the burial gorups; mission was to collect bodies from everywhere possible;
2) it eliminates inaccurate and exaggerated numbers;
3) it avoids overlapping massacre figures; and
4) it eliminates from the count those victims who were wounded but escaped.
There were four major charitable burial societies during and after the Rape of Nanking, as well as municipal burial terms and three volunteer groups and private citizens that kept careful records. The burial total compiled here is the result of these groups' impeccable record-keeping and, or course, the heroic humanitarian labor that underlay it.
Advance Benevolence Society: Founded in 1797, the privately funded charitable organization formally adopted this name in 1865. (30) During and after the Rape of Nanking, the Society established the Chong Burial Team led by Mr. Zhou Yiyu; the team consisted of four squads covering the areas of Zhonghua Gate, Xinjiekou and Drum Tower in the city, along with Yijiang Gate; and on the outskirts, the Gaoqiaomen area outside Tongi Gate and the Maqun area outside Zhongshan Gate.
Mr. Zhou's men worked from late December 1937 to early April 1938. They collected and buried 6,742 adult male bodies, 522 adult female bodies and 285 chldren's bodies in the city and on the outskirts 102,621 adult male bodies, 1,569 adult female bodies and 528 children's bodies. The total number of bodies and remains buried is 112,266. (3)
Red Swastika Society: The Nanking Red Swastika Society was a chapter of a national organization founded in 1922 in Beijing with more than 300 branches nationwide. The Nanking chapter was established in 1923. (32)
The society collected and buried bodies mainly in the vicinities of Zhonghua Gate, Shuixi Gate, Yijiang Gate and west of the city. The burial group worked from Dec. 22, 1937 to May 31, 1938. During this period, 1,759 adult male bodies, 8 adult female bodies and 26 children's bodies were collected from within the city; 41,183 adult male bodies, 75 adult female bodies and 200 children's bodies were collected from the outskirts. The total number of bodies buried is 43,071.
Nanking Red Cross Society: Established in 1904, the Chinese Red Cross joined the International Red Cross in 1907. Its Nanking branch was founded in 1912. (33)
The Society began its burial work on Dec. 24, 1937, with two teams working mainly in Xiaguan and its vicinity. The two teams buried 8,949 bodies prior to Jan. 5, 1938 and 13,734 from Jan. 6 to May 31, 1938. Collectively, they buried 22,683 bodies and remains. (34)
Common Benevolence Society: Founded in 1876, the Common Benevolence Society specialized in children's burials. (35) During and after the Rape of Nanking, a task force was organized and led by Liu Decai to collect and bury the bodies of massacre victims. All members of the team wore armbands with the Society's logo and a red cross on it. 7,000 bodies were buried by this organization. (36)
The Puppet Nanking Municipal Government: Gao Guan-wu, an official of the puppet municipal government established under the Japanese occupation, took charge of burying remains of massacre victims 10 months after the Rape, in October 1938. Initially Gao's unit buried 2,600 remains and after please from villagers outside Zhongshan Gate, some 3,000 more were buried.
Xiaguan District of the Puppet Minicipal Government: Liu Lianxiang, head of the puppet municipal government's Xiaguan District, organized a 100-member burial team and began work on Dec. 15, 1937. On Dec. 16, Liu's subordinates obtained permission from the Japanese Army's Port Affairs Office and were issued 84 insignias for individuals to wear. On Jan. 30, 1938, Liu reported that his men buried 3,240 victims' remains. (37)
The First District of the Puppet Minicipal Government: An incomplete February 1938, work report of the puppet First District states that during that month, 1,232 bodies were buried by workers sent by First District officials. (38)
In the book, there is a photo of a top secret report of the Southern Manchuria Railway Affairs Company, a con name for a Japanese espionage agency. Immediately after the fall of Nanking, the agency's Shanghai office dispatched a group of special agents, including Isao Matsuoka, Sato, Tomoo Kojima, Seigo Mabuchi, Susumu Maruyama, to Nanking to assist Japanese occupation operations. These reports, in their nature, are statements of the group's involvement in assisting Makajima troops (16th Division) to round up Chinese soldiers from refugees, issue of ID cards to Nanking citizens and supervision of dead bodies burials, etc. This report reflects and confirms, from another angle, three basic facts of the Nanking Massacre:
1) Report of January 1938, confirms the Nanking population right before the "incident," was 1.08 million.
2) Report of February 1938, confirms the fact that large numbers of young and middle-aged men were picked out, with the assistance of these special agents and executed as ex-soldiers or anti-Japanese elements.
3) Report of March 1938, confirms the fact that by March 15, 1938, 31,791 bodies were collected and buried by the Red Society alone.
Following is a copy of a coded telegraph sent to the Japanese Embassy in Washington by Foreign Minister Koki Hirota on Jan. 17, 1938, acknowledging that the number of civilian people killed in Nanking was more than 300,000:
From: Tokyo (Hirota)
To: Wahsington
Jan. 17, 1938
No. 227, Received from Shanghai as No. 176 (HE HAD AN ASTERISK AFTER THIS NUMBER)
"Since return (to) Shanghai (a) few days ago I investigated reported atrocities commited by Japanese Army in Nanking and elsewhere. Verbal accounts (of) reliable eye-witnesses and letters from individuals whose credibility (is) beyond question afford convincing proof (that) Japanese Army behaved and (is) continuing (to) behave in (a) fashion reminiscent (of) Attila (and) his Huns. (Not) less than 300,000 Chinese civilians slaughtered, many cases (in) cold blood. Robbery, rape, including children (of) tender years and insensate brutality towards civilians continues (to) be reported from areas where actual hostilities ceased weeks ago. Deep shame which better type (of) Japanese civilian here feel _ reprehensible conduct (of) Japanese troops elsewhere heightened by series (of) local incidents where Japanese soldiers run amuck (in) Shanghai itself. Today's North China Daily News reports (a) particularly revolting case where (a) drunken Japanese soldier, unable (to) obtain women over 60 and wounded several other harmless civilians."
(This message was sent in enciphered English.)
When Shanghai was lost by the Chinese Army and Nanking was facing the same fate, a group of foreigners remained in Nanking and organized the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone. The people of Nanking called the Zone "the refugee area."
There were 15 members of the International Committee. John H.D. Rabe, an executive with Siemen's, the German electronics manufacturing company, was elected chairman: Lewis S.C. Smythe, an American professor of sociology at Nanking University, was elected secretary; the members included seven Americans, three Germans, four Britons and a Dane.
The committee office, at 5 Ninghai Road, was identified by a large sign bearing the Safety Zone International Committee logo _ a red cross in a red circle _ hung on the building's gray gate. The mayor of Nanking handed over the administration of the Safety Zone to the committee before the Japanese invasion and assigned 450 policemen, 2,000 tons of rice, 10,000 bags of flour and L80,000 (pounds) in cash. (1)
The Safety Zone's irregular area measured, at its widest span, less than three kilometers north to south and less than two kilometers east to west. Its boundaries were all well-marked roads except at the southwest corner, which was an imaginary line over the hills on the east from Xinjiekou Street along Zhongshan Road to Shanxi Road Circular; to the north from Shanxi Road Circular going west to Xikang Road; to the est, along Xikang Road to the intersection of Hankou Road and Shanghai Road; to the south, from the Shanghai intersection along Han Zhong Road to Xinjiekou Street. (2)
Before the Japanese invasion, given the turbulent and dangerous situation of the city, wealthy and politically connected people filed to Sichuan (Szechuan) and Hubei Provinces. Most of the citizens, who had nowhere else to go, went to the Safety Zone as refugees. After the Japanese entered the area, the Safety Zone, with a total area of about one square mile, accepted more than 300,000 people. (3)
The Safety Zone encompassed the American, Japanese and Italian embassies, the Netherland Legation, Ministry of Justice, Supreme Court, University of Nanking with its hospital, Ginling Women's College and a number of other foreign institutions.
The Safety Zone was recognized by the Commanding Headquarters of the Japanese Shanghai Expedition. The Japanese military guaranteed that "the Safety Zone will be spared the deliberate attack provided the Zone is free of Chinese soldiers and military operations." (4)
The Chinese Army, having lost all its major battles, withdrew from the Safety Zone before the Japanese troops launched their final attack and left the entire area to the administration of the International Committee.
Another organization was established at the same time -- the Nanking International Red Cross Council, organized by 17 foreigners with an American, the Rev. John G. Magee, as chairman. These two international organizations from the very beginning took on the heavy task of rescuing innocent people.
These foreigners became Nanking's dauntless heroes. While thousands of other foreigners were busy looking for transportation out of the city, they chose to stay in Nanking, regardless of the unpredictable situation and the objections of their own governments and employers. They were all knowledgeable and experienced people and were fully aware of the danger they were facing when they made their choice.
When the Japanese entered the city on Dec. 13, Nanking refugees, including many disarmed Chinese soldiers, fled into the Safety Zone, which was clearly identified by symbols of the Red Cross. The members of the International Committee worked long days and sleepless nights for the 300,000 refugees, taking care of their daily needs of first aid, sanitation and of dealing with the Japanese military.
The refugees called the administration director, the American George A. Fitch, a "deity" because he dared to stand up to Japanese soldiers who killed in the zone at will. Fitch was born in Suzhou and had lived there for more than 30 years. He had a Chinese name, Fei Wusheng, meaning "the Fitch born in Suzhou." His wife taught at Chinese schools. Of their four children, three were born in China. George Fitch spoke perfect Chinese in the Suzhou dialect and probably felt more Chinese than American.
As Japanese soldiers forced their way into the Safety Zone, looting foreigners' property, killing innocent people and raping women, Fitch -- risking his own life on many occasions -- stood against them in protest. Once, under Japanese gun barrels, he rescued a group of Chinese refugees who were about to be shot. He also preserved some 50 photographs of Japanese atrocities. These photos were later smuggled out by his brother-in-law and publicized to the outside world.
The Rev. John G. Magee, chairman of the Nanking International Red Cross, put his own life second to those of the refugees. On Dec. 14, more than a thousand disarmed Chinese soldiers fled into the Foreign Ministry building. Magee got word that these disarmed soldiers had been rounded up by Japanese troops. Holding a Red Cross banner, he rushed to the site through constant gunfire and managed to rescue these disarmed soldiers when they were about to be slaughtered. On Dec. 20, Magee, using the Red Cross banner as a shield, escorted more than 30 sick or wounded Chinese soldiers onto a small boat and out of danger.
Magee was an amateur photographer and as a foreigner had obtained a number of permits from the Japanese military authorities. One of these permits allowed him to take photographs. With this permit and a 16 mm movie camera, he documented numerous scenes and victims of killing, rape and looting by Japanese troops. Magee later became the chaplain of Yale University and deposited his film in its library, where it remains as significant evidence of Japanese atrocities. Many of the photographs in this book are stills from his film.
The foreigner most beloved by the refugees, especially by women, was Minnie Vautrin, a 51-year-old American whom they called Kuan Yin, the "Goddess of Mercy." Vautrin graduated cum laude with a degree in education from the University of Illinois. She then joined the Christian Missionary alliance and went to Hefei, China, where for many years she was headmistress of the Hefei Girls Middle School. In December 1919, she came to Nanking and became dean of studies at Ginling Women's Arts and Science College. She was named acting president of the college in 1937.
Since she was also a member of the International Red Cross Council and Ginling was designated by the Safety Zone Committee to be the principal refugee camp for women and children, Vautrin courageously shouldered the formidable task of protecting women from Japanese soldiers. Tens of thousands of women crowded into the school in a matter of days and she immediately led the staff to get eight buildings prepared to house them, with their rooms numbered. She also arranged with the Red Cross to set up a kitchen on the campus to provide rice porridge to the refugees. Vautrin worked day and night for the defenseless women. Distributing food, taking care of the sick and providing comfort became her daily work.
Vautrin guarded the campus gate by holding a U.S. flag and tried her best to keep the women from being raped. She stood by the gate to stop Japanese soldiers, often going for days at a time without regular meals and sleep. Her famous comment was: "Whoever (Japanese soldiers) wants to go through this gate will have to go over my dead body." (6) Many times she was pushed and pulled, beaten and humiliated by the Japanese soldiers, but she stood firm and protected thousands of women from assault. Excerpts from her diary are reprinted in this book.
Years later, an old woman, Chang Chin-chuan, a survivor of the Rape of Nanking, recalled an episode when she was a refugee under Vautrin's care: "One day when I went to (the Red Cross kitchen) to get my portion of rice porridge, it was too late and no porridge was left. Vautrin gave me her own portion that she was about to eat. Then she said to me, `Don't you people worry. Japan will fail. China will not perish.'" (7) Women refugees were often moved to tears of gratitude by what Vautrin had done for them. They bowed and kowtowed to her. "You don't have to do this," Vautrin would say, "I am only carrying out my responsibilities." (8)
Vautrin became mentally disturbed after the Rape of Nanking; She constantly blamed herself for not doing enough for the Chinese women and believed more lives could have been saved had she tried harder. Finally, in May 1940, she suffered a breakdown and returned to the United States for treatment. Her plan was to return to China as soon as she was better.
She did not, however, make it back to China, she committed suicide in Indianapolis. She was buried in Shepard, Mich., where her relatives live.
Sports | Features (Currents) | Teen Currents | Leisure | Obituaries | Archives | email us | Joe Cook | Headlines/Opening Page
Last update 1 p.m. May 22, 1998
Ashtabula, Ohio