The Inhumanity of the Japanese

“When we were bored, we had some fun killing Chinese. Buried them alive, or push them into a fire, or beat them to death with clubs, or kill them by other cruel means,” was written in a diary entry of a Japanese soldier on December 15, 1937. The Japanese, throughout the Second World War, treated the Chinese, as well as other cultures, cruelly. “The Forgotten Holocaust” or the Nanjing Massacre was a result of this cruelty. My grandfather, Wu-Yu Chu, joined the Chinese army at 19 to defend his country, to prevent the Japanese from torturing and murdering his fellow Chinese, to defeat the Japanese.

A Brief Biography

On September 5, 1917, Wu-Yu Chu was born into a wealthy family in the Hopei Province in China. As the only son, his birth brought hope, joy, and high expectations. The Chinese tradition implied that he would have many responsibilities. He would be well educated and had to obey his parents’ wishes. Once the head of the family passed away, then it would become his duty to take care of his family. The war changed everything. When the Japanese invaded China, my grandfather enlisted himself into the army. He walked away from his family and his inheritance, just for the purpose of stopping the Japanese killing of his countrymen. During the war, his father refused to serve the Japanese and was kidnapped by them. My grandfather has never heard from him again. My grandfather said in Chinese, “I never regretted more then when I joined the army. I left my mother behind. I could not take care of her, which was my responsibility. It is the deepest regret in my life.” My grandfather fought against the Japanese for eight years, engaged in many battles, followed by forty years of service in the military. In 1977, he retired from the post of Chief Officer of the Army Commander and Staff College as a lieutenant general. He is now 84 years old.

The Invasion of 1937

The invasion of China began in the early 1930’s. Japan has long prepared the invasion with an eye on the abundance of the natural resources in China. Seeing that China was close to the unification after a long civil war and not wishing China to become strong any sooner, Japan militants started the invasion. They attacked Manchuria in 1933, taking its rich soil, minerals, and food supply there. Soon after, the Japanese began moving southward, looting and shipping the resources back to Japan. At those few beginning years, the Chinese government and defense forces were weak because of the civil war. The Chinese people had no choice but to tolerate the pain. In the year 1937, Japanese invaders began bombing random cities. Soon, the eastern coast was taken over by the Japanese soldiers. They began pressing westward, towards Nanjing and other cities. The Chinese army was in no way to resist the modernized weaponry. There was nothing they could do, except retreat farther into the inland. They needed time to build their defense strength, so they adopted the strategy of “exchanging space for time.” It was then that my grandfather decided to give up his pursuit of a personal life and to join the army.

My grandfather observed many things when he was just about to graduate from high school. During their stay in China, the Japanese soldiers would often be seen wandering the streets with their guns and swords. My grandfather said that aboard the trains, they would ask to see your identification. If the Japanese did not like you, they were given the right to slap you or beat you. Also, at the train stations, a cluster of Japanese soldiers would walk together, with their bayonets pointing outward. If one got stabbed, the Japanese would not care. These soldiers would not look upon the Chinese as equals, but as an inferior race, who were not worthy their attention. The Japanese, according to my grandfather, “did not even consider China as a government, as a nation, but just a piece of land, waiting to be conquered.” The fire of anger and revenge has long since been burning in the heart of my grandfather and many other Chinese people.

The Nanjing Massacre

On November 25, 1937, the invasion on Nanjing began. By December 13, 1937, the city was fallen to Japan. Being angered by the resistance they encountered and ashamed of not taking down the city sooner, the Japanese felt the need to punish China by “killing all, looting all, burning all.” For the next six weeks, the worst holocaust in history would occur. More than 300,000 Chinese people would be killed in that one city, causing this massacre to be the worst to ever happen.

The reaction of the Chinese people and the Chinese government was revenge. Many of them, including my grandfather believed that the Japanese were “inhumane, worse than savage animals.” In the battlefields, the Japanese acted against the international laws by using poisonous gas to kill their enemies. It burned the skins of many and also killed many. In one of the battles, my grandfather was serving as a front-line observer for his artillery troops. He felt skin burning and smelled something sour. Knowing that the Japanese across the river was using poisonous gas, he had no protective mask because the military was poorly equipped. He had to wet a piece of cloth with his own urine and covered his noise. The little chemical of ammonia in the urine saved him, but his eyes were injured. To this day, my grandfather’s eyes are “snow flaked,” with small white flakes in them, which was the result of the poison gas. As soon as they took over a city, the Japanese committed murder, torture, and rape on civilians. In the city Nanjing alone, over 350,000 civilians were killed and over 20,000 women raped. My grandfather said that the Allied Forces were blind to the cruelty China was facing. They did not come to help fight the Japanese until after Pearl Harbor, so the Chinese had to fight on their own. The only help the Chinese received was from a civilian group of retired American pilots, who formed the Flying Tiger Squad. They purchased old planes at their own expenses and flew to China to help fight the Japanese. In the later part of the war, since the seacoast was blockaded by the Japanese, the Chinese had to build roads through the mountains to allow trucks to import supplies from Burma. My grandfather, his colleagues, and thousands and thousands of civilians helped build that lifeline with their own hands because the government was too poor to supply the heavy equipment. All the government could do was retreat and exchange land for time to build up the army.

The Inhumane Killing Machines

My grandfather feels that the most unforgivable crime the Japanese committed was their inhumanity toward the people. During the six weeks of the Nanjing Massacre, thousands of bodies were seen lying dead in the streets. The once beautiful city was now littered with brutally killed bodies and puddles of blood. Yet, the Japanese would not stop. To my grandfather, they were “killing machines. Nothing would stop them, except their own death.” The enemy of China would use so many different techniques to murder the Chinese. One was scaring the civilians with machine guns to a river and drown them. Others would be decapitating contests. Groups of Chinese people, with their hands tied behind their backs, would line up by two Japanese soldiers, with their swords drawn. The soldiers would keep beheading them until their swords broke. Babies were often tossed into the air, and when they came down, bayonets pierced through their bodies. Other Chinese civilians were burned alive or buried alive. The methods the murderers used were unbelievably cruel.

Along with the terrible atrocities, Japanese scientists and doctors were sent to conduct live tests and experiment different things on the Chinese, and sometimes Americans and Russians prisons. One included placing people into a pressurized room and see how long it took for their eyes to pop out. Another was injecting lethal diseases and bacteria into the humans. Tests were almost always done without painkillers and anesthesia. My grandfather, fortunately, was not one of these victims.

The Atom Bomb

“The war in China help the Allied Forces by dragging the Japanese’s leg in the east. Even if the United States hadn’t dropped the atom bomb, Japan would still have lost. Our army was growing stronger and stronger. We were pushing those Japanese back toward the sea. They run short supplies and grew weaker and weaker. The bomb helped to finish them sooner,” my grandfather said. “Japan is an island country. They miscalculated that their troops could not receive enough supplies because their troops were too spread out too thin and too far,” said my grandfather, “They made the same mistake as Germany.” Gradually, China’s army became strong again, and managed to chase the Japanese out.

When the atomic bomb was dropped, more than one hundred thousands of Japanese died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, the Chinese people had hardened their hearts towards the Japanese. My grandfather felt no pity towards Japan because “it was nothing compared to the Nanjing Massacre.” Historians believed that the US dropped the bomb to end the war because of Japan’s response to the Potsdam Declaration. However, the Chinese believed that Japan should be condemned because they killed so many innocent Chinese civilians. My grandfather said, “Japan killed for the fun of it. They enjoyed watching the Chinese suffer. They ruined China’s beautiful lands. They deserved the bomb, but China did not deserve so many dead citizens.” Nanjing, China, an exquisite city, was left to crumble.

What Happened Afterwards

Was my grandfather happy after the Japanese surrendered? “No. The country was in ruins. My homeland was destroyed. Everyone lost his or her property. The poor got poorer. Education was delayed. The government did not have enough money to support the huge expenses. Cities and towns did not the well-trained personnel to govern. Everything was falling apart. It would be a long, long way to rebuild the country, even if everything went smoothly,” my grandfather said. Surely enough, the Communists jumped in at this opportunity. They soon came into power, trying to create a revolution between the poor and the rich. Therefore, when V-J Day came, China could not rejoice, but cried out for more help. The Red Army Revolution followed, costing more lives. My grandfather and my grandmother fled to the island of Taiwan, following Kuomintang’s leader, General Chiang Kai-Shek. There, it has been another fifty years of separation and hostility between the two sides of the Strait of Taiwan until this day.

The Japanese Denial

Shortly after the Second World War ended, while China was still trying to rebuild what the Japanese had destroyed, while history books wrote of the horrible event that millions of Chinese were killed, while the General Chiang Kai-Shek did not ask Japan to compensate the loss of lives and treasures, the Japanese began to deny that they had done such a terrible thing. “It is a lie. They know it is a lie, and they won’t admit it. They are irresponsible liars,” my grandfather said angrily. He has great resentment towards them. Between the 1970’s and 1990, Japanese writers, historians, and government officials denied this “incident.” Japanese history books were rewritten, replacing certain words with less offending ones. The entire massacre became known as a small incident, caused by the frustration of the Japanese army. The Japanese criticized China for starting the war. They also said that the Chinese exaggerated the truth. According to the Japanese, only 38,000-42,000 were killed, not 300,000, in the Nanjing “incident.” However, the biggest lie was probably the denial of the atrocity. This information was soon taught in schools and in textbooks.

On November 10, 1990, the deputy Japanese Consul in Houston told American citizens that, according to Japanese witnesses, the massacre never happened. For the next five years, the Japanese made it seem as if the Chinese had made up the story of the Nanjing Massacre. It was not until the fifteenth of August 1995, the fiftieth anniversary of the 1937 massacre, that Japan’s Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama confessed that the stories were true. Emperor Akihito hoped and promised that such events would never happen again. Yet, even today the newspaper reports that Japan is changing words again in their textbooks. Currently, the governments of China, Korea, and many other Asian countries are protesting Japan’s denials and cover-up of their war crimes and the way they intend to educate their next children.

Reflection

From this interview, I learned so much more about my culture’s history. I never knew so many Chinese died because of the Japanese. I always knew my grandparents resented the Japanese, but I never knew why. After doing my research, I understood the reasons why my grandparents never liked Japan. I felt what my grandfather felt as I read through the information and saw the pictures of the bodies, dismembered, decapitated, dead. I felt anger and sadness because I never knew how cruel man could be to each other. I remember as I was searching through websites, I saw a picture of a pile of babies, all dead. I was on the verge of crying because I thought it was unfair for them to die so young. This interview has showed me more of what my grandfather had to go through in the Second World War. I hope now that this “forgotten” event will never be forgotten by the humans again. If we are not careful, our civilization can make us to become a war machine, like the Japanese did. If we are not kind toward each other, the evil within can make us become a killing machine like the Japanese did. The people who were killed, Nanjing Massacre, and the war, should teach us a lesson: Peace.

Bibliography

· Bennett, Ralph Kinney. “The Woman Who Wouldn’t Forget.” Reader’s Digest. September 1998: 102-109.

· Chu, Wu-Yu. Personal Interview. 14 May 2001.

· “Modern History Sourcebook: The Nanking Massacre, 1937.” http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/nanking.html 5/19/01.

· “Nanking Massacre.” http://www.skycitygallery.com/japan/japan.html 5/16/01.

· “Situation Before the Fall of Nanjing.” http://centurychina.com/wiihist/njmassac/situatio.htm 5/18/01.

· “The Nanking Massacre.” http://www.gotrain.com/dan/nanking1.htm 5/19/01