Professor Yang Ganfu
MAY 4, 2014 marks the 36th commemoration of the bloody massacre at the Cassinga refugee camp in southern Angola where hundreds of Namibian men, women and children died at the hands of the trigger-happy apartheid South African troops.
Shortly after the bombing, the SA paratroopers went in killing people at point-blank range.
In the SADF attack and subsequent massacre, it was estimated 800 Namibians were killed.
This atrocious and humanely totally unwarranted attack reminded me again of the Nanjing Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking.
The Nanjing Massacre was a mass murder and war rape that occurred during the six-week period following the Japanese capture of the city of Nanjing China on December 13, 1937 during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Eyewitness accounts of Westerners and Chinese present at Nanjing in the weeks after the fall of the city, state that over the course of six weeks following the fall of Nanjing, Japanese troops engaged in rape, murder, theft, arson, and other war crimes.
Some of these accounts came from foreigners who opted to stay behind to protect Chinese civilians from harm, including the diaries of John Rabe, a German businessman and American Minnie Vautrin. Other accounts include first-person testimonies of Nanjing Massacre survivors, eyewitness reports of journalists (both Western and Japanese), as well as the field diaries of military personnel. American missionary John Magee stayed behind to provide a 16mm film documentary and first-hand photographs of the Nanjing Massacre.
Following are some of excerpts from the accounts, which reveal the Japanese cruelty only savage beasts will do. On 19 December 1937, Reverend James M. McCallum wrote in his diary: Never I have heard or read such brutality. Rape! Rape! Rape! We estimate at least 1,000 cases a night, and many by day.
Robert O. Wilson, a surgeon at the American-administered University Hospital in the Safety Zone, wrote in a letter to his family: “The slaughter of civilians is appalling. I could go on for pages telling of cases of rape and brutality almost beyond belief. Two girls, about 16, were raped to death in one of the refugee camps.”
John Rabe, wrote many comments about Japanese atrocities. For 17 December 1938: “What you hear and see on all sides is the brutality and bestiality of the Japanese soldiers. Last night up to 1,000 women and girls are said to have been raped, about 100 girls at Ginling Girls College alone.”
Pregnant women were targets of murder. Tang Junshan, a survivor and witness to one of the Japanese army’s systematic mass killings testified: “As the Japanese soldier was trying to rape her, the woman resisted fiercely … The soldier abruptly stabbed her in the belly with a bayonet. She gave a final scream as her intestines spilled out. Then the soldier stabbed the fetus, with its umbilical cord clearly visible, and tossed it aside.”
Perhaps the most notorious atrocity was a killing contest between two Japanese officers as reported in the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun and the English language Japan Advertiser.
The contest – a race between the two officers to see which of them could kill 100 people first using only a sword – was covered much like a sporting event with regular updates on the score over a series of days.
During this period, hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians and disarmed soldiers were murdered by soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army. Historians and witnesses have estimated that 250,000 to 300,000 people were killed.
Several of the key perpetrators of the atrocities, at the time labeled as war crimes, were later tried and found guilty at the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal, and were subsequently executed.
Another key perpetrator, Prince Asaka, a member of the Imperial Family, escaped prosecution by having earlier been granted immunity by the Allies.
How cruel, savage, inhuman and brutal Japanese are. However, unlike the German government, which admits the German’s war crimes, the Japanese government, especially the current Abe administration and Japanese conservatives and right-wingers unashamedly deny the widespread, systematic genocide occurred at all.
Recently, Abe shamelessly stated that Japan would not follow Germany to admit Japanese war crimes because Asia is not a united community. What nonsense. Who is the real troublemaker?
Abe and his cabinet members visit Yasukuni Shrine to honor and glorify Japanese wartime leaders convicted of war crimes during World War II.
They pay a high tribute to their wartime past when millions and millions of people, including Chinese, Koreans, Australians and Americans were killed.
Even worse, the Abe government is taking every possible step towards amending the Japanese constitution so as to prepare itself for military attack/invasion of other countries as she did before. (The Japanese invaded her Asian neighbours several times in history in addition to the one during World War II.)
However, the so called justice-upholding American administration stands firmly on the Japanese side saying international order should not be broken unilaterally. What international order is it, who established it?
How many times have Japan and America failed the international community in their overseas invasion and killing?
The Abe government and right wing Japanese must be aware that to contend with and make provocations against peace-loving China will only result in inviting the Japan’s own destruction. Japan and America should be warned of this consequence instead of their warnings to China.