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Lesson One: The War in the Pacific, 1931-1938
Overview:
Students examine the origins of the Asia-Pacific war, the parallels
between it and the war in Europe, and the extent of civilian atrocities
which preceded Allied intervention in the Pacific theatre.
Teaching/Learning Strategies
Using Handout 10.1-1, students divide into groups of four to six to develop a list of possible answers to the following questions:
Imagine a fictitious country which is very
aggressive and is attempting to invade and rule its neighbours. From
what you have learned about Japanese history in the twentieth century,
what do you think might be some of its characteristics? Consider
geography, population size, structure of the government, the military
and educational systems, the economy, relationships between social
classes, religious beliefs and/or any other factors which might have a
bearing on imperialist or colonial ambitions.
When the lists are shared, a class discussion
centred on their commonalities should consider the relationship between
these factors and the consequences for civilian life in the society of
the aggressor nation as well as in the conquered territories.
Students are divided into three groups, with each group covering one
of the three following topics: biological and chemical warfare in
the Asia Pacific War; the Nanking Massacre; the comfort women.
Students in each group read at least two of the references whose
website addresses are provided at the end of Handout 10-1.2
(Nanking), 10-1.3 (biological warfare), or 10-1.4 (comfort women),
and prepare a brief paper the rest of the based on the information
in the references to be read by the rest of the class and followed
by a class-wide discussion on each topic.
Time: 140 Minutes
Materials:
Handout 10-1.1 (Timeline and Description of Origins and Events of the
Asia Pacific War, 1931-1938)
Handout 10-1.2A (The Rape of
Handout 10-1.2B (Comfort Women)
Handout 10-1.2C (Biological and Chemical Warfare)
Note to teacher: Some Handouts refer students to websites. If computer
access is not available to all students, teachers may wish to print out
those they consider most valuable.
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World War II began in 1939 in Europe and ended in 1945 in Japan. Until 1941,
there was no official link between the wars in Europe and Asia.
In
Europe, the National Socialist (“Nazi”) Party in Germany formed the
government. It encouraged Germans to believe they were a “master race”
who needed and deserved more territory, and whose rightful destiny was
to rule other nations. It launched what was intended to be a worldwide
war of conquest by attacking Poland in 1939. At that point, countries
which had formal alliances for mutual defense with Poland (Great
Britain, with Canada as its Commonwealth partner, and declared war on Germany. Thus began World War II in Europe. At the
height of its territorial conquests (in 1941), Germany occupied all of
Europe, except for a few neutral countries, and Italy, which was its
ally. (It was unsuccessful in its attempt to conquer the Soviet Union.)
Meanwhile, in Asia, Japan was invading its neighbours, with the same
intention: to occupy and rule them. Japan’s government embodied the idea
of the divinity of the Emperor to whom all Japanese, civilian and
military, owed unquestioning allegiance and obedience. And the
government insisted on its need for more territory and the fitness of
the Japanese race to rule over others, just as the German government
did. Japan had already acquired dominion over Korea
and Taiwan in earlier conflicts and ruled them as colonies. In 1931, it
invaded Manchuria, the north eastern part of China, and set up a puppet
government there as well, and invaded other parts of northern China from
that base. Beginning in 1937, the Japanese launched a full-scale
invasion of China, beginning in Beijing and had a very fierce battle in
Shanghai.
1931
“Manchuria Incident”. The Japanese army launches a full-scale attack on
Manchuria.
1932
The
Japanese army seizes all of Manchuria and establishes the puppet state
of Manchukuo.
Japan
begins to set up biological warfare units in Japan and China.
1933
The League of Nations declares that Manchukuo is not a legitimate state and
calls for the withdrawal of Japanese troops. Japan
withdraws from the League in protest.
Expanding from Manchuria, the Japanese army gains control of much of
North China.
1937
“Marco Polo Bridge Incident”. Japan’s full-scale invasion of China
begins.
Peking (now Beijing) and Shanghai are captured.
When
Nanking (now Nanjing), the capital falls, the Japanese military commits
the Nanking Massacre.
The
military sexual slavery system for the Japanese military expands rapidly
after the Nanking Massacre.
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Japanese military aggression against China and other Asian countries
before and during the Second World War is remembered for the cruelty and brutality of Japan's
imperial forces. Besides soldiers in the armies that fought Japan, the victims included an untold number of
civilians of China, Korea, the Philippines, Japan, other Southeast Asian countries,
as well as civilians from North America and Europe located in Asia when war was declared. Millions died and millions more were held under brutal military rule.
Civilians and prisoners of war faced some of the worst atrocities, including the sexual
slavery suffered by "comfort women," slave
labour, live human medical experiments, and the use of chemical and biological weapons.
The Rape of Nanking*
In 1928, the Chinese government moved the capital of China to Nanking.
The city normally held about 250,000 people, but by the mid-1930s its
population had swollen to more than one million. Many of them were
refugees, fleeing from the Japanese armies that had invaded
China in 1931.
On November 11, after securing control of Shanghai, the Japanese
army advanced towards Nanking. In December 1937, Japanese troops invaded the city of
Nanking. Much of the city was destroyed by bombing raids. The
Japanese Imperial forces marched
thousands of Chinese
civilians into the countryside and murdered them; they raped women, and looted and burned people's homes. The large-scale
massacre and gross mistreatment of Chinese people at Nanking became
known as the Rape of Nanking. The following timeline highlights events
related to the massacre.
[Note there is a map on this page]
12 November 1937
Japanese troops capture Shanghai
after three months of fierce fighting. The march towards Nanking (now Nanking) begins and the "Three-all"
policy ("Loot all, kill all, burn all") is used to
terrorize civilians along the advancing route.
22 November 1937
The International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone is organized
by a group of foreigners to shelter Chinese refugees.
12 December 1937
Chinese soldiers are ordered to withdraw from Nanking
13 December 1937
Japanese troops capture Nanking
14 December 1937
The International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone lodges the first
protest letter against Japanese atrocities with the Japanese Embassy.
19 February 1938
The last of the 69 protest letters against Japanese atrocities is sent by
the Safety Zone Committee to the Japanese Embassy and the Committee is renamed as the Nanking International Relief Committee.
Many eyewitness accounts of the Nanking Massacre were
provided by Chinese civilian survivors and western nationals living in Nanking
at the time. The number of Chinese killed in the massacre has been subject to much debate. The Encyclopedia Britannica
(1999-2000 Britannica.com) states that estimates of the number of Chinese killed ranges from 100,000 to more
than 300,000.
Several accounts of the Nanking Massacre come from the group of 25 foreigners
(mostly American, but also some German, Danish, and Russian people) who
had established a neutral area called the International Safety Zone to
shelter the Chinese refugees whose lives had been threatened and homes
destroyed by the invading Japanese soldiers. When Nanking fell, the Zone housed over 250,000 refugees. The committee
members of the Zone found ways to provide these refugees with the basic
needs of food, shelter, and medical care.
[Note there is a map on this page]
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Miner Searle Bates
Dr. Miner Searle Bates was a missionary and professor of history at the
University of Nanking. He was also an organizing member of the Nanking
International Safety Zone Committee.
Only two days after the fall of Nanking, Bates lodged his first protest letter to the Japanese Embassy and
continued to do so throughout the massacre at Nanking. Following is the letter he wrote to the Japanese Embassy.
December 27, 1937
Beginning more than a week ago, we were promised by you that within a
few days order would be restored by replacement of troops, resumption of
regular discipline, increase of military police, and so forth. Yet
shameful disorder continues, and we see no serious effort to stop it.
Let me give a few examples from University property [the University of
Nanking was within the Zone]....
Last night between eleven and twelve o'clock, a motor car with three
Japanese military men came to the main University gate, claiming that
they were sent by headquarters to inspect. They forcibly prevented our
watchman from giving an alarm, and kept him with them while they found
and raped three girls, one of whom is only eleven years old. One of the
girls they took away with them.
Stray soldiers continue to seize men to work for them, causing much fear
and unnecessary inconvenience. For example, a soldier insisted on taking
a worker from the Hospital yesterday; and several of our own servants
and watchmen have been taken.
Several of our residences are entered daily by soldiers looking for
women, food, and other articles. Two houses within one hour this
morning.
...Yesterday seven different times there came groups of three or four
soldiers, taking clothes, food and money from those who have some left
after previous lootings of the same type. They raped seven women,
including a girl of twelve. In the night larger groups of twelve or
fourteen soldiers came four times and raped twenty women.
The life of the whole people is filled with suffering and fear - all
caused by soldiers. Your officers have promised them protection, but the
soldiers every day injure hundreds of persons most seriously. A few
policemen help certain places, and we are grateful for them. But that
does not bring peace and order. Often it merely shifts the bad acts of
the soldiers to nearby buildings where there are no policemen....
While I have been writing this letter, a soldier has forcibly taken a
woman from one of our teachers' houses, and with his revolver refused to
let an American enter. Is this order?
Many people now want to return to their homes, but they dare not because
of rape, robbery, and seizure of men continuing every day and night.
Only serious efforts to enforce orders, using many police and real punishments will be of any
use. In several places the situation is a little better, but it is still
disgraceful after two weeks of army terrorism. More than promises is now
needed.
(Published in American Missionary Eyewitnesses to the Nanking
Massacre, 1937-38, Edited by Martha Lund Smalley, Yale Divinity
School Library, Occasional Publication No. 9, 1997, pp. 31-32.)
John Rabe
John Rabe was a German businessman and leader of the Nazi Party in
Nanking. He saved so many lives during the Nanking Massacre that some
refer to him as the "Oskar Schindler of China." When Rabe returned to
Germany, he wrote to Adolf Hitler, telling him what he had witnessed in
Nanking, and hoped that Hitler could prevent further atrocities by the
Japanese military. Two days later, the Gestapo arrested him.
Fortunately, he was released, but he was warned never to talk publicly
or publish anything about the events taking place in Nanking. The following is an excerpt from the diary of John Rabe.
December 16, 1937
All the shelling and bombing we have thus far experienced are nothing in
comparison to the terror that we are going through now. There is not a
single shop outside our Zone that has not been looted, and now
pillaging, rape, murder, and mayhem are occurring inside the Zone as
well. There is not a vacant house, whether with or without a foreign
flag, that has not been broken into and looted ...
No Chinese even dares set foot outside his house! When the gates to my
garden are opened to let my car leave the grounds - where I have already
taken in over a hundred of the poorest refugees - women and children on
the street outside kneel and bang their heads against the ground,
pleading to be allowed to camp on my garden grounds. You simply cannot
conceive of the misery.
I've just heard that hundreds more disarmed Chinese soldiers have been
led out of our Zone to be shot, including 50 of our police who are to be
executed for letting soldiers in.
The road to Hsiakwan is nothing but a field of corpses strewn with the
remains of military equipment... There are piles of corpses outside the
gate ... It may be that the disarmed Chinese will be forced to do the
job before they're killed. We Europeans are all paralyzed with horror.
There are executions everywhere, some are being carried out with machine
guns outside the barracks of the War Ministry.
(Published in The Good Man of Nanking. The Diaries of John Rabe, Edited by Erwin Wickert,
Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1998, p. 98-102.)
*Source: Human Rights in the Asia Pacific, 1931-1945; BCALPHA
Additional resources:
www.vikingphoenix.com/public/JapanIncorporated/1895-1945/Nanking.htm
www.vikingphoenix.com/public/JapanIncorporated/1895-1945/jpwcmz.htm
www.geocities.com/nankingatrocities/Table/table/htm
www.princeton.edu~nanking/html/body_nanking_gallery
www.columbia.edu/cu/ccba/cer/issues/fall99/textonly/yoshida
www.cnd.org/njmassacre/nj.
www.jca.apc.org/JWRC/center/english/index-english.htm
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Sexual Slavery
An estimated 200,000 women from Korea, the Philippines, China, Burma,
Indonesia and other Japanese occupied territories were forced by the
Japanese military forces to work in brothels. The Japanese soldiers
referred to them as "comfort women". Only about 30% of the women
survived the war. Following is the story of a former "comfort woman" who
is now living in North Korea.
Testimony of Kim Young-shil
"I am Kim Young-shil. I was born on October 23, 1923 and was raised in Yang-gang-do, Bochon County.
It was 1941.One day I encountered a well-dressed man in western clothes.
He asked me if I wanted to have a good job. Thinking that any job would
be better than working as a maid, I accepted his offer and followed him
to where there were already eight other girls ahead of me. They were all
about 14 or 15 years old.
So we all got on a truck, and after about 30 minutes' ride, we arrived
at a place where there were many Japanese soldiers. From there we were
taken north near the border of China and Russia. There was a huge
military camp, and many girls had already arrived before us. A soldier
came up to me and put a name tag on my chest. It had a Japanese name
"Eiko" written on it. He then told me, "From now on, you must not speak
Korean. If you do, we will kill you. Now, your name is Eiko:"
The officer who took us to the camp wore a good-looking uniform with a
three-star insignia. He came into my room that night. Scared, I jumped
up. He sat down, laid his sword on the floor, and proceeded to take off
his clothes. Why was he doing this? Where is my job? I started to cry.
He shouted. "You obey my orders. I will kill you if you don't." He then
held me down and raped me. I was a virgin until that moment.
From the following day on, I was forced to service sex to ten to 20
soldiers every day, and 40 to 50 on Sundays. We were exhausted,
weakened, and some of us could not even eat meals. We were in the state
of “half-dead.” Some girls became really sick and could not recover from
the ordeal. The soldiers took them away. We did not know what happened
to them but we never saw them again. A new batch of girls arrived to
replace the missing ones, like we did.
There was a girl next to my cubicle. She was younger than I, and her
Japanese name was Tokiko. One day an officer overheard her speaking to
me and accused her of speaking Korean. He dragged her out to a field and
ordered all of us to come out there. We all obeyed. He said, "This girl
spoke Korean. So she must die. You will be killed if you do too. Now,
watch how she dies." He drew his sword. Horrified, I closed my eyes and
turned my face away. When I opened my eyes, I saw her severed head on
the ground.
On Sundays we were made especially busy. Soldiers stood in line in front
of our cubicles. …
I was totally exhausted. I could keep neither my sense of humiliation
nor my dignity. I felt like a living corpse. When soldiers came to my
room and did it to me one after another, it was done to a lifeless body.
Again. And again. And again....”
(Excerpted from Comfort Women Speak edited by Sangmie Choi Schellstede,
published by Holmes and Meier, pp. 48 -5 1)
Additional resources:
www.vikingphoenix.com/public/JapanIncorporated/1895-1945/comfort.htm
www.vikingphoenix.com/publc/JapanIncorporated/1895-1945/dwlinks.htm
www.alpha-canada.org/learn/intro.htm
www.sfsu.edu/~soh/cw-links.htm
www.sfsu.edu/~soh/comfortwomen.html
www.icasinc.org/lectures/soh3.html
www.aplconference.ca/resource.html
www.jca.apc.org/JWRC/center/english/index-english.htm
www.jca.org/vaww-net-japan/English/
www.webcom.com/hrin/parker.html
www.webcom.com/hrin/parker/c95-11.html
www.aplconference.ca/resource.html
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Japan's government sponsored experiments into biological and chemical
warfare. Under the leadership of Ishii Shiro, Unit 731 and other similar
units performed tests on living humans. For example they injected
victims with germs to see the effects and to test the effectiveness of
vaccinations. They performed operations on living humans without the use
of anaesthetic. To keep their activities secret, the victims of medical
experiments were then killed. These units killed thousands of POWs and
civilians, mainly from China. Germ-filled bombs produced by these units
were dropped on Chinese cities. Chemical weapons were mass-produced in
Japan and used widely. It is estimated that even today between 600,000
and 2,000,000 shells filled with poisonous chemicals remain buried in
China.
Additional resources:
www.Vikingphoenix.com/public/Japanincorporated/1895-1945/conference08092003.htm
www.Vikingphoenix.com/public/Japanincorporated/1895-1945/u731-1.htm
www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/NajingM
www.fas.org/nuke/guide/japan/bw
www.technologyartist.com/unit731
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
http://en.freepedia.org/Unit_731.html
www.wwpacific.com/unit731.1.html
http://english.people.com.cn/200410/05/eng20041005_159097.html
www.time.com/time/asia/asia/magazine/1999/99081/father1.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2hi/asia-pacific/2218266.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/correspondent/1796044.stm
www.webster-dictionary.org/definition/Unit%20731
www.japantimes.co,jp/cgi-bin/geted.p15?eo20010605al.htm
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