Although China has suffered from internal war and strife, the Han Chinese have seldom invaded another nation outside of what we know as China today in its four-thousand year history. In addition, until the 1980s, China was almost always self-sufficient. After the first emperor unified China, to wage war on neighboring countries to conquer and rule over them was not part of the Chinese character.
Nanking was the capital of China from the third to the 6th century. In the 14th century, the first Ming Emperor made Nanking the capital again. To protect the capital, the largest city wall in the world was built. It was fifty-feet high, forty-feet wide and more than twenty-five miles long.
Part 2 of this video continues the Rape of Nanking and it is so shocking and disturbing, you must go to YouTube and sign in showing that you are at least 18. If you do not wish to watch Part 2, the next post will continue to report about the Rape of Nanking, and it will not be as disturbing.
Part 2, The Rape of Nanking
On July 1937, Japan attacked China, and Chiang Kai-shek was the commander of China’s army and navy. The battle for Shanghai came first. Tens of thousands of innocent Chinese were killed while 300 thousand Chinese troops died. After losing Shanghai, the Chinese army retreated to Nanking.
The Japanese soldiers were ordered to burn all, steal all, and kill all as they advanced through the countryside toward Nanking. It is estimated that 300 thousand innocent Chinese were murdered in that military campaign.
For over one-hundred days, Japanese bombers bombed Nanking, while Chinese troops fought fiercely defending the city. Eventually, Chang Kai-shek fled with most of his generals and government officials, but ordered one general to stay behind with the army and fight.
After Nanking fell to the Japanese, several hundred thousand Chinese civilians were raped and murdered, and during World War II between 3 million to more than 10 million civilians, mostly Chinese, were killed by the Japanese occupation forces.
Continued on January 22, 2013, in The Rape of Nanking – Part 2, and/or discover The Roots of Madness
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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[…] The Rape of Nanking offers a brutal snapshot of what happened to China after Japan invaded in 1937. […]
Would have been better had you posted this on the 75th anniversary last month.
I’m curious where Sun Quan might have built up his palace studying the map when I noticed in a little pocket guide I got from a nice bar owner the other night that there is a place called Sun Palace between Xuanwu lake and the mountain.
Actually, with all the recent hatred towards Japan, I’m tempted to bring it up in class. Ask a student if I throw an eraser at you how do you feel? Hatred? Now if you attack me, lets pretend I have a girlfriend in the classroom. She’ll stand up for me. In a real war setting more than likely she’d be raped, tortured, and gruesomely murdered. At that point another kid in the back of the class stands up and he cant stomach the brutality he will take out the guy. Well, another guy apparently is the ex of my girlfriend and still holds a grudge that I stole his girl, so he’ll side with the opposing student. Lesson is hatred breeds hatred in a continuos chain and it takes a true hero to break that chain and put the past behind them.
With such a long history of war, I’m debating taking a trip to Shanghai or some other city on Halloween. The 600 yr old Ming tomb is creepy in itself during the day with a friend. I cant imagine the people that work security at night at that place, but I’ll take a guess they wear red underwear and depending on their religion either they wear a buddhist bracelet and jade necklace or a cross necklace with a copy of the King James version of the bible tucked in their back pocket.
Japan and China have been at it for centuries. No love lost there. However, if Commodore Matthew Perry of the U.S. Navy had not forced Japan to open its doors to trade with the West and then industrialize in the mid 19th century, there probably would have never been these wars between China and Japan.
1. the first Sino-Japanese War: 1894-1895
2. Japanese occupation of Manchuria and Jehol: 1933
3. Japanese occupation of eastern Inner Mongolia in 1934
4. the second Sino-Japanese War: 1937 – 1945
And farther back we have:
1. Japanese pirates raided Fujian in 1547
2. The Japanese invasion of Korea; China aided Korea: 1592 – 1598
To find evidence of China starting a war with Japan we have to go way back to Kublai Khan during the Yuan Dynasty when the Mongols ruled China. Kublai Khan attempted to invade Japan in 1274 and 1281 and failed both times.