THE RAPE OF NANKING, 1937 Term Paper

During the 1920s, Japan launched an aggressive economic penetration of the Chinese province of Manchuria. To protect their investments in Manchuria, the Japanese government established a new Manchurian army command, the Kwantung Army.

The Kwantung Army enjoyed considerable autonomy in Manchuria; it reported directly to Japanese Emperor Hirohito and was not subject to civilian control. For some time senior Japanese military had been seeking an “incident” to gain full control over Manchuria. On 18 September 1931, during night maneuvers near Mukden, the Japanese military claimed they had been attacked by Chinese troops. Seizing upon this “incident,” the Japanese army occupied all of Manchuria, renamed it Manchuko, and established Puyi, the last Chinese emperor, as their puppet head of state.

Well aware that China’s Nationalist government, led by Chiang Kai-shek, was not strong enough to reclaim Manchuria, the Japanese military eagerly sought another “incident” to extend Japanese influence into north China. On 7 July 1937, Japanese troops stationed in Beijing conducted night maneuvers west of the city near the Marco Polo Bridge. Mistakenly, the Japanese commander thought the Chinese army had captured one of his soldiers and ordered an attack on a nearby Chinese garrison.

The Marco Polo Bridge incident marked the opening of eight years of brutal warfare between China and Japan. From the beginning of the conflict the Japanese military targeted Chinese civilians for special treatment. Japanese aircraft bombed and strafed Chinese cities. By late November Japanese troops had captured Beijing and Shanghai and were besieging Nanking. On 13 December 1937, Japanese forces captured Nanking and initiated a horrifying policy of massacre, rape, and genocide resulting in the death of more than 350,000 civilians. By 1945 more than 1.3 million Chinese soldiers had died in the Sino-Japanese War and approximately 3 million Chinese civilians had been killed.
Suggestions for Term Papers
1. Emperor Hirohito (1926–1989) chose the word Showa or “bright peace” at the time of his enthronement as the name of his reign. Investigate the life of Emperor Hirohito and assess Showa as a descriptor for his reign.
2. Read Puyi’s autobiography (see Suggested Sources) as part of a review of the Japanese takeover of Manchuria. What role did he play as the Japanese puppet ruler of Manchuria?
3. Examine the photographs in Shi Young and James Yin’s The Rape of Nanking: An Undeniable History in Photographs (see Suggested Sources) and write a paper focusing on the experiences of Chinese women during the Japanese occupation of the city.
4. Iris Chang titles her book The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (see Suggested Sources). Write a paper on why the Japanese rape of Nanking was “forgotten.”
5. Evaluate the importance of the Sino-Japanese War in Japan’s decision to attack the United States at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.
6. To what extent did the participation of the Chinese Communist Party in the war against Japan contribute to its victory in 1949 over the Chinese Nationalists?

Research Suggestions

In addition to the boldfaced items, look under the entries for “Mao Zedong and the Long March, 1934–1935” (#25), “Kita Ikki and Ultranationalism in Japan, 1936–1937” (#27), “The Holocaust, 1941–1945” (#34), and “The Victory of the Chinese Communist Party, 1949” (#46). Search under Battle of Nomonhan, Panay Incident, and Pearl Harbor.
SUGGESTED SOURCES

Primary Sources

Chang, Jung. Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China. New York: Anchor Books, 1991. The third chapter of this memoir focuses on the Japanese occupation of Manchuria.

Letcher, John S. Good-bye to Old Peking: The Wartime Letters of U.S. Marine Captain John Seymour Letcher, 1937–1939. Edited by Roger B. Jeans and Katie Letcher Lyle. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1998. Captain Letcher commanded the Marine Guard at the U.S. Embassy at the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war. Good insights into daily life.

Puyi, Henry. The Last Manchu: The Autobiography of Henry Puyi, Last Emperor of China. Edited by Paul Kramer. Translated by Kuo Ying Paul Tsai. New York: Putnam, 1967. A good insight into Japanese occupation policies in Manchuria.

Rabe, John. The Good Man of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe. Translated by John E. Woods. New York: Knopf, 1998. John Rabe was a German businessman in Nanking who is credited with saving thousands of Chinese from slaughter. His diaries are a damning record of the genocide.

Secondary Sources

Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. New York: Basic Books, l997. The most recent and accessible account of the tragedy. Chang also examines why China and the United States have not pressed Japan for a complete accounting of why Japan treated China so harshly.

Duus, Peter, et al. The Japanese Wartime Empire, 1931–1945. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Based on a Stanford University conference, this collection has fresh interpretations of Japan’s occupation policy in China.

Ineaga, Saburo. The Pacific War: 1931–1941. Translated by Frank Baldwin. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. Written by a leading Japanese scholar who shows how Japanese misconceptions of China led to unwarranted, brutal policies of occupation.

Iriye, Akira. “Japanese Aggression and China’s International Position, 1931–1949.” In Cambridge History of China 13, part 2. Edited by John K. Fairbank and Denis Twitchett, 492–540. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. Within a brief compass this gives a good overview of the plight of China during this period.

Wilson, Dick. When Tigers Fight: The Story of the Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1945. New York: Viking Press, 1982. A crisp account of the war that emphasizes the racial character of Japanese aggression.

Young, Shi, and James Yin. The Rape of Nanking: An Undeniable History in Photographs. 2nd ed. Chicago: Innovative Publishing Group, 1997. A shocking collection of photographs documenting the assault on Nanking.