Click2Flicks - Flags Of Our Fathers: The Story Behind the Movie, Chapter 4, Death in China

<body link="0000ff" alink="ff0000" vlink="000000" bgcolor=000033> <table width="100%" bgcolor=000033> <tr> <td align=center valign=top> <table width=90% bgcolor=ffffff> <tr> <td align=center valign=top> <tr> <td> <div align=center><p><b><font face="arial, helvetica" size=5 color=000000><b><i>FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS</i></p> <p><font size="4">CHAPTER 4 - DEATH IN CHINA</b></font></p> </div>  <center> <table width="90%"> <tr> <td align="left" valign="top"> <div align="justify"> <p><font face="arial, helvetica" color="000000" size="3">Are there firsthand accounts of Japan’s invasion of China? F. Tillman, a <i>New York Times</i> reporter, witnessed events in Nanjing (then called Nanking). His report, "<a href="http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/nanking.html" target="_blank"><b>All Captives Slain</b></a>," was published in the newspaper on December 18, 1937 (pages 1 and 10). Having witnessed numerous atrocities, Tillman observed:</p> <blockquote><font face="Times New Roman"><b><i>The capture of Nanking was the most overwhelming defeat suffered by the Chinese and one of the most tragic military debacles in the history of modern warfare. In attempting to defend Nanking the Chinese allowed themselves to be surrounded and then systematically slaughtered...</i></b></font></blockquote> <p align="justify"><font face="arial, helvetica">As bodies piled up in the city, Japanese soldiers allowed few (if any) provisions to be made for burials. Tillman continues:</p> <blockquote><font face="Times New Roman"><b><i>The Japanese appear to want the horrors to remain as long as possible, to impress on the Chinese the terrible results of resisting Japan.</i></b></font></blockquote> <p align="justify"><font face="arial, helvetica">What did Japanese officials say about these events? <a target="_blank" href="images/koki.jpg"><b>Hirota Koki</b></a> (while he was Japan’s foreign minister) sent a cable to the Japanese Embassy in Washington (on 17 January 1938) regarding a report of casualties <a target="_blank" href="images/in_nanjing.gif"><b>in Nanjing</b></a>. Most scholars believe that Koki - later <a target="_blank" href="images/sentenced_death.jpg"><b>sentenced to death</b></a> at the Japanese War Crimes trial in Manilla - was forwarding information (which Koki himself disbelieved) from <i> Manchester Guardian</i> reporter Harold Timperley (who may have been elsewhere at the time of the Nanjing killings).</p> <p>Koki’s cables (there were actually two - #175 and #176) were intercepted by American intelligence, at the time, and later publicly released by the U.S. National Archives (in September of 1994). The forwarded <a target="_blank" href="images/cable_176.gif"><b>cable (#176)</b></a>, which deals with Nanjing and its environs, states, among other things: "(Not) less than three hundred thousand Chinese slaughtered." Actual numbers of people killed in the Nanjing vicinity are still hotly (and <a href="http://www.warbirdforum.com/massacre.htm" target="_blank"><b>bitterly</b></a>) debated.</p> <p>Various <a href="http://www.edogawa-u.ac.jp/~tmkelly/nanking/nanking_biblio.html" target="_blank"><b>Japanese authors</b></a> have objectively tried to help their country come to terms with atrocities their military committed in Nanjing, and elsewhere in China. Some of <a href="http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/reviewsg1.htm" target="_blank"><b>the authors</b></a> interviewed Chinese survivors (who told of horrifying events) and further relied on other primary sources (such as pictures taken by Japanese soldiers, maps, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0375701974/ref=sib_dp_pt/002-8221377-9393637#reader-link" target="_blank"><b>diaries</b></a> and interviews with Japanese officers).</p> <p>The extent of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0140277447/ref=sib_dp_pt/002-8221377-9393637#reader-link" target="_blank"><b>the brutality</b></a>,  by soldiers from a civilized society, is impossible to comprehend. Although many primary sources of the time <a href="http://www.archives.gov/iwg/reports/japanese-interim-report-march-2002-1.html#disposition" target="_blank"><b>were destroyed</b></a>, some of the following pictures of war - which are the least shocking of those available at various national archives - are gruesome:</p><ul> <li>Japanese soldiers <a target="_blank" href="images/enter_Nanjing.jpg"><b>enter Nanjing</b></a> (Nanking) in 1937.</li><br><br> <li>In Tokyo, <a target="_blank" href="images/street_banners.jpg"><b>street banners</b></a> proclaimed: “To the fall of Nanjing. To the victory of the Imperial Army.”</li><br><br> <li>Bodies of mass-execution victims were buried in a <a target="_blank" href="images/place.jpg"><b>place</b></a> called “Ten Thousand Corpse Ditch.”</li><br><br> <li>It is claimed that army recruits practiced <a target="_blank" href="images/bayonet_thrusts.jpg"><b>bayonet thrusts</b></a> on live victims.</li><br><br> <li>Hora Tomio included <a target="_blank" href="images/military_pictures.jpg"><b>military pictures</b></a> in his book <i>The Great Nanjing Massacre and the Kill All, Loot All, Burn All War</i>. <a href="http://prion.bchs.uh.edu/~zzhang/1/Nanking_Massacre/image11.jpg" target="_blank"><b>They</b></a> were <a target="_blank" href="images/marked.jpg"><b>marked</b></a> by military censors “Not Allowed” for publication.</li></ul> <p>Members of the same Japanese military who invaded China - about 22,000 of them - were sent to defend the Pacific island of Iwo Jima.</p> </div> <center> <p align="center"><font size="2"><a href="flags_fathers_ch3.htm">GO TO LAST CHAPTER</a>   <a href="flags_fathers_ch1.htm">BACK TO FIRST CHAPTER</a>   <a href="flags_fathers_ch5.htm">GO TO NEXT CHAPTER</p><br> </a> </td> </tr> </table>  </td> </tr> </table>  </td> </tr> </table> </body>