Dragon's Junket: Nánjīng

342 miles round trip, approx

I made a detour to Nánjīng which is around two hours by rail from Shanghai to visit the’ Memorial Hall of the Victims of the 'Nánjīng Massacre’ http://www.nj1937.org/english/default.asp. I had learned of this dark chapter in Chinese history whilst researching my trip and I could not believe that something as barbaric as this happened during such recent history. It truly goes beyond any other horror of war that I have ever known of due to its arbitrary cruelty that seemed to have been purely for the sadistic and fleeting pleasure of soldiers.

The Nanking Massacre or Nánjīng Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking, was a mass murder and war rape that occurred during the six-week period following the Japanese capture of the city of Nanking (Nanjing), the former capital of the Republic of China, on December 13, 1937

This is the Y - Z section of folios that contain details of murdered Chinese people.

An accurate estimation of the death toll in the massacre has not been achieved because most of the Japanese military records on the killings were deliberately destroyed or kept secret shortly after the surrender of Japan in 1945 but it believed that no fewer than 369,366 Chinese men, women and children were killed

Children killed by the Japanese

The bombing of Shanghai Railway Station that started the Japanese invasion.

As the Japanese army poured into the city, fleeing residents were shot or bayoneted. Thousands of suspected members of the Chinese Army who had shed their uniforms for civilian clothing, were apprehended, their hands tied behind their backs and led en mass to killing fields where they were shot, beheaded, used for bayonet practice or killed in some other gruesome manner before being dumped into mass graves. Thousands of others were buried while still alive.

Bodies piled up along the Yangtze

A young boy is trussed up to be used as machete and target practice.

A Chinese man's head has been placed on a fence with a cigarette butt put in his mouth. Japanese humour.

Rape was rampant as thousands of women were repeatedly forced into brutal sex and often murdered once the lust of their attackers had been satisfied. Many women were reported to have been raped up to twenty times a day before being humiliated then slaughtered in a ritual way that culminated in having machetes stabbed into their vaginas.