Reading Room

Nanjing

"Thousands of men were led out of the [Nanjing International Safety] Zone, ostensibly for labour battalions, and lined up and machine-gunned. Sometimes groups were used for bayonet exercises. When the victors grew bored with such mild sport they tied their victims, poured kerosene over their heads, and cremated them alive. Others were taken out to empty trenches, and told to simulate Chinese soldiers. Japanese officers then led their men in assaults to capture these "enemy positions" and bayoneted the unarmed defenders."--Edgar Snow, Scoched Earth, London (1941), p. 62.

Bayonetting POWs and captured civilians.

Two Japanese officers, Toshiaki Mukai and Iwa Noda, held a competition of beheading Chinese. They denied the accusation as "imagination" but were confronted with the above evidence published in Tokyo Nicinichi Shimbun. They were executed in 1947 in Nanjing.

Postcard sent back to Japan

For those with sturdy hearts, there is this confession of vivisection.