The Rape of Nanking essays

The Rape of Nanking essays I have read the book titled The Rape of Nanking. This book is appropriately titled due to the subject matter it covers. It covers an incident during World War II known as The Rape of Nanking. The book was written by Iris Chang and is two hundred and thirty pages long with an additional twenty four pages of pictures. The Rape of Nanking was an incident that occurred in December of 1937. Nanking at this time was the capital city of Nationalist China. During this incident Japanese soldiers raped, tortured, and killed Chinese soldiers and civilians totaling nearly three hundred thousand people. The official date that is credited to the day when Nanking fell is December 13, 1937. The Chinese government was forced to regroup elsewhere as the Japanese controlled this city until the war ended eight years later in 1945. Nanking wasnt the only part of China the Japanese controlled. It was where the worst atrocities took place and where the Chinese people were hurt the most. It all started with Japan taking the city of Manchuria. Quickly to be taken over after that were Chahar, Hopeh, Peking, Tiensin, Shangai, and then Nanking. The reasons for the Japanese attempt to takeover China were Japan had its own master race theory and they wanted to rule Asia. The reasons Nanking is remembered are the massive amounts of deaths in a short period of time and the manners in which these deaths and brutalities were committed. Statistics show that Certain countries had less civilian casualties in the entire war then the city of Nanking had in a few weeks. For example: Great Britain(61,000 civilian casualties), France(108,000 civilian casualties), and Belgium(242,000 civilian casualties). Some of the atrocities included thousands of men being dragged out to fields to be used as machine gun practice targets, people being buried alive, husbands being forced to rape their wive...