Execution of Japanese soldier who beheaded 300 people JJ

18 September 1931. Japan, seeking raw materials to fuel its growing industries, invades Manchuria – an industrial area located in Northeastern China known for its rich mineral and coal reserves. In the following years, there will be various “incidents”, or armed clashes of a limited nature between the Empire of the Rising Sun and the Republic of China but full-scale war will not break out between the two countries until the Marco Polo Bridge Incident on 7 July 1937. This marks the beginning  of the Second Sino-Japanese

War that will end only with Japan’s surrender on 2 September 1945. During this war, which is the prelude to the Pacific side of World War II, the Japanese army scores major victories, capturing Beijing and Shanghai and in December of 1937, the Japanese military invades Nanjing, then China’s capital. In Nanjing, the Japanese  soldiers commit unspeakable atrocities and engage in a campaign of mass killing which over the course of two months will claim the lives of as many as 300,000 civilians and numerous unarmed Chinese soldiers.

One of the men responsible for these atrocities is a Japanese Army captain Gunkichi Tanaka. Gunkichi Tanaka was born on 19 March 1905 in Tokyo, Japan. After attending military preparatory schools, Tanaka graduated from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy which was the principal officer’s training school for the Imperial Japanese Army. The training curriculum included college-level general education courses, traditional martial arts and horsemanship. After completing the two-year junior portion of training at Asaka in Saitama, cadets were

assigned for eight months to infantry regiments to become familiar with Army weaponry and platoon leadership skills before resuming studies in the 1-year, 8-month senior program at Sagamihara in Kanagawa. Upon graduation, cadets became apprentice officers with the grade of sergeant-major (but who were treated as officers), and after the successful completion of four months probation in their assigned regiments, were formally commissioned as second lieutenants. Conflict in Asia between Japan and China began with the Invasion of Manchuria, well before

the official start of World War II. As part of earlier treaty agreements, the Japanese had troops protecting the railroad in Southern Manchuria. However Japan wanted to expand their control over Chinese Manchuria so on September 18, 1931 the Japanese planted a small explosive device next to the tracks owned by Japan’s South Manchuria Railroad near the city of Mukden. The explosion that followed became known as the Mukden incident. Though damage to the railway was minimal, it provided an excuse for the Japanese for

the speedy and unauthorized capture of Mukden, now Shenyang, and to seize all the cities along the railroad. Despite Chinese opposition, the Japanese continued to advance and by February 27, 1932, the last Chinese opposing the Japanese were forced to surrender and all of Manchuria was in Japanese hands. A few days later on the 1 March the Japanese established the puppet state of Manchukuo which was dissolved only on 18 August 1945 after the Japanese Emperor Hirohito had announced the unconditional surrender of the Japanese military 3 days earlier.

The Japanese Army invaded Manchuria without the approval of the civilian government in Japan and without declarations of war, breaching the rules of the League of Nations. There were 2 major reasons for the invasion. The first reason was that Japan had a highly developed industry, but the land was scarce of natural resources. As a result, it turned to Chinese Manchuria for oil, coal, rubber, lumber and other raw materials in order to make up for the lack of resources in Japan. The second reason was that Japan saw Manchuria as a buffer state against encroachments of

its interests by the Soviet Union from Siberia. Since the invasion of Manchuria, there were various “incidents”, or armed clashes of a limited nature between the Empire of Japan and the Republic of China, but all had subsided. However, this changed on the night of July 7, 1937, when a small Japanese force on maneuvers near the Marco Polo Bridge demanded entry to the tiny walled town of Wanping in order to search for one of their soldiers. However, the Chinese garrison in the town refused the Japanese entry; a shot was heard,

and the two sides began firing. The Chinese government, under strong anti-Japanese pressure, refused to make any concessions in the negotiation of the dispute and the Japanese also maintained their position. As a result, the conflict continued to grow, with larger forces committed by both sides and fighting spread to other parts of China. Following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, which marked the beginning  of The Second Sino-Japanese War or War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression between 1937–1945, the Japanese

scored major victories, capturing Beijing, Shanghai and the Chinese capital of Nanjing in 1937, which resulted in the Nanjing Massacre also known as the Rape of Nanjing. The Battle of Shanghai which lasted from August 13, 1937, to 26 November the same year, was one of the largest and bloodiest battles of the entire war. It was later described as “Stalingrad on the Yangtze” and is often regarded as the battle where World War II started. Gunkichi Tanaka took part in the battle as a company commander in the 6th division’s

45th Regiment. After over three months of extensive fighting on land, in the air and at sea, the battle of Shanghai concluded with a victory for Japan. The battle can be divided into three stages, and eventually involved nearly one million troops. The first stage lasted from August 13 to August 22, 1937, during which the National Revolutionary Army of the Republic of China attempted to eradicate Japanese troop presence in downtown Shanghai. The second stage lasted from August 23 to October 26, 1937, during which the Japanese

launched amphibious landings on the Jiangsu coast and the two armies fought a Stalingrad-like house-to-house battle, with  the Japanese attempting to gain control of the city and the surrounding regions. The last stage, ranging from October 27 to the end of November 1937, involved the retreat of the Chinese army in the face of Japanese flanking maneuvers, and the ensuing combat on the road to China’s capital, Nanjing. The Japanese General Iwane Matsui, who drove the Chinese Army from Shanghai and had the

10th Army with which he would capture Nanjing under his command, made it clear to his superiors that he was determined to capture the capital city of China, Nanjing, which lay 300 kilometers west of Shanghai. Matsui forcefully asserted that the war with China would not end until Nanjing was under their control, and he envisaged that the fall of Nanjing would result in the total collapse of Chiang Kai-shek’s government. Although the massacre is generally described as having occurred over a six-week period

after the fall of Nanjing, the crimes committed by the Japanese army were not limited to that period alone. Many atrocities were reported to have been committed as the Japanese army advanced from Shanghai to Nanjing. Perhaps the most notorious atrocity was a killing contest between two Japanese officers Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda as reported in the Tokyo newspaper. The contest—a race between the two officers to see who could kill 100 people first using only a sword—was covered much like a sporting event with regular updates on the score over

a series of days. The Japanese military continued to move forward, breaching the last lines of Chinese resistance, and arriving outside the city gates of Nanjing on December 9. With the reports of Japanese brutality, most of the civilian population of Nanjing had already fled out of fear. Wealthy families were the first to flee, leaving Nanjing in automobiles, followed by the evacuation of the middle class and then the poor, while only the destitute lowest class such as the ethnic Tanka boat people remained behind.

Three quarters of the population had fled Nanjing before the Japanese arrived. The foreigners in Nanjing created the Nanjing Safety Zone, managed by the International Committee for the Nanjing Safety Zone led by German businessman and Nazi party member, John Rabe. The zone and the activities of the International Committee were responsible for safely harboring 250,000 Chinese civilians from death and violence during the Nanjing Massacre. It was a safe haven in the city for women, children and other noncombatants.

The Japanese troops did respect the Zone to an extent. Until the Japanese occupation, no shells entered that part of the city except for a few stray shots. During the chaos following the attack of the city, some were killed in the Safety Zone, but the crimes that occurred in the rest of the city were far greater by all accounts. At noon on December 9, the Japanese military dropped leaflets into the city, urging the city of Nanjing to surrender within 24 hours, promising “no mercy” if the offer was refused.

No response was received from the Chinese by the deadline on December 10 and the General Iwane Matsui waited another hour before issuing the command to take Nanjing by force. On December 12, under heavy artillery fire and aerial bombardment, General Tang Sheng-chi, the commander of the Nanjing Garrison during the city’s siege who had earlier announced the city would not surrender and would fight to the death, ordered his men to retreat. What followed was nothing short of chaos; some Chinese soldiers stripped civilians of

their clothing in a desperate attempt to blend in, and many others were shot by the Chinese supervisory unit as they tried to flee. On 13 December, the 6th and the 116th Divisions of the Japanese Army were the first to enter the city, facing little military resistance. From December 13, 1937, the Japanese Army including captain Gunkichi Tanaka, engaged in random murder, wartime rape, looting, arson, and other war crimes. They hunted down and killed suspected Chinese soldiers and summarily arrested thousands

of young Chinese men. Many innocent men were misidentified and killed in the process. Thousands were taken to the Yangtze River, where they were machine-gunned to death. Many Chinese soldiers were  blown up with landmines, then doused with petrol and set on fire; and those who survived were killed with bayonets. Japanese soldiers also beheaded a number of Chinese prisoners of war. During the massacre, Tanaka used his sword named “ Sukehiro” to kill more than 300 prisoners of war and civilians. Many of them were beheaded.

He was also portrayed in the Yamanaka Minetaro’s propaganda book “Imperial Soldiers”. In the book Tanaka is portrayed as a heroic fighter and in one photo he is photographed in Nanjing cutting off the head of a civilian with beloved sword “Sukehiro”. The Japanese also massacred families living outside the Safety Zone, and raped tens of thousands of women. On one occasion, a Chinese woman, Mrs. Ha, had asked the Japanese soldiers why they had murdered her husband. Before finally killing both her and her baby with a bayonet in the chest, they shot Mrs.

Ha and raped her. The number of Chinese women raped by Japanese soldiers ranged from 20,000 to 80,000, including some children and the elderly. A large number of rapes were done systematically by the Japanese soldiers as they went from door to door, searching for girls, with many women being captured and gang-raped. Immediately after the women were then often killed through explicit mutilation. A former Japanese soldier named Shiro Azuma spoke candidly about the process of rape and murder in Nanjing: “ It would be all right if we only raped them.

I shouldn’t say all right. But we always stabbed and killed them. Because dead bodies don’t talk.” After being raped by the Japanese soldiers, the victims were often photographed. There were also accounts of Japanese troops coercing families to commit incestuous acts. Sons were forced to rape their mothers, fathers were forced to rape their daughters, and brothers were forced to rape their sisters. Instead of punishing the Japanese troops who were responsible for wholesale rape, The Japanese

expeditionary Force in Central China issued an order to set up comfort houses during this period of time. The Japanese army also looted the city and burned down many buildings, one-third of the city was destroyed as a result of arson. Such crime continued from three to six weeks depending on the types of crime. As many as 300,000 civilians and numerous unarmed Chinese soldiers were killed over the course of two months. The chaos, fires, and mass graves make a precise count of casualties impossible.

The violence subsided in February 1938, after the establishment of a Chinese led, Japanese influenced government. After the war, Tanaka was not among those on the list of war criminals responsible for the Rape of Nanjing, but in April 1947 the War Criminals Commission received a request from the Chinese delegation in Japan to extradite Tanaka to China as a war criminal. On 14 May 1947 the request to add him to the list of those to be tried in connection with the Rape of Nanjing was approved. 4 days later he was extradited to Shanghai, China, and held in the war criminal detention

center before being moved to Nanjing on May 22. On 12 December 1947, the Nanjing war crimes tribunal began Tanaka’s public trial for war crimes. On December 17, the Ministry of Defense Military Tribunal combined Tanaka’s case with that of Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda known for the infamous contest over who could behead 100 people the fastest using their sword. During the trial, Gunkichi Tanaka refused to confess to any of the charges brought against him. Tanaka’s defense – regarding the photo in which he is cutting off the head of a civilian

with his sword “Sukehiro” – was that the people in the photo were wearing short-sleeves, meaning that it could not have been taken during the Rape of Nanjing, which happened in winter. However, the prosecutor answered that it was entirely possible to remove one’s jacket in the commission of brutal acts. At the trial, Tanaka, who during the Nanjing massacre had been a captain in a division of lieutenant general Tani Hisao, said: „ Yes, I was part of Tani Hisao’s unit but I had nothing to do with the Rape of Nanjing.

The killing of 300 people depicted in the book Imperial Soldiers was only propaganda intended to paint me as a heroic fighter. It was not a fact, it was imagined up by the author. You can ask all the gods of heaven and earth and they will attest that I had nothing to do with the Rape of Nanjing”. However, his lies did not help him escape justice. Tanaka, Mukai and Noda were found guilty of having successively massacred prisoners and non-combatants during the Battle of Nanjing and the subsequent massacre, and sentenced

to death. On 28 January 1948, all three – Mukai, Noda and Tanaka were executed by shooting in the mountains of the Yuhuatai District. Mukai and Noda were both 35 years old, Tanaka was 42. There were no tears shed for Gunkichi Tanaka. Thanks for watching the World History  Channel be sure to like And subscribe and click the Bell notification  icon so you don’t miss our next episodes we thank you and we’ll  see you next time on the channel.