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Japanese mass violence and its victims in the Fifteen
Years War (1931-45)
Japanese mass violence and its victims in the “Fifteen Years’ War” (1931-45)
Arnaud DOGLIA
Overview
From the end of the 19th century until 1945, Japan positioned itself among the world’s great powers
as a colonial nation. Following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, there was clearly a desire to transform
Japan into a nation capable of competing with, as well as resisting, the Western powers.
Subsequently, following a number of war victories, neighbouring territories were gradually turned
into colonies. By the end of the 1930s, and apart from China, most of Northeast Asia had come under
Japanese domination. The Kuril Islands (1875, acquired through the signature of a treaty), Taiwan
(1895), the Southern half of Sakhalin (1905), the Kwantung Leased Territory (1905), Korea (1910)
and the Pacific islands under Japanese mandate (1919) had been integrated into the emerging
sphere of Japanese influence. This shows that Japan’s expansion followed three different directions:
Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with islands taken from Germany.
This context served the interests of the military and political elites in Tokyo: nationalism was on the
rise in Japan, and the victories attained in the recent past served as reminders that Japan had a
mission to fulfil in extending and securing its newly acquired overseas territories. With this aim, the
Kwantung Army (関東軍 kantô gun) was established in 1919 to protect Japanese interests on the
continent. Korea (annexed in 1910) and Southern Manchuria (where Japanese economic interests
were increasingly significant) were subsequently presented to the Japanese population as a sort of
Eldorado after the Great Depression of 1929 in a major propaganda campaign by the government.
The nationalists presented further colonisation of the Asian continent as the only available option to
ensure the survival of the Japanese Empire, notably through achieving economic autarky. Even
though Japan was expanding in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, the Tokyo elite believed that this
objective would only be attained if Tokyo managed to control Northeast Asia.
The Japanese colonial authorities were grimly aware of growing tensions between local populations
(harassed by Japanese ultranationalist movements) and newly arrived Japanese settlers in
Manchuria. These tensions were a pretext for the Japanese military stationed on the continent to
increase the pressure on the Chinese authorities in Southern Manchuria, where a local warlord,
Zhang Zuolin, only eliminated in 1928, held sway. On 18 September 1931, the Kwantung Army
sabotaged railway lines owned by the South Manchuria Railway Company and immediately blamed
China for the deed. It is therefore clear that one cannot consider the Japanese army as a whole,
acting in the same way everywhere. Indeed, this episode demonstrates the level of autonomy
possessed by this specific structure: the Kwangtung Army played a major role in triggering the
conflict.
This affair is known today as the “Manchuria Incident“ (満州事変 manshû jihen) and retains very special
significance in Japan, not only as a sign of Japanese imperialism and aggression, but also as the
starting point of a military campaign to gain control over China (Matsusaka, 2001: 349-387). Less
than a year later, the whole of Manchuria had come under Japanese control and the puppet state of
Manchukuo had been created by the ultranationalist leaders of the Kwantung Army, under the
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supervision of the government in Tokyo. On 28 January 1932, another event, this time staged by the
Japanese Army in Shanghai, triggered the “First Shanghai Incident” (上海事変 shanghai jihen), which was
to last until 3 March of the same year. In 1934, following the refusal of the League of Nations to
recognise the legitimacy and independence of Manchukuo, Japan withdrew from the body, thereby
exacerbating its diplomatic and political isolation.
It was in this context that began for Japan what is, from a contemporary Western perspective, known
as World War II, but which Japanese specialists know as the “Fifteen Years’ War”
(十五年戦争 jûgo nen sensô). This expression was coined by historian and philosopher Tsurumi Shunsuke
(鶴見俊輔) in 1956. From the Japanese point of view and a posteriori, not only is the timeframe different,
but also the very denomination of the conflict changes. Today, the war that began in 1931 can be
understood as a long-term experiment in mass violence against an Asian, mainly Chinese, enemy; it
acquired another dimension only in December 1941 with the attack on Pearl Harbor, triggering a war
against the Americans as well. A few days later, the war had become known in Japan as “The Greater
East Asia War” (大東亜戦争 daitôa sensô – the use of this term was prohibited by the occupying powers on
15 December 1945), and was seen as a means of “liberating” Asian countries from Western
imperialism and replacing it with Japanese leadership. This shifted the emphasis to the Asian
experience of the war (Narita, 2005: 10-11). Indeed, since the first ten years of the war are
considered almost exclusively as a conflict between China and Japan, it is hardly surprising that they
are often omitted from Western narratives of the Second World War. Conversely, and although the
war ended for the Japanese population in August 1945, some historians contend that World War II did
not really end in 1945, but in 1952, with the end of the Allied forces’ occupation of the Japanese
archipelago (Dower, 1999: 25). Another good example of such nuances in historical perspective can
be found in the way the “Nanking Massacre” of 1937-38 (see below) began to be discussed by
scholars in the West only during the 1990s – some 20 years after the topic emerged in Japan as an
historiographical debate (Fogel, 2000, Iwasaki & Richter, 2005: 367-70). Regarding medical atrocities
and biological weapons, see Nie and al (2010) for the most recent study available in the West, and
Williams & Wallace (1989) for the oldest.
Today the conflict is also known in Japan as the “Asia-Pacific War” (アジア・太平洋戦争 ajia-taiheiyô sensô),
but one can also identify this series of events as the “Sino-Japanese War” (日中戦争 nicchû sensô), which
preceded the “Pacific War” (太平洋戦争 taiheiyô sensô). An overview is not the place for large
interpretative analysis of events; however, the distinctions between the various ways of
understanding the war (as irrelevant as they might seem to the untrained eye) are essential in order
better to grasp its mechanisms, for the following reasons.
First, the very denomination “Fifteen Years’ War” is a statement that identifies one’s perspective on
World War II as being after the events, and a Japanese one, as it reflects an experience
predominantly centred on Asia and, especially, Japan. For the Western reader, this represents an
interesting focal point, different from what is commonly observed in Europe, which tends to
concentrate on Nazi Germany as the main “enemy”.
Second, it is impossible to grasp the extent of Japanese mass violence from a purely Western
perspective. For the serious historian working on this topic, sources in the Japanese language are
essential, not only to understand facts and access archives written almost exclusively in Japanese,
but also to situate the extent to which Japanese scholars and citizens have investigated acts
perpetrated by their own fellow citizens. As such, it removes the debate from the realm of clichés,
and particularly the common assertion that the “duty of memory” carried out in Europe is still a
taboo topic that has been left untouched in Japan. As we shall see, this is not the case.
The attack on Pearl Harbor marked the start of a spiral of hostility against Western powers, but, as
we shall demonstrate below, a chronology of mass violence needs to begin with the experience of
the conflict in China if one is truly to understand the impact of events in the Asia-Pacific area. Given
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that the vast majority of the victims were Asian (mostly Chinese), a summary starting in 1939 or
1942 would simply not take into account the numerous cases of brutality that occurred and would
therefore give a reduced sense of their very plurality. Is it also necessary to add that while 15 August
marks the end of the war from a “standard” – read: Western – perspective, the conflict only ended on
22 August from Moscow’s point of view?
It is therefore clear that this timeframe differs from what is considered standard in the West. Not
only because the Sino-Japanese War is not directly linked to Western countries, but also because it is
justified by the Japanese perspective. This may go without saying, but nevertheless must be clarified
in order better to understand a perspective on mass violence and the very notion of a “Second World
War” that does not really dovetail with conventional European view. This does not, however, make
the case of Japanese mass violence in Asia and the Pacific unique, as is often implied in Western
historiography on the subject. There is no need for superlatives or the use of a “sensational” wording
in an attempt to quantify and qualify the supposed specificity said to make Japanese exactions
different from those of other nations. Nor is there an intrinsic sense or definition of Japanese violence
per se, even though the specificities of the topic will be approached chronologically below, in an
attempt to highlight their emergence and recurrence along a specific timeline (Fujitani, White and
Yoneyama, 2001).
As with many cases of mass violence, the number of victims poses serious problems of
historiography that need to be addressed. A timeline is not the place to debate such a question, but
it must nevertheless be said that most of the cases examined below present problems, whether of
conflicting viewpoints that negate the death toll or augment it in order to politicise it, or of
contradictory or incomplete sources, both preventing the historian from establishing a clear and
precise number. Our decision to rate an event with one, two or three stars stems not so much from
whether or not it took place, but rather indicates conflicting sources and a lack of concurrent
detailed testimonies. In other words, it is certain that the vast majority of episodes set out here did
occur; what is less certain is their precise corroboration due to the unstable nature of war
testimonies, reflected here in the classification given.
Beyond this matter also lies the decision of whether to enter into a debate regarding the total
number of victims. This carries the risk of classifying and quantifying events and the number of
deaths they entailed, thereby giving some of them precedence on the basis of their death toll. It also
places a localised event and a number on the same line. Worse, the danger of entering into a debate
on numbers (数の論争 sû no ronsô as used by Japanese scholars) is that it can lead the historian astray,
involving him in the politicisation of the event itself, where his true role is to contextualise and
explain. When necessary, a summary clarification will be given concerning the estimated number of
victims of specific events (or the absence of estimates). The chronology of Japanese mass violence
during the “Fifteen Years’ War” can therefore be subdivided into the following three periods:
1) From the birth of Manchukuo to the Second Sino-Japanese war (1931-37);
2) War against China (1937-41)
3) War in the Pacific (1941-45)
1) From the birth of Manchukuo to the Second Sino-Japanese
war (1931-37)
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On 1 March 1932, the independent State of Manchukuo (満州国 manshûkoku) was proclaimed by the
Kwantung Army. Its independence was recognised by the Japanese government and Emperor
Hirohito (昭和天皇 shôwa tennô) on 15 September of the same year. Although the country was a puppet
state subordinated to Japanese authorities, its foundation signalled, from an Asian perspective, the
beginning of the war. In this context and notwithstanding the case of China, not a Japanese territory,
it goes without saying that mass violence was first and foremost colonial violence, and the vast
majority of the victims of Japanese troops were of different nationalities and/or origins. It must be
said at this point that, although cases of mass violence were recorded during this period, these first
seven years of the war are not the main focal point of our work. The war is not continuous and total
(as it is in the case of the next two periods), but there is no durable peace. One must of course take
into account the numerous Chinese casualties of the war, going back to 1931, but this chronological
segment must above all be understood as the starting point of what was to become recurrent mass
violence and exactions of all kinds, rather than as a period of indiscriminate killings in Manchuria.
While violence seems to be limited in this context to general war exactions, it is however essential to
note that mass brutality was then beginning to become systematic throughout the Japanese empire.
It was notably through the creation of bacteriological and chemical (hereinafter referred to as BC)
warfare units that such a system first emerged in Manchukuo, but invariably controlled from Tokyo.
The very selection of Manchuria as the area where BC warfare was first developed is an interesting
indication of how it was perceived in Japan. Twice prohibited by international treaties (The Hague,
1899, and Geneva, 1925), BC research could not legally be conducted by signatory countries.
Although some research and production centres were located in Japan, the puppet state of
Manchukuo, technically independent but in reality controlled by Tokyo, represented a unique
opportunity for Japanese scientists to experiment on what theoretically “[could] not be done in the
home islands” (内地で出来ないこと naichi de dekinai koto, Aoki, 2005: 76).
Thus, countless political detainees or prisoners of war of various nationalities, not to mention
kidnapped civilians, were interned in Japanese BC warfare camps and submitted to medical,
bacteriological and chemical experiments. They become the first victims of the institutionalisation of
mass violence by the Japanese Army during World War II. A global estimate of the number of victims
is extremely difficult to provide for five main reasons.
First, available testimonies by victims and perpetrators alike do not so much contradict each other as
show the extent of the phenomenon. Experiments were conducted throughout Manchuria, and later
throughout the rest of Asia in various research centres. It is therefore virtually impossible to
encompass them all, as the experiments varied depending on the timeframe, climate, and location.
Only the most representative or well-documented cases will therefore be included in this chronology.
Second, archives and documents have survived for some experiments, but Japanese troops and
scientists destroyed most of the documented research in 1945, for fear of legal action or reprisals by
the Allied forces. Other sources exist in archives that have still not been made available to
historians.
Third, experiments were also conducted on civilians in densely populated areas, making it difficult
fully to grasp the extent to which they were exposed to bacteria and the overall effect on them.
Fourth, the long-term effects on the environment must also be taken into account (with their
attendant on people). Wells, rivers and plants, as well as animals, were used for experiments and
contaminated throughout Manchuria, causing damage that cannot necessarily be quantified.
Fifth, and as mentioned above, when studying this period, historians are confronted not with a
massacre that occurred during a specific timeframe and which is therefore immediately identifiable
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as a particular event, but instead is faced with the implementation of a system that, in the long run,
generated cases of mass violence in various locations. For Japanese scientists involved in BC
research at that time, the results and tests were all that mattered, not the nationality or the number
of victims.
Furthermore, the close collaboration of these units also prevents us from assigning precise
responsibilities to specific research groups. For example, as units 731 and 100 both participated in
the 1939 “Nomonhan Incident” described below, it is impossible to know exactly which unit was to
blame for what.
However, although we do not possess exact numbers, we can establish that, because Japanese BC
warfare units were organised into a network, they were not isolated cases or individual actions, and
one can justifiably talk of mass violence. One example suffices to confirm this idea: the first BC
research camp was built to have a capacity of 1,000, with 500-600 prisoners held inside (Harris,
2002: 32).
Chronology
March 1932
Following the “First Shanghai Incident”, 223 cases of rape by Japanese soldiers are reported in the
area. Lieutenant-General Okamura Yasuji (岡村寧次) subsequently demands the creation in Shanghai of
the first “comfort station” (慰安所 ianjo) for naval troops, an initiative immediately imitated by the
Imperial Army. The number of Chinese as well as Japanese women rounded up is unknown (see the
rest of the chronology for available numbers and estimates.)
*** (Soh, 2005: 360, Hicks, 1994: 45, Yoshimi, 2000: 43-44)
August 1932
The Tôgô Unit (東郷部隊 tôgô butai, also known as 加茂部隊 kamo butai) is created in Manchukuo under the
supervision of Major Ishii Shirô (石井四郎). Its aim is to set up a Japanese BC warfare research
programme. In the same month, the first experimentation site is founded, again under his
supervision, in the village of Beiyinhe (背陰河 Haiinga in Japanese), near the city of Harbin (哈爾浜).
Experiments undertaken in this context include, but are not limited to, injections of anthrax, plague,
typhoid fever and cholera into human guinea pigs. The victims are mostly Chinese, but sometimes
Korean or Russian, and also include communists or guerrilla fighters opposed to the Japanese regime
in Manchuria. When required, the Japanese Military Police (憲兵隊 kempeitai) also round up random
civilians in villages and cities in the area. Since victims need to be treated as non-human guinea
pigs, they are from then on referred to as “logs” (丸太 maruta) and assigned an identification number.
After the experiments are conducted, and when the results have been analysed by Japanese
scientists, the bodies are dissected and cremated. The destruction of the Beiyinhe facility is ordered
in late 1937, in order to build a bigger one.
*** (Morimura, 1983: 16-36, Tsuneishi, 1995: 26-29, 82-86, Tanaka, 1996: 135-39)
March 1933
According to testimonies, organised prostitution sections are gradually established under the name
of “Young Women Auxiliary Corps” (若年女子補助部隊 jakunen joshi hojo butai) and set up by the Imperial
Army Staff in Manchuria for the benefit of Japanese troops. (Some former victims claim that the
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corps dates back to 1931-32.) The total number of women abused is unknown.
** (Soh, 2005: 364-65)
1933
Chemical warfare production (initiated in 1929) is expanded between 1933 and 1935 in a facility
situated on the island of Ôkunoshima (大久野島), in the Hiroshima prefecture. Due to the lack of
protective measures, an estimated 350 Japanese and Korean workers die during this period after
being exposed to chlorine gas, mustard gas and tear gas, among others. Other sources mention a
total of 1,600 victims, countless deaths having occurred during the ten years after the end of the
war.
*** (Buruma, 1994: 109-11, Ienaga, 1978: 187, Okano, 1987: 13, Tanaka, 1988: 14)
1 August 1936
The Tôgô Unit is officially incorporated into the Kwantung Army under the direction of Ishii and called
the “Water Epidemic Prevention Unit of the Kwantung Army”
(関東軍防疫給水部 kantô gun bôeki kyûsui bu). The order is sanctioned by the Emperor himself. BC weapons,
their production and medical experiments are thus endorsed by the Kwantung Army Staff as well as
the Imperial Army Staff in Tokyo, and continue to be carried out on a larger scale with an
ever-increasing budget.
*** (Aoki, 2005: 76, Bix, 2000: 364, Tsuneishi, 1995: 82-86)
August 1936
A BC research centre is set up near the city of Changchun (長春 Chôshun, also known as 新京 Shinkyô,
the capital of Manchukuo from 1932 to 1945) under the supervision of Major Wakamatsu Yujiro
(若松有次郎). Contrary to its name, the Kwantung Army Horses Epidemic Prevention Facility, also known
as Unit 100 (kantôgun gunba bôekishô 関東軍軍馬防疫廠), not only works on BC weapons targeting plants
and animals, but also takes part, alongside other BC units, in experiments on humans until 1945. The
total death toll is unknown, but the “research” was devoted primarily to anthrax, plague, opium,
heroin and glanders (an infectious disease affecting horses).
*** (Documents, 1950: 121-22, Harris, 2002: 119, Morimura, 1983: 193-200)
2) War against China (1937-41)
The period between 1937 and 1941 marked the beginning of an all-out war against China (although
it was never formally declared, as sanctions and embargoes would have been imposed on Japan), as
well as serious clashes with Soviet forces. It was also during this period that Japan signed its
tripartite pact with Italy and Germany on 27 September 1940. On 7 July 1937, an armed incident
between Chinese and Japanese forces, today known as the “Marco Polo Bridge Incident” (盧溝橋事件
rokôkyô jiken), sparked a full-scale invasion of China. Beijing fell on 8 August, and Shanghai was in
Japanese hands by the end of November of the same year, with over 9,000 Imperial soldiers dead.
The Imperial Army was moving towards Nanking, hoping that the capture of the Chinese capital
would strike a blow to the government, undermine enemy morale and result in capitulation. As has
often been the case in large-scale conflicts, and particularly during world wars, cases of mass
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violence erupted against civilians, soldiers and prisoners of war in a multitude of circumstances,
making it impossible to estimate the total number of cases.
As opposed to the previous period, which mainly witnessed the creation of structures (both events
and processes) allowing for the later emergence of mass violence, the second Sino-Japanese war
resulted in a multitude of atrocities as well as greater systematisation of brutality. As a result, the
cases presented here are no more than a selection based on two main criteria.
First, it is fundamental to recall that while some incidents and phenomena have been studied by
historians or documented sufficiently to be presented here, there is no doubt that others remain
unknown to this day, and it is not certain that they will ever be brought to light by scholars.
Second, the recent politicisation of some events in the media, or disputes between historians and
revisionist/negationist movements (which are a very small minority in Japan) around issues such as
“comfort women”, the “Nanking Massacre” or the visits of certain Japanese politicians to the
Yasukuni Shrine, has led to their acknowledgement and/or discussion in the public sphere. However,
this has not been the case for all situations of mass violence in the context of the “Fifteen Years’
War”, which are far too numerous to be taken into account in an historical chronology. For example,
countless atrocities occurred against civilians, some spontaneous, some planned, as the Japanese
Army continued its conquest of China in 1937 and subsequent years; others remain unknown today
(for specific cases, see Bix, 2000: 364-67, Ishikawa, 1999, JIMT, 1948).
Furthermore, one cannot equate violence with death, as brutalities do not invariably result in the
victim’s death. During the two periods studied here and below, numerous cases of brutality that
cannot be anchored into a specific timeframe, and as such cannot be quantified with precision,
nevertheless need to be addressed in order to facilitate an understanding, in hindsight, of the extent
of the violence exerted. Three examples come to mind.
The first case concerns a type of brutality within the Japanese Army that became commonplace
between 1937 and 1945. As this type of violence did not necessarily obey a specific pattern and took
place at different levels, it is difficult to categorise or insert into a chronological index. It should,
however, be presented here as an example of the very plurality of the concept of mass violence.
Some examples of this type of violence include violent acts done to Korean/Taiwanese draftees in
the Imperial Army, themselves victims of Japanese brutality (Fujitani, 2006: 182-196), soldiers
bullying their comrades should they refuse to rape, pillage or kill on the battlefield, and the brutal
treatment of Korean workers enslaved in Japanese factories on the home islands. The latter
numbered 670,000 between 1939 and 1945, but close to 60,000 of these workers died due to harsh
working conditions on Japanese soil (Dower, 1986: 47, Utsumi 2006: 102-05).
The gradual toughening of living conditions for Japanese civilians is another good example of mass
violence; violence should not be seen merely as a purely external phenomenon, and Imperial
subjects were still subjected to structural hardships. The 1937 “Principles of National Polity” (国体の本義
kokutai no hongi), followed by the “National Mobilisation Law” (国家総動員法 kokka sôdôin hô) of 1938,
clearly reflect this situation: the Japanese population was subjected to rationing, forced mobilisation
and government control of production, not to mention the outlawing of trade unions and other
measures drastically limiting freedom of expression. While such situations do not necessarily result
in the violent deaths of the people subjected to them or to other atrocities on a large scale, none of
these examples are specific to a precise moment in time and all of them represent physical as well
as mental mass violence, the latter only having recently begun to be deemed a valid research
subject by historians (Yamashita, 2006: 262-63).
The third example is the specific case of “comfort women” (従軍慰安婦 jûgun ianfu, also known as
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“Special Personnel” 特要員 tokuyô in in the Navy) and the institutionalisation of sexual slavery
throughout the Asia-Pacific region by the Japanese state, Army and Navy. The exact date of the
establishment of the first “Comfort House” is unknown (Tanaka, 2002: 8), and it is probable that
organised prostitution did exist beforehand. In the war context, and in order to prevent the spread of
sexually-transmitted diseases among Japanese troops on the front, as much as to limit incidences of
rape, Japanese military authorities thought that they could avoid the problem by setting up a system
of government-sanctioned brothels populated with women from Korea, China and Japan, as well as
the Netherlands, Malaysia and the Philippines, not to mention other countries. The vast majority of
them were not prostitutes, and were mostly abducted or misled into “working” in brothels spreading
from Sakhalin to Indonesia (attracted by jobs as laundresses or housemaids). Initially, some of these
women were prostitutes sent abroad from Japan, the karayuki san (唐行きさん). One must add that
although Japanese authorities set up this system in order to suppress the two abovementioned
problems – rape and STDs – rapes did occur in comfort stations; as there is no indication that their
number diminished on the field, the policy was ultimately a failure. This is also true of sexual
diseases (Yoshimi 2000: 66, 69-72). As with BC warfare victims, it is almost impossible to give a
precise number of the women involved, but an estimated total of 50,000 to 200,000 women (one
woman for every 40 soldiers for the latter figure) were brought into the system and forced to have
intercourse with an average of ten soldiers a day (Hicks, 1994: 19, Ônuma, 2007: I, Soh, 2008:
119-25, Tanaka, 1996: 99, Yoshimi, 2000: 93). Some revisionists/negationists in Japan (Nanta, 2001)
assert that the Army and the state had no responsibility in this matter. Yet, while forced prostitution
and mass rapes in wartime is not an intrinsically Japanese phenomenon (Yamashita, 2006: 261), the
fact that this systematisation was managed at the highest levels of government makes this case of
mass violence worth mentioning here. As with BC warfare, these types of violence were not only
spontaneous, but were structured and endorsed by the government. The difference with the
previous example was the type of brutality experienced by the victims, where a precise death toll
cannot be estimated because the aim was not the destruction of bodies but their transformation into
a sexual commodity through mass rape and violence.
Chronology
24 November 1937
Two hundred and twenty-two Chinese villagers and refugees “ranging from infants to old people” are
killed by Japanese soldiers marching towards Nanking in the village of Dongliang (near Wuxi, 無錫
Mushaku in Japanese).
** (Honda: 1999, 68)
November 1937
Three hundred and fifty-one Chinese civilians are executed, and 120 women raped by the Imperial
Army in the commune of Shanyang (near Hangzhou, 杭州 Kôshû in Japanese). [These two examples,
out of so many others, are only quoted here to show the extent of the atrocities committed by
Japanese troops on the continent, but go largely unnoticed by Western scholars today.]
** (Honda: 1999, 22-23)
13 December 1937
The city of Nanking falls to Japanese troops under the command of General Matsui Iwane
(松井石根). Rape, pillaging and executions by Japanese soldiers take place over the following six weeks,
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until January 1938, in the city and neighbouring area, making the precise localisation of the event a
source of dispute. However, most reasonable historians today accept that what constitutes the
incident is the plurality of cases of mass violence exerted first on the road to Nanking, and then in
and around the city, whereas revisionists tend to reduce the area in which acts of violence were
committed, in order to minimise the number of victims. Chinese civilians and soldiers alike are killed,
either individually in sporadic acts of violence or machined-gunned and thrown into mass graves.
The female population is subjected to mass rape by Japanese troops. The total number of victims is
still the main source of public disagreement today. The Nanking Memorial Museum claims a total of
300,000 deaths and 20,000 rapes. Some revisionists/negationists in Japan still maintain that what is
known today as “The Great Nanking Massacre” (南京大虐殺 nankin dai gyakusatsu) or “The Nanking
Incident” (南京事件 nankin jiken) did not take place in these proportions and that there was a maximum
of 50 Chinese victims. The vast majority of historians today put the death toll at over 200,000.
*** (Brook, 1999, Fujiwara, 1997: 54-74, Ishida, 2006: 170, Kasahara, 1997: 201-232, Rabe, 1998,
Yamamoto, 2000: 234-281, Yoshida, 2006: 11-26)
December 1937
The (first?) Japanese military brothel (in China) is set up by the Army in the city of Nanking, a few
days after its fall, marking the beginning of the systematisation of this practice. Military police round
up an unknown number (over a hundred) of Chinese women to serve as forced prostitutes. It is
estimated that more than 1,200 women, a minority of them prostitutes, had been transformed into
sex slaves by the Japanese Army by 1939. It is also widely believed that brothels had already been
established in Manchuria, by and under the responsibility of the Kwantung Army, and had been in
use by Imperial troops stationed there since 1931. If the Nanking “comfort station” is not technically
the first such institution of its kind, it does, however, mark the beginning of their extremely rapid
increase.
*** (Imai & Iwasaki, 2010, Soh, 2005: 360-65, Tanaka, 2002: 12-19, Yoshimi, 2000: 53-54)
18 February 1938
Following the 1937 air raids against civilian populations in Shanghai and Nanking, the Japanese Air
Force bombs the city of Chongqing (重慶 Jûkei in Japanese) until 1943. In the first two days of air raids
alone, the death toll is put at more than 5,000 Chinese civilians. The overall death toll is incalculable.
*** (Bix, 2000: 364, Shimokawa, 2006, 147-50)
End-1938
Following Ishii’s orders, a new BC warfare facility is constructed in the village of Pingfan (平房 Heihô in
Japanese), 24 kilometres south of Harbin. The size and structure of the centre are far superior to
those of Beiyinhe, covering more than six square kilometres and with a staff of 3,000. (Construction
work was completed in 1940.) Although the exact death toll is unknown for the abovementioned
reasons, at least 3,000 people died as the result of experiments in Pingfan alone between 1940 and
1945. Furthermore, not only does this number not take into account experiments conducted before
1940, but the number of deaths as a result of experiments carried out on the civilian population
outside BC warfare facilities cannot be fully measured. Following the completion of the Pingfan
Research Facility as its headquarters, the Japanese BC research programme can be divided into five
branches: 1) dissections and surgical experiments; 2) experiments to discover unknown pathogens;
3) experiments testing the strength of contagion of known pathogens; 4) experiments to discover
new sources of treatment (including research into frostbite); and 5) experiments for the production
of vaccines and drugs.
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*** (Harris, 2002: 53-73, Kasahara et al, 1997: 29, Documents, 1950: 118, Tsuneishi, 1995: 105)
1938
In order to cut costs and focus on the war effort, the Japanese government makes drastic public
health cuts until 1945. Due to food shortages, the Japanese civilian population on the home islands
suffers particularly from tuberculosis. Between 1938 and 1943, more than 5,000 Japanese in the
archipelago die of the disease.
*** (Ienaga, 1978: 193)
18 April 1939
A BC research facility is set up in the city of Nanking in a hospital, with Unit 1644 (also called 多摩部隊
tama butai) created in the same city. From the beginning until the end of the war, more than 300
Japanese scientists receive BC warfare training in Nanking each year. To undermine Chinese
resistance, Japanese troops are ordered to spread typhoid fever in the wells and springs of
neighbouring areas, using infected bottled water. Other BC facilities are installed in the same year in
Beijing (Unit 1855, 9 February) and Canton (Unit 8604, 8 April), creating a network of operations on
Chinese territory (North, Centre, South). Beyond field operations, it is estimated that between 5,000
and 6,000 Chinese people are murdered in BC facilities. The total death toll is unknown.
*** (Aoki, 2005: 80-81, Harris, 2002: 87, 136-150, Documents, 1950: 58, 73-74, Tsuneishi, 1995: 12,
167-71, Yoshimi & Ikô, 1995: 2)
11 May 1939
The battles of Khakkhin-Gol, or the “Nomonhan Incident” (ノモンハン事件 nomonhan jiken), oppose Soviet,
Mongolian and Japanese troops until September. The 11 May incident is the most famous of a
numbers of clashes between the USSR and Japan in the 1930s, and ends with a crushing defeat for
Japan. On 16 July, and following orders from the Kwantung Army Staff, bacillary dysentery bombs are
spread into rivers in order to cover the Japanese forces’ retreat and to slow the Soviet advance. In
this episode only, and notwithstanding Soviet casualties, an unknown number of Imperial troops die
after being exposed to germs spread by their own army.
*** (Harris, 2002: 95-98, Documents, 1950: 62-64, Takemae, 2002: xxxi, Tsuneishi, 1995: 136-37,
Yoshimi & Ikô, 1995: 15-6)
4 October 1940
Until 1942, numerous Japanese military operations (some BC) are conducted on Chinese territory to
annihilate the communist resistance. On this date, orders are given to Japanese aircraft to drop
cereals infected with bacteria onto the city of Quzhou (衢州 Kushû in Japanese) in order to crush
guerrilla groups. Fifty thousand Chinese are thought subsequently to have perished. These
systematic acts of mass violence orchestrated by the Japanese Army are labelled the “Three Alls
Policy” (三光作戦 sankô sakusen or 三光政策 sankô seisaku) or “burn all, kill all, steal all” (灼き尽くし
yakitsukushi, 殺し尽くし koroshitsukushi, 奪い尽くす ubaitsukusu), a term later used by the Chinese
Communist Party. The total death toll of this single campaign is estimated at between 25 million and
44 million.
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*** (Bix, 2000: 365, Dower, 1986: 43, Harris, 2002: 102, Ishida, 2006: 16-69, Li, 2003: 292-97,
Tsuneishi, 1995: 169-70)
3) War in the Pacific (1941-45)
This period is usually, and with good reason, seen as a time of conflict with the Allied/Western
powers. However, it is interesting to note that, prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, Tokyo signed a
neutrality pact with Moscow on 13 April 1941, even though fighting and large-scale skirmishes
continued on the border between Manchukuo and the USSR (and Mongolia). On 7 December 1941,
the Japanese Navy launched a large-scale attack on the United States forces at Pearl Harbor,
marking the beginning of a war against the Allies (United States, British Commonwealth,
Netherlands, also known as the ABCD Powers – Americans, British, Chinese and Dutch). A few days
later, the conquest of the Asia-Pacific region had started. By mid-December, Borneo was under
Japanese domination. The Philippines fell to Japanese troops in January 1942. By May of the same
year, most of Southeast Asia was under Imperial control: Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore, Indochina,
the Dutch East Indies and the islands of the Pacific as well as Papua New Guinea. This blitzkrieg was
considered essential by Tokyo, as war resources (notably the oil of the Dutch East Indies, with the
American embargo imposed after Japan’s invasion of Indochina) were considered a priority in order
to support the war effort. Symptomatic of this “total war” situation was the appointment of General
Tôjô Hideki (東条英機) as Prime Minister, as well as Army Minister, on 18 October 1941.
However, the Japanese defeat in the naval Battle of Midway in June 1942 also marked the beginning
of the Allied counter-offensive. In August of the same year, Allied troops landed on Guadalcanal
(Solomon Islands), fighting their way to victory in February 1943 in a major setback for Imperial
troops. On 6 July 1944, the island of Saipan fell to Allied forces in a move to isolate the enemy and
cut its communication lines, signalling a crucial strategic loss for Japan. In December, the Philippines
also fell, as Allied armies closed in on the Japanese archipelago. In March 1945, the island of Iwo Jima
(硫黄島 iôtô) suffered a similar fate, while Okinawa was attacked by American troops in April. Although
these islands were small, their possession was crucial for control of the Pacific Ocean theatre: Japan
was now an attainable destination for US bombers. This chronology focuses solely on Japanese
atrocities; to give a single example of enemy brutalities, however, on 17 November 1944, the first of
a series of air raids on Japanese cities took off from Saipan, dropping incendiary and explosive
bombs on the archipelago. On 9-10 March 1945, between 80,000 and 100,000 civilians died from US
incendiary bombs. By August, 66 cities had been hit, and 40 percent of them had been reduced to
ashes.
On 6 August, and following Tokyo’s decision to reject capitulation as outlined in the Potsdam
Proclamation, the first atomic bomb was dropped, on the city of Hiroshima. Two days later, the
Soviet Union officially declared war on Japan and began a full-scale invasion of Manchuria and
Sakhalin/Karafuto (サハリン/樺太). On 9 August, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb, this
time on the city of Nagasaki. On 14 August, under growing pressure, Japanese authorities agreed to
capitulate and accepted the Potsdam Proclamation, leading to Emperor Hirohito’s declaration the
next day, officially putting an end to the conflict on 15 August 1945.
These events constitute what is today known as the “Pacific War”, but it is important to remember
that the attack on Pearl Harbor did not mean the end of the conflict with China. Until 1945, Japanese
troops were engaged on the continent, and continued their campaign, although it was in reality
limited to major cities and adjacent areas. Chinese resistance, as well as the size of the country,
constituted the main obstacles for Japanese troops involved in two very different theatres of war.
Furthermore, as noted above, a chronology of mass violence cannot be limited to Japanese military
actions against enemy civilians or troops. Abandoned or mismanaged by their leaders and due to
poor logistics planning (sometimes no plans at all were drawn up to supply them), Imperial troops
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succumbed not only to enemy fire, but also to dehydration, malnutrition and disease on the
battlefield. These were not isolated or exceptional cases. On the continent, it is currently estimated
that the vast majority of the 450,000 Japanese casualties faced disease and starvation, leading them
to commit acts of violence against civilians in order to get food. In the Pacific, up to 95 percent of
some units caught malaria, due to a shortage of treatments (Fujiwara A., 2001: 33, 127-129, 146,
233). Certainly, acts of large-scale brutality were recurrent throughout the three periods presented
here, and it is certain that, due to the radicalisation of the conflict and the involvement of the Allied
Powers, 1941-45 can be considered as the timeframe with the most casualties. However, violence
against civilians, regardless of their nationality, must be added to this account. In Japan, the period
saw a continuation of the restrictions imposed on the population in 1937-38. Experiments on
undernourishment were conducted in Japanese prisons, in about 1943, to assess the level of limits
and resistance of the individual (Tsuneishi & Asano, 1982: 118-125). Opposition at home, whether
from intellectuals, communist sympathisers or religious movements, was silenced through
imprisonment or torture. In addition, in 1942-43, over 100 Japanese Christians were jailed by their
own government for not obeying the orders of the Imperial hierarchy (Tokyo Shinbun, 2006: 23).
Outside Japan, a type of physical violence that is impossible to situate, precisely because of its
quasi-ubiquity, continued unabated throughout the period. In Southeast Asia, for example, in
1942-43, over 350,000 men were forced to work on the construction of the Burma-Siam railway line,
and it is believed that 60,000 of them died of malnutrition and disease (Dower, 1986: 47, Utsumi,
2006: 93-96). In what is now Indonesia, an estimated 300,000 Javanese were drafted as forced
labourers; more than half of then perished before 1945 (Sato, 2005: 129). Similar events occurred
throughout Asia. In Manchuria alone, over 2.5 million people were put into forced labour in 1944
(Tucker, 2005: 51).
The number of cases of mass violence can therefore be considered in this period to be the
culmination of a process dating back to 1931. This is not only valid for the abovementioned cases of
forced labour, but also for most of the following: acts of cannibalism, famines or the extension of the
“comfort women” system following the occupation of Indonesia. Some of these specific acts of
violence represented isolated cases that cannot always be recorded individually, but mentioning the
most significant or early occurrences is nevertheless necessary in such a timeline: it allows for them
to be understood, either in a context of systematisation or as confirmation that similar incidents
have occurred.
The very number of these acts of violence makes it impossible in this context to locate or record
them all. A simple look at Chapter 8 of the judgment of the “International Military Tribunal for the Far
East” lists over 100 occurrences of mass brutality (IMFTE, 1948). Furthermore, the selection of
sources for these cases raises yet another difficulty, namely the importance given to the victims.
Aside from linguistic issues (and the need for historians to access sources in Chinese, Korean or
other languages) and well-documented events such as the Nanking Massacre, most of the recorded
acts of violence come from English-language archives, namely American, British and Australian
(Japanese documents excepted). From a purely Japanese perspective, military deaths between 1937
and 1945 amounted to over 2.3 million, out of which 1.4 million caused by hunger, thirst or disease
(Fujiwara A., 2001: 3, 133, 138). Together with civilian casualties, the total is close to 3.1 million
(Dower, 1986: 297-98). Moreover, some have estimated that a total of 15 million Chinese perished in
the conflict, along with 20 million Southeast Asians (of which 1 million Indonesians) (Fujiwara A.,
2001: 133, Gruhl, 2003: 243-58). These numbers are of course subject to debate, and are only given
here to illustrate the difficulty to quantify the phenomenon.
This raises one last interesting point, namely the danger of reducing our analysis to a narrative of
Japanese brutality. The main focus of this timeline is to present significant cases of mass violence
exacted by the Japanese state, Army and Navy. However, one does not wage war against oneself.
For the subject at hand, we also need to take into account the role played by the enemy. Beyond the
oft-cited notion that the winner gets to write history, a chronology of Allied mass violence (or mass
violence perpetrated by Asian collaborators) in the Asia-Pacific War still has to be written in order to
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render the complexity of these phenomena in a multi-faceted war whose very denomination
represents a challenge.
Chronology
July 1941
In preparation for war with the Soviet Union, an estimated 10,000 Korean women are brought to
Manchukuo to serve as “comfort women” for the Kwantung Army, and large numbers of brothels are
set up throughout the area.
** (Yoshimi, 2000: 57)
25 December 1941
Japanese troops force their way into a British hospital in Hong Kong, using grenades and bayonets to
kill wounded British soldiers being treated there. Chinese and British nurses are raped. The total
number of victims is unclear, but certainly exceeds 50.
** (Tanaka, 1996: 82-83)
8 February 1942
As part of the anti-communist campaign throughout China beginning in 1940, the 36th Brigade of
the First Army uses 300 tonnes of mustard gas against the Chinese Communist Army over eight days
in Shanxi Province (山西 Sansei in Japanese). “A few thousand were poisoned and half of them died.”
*** (Tanaka, 1988: 17)
15 February 1942
After Britain’s surrender of Singapore, it is estimated that several thousand Chinese (suspected of
belonging to communist guerrilla movements and/or of anti-Japanese activities), mostly males
between 18 and 50 years of age, are executed in a few days by Imperial troops, in a number of
different ways ranging from drowning and machine-gunning to beheading. An exact death toll is
unavailable, but the number of victims is estimated at between 5,000 and 50,000 during the event
now known as the “Singapore Chinese Massacre Incident” (シンガポール華僑虐殺事件 shingapo-ru kakyô
gyakusatsu jiken).
*** (Dower, 1986: 43-44, Fujiwara K., 2001: 180-86, Ishida, 2006: 170-71)
26 March 1942
BC Unit 9420 is set up in Singapore by Naitô Ryôichi (内藤良一). Experiments on malaria and the plague
are carried out in order to expand Japanese BC warfare capacities. (For obvious climatic reasons,
frostbite-related research can only be done in Manchuria and malaria can only be studied in the
south.) Unit 9420 also specialises in catching and breeding rats, with subunits in Thailand. The total
number of victims is unknown.
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** (Gold, 1996: 53-57, Tsuneishi, 1995: 12, Yoshinaga 2001: 243)
April 1942
After the fall of the Philippines to the Japanese Army, a total of 78,000 people, both soldiers and
civilians (including American troops) are forced to march a 100 kilometres, with no preparation and
no equipment, to the prison camp where they are to be interned. Countless numbers are brutalised,
bayoneted or executed on the way. More than half those who survived the march died in prison
camps after their arrival. The exact death toll is unknown, but estimates range from 6,000 to 20,000
dead in what is today known as the “Bataan Death March” (バターン死の行進 bataan shi no kôshin).
*** (Dower, 1986: 51-52, Tenney, 2003: 81-106, Tanaka, 1996: 15)
15 May 1942
The recruitment of auxiliary guards (軍属 gunzoku) to watch over Allied prisoners of war begins in
Korea and Taiwan, underlining the racial hierarchy imposed at the time. Japanese officers dominate
Asians, who in turn subjugate Western captives (army conscription of non-Japanese nationals is
already in place from 1938). Three thousand Koreans are integrated into this structure and become
the victims of Imperial military violence, as well as the oppressors of Allied prisoners. In September
1945, plans are made to execute 800 Korean guards along with Allied prisoners, and while the orders
are changed at the last minute, this demonstrates the extremely low hierarchical position of these
colonial guards. The number of Taiwanese enrolled is subject to debate (possibly over 200,000), as is
the final death toll, but 148 Koreans are condemned for brutality at the subsequent International
Military Tribunal for the Far East trials conducted by the Allied countries.
*** (Hui-Yu, 2005: 117, Michelin, 2000: 263-96, Tanaka, 1996: 38-40, 71-72, Utsumi, 2006: 92-93,
Tokyo Shinbun, 2006: 194-97)
June 1942
The Japanese naval police fear that the Chinese population on the island of Borneo may be plotting
an armed rebellion with the complicity of former colonial authorities. It therefore arrests the Dutch
governor of the Kalimantan provinces and his wife, and accuses them of anti-Japanese activities.
They are subsequently executed, along with 257 other people. An estimated 1,500 people,
Europeans as well as Chinese, Indonesians and Indians, are tortured and killed over the subsequent
months. In April 1943, another case of mass violence erupts, known as the “Mandor (or Pontianak)
Massacre” (マンドール事件 mandor jiken, ポンティアナック事件 pontianak jiken): several thousand people, including
the Sultan, colonial officers, intellectuals and nobles, are killed by Japanese troops. Certain points
remain obscure to this day, but, although the total death count remains unknown, it is estimated
that over 20,000 Dutch prisoners and civilians died of malnutrition, under torture or by execution in
Japanese camps all over the Dutch East Indies before 1945.
** (Hayase, 2006: 32-35, Tanaka, 1996: 27-28, NIOD: IKA, 2010)
7 August 1942
Start of the battle of Guadalcanal. Until its end in February 1943, about 5,000 of the 34,000 men of
the Japanese Imperial Army die in combat. Another 15,000 (three times the number of casualties) die
of starvation, and/or the effects of disease or malnutrition (malaria, dysentery, beriberi).
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*** (Fujiwara A., 2001: 22)
12 August 1942
Six hundred and ten crimes, the majority of them rapes, are committed by Japanese troops against
civilian populations in Southeast Asia, and listed. As a result, and by September of the same year,
400 “comfort stations”, populated by (mostly) Asian women, are set up throughout the Asia-Pacific
region in a matter of months in an attempt to contain rapes and STDs. In the Dutch East Indies
alone, an estimated 300 Dutch and 20,000 Indonesian women (many not forced into prostitution but
victims of rape and violence) are affected. As mentioned above, the exact total number of women
enslaved or subjected to mass violence is still unknown.
** (Imai & Iwasaki, 2010, Tanaka, 2002: 61-83, Yoshimi, 2000: 80, 86)
11 November 1942
Over 2,000 Allied prisoners (Americans, Britons, Australians, etc.) are deported to Manchuria and
housed in prison camps. Some sources mention experiments (injections and dissection) on these
men, whereas others insist that nothing was done to Western prisoners (not including Russians). The
death toll up to 1945 is unknown and remains a source of debate today.
** (Harris, 2002: 163-176, Documents, 1950: 273, Powell, Gomer, Röling, 1981: 44, 48, Tanaka,
1996: 158-59)
January 1943
The Japanese 18th Army loses over 135,000 men in Papua New Guinea, after having been sent to
the front by their chiefs of staff without proper knowledge of the local situation or the strength of
enemy forces. Due to inadequate planning and carelessness, most of these men die of starvation
and disease.
*** (Fujiwara A., 2001: 52-53)
17 March 1943
Sixty civilians – German and Chinese missionaries and nuns – are being evacuated from several
Pacific islands on the Japanese destroyer Akikaze (秋風) when the order is given, for reasons unknown,
by the 8th Fleet Headquarters to execute them. All are shot and thrown overboard, including two
children. Three hours later, the officers of the ship conduct a funeral ceremony for the deceased.
*** (Tanaka, 1996: 171-78)
September 1943
A total of 2,500 Australian and British prisoners of war have been interned in the Sandakan camp
(Borneo) since the previous year. A resistance movement initiated in 1942 is discovered by the
Japanese, and a series of escapes triggers a spiral of violence. Living conditions deteriorate, causing
prisoners to die of disease and malnutrition. By the end of 1944, more than 400 of them are dead. In
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January 1945, any survivors fit to walk are taken on a forced march under extreme conditions, and
the vast majority do not survive, while prisoners left at the Sandakan camp are executed by
Japanese troops over several months. The survival rate is 0.24 percent: in August of the same year,
only six prisoners remained alive.
*** (Rees, 2001: 81-91, Tanaka, 1996: 11-66, NIOD: IKA, 2010)
End-1943
Individual testimonies by Allied soldiers about acts of Japanese cannibalism start to emerge. One
witness claims that over 100 prisoners were killed and eaten by starving groups of Japanese troops
near Manokwari, New Guinea. The practice, for survival purposes (Japanese troops were abandoned
on Pacific islands without food or means of subsistence), seems to have been extended to killing and
eating locals as well as dead Japanese soldiers. An order issued by the Imperial chiefs of staff, dated
18 November 1944, confirms this hypothesis and states that cannibalism is punishable by execution,
except if the flesh consumed is of the enemy.
** (Rees, 2001: 93-96, Tanaka, 1996: 120-29)
6 July 1944
The Americans invade Saipan. The next day marks one of the largest collective suicides in the war.
In a counter-attack effort, all Japanese forces die on the battlefield. Of the 23,811 troops present,
only 3 percent survive. Civilians living on Saipan and attempting to surrender to the enemy are killed
on the spot. As a result, 10,000 Japanese, over 1,000 Koreans and 3,000 islanders and “comfort
women” perish at the hands of Japanese troops, following Tokyo’s orders, which proclaims that Allied
troops will rape, torture and kill any Japanese taken alive, and that it is therefore preferable to die
than to surrender. While this could be seen as propaganda, it should be borne in mind that more
than 12 percent of Japanese settlers were indeed slaughtered by Soviet troops in Manchuria in 1945.
*** (Bix, 2000: 475-76, Dower, 1986: 298, Takemae, 2002: 23)
September 1944 (the exact date of the beginning of the experiments is unknown, it may have
been earlier)
Around 130 Allied prisoners serve as human guinea pigs for members of the Military Police in Rabaul
and Ambon in Papua New Guinea until 1945. Some of them are starved in order to study the effects
of malnutrition, while others are used for research on malaria or injected with various poisons. Only
two survive.
** (Tanaka, 1996: 150-58)
25 October 1944
Vice-Admiral Ônishi Takijirô (大西瀧治郎) creates the first kamikaze corps (神風 divine winds, also known as
“Special Attack Forces” 特別攻撃隊 tokubetsu kôgeki tai, often abbreviated as 特攻隊 tokkôtai) during the
battle for the Philippines in order to slow the Allied victory in the Pacific. Young Japanese pilots or
recruits, often presented as “volunteers”, accept or are forced aboard aircraft destined to crash into
American warships, and are subsequently treated as martyrs (and symbols of purity) to the
fatherland. It is now estimated that their success rate in hitting their targets ranged between 1 and 3
percent, with total casualties probably numbering around 5,000 pilots. In November of the same
year, the “Marine Unit of the Chrysanthemum” (菊水隊 kiku sui tai), a reference to the symbol of the
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Imperial House, is the first of the suicide submarine squads (回天 kaiten), set up along the same
principle, but with a lower death toll of 106 among the Japanese. On 18 January 1945, kamikaze
attacks become official government policy. From then on, the entire civilian Japanese population is
expected to sacrifice itself and die like the kamikaze pilots, as per the slogan “The shattering of the
hundred million like a beautiful jewel” (一億玉砕 ichioku gyokusai). To facilitate the identification
process, kamikaze units are often presented in pictures in the Japanese press between 1944 and
1945.
*** (Dower, 1986: 232-33, Hosaka, 2009: 93-98, Ienaga, 1978: 183-84, Nakamura, 2006: 304-311,
Tokyo Shinbun, 2006: 86-93)
February 1945
While under siege by Allied forces in Manila (February-March 1945), 20,000 Japanese soldiers kill,
rape and torture more than 1,000 Filipino civilians held as hostages, before engaging in another
suicide counter-attack. Over a period of two months, another 100,000 die in street fights at the
hands of Imperial troops.
*** (Dower, 1986: 44-45, Fujiwara A., 2001: 112-113, Takemae, 2002: 28-29)
9 March 1945
The Japanese ambassador to Indochina orders the immediate surrender of French forces in the
territory. Subsequently, and after a delay in their surrender, French civilians as well as officers are
tortured, executed and/or decapitated. A few days later, Imperial authorities announce an increase in
the mobilisation of resources. Food has been requisitioned in Indochina since 1944 to feed Japanese
troops; as of 1945, larger stocks of rice are confiscated. American bombings (starting in 1943) of
local railway lines make the delivery of resources impossible across the territory. Outbreaks of
cholera and typhus appear as a result of generalised starvation. The death toll for both events is
unclear, but it is thought that between 400,000 and 2 million people died. The number of French
people falling victim to the Japanese Army is not specified in the available references.
** (Dalloz, 1987: 62-66, Fujiwara A., 2001: 133, Van 1996: 286, 308-09)
26 March 1945
Allied troops land on the island of Tokashikijima (渡嘉敷島), marking the beginning of the invasion of
Okinawa. Japanese civilians are ordered by the garrison commander to kill themselves rather than
meet an even more terrible fate at the hands of the American troops, and grenades are distributed
among the population. When these fail to explode, sickles, razors and stones are used. Two days
later, the death toll amounts to 329. A month later, 1,200 children (aged 11 to 14) drafted into
“defence battalions” by the Japanese Army, are either killed by the enemy or commit suicide in
accordance with Imperial orders. Okinawans who speak the local dialect but not standard Japanese
are executed as suspected spies. By the end of the war, it is estimated that one-third of the island’s
population (150,000–160,000) has perished.
*** (Dower, 1986: 298, Ienaga, 1978: 185, 198-99, Takemae, 2002: 32-35, Yakabi, 2006: 149-177)
March 1945
Japanese troops stationed on Mili atoll, in the Marshall Islands, are cut off from supplies by constant
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Allied air raids, and gradually starve. Food from the local population is requisitioned, and a
subsequent uprising is crushed by the Japanese army, leaving over 200 people shot dead. This case
is far from unique, and similar large-scale incidents (including victims such as Korean auxiliaries)
occur throughout the Pacific, notably in the Philippines, until the end of the conflict.
*** (Fujiwara A., 2001: 92-93, 106-107)
9 August 1945
The order is given by the Japanese Army chiefs of staff to destroy the Pingfan BC warfare facility.
Over 400 surviving prisoners are given food dosed with potassium cyanide or shot to dispense with
any surviving witnesses who could testify to illegal activities. The remaining staff fail to dispose of all
the bodies, which cannot be cremated due to their great number. On 14 August, the 120 technical
staff still working there are ordered to commit suicide with cyanide pills to avoid being taken alive by
Soviet troops.
*** (Harris, 2002: 245, Ienaga, 1978, 188-89, Documents, 1950: 43, 61, Morimura, 1983: 277-81)
Bibliography
Books and articles
AOKI, Fukiko (青木富貴子), 2005, ７３１：石井四郎と細菌戦部隊の闇を暴く 731: Ishii Shirô to saikin sen butai no yami wo
abaku [731: Beyond the Darkness of Ishii Shiro and Bacteriological Warfare Units], Tokyo: 新潮文庫
Shinchô bunko.
BIX, Herbert P., 2000, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, New York: Harper Collins.
BROOK, Timothy (ed.), 1999, Documents on the Rape of Nanking, Ann Harbor: University of Michigan
Press.
BURUMA, Ian, 1994, The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan, London: Phoenix.
DALLOZ Jacques, 1987, La guerre d’Indochine, 1945-1954, Paris: Seuil.
DOWER, John, 1999, Embracing Defeat, Japan in the Aftermath of World War II, London: Penguin.
DOWER, John, 1986, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, New York: Random
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FOGEL, Joshua A. (ed.), 2000, The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography, Berkeley:
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FUJITANI, Takashi (藤谷健), “殺す権利、生かす権利：アジア・太平洋戦争下の日本人としての朝鮮人とアメリカ人としての日本人 Korosu kenri, ikasu
kenri: ajia-taiheiyô sensô ka no nihonjin toshite no chôsenjin to amerikajin toshite no nihonjin”
[Power of Life and Death: Koreans as Japanese and Japanese as Americans during the Asia-Pacific
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War], in KURASAWA, Aiko (倉沢愛子) et al., (eds.), 2006, 動員・抵抗・翼賛 dôin, teikô, yokusan [Mobilisation,
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FUJITANI, Takashi (藤谷健), Geoffrey M. WHITE, Lisa YONEYAMA (ed.), 2001, Perilous Memories: The
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FUJIWARA, Akira (藤原彰), 1997, 南京の日本軍・南京大虐殺とその背景 Nankin no nihon gun: nankin dai gyakusatsu to
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HOSAKA, Masayasu (保坂正康), 2009, 太平洋戦争、七つの謎：官僚と軍隊と日本人 Taiheiyô sensô, nanatsu no nazo: kanryô
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IENAGA, Saburô (家永三郎), 1978, The Pacific War, 1931-1945, A Critical Perspective on Japan’s Role in
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ISHIKAWA, Tatsuzô (石川達三), 1999, 生きている兵隊 Ikite iru heitai [Soldiers Alive], Tokyo: 中央公論 Chûô kôron.
IWASAKI, Minoru (岩崎稔), RICHTER, Steffi, “歴史修正主義・一九九〇年代以降の位 Rekishi shûseishugi 1990 nendai ikô no
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MORIMURA, Seiichi, (森村誠一), 1983, 悪魔の飽食 Akuma no hôshoku [The Devil’s Gluttony], Tokyo: 角川文庫
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NANTA, Arnaud, 2001, “L’actualité du révisionnisme historique au Japon”, Ebisu, no. 27: pp. 129-138.
NARITA, Ryûichi (成田龍一), “戦争の系譜：状況・体験・証言・記憶 Sensô no keifu: jôkyô, taiken, shôgen, kioku”
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kôjô, sono higai to kagai [The Island of Toxic Gas, The Chemical Gas Factory of Ôkunoshima, Its
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POWELL, John, Robert GOMER, Bert V.A. RÖLING, 1981, “ Japan’s Biological Weapons: 1930-1945”,
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SOH, Chunghee Sarah (蘇貞姫サラ), “帝国日本の‘軍慰安制度’論：歴史と記憶の政治的葛藤 Teikoku Nihon no ‘gunian seido’ ron:
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TAKEMAE, Eiji (竹前栄治), 2002, The Allied Occupation of Japan, Inside GHQ: The Allied Occupation of
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TANAKA, Yuki (田中由紀), 2002, Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution during World
War II and the US Occupation, London: Routledge.
TANAKA, Yuki (田中由紀), 1996, Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II [知られざる戦争犯罪
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TANAKA, Yuki (田中由紀), 1988, “ Poison Gas, The story Japan would like to forget ”, Bulletin of the
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TSUNEISHI, Keiichi (常石敬一), 1995, 七三一部隊：生物兵器犯罪の事実 Nana san ichi butai: seibutsu heiki hanzai no
jijitsu [Unit 731: The Truth about Crimes involving Biological Weapons], Tokyo: 講談社 Kôdansha.
TSUNEISHI, Keiichi (常石敬一), ASANO, Tomizô (朝野富三), 1982, 細菌戦部隊と自決した二人の医学者 Saikin sen butai to
jiketsu shita futari no igakusha [The Bacteriological Warfare Unit and the Suicide of Two Physicians],
Tôkyô, Shinchôsha 新潮社.
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YAMASHITA, Yone (山下英愛), “日本軍による性的暴力の諸相とその特徴 Nihon gun ni yoru seiteki bôryoku no shosô to sono
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YOSHIDA, Takashi (吉田たかし), 2006, The Making of the “Rape of Nankin”: History and Memory in Japan,
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YOSHIMI, Yoshiaki (吉見義明), 2000, Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military during
World War II [従軍慰安婦 Jûgun ianfu Comfort Women, 1995], New York: Columbia University Press.
YOSHIMI, Yoshiaki (吉見義明), IKÔ, Toshiya, (伊香俊哉), 1995, 七三一部隊と天皇・陸軍中央 Nana san ichi butai to tennô
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YOSHINAGA, Haruko (吉永春子), 2001, 七三一：追撃・そのとき幹部達は。。。 Nana san ichi: tsuigeki, sonotoki kanbutachi
ha… [The Hunt for 731 Unit: What the Leaders were up to…], Tokyo: 筑摩書房 Chikuma shobô.
Websites
Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie (Netherlands Institute for War Documentation),
(NIOD) (accessed July 2010), http://www.niod.nl/
Archives and sources
1950, Documents relatifs au procès des anciens militaires de l’armée japonaise accusés d’avoir
préparé et employé l’arme bactériologique, Moscou: Editions en langues étrangères.
Indische Kamparchieven (Dutch East Indies Camp Archives), (IKA) (accessed July 2010),
http://www.indischekamparchieven.nl/
Judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Chapter 8 (accessed July 2010),
http://ibiblio.org/hyperwar/PTO/IMTFE/IMTFE-8.html
Biographical notices
Emperor Hirohito/Shôwa (裕仁/昭和天皇 shôwa tennô) 29 April 1901-7 January 1989: From his accession
on 25 December 1926, Hirohito remained in power until his death on 7 January 1989. He enjoys an
uninterrupted reign before, during and after the “Fifteen Years’ War”. Before and during the conflict,
Hirohito was an informed, participative and enthusiastic leader of Imperial military operations,
notably sanctioning the (secret) institutionalisation of the Japanese BC warfare project and, as the
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top of the military chain of command, reading each official telegram and piece of news. After 1945,
Hirohito was protected and kept in place by the occupying powers, who saw him as a necessary
element in keeping Japan from Communist influence. He was subsequently reinvented as the
peace-loving, harmless sovereign who ended the war. His absence at the Tokyo War Crimes Trials,
followed by his complete absolution from any war-related responsibilities, is still a source of
dissension in the Japanese memorial landscape today, and for the people who fought in his name
between 1931 and 1945.
Source: Bix, 2000
International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) (極東国際軍事裁判 kyokutô kokusai gunji
saiban), 19 January 1946-12 November 1948: The IMTFE was a body composed of 11 judges (from
the Allied powers as well as neighbouring countries), located in the former Ministry of War
headquarters in Tokyo, created to try the leaders of Imperial Japan. Following the Nuremberg Trials
and the intention to eliminate “irresponsible militarism”, as stated in the Potsdam Declaration
(article 6), 28 Japanese military leaders were tried for crimes against peace and for conspiracy to
wage war as “Class A War Criminals” (A級戦犯 A-kyû senpan) alongside “B and C Class” defendants.
Seven of the 28 were hanged; by 1958, all of the surviving defendants had been freed, some
resuming positions in government. The role and legacy of the IMTFE is still the subject of debate,
largely because of dissenting opinions among the judges, the absence of representatives of the
Imperial House – starting with the emperor himself – and representatives of colonised countries
(Indonesian, Vietnamese) or the fact that BC warfare and, to a lesser extent, the question of sexual
enslavement of Asian women (evidence was brought at the early stages of the IMTFE; subsequently,
13 Japanese defendants were brought before a military court in Batavia in 1948 for crimes against
Dutch women only) were swept under the carpet at the trials.
Source: Takemae, 2002, Yoshimi, 2000
Ishii Shirô (石井四郎) (25 June 1892-9 October 1959)
Born in the Chiba (千葉) area, Ishii was the fourth son of a wealthy family. He was a brilliant pupil and,
upon completion of his studies in 1921, embarked on a career as a doctor in the Japanese Army. Ishii
was convinced that the future of Japan lay with the military, and that BC warfare, although forbidden
internationally, had a critical role to play in the process. With this aim, in 1932, he became director
of a research laboratory that would later be expanded in Manchukuo. Although he was not alone in
his interest for BC warfare, and received support from the highest authorities in Japan, he can be
considered a pioneer in the field, particularly after the setting-up of BC facilities (not necessarily
under his guidance) across the Asia-Pacific region. After 1945, Lieutenant-General Ishii was never
tried by the IMTFE, in exchange for his collaboration with the American government on BC-related
matters. It must be noted that most works in Western languages (unlike sources in Japanese) tend to
describe him as a “mad scientist” with a strange character, “obsessed” with women and drinking, so
as to minimise his “genius”.
Source: Harris, 2002
Kwantung Army (関東軍 kantô gun) 1906-1945
After its victory in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), Japan expanded its sphere of influence in the
Liaodong peninsula and gained control over the southern segment of the South Manchuria Railway
by way of international treaties. To protect its interests, a military garrison is set up in the area in
1906, subsequently renamed “Kwantung Army” and restructured in 1919. Although technically under
the control of the Japanese Army chiefs of staff, it was relatively independent vis-à-vis Tokyo.
Notably, the Kwantung Army engineered the 1931 “Manchuria incident” and gained control over the
area before creating the State of Manchukuo, with the Army’s Chief of Staff serving as Japanese
plenipotentiary ambassador, de facto becoming the puppet state’s leader. It was also ultimately
responsible for managing and partly funding the Japanese BC warfare programme in the area.
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Although it benefited from a reputation of prestige and success, it suffered greatly during the battle
of Nomonhan and surrendered to Soviet troops in August 1945.
Source: Matsusaka, 2001
Matsui Iwane (松井石根) 27 July 1878-23 December 1948
A general in the Imperial Army, Matsui was a commanding officer in the Russo-Japanese War. Upon
his retirement from the Army in 1935, he became active in pan-Asian associations to suppress
communism in China. Called out of retirement to command the Shanghai Expeditionary Force and
later the Central China Area Army in 1937, he favoured taking Nanking to mark a symbolic victory.
Matsui was not present in the city when atrocities began (he was aware of some of them to a certain
extent, mostly looting and rapes, which he strongly opposed), and only arrived for a formal
ceremony on 17 December 1937. On 15 February 1938, he was recalled to Japan, where he
ultimately retired. In 1946, he was arrested by the IMTFE and found guilty of incapacity to control his
troops. Wrongly sentenced to death, he was hanged along with six other Japanese leaders. His diary
today is widely used and abused (by some revisionists) as a source on the event.
Source: Yamamoto, 2000
Naitô Ryôichi (内藤良一) 26 December 1906-7 July 1982
Naitô was a lieutenant-general of the Japanese Army. He graduated from the Kyoto Imperial
University before becoming assistant professor at the Imperial Army School of Medicine (陸軍軍医学校助教授
rikugun guni gakkô jokyôju) in 1939. A year later, he filed a patent application with Ishii for his
“method of dry plasma blood transfusion” (輸血用乾燥血の製造法 yuketsuyô kansôketsu no seizô hô). In 1942,
he was appointed Head of Unit 9420 in Singapore, where BC research and experiments were
conducted under his supervision. From 1942 until the end of the war, Naitô resumed his position as a
professor at the Imperial Army School of Medicine. From 1947 and in exchange for complete
immunity, Naitô became a leading informant for US military personnel looking for the results of
Japanese research on BC warfare. In 1950, he was the co-founder, under the patronage of Japanese
and American bodies, of the Japanese Blood Bank（日本ブラッドバンクNihon Buraddo Banku), which on 28
August 1964 was renamed “The Green Cross Corporation” (株式会社ミドリ十字 kabushigaisha Midori Jûji),
implicated in a tainted-blood transfusion scandal in 1983.
Source: Yoshinaga, 2001
Okamura Yasuji (岡村寧次) 15 May 1884-2 September 1966
Born in Tokyo, Okamura was a Japanese general in the Kwantung Army. In the 1920s, he was sent to
Europe, subsequently taking command of a Japanese battalion that had returned from Siberia with a
high rate of STDs, incapacitating officers and soldiers alike. In 1932-33, as Vice-Chief of Staff of the
Shanghai Expeditionary Force, and to avoid the spread and debilitating effects of venereal diseases,
he ordered both the Imperial Army and Navy to set up brothels in Shanghai after the Japanese
intervention of 1932. Okamura demanded that the Nagasaki prefecture create and send “military
comfort women corps” for Imperial troops stationed in China. The women were to be recruited
among Japanese prostitutes in Nagasaki, with the aim of eradicating not only STDs among the
Imperial forces, as well as rape. Condemned for war crimes in China in 1948, he was however able to
return to Japan in 1949. His diary is a source on the “comfort women” question.
Source : Yoshimi, 2000
Ônishi Takijirô (大西瀧治郎) 2 June 1891-16 August 1945
Vice-Admiral in the Imperial Navy, Ônishi was appointed as Chief of the General Affairs of the
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Published on Encyclopédie des violences de masse (http://ww
w.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance)
Aviation Department in the Ministry of Munitions in 1944, after a brilliant career as commander of an
aircraft carrier. This position made him aware of a certain lack of Japanese aircraft production
capacity, leaving his country at a disadvantage against the enemy. With few planes left, Ônishi felt
that suicide attacks had a better chance of success than conventional warfare. Determined to keep
fighting to the bitter end, the Vice-Admiral refused to consider surrendering to the Allies and
committed suicide in the night of 15 August 1945. He wrote an apology note before his death,
dedicated to kamikaze pilots and to their families.
Source : Inoguchi, Nakajima, Pineau, 1958
Tôjô Hideki (東条英機) 30 December 1884-23 December 1948: A general in the Japanese Army, Tôjô
was transferred to the Kwantung Army early in his career. In 1938, he was recalled to Japan to serve
in various pivotal positions. He then became prime minister from 1941 to 1944, becoming Chief of
Army Staff in 1944. Tôjô attempted suicide in 1945, just before he was captured by the occupying
forces, but was kept alive and tried by the IMTFE as one of the main war criminals, due to the several
senior positions he held before and during the conflict. He was hanged in 1948. Tôjô is often
considered a scapegoat executed in order to save the Emperor and keep him on the throne.
According to some sources, he remained devoted to Hirohito until the end; Hirohito reportedly wept
upon hearing the news of his death.
Source: Bix, 2000
Keywords
Japan (日本), World War II (第二次世界大戦), Asia-Pacific War (アジア・太平洋戦争), Fifteen Years’ War (十五年戦争),
Atrocities (残虐), Mass Violence (暴力), Comfort Women (従軍慰安婦), Biological Weapons (生物兵器), Japanese
Army (日本軍), Colonies (植民地)
Pour en savoir plus
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