Week of:



Week of: 3/23/2020 - 3/27/2020

Monday - Friday, Lesson # 29

Course: World History - AP

Dr. Louise Tokarsky-Unda, PhD

_______________________________________________________________________

Textbook & Materials:

(1) World Civilizations, Vol 1 & 2 - Philip J. Adler & Randall L. Pouwells - 4th Edition

CH 47, pp.630-641.

(2) Handout: WWII + Holocaust DBQ

(3) Handout: Japan packet (Rape of Nanking; Unit 731, My Grandma's Stories)

(4) YouTube video:

NJ CCCS # 6.2.12.A.4.c; 6.2.12.D.4.d,e,g,j; RH.9-10.1-3, 6,9

Homework: Read Ch.47 by Mar 30.; Reaction paper #22: Any topic related to WWII, due

March 30. Unit Test #4 (Chs.43,44,46,47) on April 3.

Objectives:

SWBAT analyze the causes of WWII, list the goals of Germany and Japan, discuss the course of the war, analyze Nazi Germany's impact on Jewish populations, analyze Japan's impact on Chinese and Singaporean populations, predict ways to prevent future genocides.

Activities:

Mon/Tues (block):Collect paper #21. Students take turns reading aloud from WWII packet,

answer questions. Read an discuss Holocaust DBQ packet.

Wed/Thurs (block): Read and discuss Japan packet (Unit 731, Rape of Nanking, My Grandma's

Stories).

Fri (40 mins): Show YouTube video: UNIT 731 Documentary | Japanese Invasion of China |

Second Sino-Japanese War | 1937-45

(41 mins)

World War II (1939-1945)

What was it?

A worldwide conflict fought between the Allied Powers (Soviet Union, United States, United Kingdom, China, and France) and the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, Japan).

Armed forces from over seventy nations fought in aerial, naval and ground-based combat. Spanning much of the globe, World War II resulted in the death of over 62 million people, the deadliest conflict in human history.

The war ended with an Allied victory.

Causes:

• German invasion of Poland

• Japanese attacks on China, the United States, British and Dutch colonies. All of the attacks were organized by the leadership of the ruling upper class in Germany and Japan.

World War II began after these acts of aggression were met with an official declaration of war, armed resistance, or both.

Nazi Germany’s goals:

• To regain German territories taken by the Treaty of Versailles (the treaty that ended WWI).

• To add ethnic German regions of former Austria-Hungary to Germany’s territory. For example, Hitler claimed to be concerned about the rights of Germans living in parts of Poland and Czechoslovakia, which were taken from Germany and Austria during WWI.

• To attack anyone who was Leftist, or who disagreed with the Nazi worldview.

Why Germans supported the Nazi Party:

• The Treaty of Versailles unfairly punished Germans, forcing them to pay a lot of money for damages caused from WWI, even though many countries participated and many caused damage. Germans thought they deserved to be compensated.

• The Great Depression caused public discontent. People were willing to accept Hitler’s fascism and militarism because they thought it would make Germany prosperous and powerful again (which is what he promised them).

• The Nazis persecuted ethnic groups and political groups, targeting them as the cause of Germany’s suffering. Ethnic Germans liked having someone to blame for their economic misfortunes.

Why didn’t other countries stop the Nazis immediately?

• British and French governments were still tired and weak from WWI. They decided to appease Germany, in order to avoid another war.

• Other countries knew that the Versailles Treaty was unfair, and thought it was better to let Germany pursue compensation rather than provoke it and cause another war.

• Hitler lied: he told England and France that he wanted to claim only German speaking areas of Czechoslovakia. After that, he wouldn’t try to take any more territory. This agreement is called the Munich Agreement. Other countries believed him.

Japan’s Goals:

• To become a great colonial power

• To conquer Asia and the Pacific

Japan assumed that European countries (and the U.S.) would still be weak from WWI, and distracted by the war in Europe. The Japanese thought they could invade the Pacific because the U.S. wouldn’t be prepared for a war.

Japan invaded China, and threatened to invade the USSR. The Soviets didn’t want to fight a war on two fronts, so they made a secret agreement (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) with Germany. Part of this agreement was for both countries to divide and claim Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland and Romania. It wasn’t until later, when Germany invaded Soviet territory, that the Soviets fought against the Germans.

In 1940, Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with fascist Italy and Germany, to form the Axis Powers.

Pearl Harbor

• On Dec.7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, a U.S. naval base in Hawaii

• Japan wanted to weaken American naval power, so it could proceed with its plans to take over the Pacific

• Over 2,000 Americans died, and over 1,000 were wounded

• Because of this, the U.S. entered into WWII

• Just four days later, on Dec.11, Germany declared war on the U.S.

WWII Timeline

--July 1937 Japan attacks China, killing over 300,000 civilians in one month

--Spring 1939 Japan threatens Soviets, leading to Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between the USSR and Germany

--Sept. 1, 1939 Germans invade Poland, falsely claiming that Poles had attacked them.

--Sept.3, 1939 U.K., Australia and New Zealand declare war on Germany, because the Germans would not pull out from Poland. France, South Africa, Canada and Nepal also declare war on Germany.

--Sept. 1939 Soviet Union invades Poland from the east

--Nov. 1939 Soviet Union attacks Finland

--April, 1940 Germany invades Denmark and Norway

--May 1940 Germany invades Luxembourg, Belgium, Netherlands, France

--July 1940 British attack French navy in North Africa (France had surrendered to Germany. British didn’t want Germans to control the Suez Canal)

--Aug. 1940 Italians capture British Somaliland (in Africa)

--Sept. 1940 Italy invades British bases in Egypt and Libya

--Oct. 1940 Italy invades Greece

--March 1941 Allied forces destroy Italian navy in Mediterranean

--April 1941 Allied forces invade Syria, Lebanon and Iran

--April 1941 Axis forces invade Yugoslavia

--June 1941 Germany invades Soviet Union, Soviets join the Allies

--June 1941 U.S., U.K and Netherlands begin oil embargo against Japan

--Dec. 1941 Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, Thailand, Malaya, Hong Kong, Philippines

--Dec. 1941 U.S. declares war on Japan. Germany declares war on U.S. (Germans hoped Japan would support them by attacking Soviet Union)

--Jan. 1942 Allies officially formed in the declaration by the United Nations

--Feb. 1942 U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt orders internment of thousands of Japanese-, Italian-, and German-Americans for the duration of the war (most were U.S. citizens!).

--May 1943 Allied forces reclaim North Africa

--March 1944 U.S. firebombs large portions of Japanese territory

--June 1944 Allies invade France (Battle of Normandy)

--1945 Allies begin to conquer Germany

--April 30, 1945 Hitler, realizing he’s losing the battle, commits suicide

--Aug. 6, 1945 U.S. drops nuclear bomb on Hiroshima (Japan)

--Aug. 8, 1945 Soviet Union attacks Japanese in Manchuria

--Aug. 9, 1945 U.S. drops nuclear bomb on Nagasaki

--Aug. 14, 1945 Japanese Emperor Hirohito surrenders

World War II

[pic]

Mushroom cloud resulting from the

U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki

[pic]

Allied supplies coming ashore in Normandy, France.

[pic]

Starving prisoners in an Austrian concentration camp.

[pic]

[pic]

[pic]

In the face of wartime labor shortages, the U.S. needed women to enter labor industries, the civilian service and the Armed Forces. These posters encouraged women to take such

jobs.

World War II worksheet Name: _____________________

1. Who were the major Allied Powers in WWII?

2. Who were the major Axis Powers?

3. Which two countries started WWII?

4. How did the Treaty of Versailles lead to WWII?

5. What did Germany want to do?

6. Why did many Germans support the Nazis?

7. Why didn’t England and France attack Germany immediately?

8. What were Japan’s goals?

9. What was the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact?

10. Why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor?

11. Using the timeline, which side (Allies or Axis) was winning the war in the

beginning?

12. Around what year does the other side begin to win?

13. What series of events brings WWII to an end?

Use the photographs to answer the following questions:

14. What were some of the effects that WWII had on civilians?

15. What did women do during World War II?

16. How did the U.S. government encourage women to take jobs that were

traditionally held by men?

17. (opinion question) Atomic bombs destroy entire regions, and poison the

ground and any survivors with radiation. Do you think it was necessary to drop

atomic bombs on Japan? Why, or why not?

Holocaust DBQ

Historical Context

The rise of the Nazi Party from 1933-1945 had a profound impact on the lives of many people throughout Europe. Innocent people including over a million children suffered at the hands of the Nazis.

Task

Examine the documents to see chronologically how the Nazis slowly changed life politically, economically and socially for many people.

Part A

Directions: Analyze the documents and answer the question or questions that follow each document, using the space provided.

Part A

Kristallnacht Order

Document 1

This document was retrieved from the archives of Shamash: The Jewish Internet Consortium.

Message from SS-Grupenführer Heydrich to all State Police Main Offices and Field Offices, November 10 1938 (before Kristallnacht, the "night of broken glass," the first large scale pogrom against the Jews).

Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression - Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., 1946, Vol. III, p. 545-547.

Regards: Measures against Jews tonight.

a) Only such measures may be taken which do not jeopardize German life or property (for instance, burning of synagogues only if there is no danger of fires for the neighbourhoods).

b) Business establishments and homes of Jews may be destroyed but not looted. The police have been instructed to supervise the execution of these directives and to arrest looters.

c) In Business streets special care is to be taken that non-Jewish establishments will be safeguarded at all cost against damage.

As soon as the events of this night permit the use of the designated officers, as many Jews, particularly wealthy ones, as the local jails will hold, are to be arrested in all districts. Initially only healthy male Jews, not too old, are to be arrested. After the arrests have been carried out the appropriate concentration camp is to be contacted immediately with a view to a quick transfer of the Jews to the camps

 

 

1. How would The Kristallnact Order change life for the Jews?

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Were German citizens treated the same way as the Jews were?

 

 

Document #2 Life in the Warsaw Ghetto

Life in the Warsaw Ghetto, Emanuel Ringelblum quoted in Yad Vashem Documents on the Holocaust, pp 228-229:

Smuggling began at the very moment that the Jewish area of residence was established; its inhabitants were forced to live on 180 grams of bread a day, 220 grams of sugar a month, 1 kg. of jam and 1 kg. of honey, etc. It was calculated that the officially supplied rations did not cover even 10 percent of the normal requirements. If one had wanted really to restrict oneself to the official rations then the entire population of the ghetto would have had to die of hunger in a very short time.... The German authorities did everything to seal off the ghetto hermetically and not to allow in a single gram of food. A wall was put up around the ghetto on all sides that did not leave a single millimeter of open space.... They fixed barbed wire and broken glass to the top of the wall.

1.       List three characteristics of ghetto life. 

Document # 3 Discriminatory Decrees Against the Jews

This document was retrieved from the archives of Nizkor. Source: Nazi Conspiracy & Aggression, Volume I, Chapter XII, Office of the United States Chief Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, 1946, pp. 980-982.

2. DISCRIMINATORY DECREES AGAINST JEWS

When the Nazi Party gained control of the German State, the conspirators used the means of official decrees as a weapon against the Jews. In this way the force of the state was applied against them. Jewish immigrants were denaturalized (1933 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 480, signed by Friank and Neurath). Native Jews were precluded from citizenship (1935 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 1146, signed by Frick). Jews were forbidden to live in marriage or to have extramarital relations with persons of German blood (1935 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 1146, signed by Frick and Hess). Jews were denied the right to vote (1936 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 133, signed by Frick). Jews were denied the right to hold public office or civil service positions (1933 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 277, signed by Frick) . Jews were relegated to an inferior status by the denial of common privileges and freedoms. Thus, they were denied access to certain city areas, sidewalks, transportation, places of amusement, restaurants (1938 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 1676). Progressively, more and more stringent measures were applied, even to the denial of private pursuits. They were excluded from the practice of dentistry (1939 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 47, signed by Hess). The practice of law was denied to them (1938 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 1403, signed by Frick and Hess). The practice of medicine was forbidden them (1938 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 969, signed by Frick and Hess). They were denied employment by press and radio ( 1933 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 661). They were excluded from stock exchanges and stock brokerage 1934 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 661). They were excluded from farming ( 1933 Reichsgesetzblatt, , Part I, page 685).

1. How did life change politically, economically, and socially for the Jews?

Document #4-Ghetto Ration Card

[pic]

Ghetto ration card for October 1941. This card officially entitled the holder to 300 calories daily.

Photo credit: Meczenstwo Walka, Zaglada Zydów Polsce 1939-1945. Poland. No. 137.

1.       Why do you think the Nazis gave ration cards out to Jews in the ghetto?

2. Do you think that it would be possible to survive with this amount of food?

Document #5-Testimonies of SS-Men from Various Camps

Retrieved from archives of Shamash: The Jewish Internet Consortium. The comments inside the square [ . . . ] brackets were written by Daniel Keren for the Shamash archives.

Testimony of SS Scharführer Erich Fuchs, in the Sobibor-Bolender trial, Dusseldorf.

Quoted in "BELZEC, SOBIBOR, TREBLINKA - the Operation Reinhard Death Camps", Indiana University Press - Yitzhak Arad, 1987, p. 31-32:

If my memory serves me right, about thirty to forty women were gassed in one gas chamber. The Jewish women were forced to undress in an open place close to the gas chamber, and were driven into the gas chamber by the above mentioned SS members and the Ukrainian auxiliaries. when the women were shut up in the gas chamber I and Bolender set the motor in motion. The motor functioned first in neutral. Both of us stood by the motor and switched from "Neutral" (Freiauspuff) to "Cell" (Zelle), so that the gas was conveyed to the chamber. At the suggestion of the chemist, I fixed the motor on a definite speed so that it was unnecessary henceforth to press on the gas. About ten minutes later the thirty to forty women were dead. From the testimony of SS-Unterscharfuehrer Wilhelm Bahr in his trial at Hamburg.

Quoted in "Truth Prevails", ISBN 1-879437

1. Based on the testimony of this SS officer, what happened to the women prisoners of the Sobibor Concentration camp?

Document # 6-Early Nazi Policies

[pic]

[pic]

Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses

1.     How would the boycott of Jewish businesses help the Nazis?

 

2.      How would the boycott of the businesses change the economic livelihood of the Jews?

Document #7- Identification badges

|[pic] |

|[pic] |

|In May 1942, all Jews aged six and older are required to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothes to set them apart from non-Jews.|

| |

1. What was the purpose of identification badges?

Document #8- Anne Frank in school

|Anne Frank attends the local Montesori school, but after summer recess in 1941, she is not | |

|allowed to attend school with non-Jews. | |

1. How did education change for Anne Frank and other children after the Nazis came to power?

Document # 9- Diary Excerpt

|On Her Old Country, Germany |

|"Fine specimens of humanity, those Germans, and to think I'm actually one of them! No, that's not true, Hitler took away our nationality |

|long ago. And besides, there are no greater enemies on earth than the Germans and Jews." - October 9, 1942 |

|  |

1. According to this diary entry, why did Anne Frank feel that the Germans were the enemy?

Document # 10- Photo of a camp prisoner

[pic]

A prisoner in Dachau is forced to stand without moving for endless hours as a punishment. He is wearing a triangle patch identification on his chest.

 

1. What was life like for prisoners in the Concentration Camp?

Document # 11- Photo of Jewish Children

[pic] 

1. Based on this picture, what do you think the future of these two children would be like?

Task:

Using information from the documents your knowledge of global history, and the Daniel Story Exhibit, write an essay that shows how the rise of the Nazis caused life to change politically, economically and socially for people. Make sure to include how life changed for children as a result of the Nazis coming to power in 1933. Be sure to include specific historical detail.

Friday, 1 February, 2002, 18:00 GMT

Unit 731: Japan's biological force

[pic]

Wang Xuan is leading the Chinese villagers in their fight for justice

Unit 731 was a special division of the Japanese Army, a scientific and military elite. It had a huge budget specially authorised by the Emperor, to develop weapons of mass destruction that would win the war for Japan. America and Germany had their nuclear arms race. Japan put its faith in germs. Anita McNaught reports.

[pic]

The Second World War

It was October 1940. Wu was a boy of 11, when his nine-year-old brother fell sick from a mysterious disease, an epidemic that was raging through his village. Terrified that the family would be evicted, Wu's parents kept his brother's sickness a secret from their neighbours.

|[pic] |

|Wu Shi-Gen pays respects outside |

|the room in which his brother was |

|kept |

And fearing the boy would infect his siblings, they locked him in a storeroom at the far end of the house.

His brother had the bubonic plague.

The Japanese war planes which had passed over Wu Shi-Gen's village in Quzhou, southern China several days earlier puzzled its inhabitants. The bombs the planes dropped did not explode, but fell harmlessly to earth, cracking open like eggs. From them poured a bizarre mixture of rice, wheat and fleas. The fleas hopped away, into the dark corners of people's houses.

It was not until several days later, when many villagers were struck down by sickness, that some of the more astute began to make a connection.

White-coated Japanese medics claiming to be from a government epidemic-prevention unit would arrive at villages unannounced, saying they were there to implement hygiene measures, or administer vaccinations. Except that after they left, the village would fall sick.

Even more sinister, were the rare eyewitness, scarcely believed at the time, who told of how Japanese soldiers would take hold of victims, cutting them open while still alive and taking samples, before disposing of the bodies.

But none of these horrors came anywhere close to what was happening in the top secret facilities scattered right through Manchuria in Japanese-occupied Northern China.

Unit 731

Unit 731 was the world's largest and most comprehensive biological warfare programme. Inside Unit 731 the Japanese conducted research and human experimentation on a scale unlike any in the history of humankind.

|[pic] |

|The exterior remains of Unit 731 |

|facilities |

More than 10,000 Chinese, Korean and Russian POWs were slaughtered in these experimental facilities. They were used as human laboratory rats, to research, breed and refine biological weapons.

They were treated as sub-human, and live vivisections were common. The products of the research were tested on Chinese civilians. It is estimated that biological weapons killed more than 300,000 between 1938-1945.

Cover up

As the war came to an end, the Japanese surrendered and the US moved in to run the country's affairs, the officers and scientists responsible were never brought to trial.

|[pic] |

|The research notes from Unit 731 |

|have been locked away in US |

|military archives |

The US military got wind of what the Japanese had been working on and immediately grasped two points: They would never be able to conduct that type of human experimentation at home. And that the research had to be kept from the Russians at all costs.

So the US cut the Japanese officers a deal: Immunity from prosecution for war crimes in return for experimental data.

Taking action

When neither the Japanese government nor the US seemed prepared to admit to either the crimes or the cover-up, a small group of appalled Japanese reached out to the Chinese, and formed an unusual alliance. They were determined to use the system to change the system, and decided a lawsuit was the best way.

They needed to hear the villagers' stories - without living witnesses to the slaughter, they would have no case. Their planned visit to Chong Shan made headlines in both countries.

|[pic] |

|Wang Xuan has made it her life's |

|work to call the Japanese |

|Government to account |

Wang Xuan knew the war stories from the villagers of Chong Shan, in her teens she had been sent there to learn from the peasants. Her province too had been plague-bombed. Her uncle had died of diseases. She realised some form of redress for what her relatives had suffered was possible.

She remembers the day in August 1995 she, working in Japan, read about plans for the law suit in the Japan Times. "I was very excited. I got in touch with the group and I said: I am the offspring from Chong Shan village. I have an obligation to help you."

Wang Xuan has played a crucial role in getting the witnesses to trial, and collecting detailed evidence. She has held political rallies and organised conferences and symposiums. She has lobbied and harried government officials on both sides of the China Sea, and forged international links between academics in Asia and the US.

The lawsuit

When research for the lawsuit began, Wang heard Wu had a story to tell. But Wu, like many of his generation was instinctively humble. He could not see how an old man like himself, with little education and no experience in public affairs could possibly be any help. Wang talked him around.

|[pic] |

|Wu Shi-Gen keeps his pledge to |

|avenge his family |

A group of 180 Chinese villagers including Wu Shi-Gen gave evidence against the Japanese government. Their demands are simple. They want the government first to admit to the extent of the biological warfare waged against the Chinese, and then to apologise and make a compensatory payment. "Sorry is not enough", says Wang Xuan, "the Japanese are a very polite people - they say sorry all the time in their daily lives."

Despite his initial anxieties, for Wu Shi-Gen, the process of confronting his past has been entirely positive. After the deaths of his brother and sister, his father was bayoneted to death by a Japanese soldier. His mother on her deathbed asked her surviving son to avenge the family. Sixty years on, Wu feels he has finally honoured that pledge.

"I feel like a stone has been lifted from my heart", he says.

The verdict is expected in early March.

Now, the Chinese villagers are looking to sue the US government.

[pic]

In December of 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army marched into China's capital city of Nanking and proceeded to murder 300,000 out of 600,000 civilians and soldiers in the city. The six weeks of carnage would become known as the Rape of Nanking and represented the single worst atrocity during the World War II era in either the European or Pacific theaters of war.

The actual military invasion of Nanking was preceded by a tough battle at Shanghai that began in the summer of 1937. Chinese forces there put up surprisingly stiff resistance against the Japanese Army which had expected an easy victory in China. The Japanese had even bragged they would conquer all of China in just three months. The stubborn resistance by the Chinese troops upset that timetable, with the battle dragging on through the summer into late fall. This infuriated the Japanese and whetted their appetite for the revenge that was to follow at Nanking.

After finally defeating the Chinese at Shanghai in November, 50,000 Japanese soldiers then marched on toward Nanking. Unlike the troops at Shanghai, Chinese soldiers at Nanking were poorly led and loosely organized. Although they greatly outnumbered the Japanese and had plenty of ammunition, they withered under the ferocity of the Japanese attack, then engaged in a chaotic retreat. After just four days of fighting, Japanese troops smashed into the city on December 13, 1937, with orders issued to "kill all captives."

Their first concern was to eliminate any threat from the 90,000 Chinese soldiers who surrendered. To the Japanese, surrender was an unthinkable act of cowardice and the ultimate violation of the rigid code of military honor drilled into them from childhood onward. Thus they looked upon Chinese POWs with utter contempt, viewing them as less than human, unworthy of life.

The elimination of the Chinese POWs began after they were transported by trucks to remote locations on the outskirts of Nanking. As soon as they were assembled, the savagery began, with young Japanese soldiers encouraged by their superiors to inflict maximum pain and suffering upon individual POWs as a way of toughening themselves up for future battles, and also to eradicate any civilized notions of mercy. Filmed footage and still photographs taken by the Japanese themselves document the brutality. Smiling soldiers can be seen conducting bayonet practice on live prisoners, decapitating them and displaying severed heads as souvenirs, and proudly standing among mutilated corpses. Some of the Chinese POWs were simply mowed down by machine-gun fire while others were tied-up, soaked with gasoline and burned alive.

After the destruction of the POWs, the soldiers turned their attention to the women of Nanking and an outright animalistic hunt ensued. Old women over the age of 70 as well as little girls under the age of 8 were dragged off to be sexually abused. More than 20,000 females (with some estimates as high as 80,000) were gang-raped by Japanese soldiers, then stabbed to death with bayonets or shot so they could never bear witness.

Pregnant women were not spared. In several instances, they were raped, then had their bellies slit open and the fetuses torn out. Sometimes, after storming into a house and encountering a whole family, the Japanese forced Chinese men to rape their own daughters, sons to rape their mothers, and brothers their sisters, while the rest of the family was made to watch.

Throughout the city of Nanking, random acts of murder occurred as soldiers frequently fired their rifles into panicked crowds of civilians, killing indiscriminately. Other soldiers killed shopkeepers, looted their stores, then set the buildings on fire after locking people of all ages inside. They took pleasure in the extraordinary suffering that ensued as the people desperately tried to escape the flames by climbing onto rooftops or leaping down onto the street.

The incredible carnage - citywide burnings, stabbings, drownings, strangulations, rapes, thefts, and massive property destruction - continued unabated for about six weeks, from mid-December 1937 through the beginning of February 1938. Young or old, male or female, anyone could be shot on a whim by any Japanese soldier for any reason. Corpses could be seen everywhere throughout the city. The streets of Nanking were said to literally have run red with blood.

Those who were not killed on the spot were taken to the outskirts of the city and forced to dig their own graves, large rectangular pits that would be filled with decapitated corpses resulting from killing contests the Japanese held among themselves. Other times, the Japanese forced the Chinese to bury each other alive in the dirt.

After this period of unprecedented violence, the Japanese eased off somewhat and settled in for the duration of the war. To pacify the population during the long occupation, highly addictive narcotics, including opium and heroin, were distributed by Japanese soldiers to the people of Nanking, regardless of age. An estimated 50,000 persons became addicted to heroin while many others lost themselves in the city's opium dens.

In addition, the notorious Comfort Women system was introduced which forced young Chinese women to become slave-prostitutes, existing solely for the sexual pleasure of Japanese soldiers.

News reports of the happenings in Nanking appeared in the official Japanese press and also in the West, as page-one reports in newspapers such as the New York Times. Japanese news reports reflected the militaristic mood of the country in which any victory by the Imperial Army resulting in further expansion of the Japanese empire was celebrated. Eyewitness reports by Japanese military correspondents concerning the sufferings of the people of Nanking also appeared. They reflected a mentality in which the brutal dominance of subjugated or so-called inferior peoples was considered just. Incredibly, one paper, the Japan Advertiser, actually published a running count of the heads severed by two officers involved in a decapitation contest, as if it was some kind of a sporting match.

In the United States, reports published in the New York Times, Reader's Digest and Time Magazine, were greeted with skepticism from the American public. The stories smuggled out of Nanking seemed almost too fantastic to be believed.

Overall, most Americans had only a passing knowledge or little interest in Asia. Political leaders in both America and Britain remained overwhelmingly focused on the situation in Europe where Adolf Hitler was rapidly re-arming Germany while at the same time expanding the borders of the Nazi Reich through devious political maneuvers.

Back in Nanking, however, all was not lost. An extraordinary group of about 20 Americans and Europeans remaining in the city, composed of missionaries, doctors and businessmen, took it upon themselves to establish an International Safety Zone. Using Red Cross flags, they brazenly declared a 2.5 square-mile area in the middle of the city off limits to the Japanese. On numerous occasions, they also risked their lives by personally intervening to prevent the execution of Chinese men or the rape of women and young girls.

These Westerners became the unsung heroes of Nanking, working day and night to the point of exhaustion to aid the Chinese. They also wrote down their impressions of the daily scenes they witnessed, with one describing Nanking as "hell on earth." Another wrote of the Japanese soldiers: "I did not imagine that such cruel people existed in the modern world." About 300,000 Chinese civilians took refuge inside their Safety Zone. Almost all of the people who did not make it into the Zone during the Rape of Nanking ultimately perished.

My grandma’s stories: Japanese occupation, of horror and terror

April 11, 2012 ~ Jie Yi See

(This is the fourth part of an ongoing series recounting my grandma’s stories about her life and the old days in Singapore. Click here for the first, second and third part)

December 7, 1941 – Pearl Harbor in Hawaii came under a surprise military strike by the Japanese, who officially declared their ambitions in the Pacific. The United States entered World War II for the first time.

Two months later, the Japanese conquered the whole of Malaya, including Singapore, putting an end to more than a century worth of British colonization.

“Compared to the British who left us to our own devices, the Japanese constantly harassed us,” grandma recounted the war years when she grew up as a young teenage girl. “They were merciless, brutal and always beating innocent people up.”

[pic]The new order of the day became terror and scarcity, and the number one item on everyone’s list of fear – bombs.

“The Japanese dropped a huge bomb after a plane flew past at the other end of my village and a lot of people died,” Ah Ma said. “Since then, we would never stay in our houses when we hear the sound of planes.”

Dodging bombs became a matter of survival and the main preoccupation in Ah Ma’s everyday life.

[pic]Once a plane is spotted or heard, Grandma and her neighbors would flee to a nearby rubber plantation to seek cover.

Amongst the thicket of rubber trees, they would hide in a long and deep trench secretly dug by numerous families, which could fit about five to six families. To camouflage their hiding place, wooden planks were placed across the hole before grass patches were laid above them.

On top of experiencing psychological trauma, the war also depleted supplies of resources in a country where natural resources are in the first place hard to come by.

As a tiny island, Singapore is never a self-sustainable nation, importing almost everything from critical food resources to petroleum. (According to the CIA, Singapore is about 3.5 times the size of Washington D.C.) [pic]

During the warring years, staples such as rice and noodles came under tighter centralized controls and were rationed monthly.

“We had to carry our identification cards and wait in a long line to get our rations,” Ah Ma recalled. “Different items were distributed at different places, rice could be in the east and kerosene in the west, so we had to cover great distances before we could buy them.”

In spite of going to great lengths to obtain rations, they were barely enough for Ah Ma’s family of six to survive. Such limited supplies drove them to search for another way out, which sadly put an abrupt end to grandma’s childhood.

“I remembered blisters and calluses formed on my hands from digging the soil and carrying hoes,” Ah Ma said. “They were really painful but we didn’t have any money to buy gloves to protect my hands.”

Like most of her neighbors, grandma’s family planted cheap but nutritious sweet potatoes and tapioca plants in their backyard as alternatives to the much-preferred white rice to supplement their diets.

Days of terror reigned for the rest of the three years and eight months until 1945 where atomic bombs Little Man and Fat Boy brought the Japanese imperial army to their knees, which also drew an end to their occupation of Malaya.

[pic]

Japan's Foreign Minister, Mamoru Shigemitsu, signs the surrender document in 1945.

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