Battle of Nanjing. The Soul of the Victims of the Divided Land

Author: (Japanese) Matsuo Kazuko | Translator
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2005-04-01
Features: There were about a hundred Japanese soldiers stationed near Coal Port. The area nearby had many open spaces, and the number of corpses was the highest around Coal Port. There were guards with long swords and spears. If someone walked past carelessly and was spotted, they would be told to pick up stones. The Japanese soldiers would stack the stones one by one. When they couldn’t carry any more, they would stab them to death. At that time, for a living, I went to empty houses and deserted shops in the downtown area of Xiguan to look for food. To get to Xiguan, I had to pass through Coal Port. Every time I went, I saw Chinese people being killed. The Japanese soldiers killed Chinese people at random, and I was very afraid, so I deliberately took a longer route to get there. It wasn’t until the second year after the Japanese soldiers entered and the puppet regime was established that things became somewhat stable. One day, a guard in Coal Port caught a woman, took off her pants, and stared at her while laughing. Then, the Japanese soldiers suddenly stabbed her with a bayonet from below upwards into her vagina, killing her. What was this! I hid in the reeds nearby, and I saw the whole thing. This happened two months after the Japanese soldiers entered. A woman with a two-year-old baby passed by the railway in Xiguan. The Japanese soldiers ordered her to stop, took the baby from her arms, and threw it to the ground, killing it. This was also something I saw. I thought I might be killed too, and I was very afraid. Later, the (Kempeitai) arrived. They wore armbands with the word "" (Kempeitai) written on them, and it was easy to recognize them. The Kempeitai were often seen, and the Japanese soldiers would beat anyone who wore a tilted hat or did something wrong. I also worked as a laborer at Zhongshan Pier. The pay was two pounds of wheat per day, which was very little, but since there was nothing else to eat, it was considered good to have something to eat. It wasn’t soldiers, but Japanese wearing cylindrical sleeves and kimonos who supervised dozens of laborers. They would beat anyone who took a break. The work involved loading grain from ships onto rail cars with a capacity of about one ton and pushing them. At that time, many people who had escaped returned, and many men were working as laborers. The Japanese soldiers often checked at checkpoints, saying, "Are you a Chinese soldier?" and tapping the heads of Chinese men to confirm. It is said that Chinese soldiers wore steel helmets, and part of their heads would harden. The Huajin Trading Company building and yard, run by the British, were full of refugees.
On page 99, before the Japanese entered the city, because the 88th Division of the Chinese army was retreating, I felt that Nanjing had no hope, so I quickly went to the refugee area for refuge. It was a refugee area near Huajiale Road. It was a temporary temple used as a refugee area, and there were only eight families living there, including us. At that time, there was a wife, a three-year-old child, a younger brother, and my father in the family, making a total of five people. I hid in the room of the refugee area and didn’t go out at all, because a neighbor who went out to see the situation was stabbed to death by the Japanese soldiers, so I was too scared to go out. Even in the refugee area, the Japanese soldiers often went to the nearby area at night to look for "flower girls" and chose better houses to enter. A young woman who was refugeing in the next room was gang-raped by many Japanese soldiers, one after another. There were other people in that house, but the Japanese soldiers didn’t care and forced the Chinese woman to have sex with them. When one Japanese soldier finished, the next one would enter the room, and this went on repeatedly. From the window of the next room, I witnessed this scene with my own eyes.
Additionally, I heard that an old woman in my hometown, who was over seventy, was raped. In the refugee