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The following content is extremely graphic and it might distress some readers. Reader discretion is advised.
We all know of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombing by the US which halted the Meiji Revolution and put an end to Japanese occupation and World War 2.
We all know the atrocities committed by Khmer Rouge regime in Myanmar which left around 2 million people dead in the most horrific way.
We all know of Sri Lankan Tamils being brutally killed by the Ceylonese government during the civil war between the LTTE and the Ceylonese army under the thumb of Rajapakse.
But, how many of us know of some 80,000 Chinese women, gang raped and sadistically murdered by the Japanese soldiers during World War 2?
Here is their story -- a forgotten story that needs telling where humans are capable to carry out bestial deeds.
If one wants to cripple a nation, a society or a community, the easiest way to do it is to rape and destroy the women.
And, rape was employed fully as a tool to bring China to its knees in the bygone era.
Mothers and babies, old women and little girls were raped, mutilated or immolated alive by Japanese soldiers during the war and women who were attractive were branded and held captive as a little more than sex slaves to 'serve' the Japanese soldiers and officers as they made their way to Nanking.
During the journey to Nanking, those women were raped by hundreds of soldiers before being killed and discarded like trash along the roadside.
As a matter of a revolting fact, every soldier was promised a woman if they kill lots of Chinese.
Many Japanese soldiers derived a sick kind of sexual pleasure by stabbing half naked women and men with their bayonets and swords, over and over and over again.
One survivor reminisces: "A dozen of Japanese with bayonets rushed into our house and shot my father and grabbed my baby sister who was being breast fed by my mother. Then they drew a bayonet into the baby, stripped my mother and raped her. They killed my grandparents and stabbed my 3 year old sister and me.with bayonets. Then, they dragged my elder sisters out and raped them. I saw both of my elder sisters lie in a pool of their blood. They were dead."
The soldiers happened to have a barbaric fetish for violating their victims with swords and knives.
"He tried to rape me. I managed to kick him and take his bayonet. He cried out in fear and other soldiers came to help him. They stabbed me continuously until they thought I was dead." - Li Jianfen -
In order not to get raped, young women cut their hair short, smear their faces with soot, bind their breasts and wore the clothing of men.
In Nanking, many women hid in the hospital and college and other safety zones. John Rabe, the German businessman who tried to save Chinese civilians from the atrocities of the Japanese in Nanking wrote in his diary that the Japanese intended to let the refugee starve as they began to hold food back from the safety zones.
The Japanese demanded that those who were in the zones to return to their homes which have been burned down, promising if they go back to their homes, they will be provided with food and water as well as protection when in fact the Japanese only wanted to 'use' these women as servants by day and sex slaves by night.
Chinese comfort women
The Japs considered Chinese women to serve only one purpose -- they were to be raped. Day in and day out, the soldiers scour the city in search for women to rape and torture.
A Japanese senior officer maintained a harem of over 2 dozens of young women.
A Japanese soldier said that the women, no matter how young or old cannot escape from the fate of being raped.
Women aged 10 to 80 were gang raped then killed when they can no longer satisfy the men's libido. Trucks were sent to seize women and every woman was allocated for 20 soldiers for sex and abuse. Countless women were taken captive and forced into sexual slavery.
Each soldier was issued a Red Ticket with the seal of his company's commander and they line up wearing only their underwear, waiting for their 'turn.' One such soldier said, "The women don't bother to wipe off the semen pouring out from their vagina. They just lie there, with their legs open as soldiers get in one by one."
They called these women 'public toilets.'
The assaulting and stabbing groups of young women, many of whom have been dragged out of their homes or places of shelter were common in the city.
More than 80,000 Chinese women were repeatedly raped by Japanese soldiers, forced to expose themselves in front of dozens of soldiers before and after they were sexually assaulted.
The Japanese even attacked a local hospital, gang raping the female staff there. More than 1,000 rapes happened every night.
On many occasions, the Japanese raided the Gingling college, kidnapping and raping hundreds of women, considering the college as their own pleasure palaces.
If fathers, brothers and husbands intervene during rapes, they were shot. Rapes committed by Japanese soldiers and officers took place in broad daylight, in front of spouses, children and other family members.
Beautiful, educated women were taken to serve in the harems of colonels and major generals. Children as young as 3 and elderly women as old as 70 were gang raped mercilessly by a dozen or more soldiers. Many were gang raped to death.
Many young women were tied up to beds, accessible to all comers and the most beautiful of Chinese women were taken into captive and repeatedly, violently and mercilessly gang raped by hundreds of soldiers over several days. When they become too weepy or too diseased to arouse desire, the women were disposed off.
Raping and bayoneting Chinese women were commonplace in the city and the Japanese soldiers made a game out of torturing and raping women with their higher ranking officers encouraging the soldiers to invent new and amusing ways to torture and murder the women.
A veteran Japanese soldier said that they took turns raping the women and then stab and kill them. "While raping her, we looked at her as a woman and when we killed her, we looked at her as lesser than a pig," he shrugged.
An elderly lady who survived the ordeal remembers her 7 month pregnant cousin being raped to death by 8 soldiers. "They stabbed her again and again with bayonets until she died. There so many naked bodies of women who have been gang raped then killed lying on the streets, their breasts, cut off," she sobbed.
Pregnant ladies' bellies were cut open by the soldiers and some women were bayoneted in their abdomens and intestines were spilling out from their bloodied bodies. Some have pieces of wood stuffed into their nether regions and the Japanese soldiers shoved bayonets and bamboo poles up the women's genitals. John Rabe wrote: You can't breathe out of sheer revulsion when you keep finding naked bodies of women with long bamboo poles thrust up their vaginas."
In one instance, several soldiers, after raping and killing a pregnant woman, presented her foetus on a bayonet to their commanding officer and was met with rapturous laughter.
It can't possibly get sicker than this. This black episode will haunt China for a long time and it is a story that should be told so that it won't repeat itself in any part of the world.
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