Journal of Japanese Invasion ofChina and Nanjing Massacre

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Christian Kröger, an engineer of the German firm Carlowitz & Co., lived and worked in Nanjing from 1936 to 1938. He stayed in Nanjing while the Japanese troops occupied the city and slaughtered the disarmed soldiers and civilians, assisting John Rabe in managing the Safety Zone and trying his best to protect the refugees. Meanwhile, he kept an extensive and detailed record of the conditions under the reign of terror. His eyewitness accounts, some of which were read as the prosecution’s evidence before the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, faithfully recorded such Japanese atrocities as massacres, rapes, lootings, and burnings. Although he was unable to set foot on Chinese soil again after his departure in January 1939, he had a strong attachment to the country and could not forget people’s sufferings endured during the Nanjing Massacre. On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre, he edited his original eyewitness accounts and sent them to the Chinese ambassador to West Germany in commemoration of the anniversary.

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Memorial Day and its ceremonial activities are one of the important ways to construct and inherit collective memories. On December 13, 1937, after the Japanese army occupied Nanjing, they committed Nanjing Massacre that shocked China and the world. To commemorate the fall of Nanjing then as the Capital of China and to mourn victims, relevant commemorative activities were held in Zhejiang, Nanjing and other places during the total war of resistance against Japan and after the victory of the War which experienced changes from the wartime “Memorial Day of the Fall of the Capital” to the postwar “Memorial Day of Nanjing Martyrs”. These commemorative activities promoted the formation of the collective memory of the Nanjing Massacre. Collective memory is constructed on social needs, and the collective memory of the Nanjing Massacre is no exception. Relevant commemorative activities of the Nanjing Massacre are affected by social, political and other factors, and are endowed with different connotations and meanings in different periods.

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During the stage of stalemate of the War of Resistance against Japan, due to the KMT’s economic blockage and the increase of the non-production population in Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Area, the border area encountered severe political, military and economic difficulties. The enlightened gentry Li Ding-ming proposed “ Better Troops and Simpler Administration” at the second consultative assembly which was affirmed by Mao Zedong and the Central Committee of the CPC and became an important policy of the CPC. It was of a more prominent significance in “streamlining administration” in Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Area as the seat of the Central Committee of the CPC and the rear of the War of Resistance against Japanese aggression. However, it encountered great obstacles in the implementation process. Through exploration and adjustment, “streamlining administration ” was closely integrated with the rectification movement, which was given new connotation by Mao Zedong, namely downsizing, unity, efficiency, saving and opposition to bureaucratism. The central goal was to deepen the baptism of cadres’ thinking and the reform of administrative system. It was not only streamlining, but more importantly, reconstructing the administrative system and the formation of a unified dual leadership regime through thorough streamlining, which contributed to improvements and changes at the Border Area.

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In the Tokyo Trial of Class-A war criminals after World War II, although Emperor Hirohito wasn’t charged, yet the issue of his war responsibility remained in the court’s vision. As the trial progressed, William Webb, the presiding judge of the Tokyo Trial, changed his position on this issue from the original “the emperor should not stand trial” to “the emperor should bear responsibility but not held accountable”. However, Webb classified the Emperor as a pacifist, and fail to regard him together with the 28 Class-A defendants as a conspiracy group, which affected his judgment on the defendants’ “joint conspiracy” of aggression. Judging from Webb’s position on the emperor’s responsibility and its formation process, it shows the judicial independence of the Tokyo Trial judges on one hand, and on the other hand, it also reflects the complexity of the Tokyo Trial as a large-scale international judicial practice.

: “”1944

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“Hometown China” was one of the “hometown” reports of four countries published in the, an American popular magazine in 1944. It was sponsored by official agencies of China and the United States, and focused on the business, production, social reform and spiritual outlook of people of wartime Bishan County, the relocation area of China’s wartime capital Chongqing through a large number of images and information collected by American journalists in Bishan County,. They tried to display the image of “New China” through Bishan, a “model county” with the “New China Spirit”. Together with the “Hometown” reports about Britain, the United States and Russia, it conveyed to the American people the legitimacy of the ongoing war and the United States’ expectations for the postwar development of the allied countries. This image of China was jointly constructed by the governments and the propaganda institutions of China and the United States. Although there was a gap between the image and the actual situation in China during the same period, it was in line with the wartime interests of both sides, and was an important case in the creation and dissemination of wartime national image.

——1946

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In April 1946, a cholera epidemic occurred during the repatriation of Japanese civilians and POWs on the repatriation ships departing from Guangdong. The Japanese authorities grouped those ships at Uraga Port and established “Uraga Repatriation Assistance Bureau” as the core commanding institution for the comprehensive cholera control and prevention. The prevention measures mainly included quarantine, disinfection, diagnosis and treatment as well as the material supply to the repatriation ships. Due to the restrictive conditions, those measures encountered great obstacles in the course of implementation, but ultimately it prevented successfully the cholera from spreading to Japan. However, the cholera epidemic still had many negative impacts on the economy and society of Uraga, Tokyo and even the Kanto region.

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It was one of the important means for Japan to implement its national policy of aggression against China to carry out survey research in China and spy out information, which played a crucial role during the Japanese aggression against China. Japan used the Boxer indemnity to establish the Shanghai Institute of Natural Sciences, and started the “Cultural Undertaking towards China”. In the name of “carrying out natural science research and popularizing scientific knowledge”, it conducted various surveys and collected resource information. Especially during the total war of resistance, the entire Japanese system of “Cultural Undertaking towards China” including the Shanghai Institute of Natural Sciences was incorporated into the wartime system, and all the surveys were carried out around the national policy of its war of aggression against China, which had become the dependency and accomplice of Japanese policy of the aggression against China and the aggressive war. Their aggression and intelligence-gathering activities didn’t end until the Chinese government took over Japanese cultural institutions in China after the victory of the War of Resistance against Japan.

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As a featured part of modern patriotism education, the geographical education on national humiliation was closely integrated with school education and social education, aiming to awaken students and the public the sense of national crisis through exaggerating national humiliation reflected in the successive losses of land and power in modern China, which in turn strengthened their sense of responsibility and mission to defend national dignity and recover the lost territory. To improve the effect of education, relevant institutions formulated a series of policies to promote it. Schools at all levels used maps, games and other carriers to enhance their teaching appeal, and the application of films, poems, songs, woodcuts, exhibitions and other methods further expanded the scope of education. The geographical education on national humiliation not only spread the concept of the modern state, strengthened the overall national identity, but also provided support for defending the territorial integrity and washing away the centuries of humiliation.

’’—1935

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Due to the extremely important strategic position of Macao, in the 1930s, the Japanese seized various opportunities to penetrate into Macao economically, which aroused the Britain’s vigilance. In early 1935, the Macao authorities put up the financially-distressed waterworks for sale, which quickly attracted the interest of the Japanese. The Governor of Macao realized the danger of the Japanese entering Macao, but was unable to deal with it, so he turned to Britain for help. The British military and political leaders persuaded the Portuguese government to stop the transaction. To solve the dilemma faced by the waterworks and cut off the possibility of the Japanese interference, the British government and the Hong Kong authorities persuaded HSBC to provide loans, and finally the Macao authorities resisted the continuous pressure from the Japanese and granted a concession contract to British companies. Japanese purchase plan was completely failed. In the 1930s, in the face of Japan’s expansion, although British Government generally adopted a policy of appeasement, it also had active countermeasures in non-military aspects such as economy and diplomacy.

’(1937—1941)

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From the Lugouqiao Incident to the outbreak of the Pacific War, in different periods, the radio stations in the national government responsible for broadcasting towards the United States were different, and there were changes in the broadcasting managements, their functions and powers, but finally in the summer of 1940, a functional division was established between the Central Broadcasting Administration responsible for technology and the Department of International information responsible for the content, which strengthens the professionalism and concealment of the broadcast propaganda towards the United States. The retransmission of radio stations located between China and the United States was a necessary condition for the successful message transmission. After May 1940, the relay between the American radio station in Manila and Stewart, an American constituted a stable new channel for the transmission to the United States. To enhance the effect of broadcasting propaganda to the United States, the Chinese side increased the program length, adjusted the time slots and tailored the broadcasting program to suit the international situation, but the core appeal was always to promote American support for China and sanctions against Japan. Thanks to the cooperation among people concerned in China and the United States, the national government’s broadcasting towards the United States created a national image that was similar to that of the United States in terms of ideals and interests, which helped China to secure American aid during the war of resistance.

(1941—1945)

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During the “Public Security Reinforcement Campaign” from 1941 to 1945, the Japanese army manipulated the puppet regimes to expropriate the people nearby to build a large number of blockhouses in the rural areas of Hebei Province. As a kind of fortifications, in addition to its military function, the blockhouses were also equipped with daily living facilities. Due to the isolated and dangerous situation, the difficulty of material supply, psychological and emotional distortions and other factors, the life of the Japanese army in the blockhouses was hard to sustain, and finally tended to collapse with the counterattack from the Hebei resistance forces led by the CPC. The research on the life of the Japanese army including the puppet army in the rural blockhouses provides a new perspective for the studies on the history of the War of Resistance against Japan, that is, paying more attention to the daily life of the people in the war, especially the inflicters.

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In 2019,by Zhang Sheng was published. This collection has filled up new historical records for current and later research on modern and contemporary history both at home and abroad. At the same time, it shows the significance of the Mukden Incident in world history from the perspective of modern international relations and world history with historical records worthy of in-depth exploration and research in terms of “discovering history in China”, “discovering history of China in the world” and “discovering world history in China”. This paper roughly analyzes the contents of its five major parts, and explores and extracts the value of historical records for the purpose of being studied and used by historians.