Racism

While Japanese servicemen suffered violence from the empire, they also perpetrated violence. Killing enemy servicemen in combat was considered honourable. Although killing civilians was not considered admirable even during the war, the distinction between combatants and non-combatants became blurred as the war with China and the Allies progressed.

The Judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (1946-8) estimated that more than 200,000 Chinese people were killed in and around Nanjing during the first six weeks of the Japanese occupation. The Tribunal, describing the atrocities in Nanjing, said:

The Japanese soldiers swarmed over the city and committed various atro­cities. According to one of the eyewitnesses they were let loose like a barbarian horde to desecrate the city. It was said by eyewitnesses that the city appeared to have fallen into the hands of the Japanese as captured prey, that it had not merely been taken in organized warfare, and that the members of the victorious Japanese Army had set upon the prize to commit unlimited violence. Individual soldiers and small groups of two or three roamed over the city murdering, raping, looting, and burning. There was no discipline whatever.

Tall and thick walls with blockaded exits protected the city of Nanjing, but many of the Chinese defending forces were trapped inside these same walls. The troops threw away their uniforms and attempted to hide in the refugee zone. The thorough mopping up operations by the Japanese military con­tributed to the number of victims.

In terms of scale and duration, the Japanese Army's strategy known as the Three-All campaigns (kill all, burn all and loot all) was greater than the atrocities in Nanjing. The campaigns were intended to annihilate Chinese communists and their sympathisers in northern China for three years from 1941. The Japanese North China Area Army (Kita-Shina homen gun) occupied more than 10 million hectares in northern China (including Hebei, Shandong, Shanxi, Chahar, Suiyuan and part of Henan) with a population of approxi­mately 100 million people. In order to carry out the campaigns, the army mobilised at least 2 million labourers to dig 6 by 35 m trenches running 200 km from north to south or build walls if it was impossible to dig trenches. These trenches and walls were used to surround and isolate the enemy bases. After completely destroying the villages, the army sprayed mustard gas so that the enemy would not able to reuse them as bases. While the exact number of the deaths from the campaigns is unknown, one Chinese estimate concludes that nearly 2.5 million people were killed during these campaigns.^[566]

As many of the Japanese perpetrators explained in the postwar period, they did not feel remorse when they killed Chinese enemies.

After the war both Tominaga and Yuasa were captured and imprisoned by the Chinese communists. Tominaga spent six years in prison, while Yuasa spent five years. Contrary to their expectations, they received no retribution. The Chinese communists neither tortured nor executed them. Instead, they were treated humanely and received ample time to re-examine their wartime thoughts and deeds. They discussed their atrocities with their fellow inmates, confronted the Chinese survivors of the Japanese atrocities, and began to feel inexpiable guilt and responsibility for their war crimes. They recognised their victims not as faceless enemies but as other human beings and took responsibility for their crimes instead of accusing the state, their superiors in the Army, or their education. Tominaga and Yuasa were not alone, and they established the Liaison Society for Returnees from China (Chugoku kikansha renrakukai) after their repatriations. When they returned to Japan, they began to educate the public about the atrocities that they had committed through publications and oral presentations. They believed that their honest confessions would convey to young Japanese the reality of war, and their mission of atonement continued until their deaths.^[568]

Racist ideology probably also inspired Japan's chemical and biological warfare.

Opium and other drugs were systematically used to control the people in China, Korea, Mongolia and Singapore. In Mongolia, the Japanese govern­ment controlled the puppet regime and sold 714 tons of opium between 1939 and 1942, 55 per cent of which was exported to Shanghai and 24 per cent to northern China. The amount of opium was able to provide annual supplies for 500,000-800,000 people. In Manchuria, between 1933 and 1945 at least 3,410 tons were produced, while in Korea 293 tons were harvested between 1935 and 1944. In addition, the Japanese government imported Iranian opium to central China and Manchuria. After Imperial Japan conquered South-East Asia, the Japanese government initiated opium operations in Singapore.

According to Eguchi Keiichi, Professor of Modern Japanese History, Japan's opium operations in China had two goals: to profit from selling the drugs and to poison China into submission, because addiction would deprive the Chinese people of their will to fight. While the Japanese government func­tioned as the drug cartel, dealers were often colonial residents from China, Korea and Taiwan, many of whom struggled to survive at the bottom of the empire's social hierarchy.^[570]

Although racism may not be the sole reason for such violence as the Nanjing Massacre, Three-All campaigns, chemical and biological warfare, and opium production and smuggling, the belief that the Japanese people were racially superior to colonial residents amplified violence by the state and the individuals in the empire. Similarly, the state and its residents frequently committed violence against women.