China was never a colony and China do keep records of the inventions! It was never interpreted to English
Colonialism Ending in Asia As China Reclaims Macao
By MARK LANDLER
Published: December 19, 1999
MACAO, Dec. 18— Five hundred years of European colonialism in Asia sputters to a close here this weekend on a desolate, rain-swept waterfront dredged out of Macao's once beguiling harbor. At the stroke of midnight on Sunday, China will reclaim this tiny enclave from Portugal, raising its red flag over another patch of Chinese soil and setting the stage for what it hopes will be eventual reunification with Taiwan.
Unlike Britain's handover of nearby Hong Kong two years ago, which was heralded by years of Chinese anticipation and British angst, this is not the reluctant surrender of a prized possession. Portugal tried to give back this enclave of 430,000 people once before, after the revolution that ended decades of dictatorship in Portugal in 1974, but China's leaders, fearful of losing a trading channel to the outside world, demurred.
Since then, the Portuguese administration has presided over Macao's steady deterioration into a disreputable, vaguely sinister gambling destination for weekend wagerers from Hong Kong. As feuds between rival Chinese gangs have terrorized the colony over the last few years, the economy has withered and Macao has become ever more hooked on the casinos, which generate more than half of its tax revenues.
''As a local, I'd have to say the Portuguese haven't done a good job,'' said Eric T. M. Yeung, a prominent Macao businessman who makes toys. ''But in fairness, they had their own problems and couldn't pay attention to a little spot of land on the other side of the world.''
A senior Chinese official in the future local government, who asked not to be identified to avoid offending the Portuguese, said:
''Hong Kong is so successful that Hong Kong people always think they are superior to the Chinese. We are happy in Macao, but I don't think anyone is proud.''
Portuguese officials are keenly aware of their checkered legacy. They were the first Europeans to colonize in Asia, driven by a lust for adventure and discovery, and a desire to spread the Christianity that had helped free Portugal of Moorish, Muslim rule. But for all the centuries they have lingered here, the Portuguese have left behind no lasting political culture.
In the last few weeks, they have worked diligently to promote the artifacts, old and new, of 442 years of colonial rule: meticulously restored buildings in Portuguese pastels, a state-of-the-art airport and gleaming causeways that connect Macao with its outer islands.
Portugal's president, Jorge Sampaio, said that in the last decade Macao had taken on many of the hallmarks of a liberal Western state, including the rule of law, freedom of religion and a free press. ''Well, it could have been done 300 years ago,'' he said in an interview on the eve of the handover, ''but that was not the habit of time.''
For Sunday's ceremony, the departing colonial masters from a small nation on the other side of the world have produced the trappings of a momentous occasion. This week, workers frantically hammered the last planks on an $8 million pavilion where President Jiang Zemin of China will take control of the eight-square-mile territory from Mr. Sampaio. Officials say the translucent building is meant to resemble a Chinese lantern. In truth, it looks more like a giant, softly lighted bathtub.
The Portuguese have also sought to account for the dark side of their rule: a stunted political system, with few local Chinese trained to take over the government, shaky courts, a corrupt police force, and a democracy movement that can be summed up by the fact that it has exactly one elected legislator.
''We can build an airport in five years; we can build a bridge in two,'' said Jorge Alberto Rangel, the secretary for public administration, who is coordinating the handover ceremony. ''But forming people takes time. We really did what we thought was best for Macao.''
Mr. Rangel's sense of conflict is deeply felt. A native Macanese -- part Portuguese, part Chinese -- he comes from one of the colony's oldest families.
But he also served in the Portuguese Army as an infantry commander in Guinea-Bissau, in West Africa. There, Mr. Rangel witnessed Portugal's chaotic departure from its African colonies after the 1974 revolution. With no leadership and no capacity to govern themselves, formerly Portuguese Mozambique and Angola fell into bloody strife, and in Angola, it continues today.
''What happened in Africa was disaster,'' Mr. Rangel said. ''We made no preparations, like we have here. I believe Macao deserved to have it done differently.''
Colonialism Ending in Asia As China Reclaims Macao - NYTimes.com
JAPANESE OCCUPATION OF CHINA
Of the estimated 20 million people that died as a result of the Japanese hostilities during World War II, about half of them were in China. China claims that 35 million Chinese were killed or wounded during the Japanese occupation from 1931 to 1945.
An estimated 2.7 million Chinese were killed in a Japanese "pacification" program that targeted "all males between 15 and 60 who were suspected to be enemies" along with other "enemies pretending to be local people." Out of the thousands of Chinese prisoners captured during the war only 56 were found alive in 1946.
The first phase of the Chinese occupation began when Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931. The second phase began in 1937 when the Japanese launched major attacks on Beijing, Shanghai and Nanking. By the time the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 they were firmly entrenched in China, occupying much of the eastern part of the country.
How Japan Became a Major Power in Asia
Japan modernized at a much faster rate than China in the 19th and early 20th centuries. By the late 1800s, it was on its way to becoming a world class, industrial-military power while the Chinese were fighting among themselves and being exploited by foreigners. Japan resented China for being a "sleeping hog" that was pushed around by the West.
The world was awakened to Japan's military strength when they defeated China in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95 and Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905.
The Russo-Japanese war halted European expansion into East Asia and provided an international structure for East Asia that brought some degree of stability to the region. It also changed the world from being a European-centered one to one in which a new pole was emerging in Asia.
Japanese Colonialism
The Japanese hated European and American colonialism and were committed to avoiding what happened to China after the Opium Wars. They felt humiliated by the unequal treaties that were forced on them by the United States after the arrival of Perry's Black ships in the 1853. But in the end Japan became a colonial power itself.
The Japanese colonized Korea, Taiwan, Manchuria and islands in the Pacific. After defeating of China and Russia, Japan began conquering and colonizing East Asia to expand its power.
The Japanese victory over China in 1895 led to the annexation of Formosa (present-day Taiwan) and Liaotang province in China. Both Japan and Russia claimed Liatong. The victory over Russia in 1905 gave Japan the Liaotang province in China and led the way to the annexation of Korea in 1910. In 1919, for siding with the Allies in World War I, the European powers gave Germany's possessions in Shandong province to Japan in the Treaty of Versailles.
In some ways, the Japanese mimicked the Western colonial powers. They built grand government buildings and "developed high-minded schemes to help the natives.” Later they even claimed they had the right to colonize. In 1928, Prince (and future Prime Minister) Konroe announced: “as a result of [Japan’s] one million annual increase in population, our national economic life is heavily burdened. We cannot [afford to] wait for a rationalizing adjustment of the world system.”
To rationalize their actions in China and Korea, Japanese officers invoked the concept of "double patriotism" which meant they could "disobey moderate policies of the Emperor in order to obey his true interests." A comparison has been made with religious-political-imperial ideology behind Japanese expansion and the American idea of manifest destiny. [Source: "History of Warfare" by John Keegan, Vintage Books]
The Japanese tried to build a united Asian front against Western imperialism but its racist views ultimately worked against it.
Japanese Enter Manchuria
The Japanese operating out of their concessions on China's east coast encouraged and profited from the opium trade. Profits were funneled to right wing societies in Japan that advocated war.
The absence of a strong central government after the collapse of the Qing dynasty made China easy prey for Japan. In 1905, after the Russo-Japanese War, the Japanese took over the Manchurian port of Dalien, and this provided a beachhead for its conquests in northern China.
Tensions between China and Japan arose over claims on the Russian-built Manchurian railroad. In 1930, China owned half the railways outright and owned two thirds of the remainder with Russia. Japan held the strategic South Manchurian railway.
The Chinese railroads were built with loans from Japan. China defaulted on these loans. Both China and Japan promised a peaceful resolution to the problem. On the eve of discussions on the matter a bomb exploded on the tracks of the South Manchurian Railway.
Japan Takes Over Manchuria
The 10,000-man Japanese Kwantung Army was responsible for guarding the Manchuria railway. In September 1931, it attacked one of its own trains outside Mukden (present-day Shenyang). Claiming that the attack had been carried out by Chinese soldiers, the Japanese used the event—now known as the Manchurian Incident—to provoke a fight with Chinese forces in Mukden and as an excuse to start a full-scale war in China.
The instigators of the incident were Kanji Ishihara and Seishiro Itagaki, staff officers in the Kwantung Army, a unit of the Imperial Japanese Army. Some blame these two men for starting World War II in the Pacific. They modeled their attack on the assassination of Zhang Zuolin, a Chinese warlord with a strong influence in Manchuria, whose train was blown up in 1928.
After the Manchurian Incident Japan sent 100,000 troops to Manchuria and launched a full-scale invasion of Manchuria. Japan took advantage of China's weakness. It encountered little resistance from the Kuomintang, taking Mukden in a single day and advancing into Jilin province. In 1932, 3,000 villagers were massacred in Pingding, near Fushan.
Chiang Kai-shek's army offered no resistance against the Japanese after Japan entered Manchuria in 1931. Out of disgrace Chiang resigned as head of the nation but continued on as head of the army. In 1933, he made peace with Japan and attempted to unify China.
In a tactic intended to halt the southward movement of Japanese soldiers from Manchuria before World War II, Chiang Kai-shek ordered his soldiers to breach the levees of the Yellow River and purposely divert its flow. At least 200,000, maybe millions, died, millions more were made homeless and the Japanese advanced anyway.
Japan Attacks Shanghai
In January 1932, the Japanese attacked Shanghai. After several hours of fighting the Japanese occupied the northen section of the city and placed the foreign settlement under martial law. Looting and murder prevailed throughout the city, American, French and British troops took up positions with bayonets out of fear of mob violence.
Reporting from Shanghai, an International Herald Tribune reporter wrote: “Terrified by innumerable acts of violence and the persistent rumors of impending Japanese air raids, foreigners kept indoors...Attempting to carry heavy munitions to a secret fortification in the river front, 23 Chinese were killed in a terrific blast which destroyed their craft and shattered windows along the quays, when sparks form the boat’s smokestack ignited the cargo. A live bomb was discovered in the Nanking Theater, Shanghai’s largest movie house, and another bomb, which exploded in the Chinese native city, near the French settlement, did great damage and resulted in grave rioting.”
Japanese Occupation of Manchuria
Japanese-built Dalian station In March 1932, the Japanese created the puppet state of Manchukou. The next year the territory of Jehoi was added. The former Chinese emperor Pu Yi was named the leader of Manchukuo in 1934. In 1935, Russia sold the Japanese its interest in the Chinese Eastern Railway after the Japanese had already seized it. China’s objections were ignored.
Japanese sometime romanticize their occupation of Manchuria and take credit for the great roads, infrastructure and heavy factories they built. Japan was able to exploit resources in Manchuria using the Russian-built trans-Manchurian railway and an extensive network of railroads they built themselves. Vast expanses of Manchurian forest were chopped down to provide wood for Japanese houses and fuel for Japanese industries.
For many Japanese Manchuria was like California, a land of opportunity where dreams could be realized. Many socialists, liberals planners and technocrats came to Manchuria with utopian ideas and big plans. For Chinese it was like the German occupation of Poland. Manchurian men were used as slave laborer and Manchurian women were forced to work as comfort women (prostitutes). One Chinese man told the New York Times, “You looked at the forced labor in the coal mines. There wasn’t a single Japanese working in there. There were great railroads here, but the good trains were for Japanese only.”
The Japanese enforced racial segregation between the themselves and the Chinese and between the Chinese, Koreans and Manchus. Resisters were dealt with using free fire zones and scorched earth policies. Even so Chinese from the south migrated to Manchuria for jobs and opportunities. The pan-Asian ideology given lip service by the Japanese was a view widely held by the Chinese.
Japanese forces fought with Soviet forces along the Manchuria-Outer Mongolia bordered during May-September 1939. Japanese troops were slaughtered in a Mongolian Desert called Nomonhan by Soviet tanks because the military leaders though they were assured of victory because they had been given a blessing by the Emperor.
Japanese Invasion of China
The Japanese began an eight-year undeclared war with China in 1937 when China was weak and torn apart by rivalry between warlords. The excuse for the incursion was the so-called Marco Polo Bridge Incident on July 7, 1937, when Japan seized Beijing after Chinese nationalist troops under Chiang Kai-shek opened fire on some Japanese troops who had illegally taken over a railway station. Chinese general Fang Zhenwu, "the man who shot the first bullet against the Japanese," is regarded today as a great Chinese hero.
After the Marco Polo incident as armistice was briefly established by the Japanese government which then yielded to pressure from the military and sent in more troops and expanded the front. Chinese resistance was more than the Japanese anticipated.
Also on July 7, the Japanese 1st Division, stationed in northern China, demanded to enter the city of Wanping, purportedly to search for a missing Japanese soldiers. Chinese officials refused and the Japanese shelled the city into submission.
After that Japanese troops conquered city after city. In November 1937, Shanghai was captured; the infamous Rape of Nanking took place in December 1937; and Canton was captured in 1938. Beijing, Tsinan and Wuhan also fell. The the U.S. gunship Panay and three Standard Oil tankers were sunk by Japanese bombs on the Yangtze River.
Describing the Battle for Shanghai, the Washington Post reported: "Fresh regiments of veteran Japanese regular army troops smashed China's defense line on the northern edge of the Yangtzepoo area of the International Settlement...Nipponese infantrymen fought with their bayonet behind a curtain of artillery shells and aerial bombs. There were continuous explosions of large-caliber artillery shells as Chinese and Japanese batteries engaged in a deafening duel.”
Japanese General Hideki Tojo, the most well-known Japanese war criminal from World War II, lead attacks in Char Province on Inner Mongolia, urging men to repeatedly charge and attack. There were reports of atrocities and mass executions of Chinese there.
By 1939, most of coastal China was occupied by the Japanese. A year later more than 1.5 million Japanese troops were stationed in China, costing Japan more than $4 million a day. The Japanese occupied most of eastern China for eight years. The Kuomintang and the Communists were holed up in western China, where they were supplied towards the end of World War II by American and British weapons brought in on the Burma Road.
Rape of Nanking
One of the most horrible events of the Japanese occupation of China was the Rape of Nanking. Unspeakable atrocities were committed throughout the Yangtze Delta, which includes Nanking as well as Shanghai. No one knows how many Chinese were butchered. The extent of the atrocities did not come to light until after the end of World War II. The Japanese have estimated that 100,000 troops and unarmed Chinese civilians were killed. The Chinese figure is 300,000.
From December 1937 to March 1938, Japanese terrorized the people of Nanjing. The world was shocked by Japan's brutal aggression. Even swastika-wearing Nazis set up safety zones for Chinese. In many Japanese cities, by contrast, people held lantern parades to celebrate the capture of Nanking.
Book: Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang contains numerous eyewitness accounts of rapes, beheadings, murders and other crimes at the hands of Japanese troops. Tillman Durdin of the New York Times, Archibald Steel of the Chicago Daily and Leslie Smith of Reuters were in Nanking at the time of the incident:
Atrocities of Rape of Nanking
On December 13, 1937, Japanese soldiers entered Nanking, then the capital of China. During the assault, Japanese soldiers were involved in mass rapes, point-blank executions,and public beheadings. They buired people alive; killed people at random; raped women, girls and boys; bayoneted people tied to stakes; used Chinese peasants as human minesweepers; and looted and set fire to shops, temples, houses and churches.
Japanese soldiers raped thousands of girls and women, many of whom were dragged from their homes. By the end of December, 20,000 cases of rape had been reported. One girl was raped 37 times. Another had her four-month-old son smothered by the soldier who raped her. Some Japanese soldiers raped pregnant women, killed them, cut the fetuses out of their bodies and then had their picture taken with the fetuses. Some young Chinese women disguised themselves as elderly women to escape being raped.
One former Japanese soldier, who confessed to sexually assaulting a Chinese woman with a wooden sword, said "I kept beating her until her skin broke and started to bleed, but she didn't answer my questions." A soldiers that ate the flesh of a young Chinese boy said, "It was the only time, and not so much meat."
Photographs taken by Japanese show Imperial army soldiers holding up severed heads; placing, their feet on dead women and babies; rape victims begging for mercy; and soldiers standing beside dead people hung from ropes as if they were prize fish. Some Japanese soldiers competed among themselves to see who could kill the most Chinese. Two sub-lieutenants, battling to be the first to reach 100, beheaded 167 people in a single day.
The slaughter lasted for six weeks. One relief agency buried 100,000 people; the Red Crescent buried 43,000. In just five days, the Japanese disposed of 150,000 bodies by throwing them in the Yangtze. [Source: Denis and Peggy Warner, International Herald Tribune]
Account of a Nanking Rape Victim
Liu Xiuying, a 78-year-old survivor told a court in Tokyo in 1996: "The Japanese troops entered the city on Dec. 13, 1937. We were about 100 young women sheltering in the cellars of a building. On the afternoon of the 18th a group of soldiers came and some of us were taken by force."
"We knew what they were doing to women," she said. "They were dragging them into a neighboring building where they were often raped. The following morning some soldiers returned and one of them seized me by the arms. I was 19 and I was seven months pregnant. I resisted with all my force and I bit him on the arm. He screamed and his colleagues came immediately."
The soldiers leapt on her and stabbed her 37 times in the face and stomach. She was left for dead in a pool of blood. The next day she lost her child but miraculously survived. She was taken to a Protestant church where she was taken care of by an American. "I can't forget, and I can't forgive," she said. "From that day on and for years to come, I had nightmares. I was so disfigured that I never left the house. I couldn't work. Even today my face sometimes hurts."
Machine Gun Squads in Nanking
Machine-gun squads worked for hours non-stop executing people. Tillman Durdin of the New York Times wrote that he saw the execution of 200 men in 10 minutes.
A correspondent for a Tokyo newspaper later reported that he saw a continuous procession of Chinese taken to an execution area near the Yangtze River. He saw piles of burned corpses covering an entire wharf and 50 to 100 Chinese workers dragging the bodies and throwing them in the river. After their work was done, the Chinese workers were lined up and executed.
One Chinese man later told AP he was lined up on December 14, 1937 with 300 people mowed down by machines gun. He said he awoke under a pile of bodies. "Slowly, slowly, I made my way out. My coat was completely soaked with blood. I thought I was a ghost.” When he went to the river to wash he found the water red with blood from hundreds of dead bodies.
One account from classified Chinese documents goes: “In the last ten days of December, the campaign to clear the streets began...Japanese soldiers, in groups of three to five, went from door to door wielding long swords, loudly screaming out orders, and insisting the doors be opened...those who had been hiding inside...could not help but poke their heads out their doors to look around and see what happened outside. The catastrophe befell them. The moment they opened their doors...the Japanese opened fire. On this day alone, the dead and wounded numbered in the thousands.” [Source: Japanese Imperialism and the Massacre of Nanjing by Gao Xingzu, Wu Shimin]
Why Were the Japanese So Brutal in Nanking
No one knows exactly why the Japanese soldiers behaved so brutally. In the Japan-Russia War of 1905, the Japanese went of their way to treat prisoners of war with mercy. Explanation for their behavior in Nanking include the samurai code of honor and a desire by the Japanese to terrorize the Chinese into surrendering.
In the Japanese-made film Japanese Devils (2001) by Minori Matsui, 14 former Japanese soldiers who served in China were asked why atrocities were committed. They said that horrible things were done to civilians not out of stress or fanaticism but rather because they regarded the Chinese as less than human and potential spies; they wanted to be a member of the group; and they were worried that if they didn't do terrible things their manhood would be questioned.
Committing atrocities was condoned and even encouraged. One man in the film said that he and his comrades wiped out an entire village simply for the thrill of it. Another said he burned a mother and her newborn baby alive and stuck around to hear their screams.
The soldiers claimed their brutal training—in which they were beaten by their superiors and subjected to cruel hazing by their peers with the object of crushing their "arrogant" individuality—turned them from village farm boys into heartless soldiers who were able to kill without feeling.
Account of Nanking in Chinese History Book
According to Modern and Contemporary Chinese History, Book One: “Wherever Japanese went, they committed all manners of crimes: arson, homicide rape and looting. In December, 1937, Japanese armies occupied Nanjing ad massacred the city’s peaceful residents, the ultimate act of human cruelty. Within six weeks more than 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers in Nanjing were murdered. The means of massacre were extremely brutal. Some victims were bayoneted some were were buried alive; some were cremated alive.”
“The Japanese military commander, Tani Hisao, and his troops entered Nanjing and killed whoever they saw. At the time, numerous refugees, unarmed Chinese citizens and wounded were crowded into the city. They were killed by Japanese soldiers manically shooting with machine guns, rifles and pistols. Crowds of old people, women and children were felled.”
“The Japanese armies also smashed their way into civilian houses and randomly killed residents living peacefully in Nanjing. They hauled a young man into the street, stripped his clothes, poured aqua fortis [nitric acid solution] on his body and forced him walk until his death; they tied captured soldiers on pillars, stabled them with awls till they became bleeding bodies, and finally thrust bayonets into their throats; they also gang raped pregnant women, cut open their wombs and took out the embryos to play with on the top of their bayonets.”
Account of Nanking in Japanese History Book
According to Japanese History B: “In August, hostilities broke out in Shanghai and the flames of war spread south...Japan continuously committed a large army [to the area], and occupied the Nationalist government capital in Nanjing by the end of the year...Because the Nationalist government retreated from Nanjing to Hankou and the further inland to Chonqing and persistently continued to resist, the Sino-Japanese war became a quagmire-like drawn-out war.”
A foot note from the book reads: “In addition to repeated looting and violence within and outside Nanjing at the time of its fall, the Imperial Japanese Army murdered a large number of Chinese noncombatants (including women and children) and prisoners (Nanjing incident).”
In 1995, a right-wing political party in Japan took out a full page ad in the New York Times claiming the Rape of Nanking never took place. In Japanese textbooks from the 1980s the only reference to the "Rape of Nanking" was a footnote that called it the "Nanking Incident." See Textbooks, World War II.
Legacy and Film of the Rape of Nanking
After Durdin's account's were printed, the Japanese imposed a news blackout and restricted vehicles form coming to and going from Nanking.
Massacres also occurred in other places. Describing a mass slaughter in Beijing by soldiers who killed everyone they thought might be soldiers, one eyewitness wrote, ”The area was filled with crumpled, twisted corpses, piled on top of each other in bloody mounds. Coolie laborers were set to work throwing bodies into the river...An officer said, ‘There are about 20,000 dead Chinese here.’”
Many Chinese feel the Japanese need to apologize for the Rape of Nanking and other atrocities committed in China. In 1995, Jiang Zemin said: "Japan should make a correct recognition of its past imperialism which forced calamities on [Asian] people."
The Japanese government has requested that China tone down the exhibitions in the Memorial Hall to Victims in the Nanjing Massacre in Shanghai on the grounds they “inspire anti-Japanese feeling and animosity” among Chinese citizens. For their part the Chinese want the museum to be given UNESCO World heritage status like Auschwitz and Hiroshima Peace Park.
City of Life and Death is a Chinese-made film by Lu Chuan about the invasion of Nanking that has been both praised and condemned for portraying the Japanese in a somewhat sympathetic light. The film depicts the Nanking massacre through the eyes of a Japanese soldier who is shocked and terrified by the atrocities committed by his compatriots and ultimately kills himself after letting a Chinese prisoner of war escape. Even though the film attracted large audience and was approved by the Communist Party, Lu was accused by some as being a traitor.
City of Life and Death won the top award at the San Sebastian film festival in Spain Lu won an award at the Tokyo Film festival for his film Kekexili: Mountain Patrol about men trying to protect Tibetan antelope from poachers.
Chinese Flee to Southern China
War orphans Many Chinese fled southward to Yunnan and Sichuan (where the Kuomintang had their wartime capital in Chongqing). Air raids were launched on Chongqing in May 1939. Altogether 218 air raids were conducted on the city over the next several years, leaving the city in ruins and killing around 20,000 people, including people that sought refuge in tunnels and suffocated to death there.
The most deadly panic ever occurred in Chongqing in June 1941, when 700 people suffocated in an underground tunnel in a Japanese air raid.
Describing Chongqing in 1939, Edgar Snow wrote: "Acres of buildings had been destroyed in barbaric raids of May and June. The Japanese preferred moonlit nights for their calls, when from their base in Hankow they could follow the silver banner of the Yangtze up to its confluence with the Jialing, which identified the capital in a way no blackout could obscure."
"The city had no defending air force and only a few anti-aircraft guns...Spacious public shelters were being dug, but it was estimated that a third of the population still had no protection. Government officials given advanced warning, sped outside the city in their motor cars—cabinet ministers first, then vice-ministers, then minor bureaucrats. the populace soon caught on; when they saw a string of official cars racing off to the west, they dropped everything and ran. A mad scramble of rickshaws, carts, animals and humanity blew up the main streets like a great wind, carrying all before it."
Recalling how he survived during the war one Chinese man told Time, "I would scavenge for food and elude the soldiers by running up into the hills and hiding."
Jews in Occupied China
The Japanese were not all beasts. Shanghai under the Japanese was one of the few places in the world that accepted Jewish refugees from Europe. Thousands of Jews arrived in Japanese-occupied Shanghai in the late 1930s and early 1940s from Europe because it was the only place that would accept them without passports or visas and unlike other places there were no restrictions on the numbers of Jews allowed in the country.
Japanese rulers in Shanghai accepted 25,000 Jewish refugees, more than Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India combined. The Japanese Foreign Minister told a group of Jewish businessmen in December 1940: "I am the man responsible for the alliance with Hitler, but nowhere have I promised that we would carry out his anti-Semitic policies in Japan."
Most of the Jewish refugees came from Austria, Poland and Russia. The Japanese "Schindler," Chiyune Sugihara, a consul in the Japanese Embassy in Lithuania issued thousands of exit visa for Jews, which allowed them to leave the country before the Nazi occupation. After his seal was taken he issued the visas by hand and continued doing so out of the window of the train that took him out of the country.
Suffering of Jews in Occupied China
In 1943, partly to appease their Nazi allies, the Japanese rounded up 18,000 newly arrived Jews, mostly from Austria, Germany and Poland, and placed them in Hongkew (now Hongkou), a two-square-mile ghetto that had been badly damaged by bombing raids.
The Nazis proposed rounding up the Jews for a "final solution." One suggestion was to sponsor a big Rosh Hashana party on some barges and then send the celebrators to concentration camps on Tsungming Island (later canisters of gas were found on the island that contained the same chemicals used to kill Jews in Europe). Why the Japanese refused to go along with the plan is unknown? Some have suggested that it was because Jewish businesses had lent them money during the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War.
The Jews in Shanghai suffered terribly. They did menial jobs and relied on charity to survive. Baths, fresh food and hot water were luxuries. They ate old bananas and cabbage soaked in chemicals to kill bacteria and washed their hair with kerosene to kill lice. Many died from starvation and diseases. Others busied themselves with clubs, dances and theater performances. Most survived the war.
Image Source: Mostly from Nanjing History Wiz
Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.
JAPANESE OCCUPATION OF CHINA - China | Facts and Details
So, don't spread ur propaganda we all know history of China.
Stay to the topic.
