Nanking

Justice or Revenge

Since the beginning of time armies have been committing heinous acts in the heat of battle. Most of these acts are grotesque and unimaginable. It is hard to believe that people could hate one another that intensely to do some of the things which war causes. After watching the video of The Rape of Nanking; I could see how the Americans might justify the use of nuclear weapons against the Japanese soldiers. Personally I believe that we should not have used them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When America destroyed those two cities they ended up murdering mostly innocent people, not just the soldiers that we intended to. It also created nuclear fallout which caused all different kinds of problems for the people of Japan who had nothing to do with the war. However I can see why we did end up dropping the atomic bombs on Japan. We did not want to try and invade the country because Japan still had a massive army spread across the nation. We knew it would probably take several months at least to take Japan by land because of our previous efforts to take the Guadalcanal.

Japanese soldiers did some of the worst things that a human being can do to another human being at Nanking. The soldiers were given an order to kill everyone in the city. Although they took it to the extreme by killing innocent children, the elderly, and women. Some of these women were even pregnant. They tortured nearly everyone they could find in every way that the Japanese soldiers could think of. The Japanese soldiers distorted the order of “kill all” to mean that they had free reign to do whatever they wanted to the prisoners. They saw the Chinese prisoners of war as less than human. This is how they justified their behavior.

The Battle of Nanking only added to the brutal and fearsome reputation of Japan’s Imperial Army. They were feared for the harsh treatment of their prisoners, and for their fanatic behavior on the battlefield. These were some of the key...