Journal of Japanese Invasion of China and Nanjing Massacre

No.3, 2023

1.InvestigationandEvidenceCollectionbytheInternationalProsecutionSectionfortheTokyoTrial——CenteringontheJapaneseArmy’sAtrocitiesinNanjing

YangXiaming(4)

On December 6, 1945, the American team of the International Prosecution Section arrived in Tokyo and immediately began the preliminary work such as selecting the court site and drafting the “Special Proclamation”,“Charter of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East” and “Rules of Procedure of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East”. Investigation Division, Document Division and so on were established, and the investigation period and major events were identified and categorized. With the arrival of the teams of other counties in the following year, the executive committee composed of associate counsels from various countries and several core members were established to assist the Chief Counsel in decision-making and coordination of prosecution work, and investigation methods such as documentcollection, on-site investigation, interrogation or questioning of parties involved were also decided.The investigators of the International Prosecution Section interrogated Japanese senior commanders involved in the attack on Nanjing, interviewed Japanese diplomats based in Nanjing and writers who visited Nanjing, translated German diplomatic documents, retrieved the original files of the United States Embassy in Nanjing, and went to Nanjing three times for on-site investigation and evidence collection. Through the above mechanisms and methods, the investigators reconstructed the process of the Japanese occupation of Nanjing and the subsequent atrocities. The key witnesses and evidence related to the Nanjing atrocities were included in the investigation, and relevant evidence was obtained in a short period of time, which also laid a foundation for the basic historical documents and the framework for the study of the Nanjing Massacre committed by the Japanese army.

2.HowFascistSoldierswereCultivated:StudiesontheEarlyChildhoodSchoolsoftheJapaneseArmyand“Spiritualism”EducationinPostwarJapan

QiJianmin(28)

Although the early childhood school of the Japanese army belongs to the basic stage of the overall Japanese military education system, it’s the key link in its militarist education and the cradle for cultivating fascist soldiers. The graduates from those schools constitute the mainstream faction within the Japanese Army, controlling the central organs of the Army and being the core force in promoting its aggression policies. With a narrow range of knowledge, the graduates from these schools ignored the trend of the national movement since the 20thcentury. They believed in conquering the world with force, invading Asian countries, worshiping Germany lacking sufficient understanding of the United States and Britain, and constantly expanding the war. Fascist soldiers fervently believed in the so-called spiritual power, in the hope of making up for the lack of sufficient weapons and equipment; They regarded the hand-to-hand combat as the fundamental principle of strategy and tactics, which was barbaric and brutal. Japanese fascism is closely linked with the education system of the early childhood schools of the army.

3.TheJapaneseArmyandChina——TheStudiesontheHistoryoftheArmy'sPolicytowardsChinabytheJapaneseAcademicCommunity

GuoXunchun(44)

Since the 1960s, Japanese scholars have attempted to explain issues such as “the structure of Japanese fascism” and “why Japan stepped on the course of the Fifteen-Year War”, all of which cannot be separated from the topic of “Japanese Army’s Policy towards China”. According to the current research by the Japanese academic community, the history of the Japanese Army’s policy towards China could be roughly divided into four stages, namely, the periods of before the Sino-Japanese War to WWI, Post WWI to the September 18thIncident, after the September 18thIncident to the July 7th Incident, and after the July 7th Incident to Japan’s defeat. Based on the representative research results of the first three stages, the paper summarized the basic understanding and research characteristics of Japanese scholars on the theme of “History of Japanese Army’s Policy towards China”. The Japanese academic community is increasing its “understanding of sympathy” for the Japanese army, and the role of Japanese army is gradually shifting from being a “responsible party for the invasion of China” to a “carrier of historical rationalism”.

4.TheCPCGrassrootsOrganizationsintheTaihangBaseArea——CentereingonthePingshunCounty

YueQianhouYanNing(63)

The Communist Party of China is a modern party with strict organization and discipline, which always attaches importance to the construction of grass-roots branches. With the outbreak of the total war of resistance against Japanese aggression, the Eighth Route Army advanced into the Taihang Mountains to establish the Taihang Base Area and rural branch of the Party in Pingshun County were set up throughout villages. Under the inherent requirements of the war, rural branches operated relatively smoothly and play an important role in leading the war of resistance, production, organizing and mobilizing the masses. However, due to the extensive organizational development in the early stages and the sabotage of the Kuomintang's diehards and the Japanese puppet regime, a series of problems such as insufficient training occurred the CPC branches experienced some phenomena such as weak leadership, improper work style of party members and officials and so on. To respond to the demand for the resistance behind the enemy lines, the Pingshun County Committee formulated different strategies and adopted various methods to strengthen the education of party members and officials, and to carry out mass movements to enhance the party-mass relationship. The development of the CPC rural branch in Pingshun County showed that the reason why the Party was able to continue its war of resistance in the difficult environment was mainly through strengthening its own organizational construction and building the Party branch into a strong fighting bastion.

5.PartialAdvanceandRetreatwithintheOverallStrategy:AStudyontheDevelopmentoftheNewFourthArmyinJiangnan(1944—1945)

ZhuShiyu(73)

In the second half of 1944, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China made the strategic policy of “southward development”, and the development of the New Fourth Army towards Jiangnan was an integral part of this strategy. The purpose of the New Fourth Army’s southward advance was to seize the strategic opportunity of the upcoming American army’s landing on the southeast coast, and firstly to cooperate with their landing, and then occupy major cities such as Nanjing, Shanghai and Hangzhou during the strategic counterattack phase. In the first half of 1945, Su Yu and Ye Fei led the main force of the First Division of the New Fourth Army southward and achieved victory in three counterattacks against the Kuomintang army in western Zhejiang. However, in the military competition among the New Fourth Army, the Kuomintang Army, and the Japanese puppet army in the Jiangnan region, the New Fourth Army was at a disadvantage and could not receive strong backup from the New Fourth Army in Jiangbei, so they had to adjust their strategies and wait for the situation changes. With the victory of the war of the resistance against Japan, the New Fourth Army in Jiangnan failed to occupy any big cities. With the strategy of “developing northward and defending southward” proposed by the CPC’s Central Committee, the New Fourth Army in Jiangnan ultimately withdrew entirely to Jiangbei. There was a linkage and interaction between the overall strategy of the Central Committee and the partial advance and retreat of the New Fourth Army in Jiangnan.

6.TheGasWarfareRecordedintheWrittenConfessionsofJapaneseWarCriminals

MatsunoSeiya(87)

This article aims to analyze the actual situation of the Japanese military’s gas warfare based on the comparison between the handwritten confession of Japanese war criminals from War Criminals Prisons of the People’s Republic of China and the existing materials about the Japanese army. It demonstrates the credibility of the content recorded in the handwritten confession of Japanese war criminals. Through further investigating the relevant records of the poisoning gas warfare in the handwritten confessions, the research on the Japanese gas warfare in Taierzhuang, South China and other places has been further deepened. So these handwritten statements are not intentionally fabricated, but truthfully recorded the crimes based on memories of the confessors.

7.TheWarbytheInappropriateInitiatorsontheImproperOccasionatanInappropriateTime——Re-studiesontheOperationIchi-Go

YaoJianghong(107)

“Operation Ichi-Go” was the war to certain extent launched arbitrarily by the China Expeditionary Army and Sanada Joichiro, Hattori Takushiro and others from the General Staff Headquarters on an improper occasion at an inappropriate time, in terms of the Japanese army’s strategic objectives and the military operation results. The inappropriate time means that the former strategic situation was used to draw up the objectives of the current operation, resulting in a disconnection between the strategic situation and the objectives; the inappropriate occasion means that the large-scale operations shall be not be launched on the Chinese Mainland with the collapse of the entire Pacific war theatre , attempting to get through the traffic in mainland and “dominate the air by land” to destroy the US air force bases in China, which actually led to the reversal of strategic priorities; the inappropriate initiators means that “Operation Ichi-Go” was a result of different strategic intentions among the China Expeditionary Army, the Department of military Operations of the General Staff Headquarters and the highest decision-making body, rather than a collective and consistent strategic decision-making action. Although the Japanese “Operation Ichi-Go” failed to save their fate of defeat, it had a profound impact on the politics of China, especially in the later stage of the War of the Resistance against Japan.

8.ARestudyontheTrialofJapaneseWarCriminalsbytheNationalistGovernment

CaoLuxiaoZhaoYuhui(116)

The academic community used to divide the trials of the Japanese war criminals by the allied countries in the Asia Pacific region into two categories-Class Atrials and Class BC trials. It was believed that Class A trials were trials with Class A charges , and Class BC trials were trials with Class BCcharges. The 10 trials organized by the Nationalist Government shall also be categorized as Class BC trials. However, under the historical background, the term “Class BC trial” did not actually conform to the essence of the trial by the Nationalist Government. From the perspective of jurisdictional provisions, the Nationalist Government originally formed its own faction in terms of the trial, without distinguishing the crimes under its jurisdiction by categories. Later, it followed the Tokyo Trial and incorporated Class ABC crimes into its jurisdiction. This was not in line with the characteristics of Class BC trial jurisdiction over charges of Class BC crimes. Based on practices of trials in various regions, the military courts of the Nationalist Government mainly deal with Class B Crimes, followed by Class A crimes, and had never tried Class C crimes. It could be seen that the trails by the Nationalist Government could not be considered as Class BCtrial. The term of “Class BC trial” reflects the misunderstanding of the complex aspects of trials in various countries by later generations. The relevant meanings and attributes should be further restudied and clarified.

9.WantingtoResistJapan:ImpressingafterreadingChiangChingkuoDiary

ZhangSheng(125)

10.OverseasArchivesandNewDiscoveries,NewPerspectives,andNewApproachesintheStudyofModernChineseHistory——AnalysisofTheCollectionoftheFitches’PapersintheHarvard-YenchingLibrary,HarvardUniversity

ZhangLianhong(130)

“The Collection of the Fitches’ Papers in the Harvard-Yenching Library, Harvard University”, chief-edited by Prof. Jiang Liangqin from Nanjing University, was published by Guangxi Normal University Press in 2022 with a total of 40 volumes. The book sorted out over 20 topics on modern Chinese history, providing important clues and historical materials for the academic community to explore new research fields in modern Chinese history. This series of books contains a rich variety of archival records , with appropriate arrangement and compilation style, presenting the original appearance of the historical materials to the greatest extent, and providing useful reference for future exploration of the joint compilation of archival materials between China and foreign countries. It has an extremely high historical value, which is not only beneficial for the academic community to further expand many new research fields on modern Chinese history, but also helps to make up for the weak and even missing links in modern Chinese history research, opening up a new approach for academic research with great significance. From both the perspective of compilation of historical materials and academic research, this series of books are a landmark achievement in recent years in terms of the organization and publication of overseas archival documents.

【English abstracts translated by Cai Dandan】