Has Japan killed more foreign civilians in WWII than any other country in history ?

Looking at the list of World War I casualties and World War II casualties, I noticed that the civilian losses in China during WWII alone were higher than of all other countries combined (except USSR). And the numbers for other Asian countries are not even listed. As the Japanese were the sole responsible for these casulalities, then adding those of the rest of Asia, I was wondering if the Japanese do not deserve the dubious title of worse butchers of innocent in the history of mankind. No other war has caused more civilian deaths and more suffering (rapes, torture, slave workers, sexual slaves, biological experiments on live human beings...) than the Japanese invasion of Asia from the 1930's to 1945.

If you can think of a country having caused more civilian or total casualities in the same war (=same government and people, not with several centuries of interval), please let me know.

Russia...Stalin killed over 20 million innocent Russians during his purges. The man was a genocidal maniac.

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Originally Posted by Jungle Boy

Russia...Stalin killed over 20 million innocent Russians during his purges. The man was a genocidal maniac.

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Yes, and Mao even did worse after WWII. Let say that Japan killed the highest number of "foreign civilians" (not own citizens). The total number of casualties caused by the Nazi are similar to that caused by the Japanese. The main difference is that the Japanese killed a disproportionately high number of civilians, while the Nazi killed more soldiers (and lost 4x more troops than the Japanese too, which indicates a higher level of soldiers vs soldiers fighting).

what about the spaniards: how many aztecs?
what about the brits/french: how many native americans?
what about the inquisition(germany/france): how many hags, wizards and faggots?

just write down one, holy nation/race; which has not murdered at all. the israelites does not count, as they are already mentioned in the bible: the fleed from the egypt slavery!

"to the crucification? one cross only each, please"
(monthy pyton, the life of the brian)

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As the Japanese were the sole responsible for these casulalities, then adding those of the rest of Asia, I was wondering if the Japanese do not deserve the dubious title of worse butchers of innocent in the history of mankind.

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Are you sure? Doesn't that number include deaths of Chinese killed by other Chinese in internal conflicts? Seems impossibly high for the Japanese alone to be responsible for those deaths.

:?

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Originally Posted by mad pierrot

Are you sure? Doesn't that number include deaths of Chinese killed by other Chinese in internal conflicts? Seems impossibly high for the Japanese alone to be responsible for those deaths.

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No, that was after WWII. The reason why the Japanese killed more people than the Nazi is that they invaded China from 1933 and stayed until 1945. 12 years in total, while the Nazi only fought for about 4.5 years (from late 1939 to early 1945).

Good point. But surely all of China couldn't have been united against Japan for all of those 12 years? There had to have been a few petty warlords who took advangtage of the situation. Enemies weakened by fighting Japanese forces would have been tempting targets.

I get your point, though. This is something I'm going to have to look into.


:sorry:

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Originally Posted by alexriversan

what about the spaniards: how many aztecs?
what about the brits/french: how many native americans?
what about the inquisition(germany/france): how many hags, wizards and faggots?

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You don't get my point. Everybody knows that every country has massacred other people or their own people at some time of their history.

But the Spaniards could not have massacred 20 million Amerindian for the sole reason that there were not 20 million Amerindian in the whole Americas when they got there. The world population has increased a lot in the last 2 centuries. We are now 6 billion people, but were only 1 billion in 1802 and about 500 million in 1500. Wikipedia tell us that the population of Latin America in 1750 (250 years after the Europeans arrived) was 16 million, including the European settlers.

Because WWII was one of the last major wars, and the one causing the highest death toll in history, it is only natural that the main protagonists be the worst butchers in history too. These were the Germans and the Japanese, and the title of this thread says that the Japanese killed the highest number of (foreign) civilians ever.

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Originally Posted by mad pierrot

Good point. But surely all of China couldn't have been united against Japan for all of those 12 years? There had to have been a few petty warlords who took advangtage of the situation. Enemies weakened by fighting Japanese forces would have been tempting targets.

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China was not united, and that's partly why there was so little organised resistance from the Chinese. China was laready 10x more populous than Japan, and Japan only sent a fraction of its people as soldiers to China, but managed to control the most densely populated regions of the East. Only about 2 million Chinese soldiers died, against 10 million civilians. From what I read in my various history books, the Japanese army was extremely brutal in China, which accounts for the high number of civilian casualties.

Posted something and put my proverbial foot in mouth.

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China was not united, and that's partly why there was so little organised resistance from the Chinese. China was laready 10x more populous than Japan, and Japan only sent a fraction of its people as soldiers to China, but managed to control the most densely populated regions of the East. Only about 2 million Chinese soldiers died, against 10 million civilians. From what I read in my various history books, the Japanese army was extremely brutal in China, which accounts for the high number of civilian casualties.

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Of course. I'm well aware of the circumstances, but it seems dubious to attribute all of the 10,000,000 civilian casualties just to Japanese forces. That's not to say the Japanese didn't have a large hand in it. I mean attributing all isn't very reasonable. (For example, say directly slaughtered 7 million, caused another 2 million indirectly, and the remaining one million killed by various factions/warlords.) Blaming just Japan as the sole source of death at that time seems unrealistic to me. The major source, sure. But the sole source? No.

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Originally Posted by mad pierrot

Of course. I'm well aware of the circumstances, but it seems dubious to attribute all of the 10,000,000 civilian casualties just to Japanese forces. That's not to say the Japanese didn't have a large hand in it. I mean attributing all isn't very reasonable. (For example, say directly slaughtered 7 million, caused another 2 million indirectly, and the remaining one million killed by various factions/warlords.) Blaming just Japan as the sole source of death at that time seems unrealistic to me. The major source, sure. But the sole source? No.

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Agreed, but 10 million is only one estimation. According to this article, the Chinese government claims that Japan killed as many as 30 million Chinese. I tried to be conservative on the number already.

Point taken. I believe the number to be likely more than 10 million as well. Sad, but not far-fetched at all. I've got a few copies of Japanese middle school history texts sitting around and I've been trying to find a figure for it. I'm curious what they are teaching it to be. So far, no success. I'll be back with it when I find something substancial.

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Originally Posted by Maciamo

Agreed, but 10 million is only one estimation. According to this article, the Chinese government claims that Japan killed as many as 30 million Chinese. I tried to be conservative on the number already.

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I don't think, 10m is a conservative estimate. Acc. to Rummel, that's already the high. I wouldn't trust the PRC government on the number of Chinese deaths. Rummel who seems to me to have the most accurate presentation of war deaths gives the medium of roughly 6m for Japanese democide (which includes 4m Chinese from 37-45 & 2m non-Chinese from 41-45).

Germany's democide was most probably worse (in numbers, the cruelty was presumably comparable). Rummel gives the number of 21m victims of German democide (see attachment).

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Originally Posted by Eisuke

Total killed by Stalin during the war years:
Davies: 16-17,000,000 non-war-dead
Rummel: 18,157,000 democides
NOTE: Numbers this high are hard to reconcile with the common estimates of 7 million Soviet civilian deaths during WW2. Even if we go with larger, more recent estimates of 17M civilian deaths, these number proposed by Rummel and Davies would leave no room for murders at German hands and deaths as a simple by-product of war.

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A slight misrepresentation of Rummel, I think. The numbers I have look a bit different. The medium numbers Rummel gives are 19m for battle/occupation dead & 10m for Soviet democide.

Because the personal computer had not yet been invented, records keeping was not up to today's standards, but according to the pundits of the time, it is possible that this title belongs to the Mongols.

Beside the Chinese, the Japanese, the Indians, various Europeans, they conquered most of Islam, heaping mountains of skulls in the process. Given their trend to exagerate beyond all understanding, historians of the time still say the numbers ran into tens of millions. It is conceivable. When they encountered a community that resisted them, they were known to put whole cities to the sword--literally.

The world population might have been smaller then, so the gruesome numbers might not have been close to the 20-30 million figures we're tossing around here but chronicals of the time were in agreement that these were some cru-well dudes. If they did not kill that many, it was because their sword arms got weary.

De mortuis nihil nisi bene.

probably a large percentage of those deaths were indirect casualties
ie they died from desease

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Originally Posted by deadhippo

probably a large percentage of those deaths were indirect casualties
ie they died from desease

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True, quite possibly, but so were the civilian deaths in China during the Second World War.

That the disease casualties in China might have been the result of deliberate infections via Japanese biological warfare efforts or not is in debate. With low calorie diets, poor sanitation, constant upheaval as causes, it is also possible that these epidemics were naturally caused--however unlikely.

Arab chroniclers were unamimous: the Mongols slew all--men, women, children, all...without mercy and without regard. Again, I admit that there is reason to hold their figures at arm's length, but it is difficult to totally discount them.

one thing I do know is that my great grandfather was killed by japanese soldier as a innocent civilian, and my grandparents, they need to run into mountains in order to avoid "japanese demon" or "japanese ghost". That's how they earned this name for their bruteness.

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I was talking to another American, while watching the movie PURPLE BUTTERFLY. At the end of the movie was real footage of atrocities in Nanking, and the bombing of Shanghia.

We both agreed we seen this a hundred times on the HISTORY CHANNEL.

This is ancient history, the world has moved on..

Most Americans seem to generally move on, with some small exceptions and not spend the rest of their lives dwelling in the past.
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Originally Posted by JackInBox

This is ancient history, the world has moved on...

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Er..., you must have a different definition of ancient than I have. Some people who lived through WWII are still alive.

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Er..., you must have a different definition of ancient than I have. Some people who lived through WWII are still alive.

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Their very old. Lets say you were 20 years old in 1945. You would be, today, 79-80 years old.

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Originally Posted by JackInBox

Their very old. Lets say you were 20 years old in 1945. You would be, today, 79-80 years old.

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Well, that's not really what I'd call ancient. If you call people of that age ancient, I suppose, that can be considered rude.

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Originally Posted by Maciamo

Agreed, but 10 million is only one estimation. According to this article, the Chinese government claims that Japan killed as many as 30 million Chinese. I tried to be conservative on the number already.

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I don't trust information comes out from Chinese government. Will they ever provide accurate information?
Besides, nobody knows the accurate number on this because of lack of research and accurate information.
Also, I would like to point out that in the book written by Iris Chan ”The Rape of Nanking” , so many fabricated photos were found. Of course, the provider of those photos was Chinese government.

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Originally Posted by ralian

I don't trust information comes out from Chinese government. Will they ever provide accurate information?
Besides, nobody knows the accurate number on this because of lack of research and accurate information.
Also, I would like to point out that in the book written by Iris Chan ”The Rape of Nanking” , so many fabricated photos were found. Of course, the provider of those photos was Chinese government.

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Don't see your point...

We don't need the PRC government to know that millions of Chinese were killed by Japanese forces.

Nobody knows the accurate numbers in Europe, too. But we have estimates.

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Originally Posted by bossel

Don't see your point...

We don't need the PRC government to know that millions of Chinese were killed by Japanese forces.

Nobody knows the accurate numbers in Europe, too. But we have estimates.

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Wasn't it PRC government who suggested that 30M people were killed in 南京?
Nobody else is suggesting such figure.
However, wasn't the population of 南京 20M that time?
I could be wrong.

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Originally Posted by ralian

Wasn't it PRC government who suggested that 30M people were killed in 南京?

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It seems, you're confusing some things here. The official PRC victim figure for the Nanjing Massacre is >300,000. Roughly that number is widely accepted in historical circles, but there are a number of lower estimates & very few higher.

30m is, IIRC, the officiall PRC estimate for the whole Sino-Japanese War. This is probably exaggerated. I'd go for a number around 10m, but the estimates vary widely.

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However, wasn't the population of 南京 20M that time?

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The actual number of Nanjing inhabitants at the time is hard to calculate, since the city was full of refugees. It may have been up to 1m, but I never saw the number of 20m anywhere.

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Originally Posted by bossel

It seems, you're confusing some things here. The official PRC victim figure for the Nanjing Massacre is >300,000. Roughly that number is widely accepted in historical circles, but there are a number of lower estimates & very few higher.

30m is, IIRC, the officiall PRC estimate for the whole Sino-Japanese War. This is probably exaggerated. I'd go for a number around 10m, but the estimates vary widely.

The actual number of Nanjing inhabitants at the time is hard to calculate, since the city was full of refugees. It may have been up to 1m, but I never saw the number of 20m anywhere.

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Yes, I was confused about the figure as I was reading articles written in Japanese.
I meant to say that the population of Nanjing was 200,000 that time, while PRC claims that the figure for Nanjing Massacre was 300,000.
Probably no one knows.
It is hard to investigate unless researchers receive full corporation from Chinese government.

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Originally Posted by bossel

It seems, you're confusing some things here. The official PRC victim figure for the Nanjing Massacre is >300,000. Roughly that number is widely accepted in historical circles, but there are a number of lower estimates & very few higher.
...
The actual number of Nanjing inhabitants at the time is hard to calculate, since the city was full of refugees. It may have been up to 1m, but I never saw the number of 20m anywhere.

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Roughly that number is widely accepted in historical circles
Really? Which circles?

I always wonder if WWII really ended in Asia in 1945.
If I were a Chinese/Korean survivor, maybe even Taiwanese after Kunmintan regime, my answer must be "no".

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Originally Posted by pipokun

Roughly that number is widely accepted in historical circles
Really? Which circles?

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Mainstream historians usually agree on 300,000 as a valid estimate, though numbers between 200,000 & 300,000 (closer to 300,000) are acceptable as well, if you didn't notice. Numbers below 200,000 are only purported by a minority (most of them in Japan).

I'm going to veer here and ask why every other thread seems to have something to do with Japanese atrocities in WWII. Could we not have contained it to one thread?

For the record, I do believe Imperial Japan holds this title, but I am curious as to why it matters. I still must insist on calling it Imperial Japan, for reasons discussed elsewhere. Are we, as a global community, so unwilling to forgive that we must dwell on the actions of those which are mostly dead, and will be completely very soon?

As Falk Pingel in the Georg Eckert Institute mentioned, I don't think PRC accepts researches from other countries or that Japan and PRC/Taiwan hold open dialogues upon their histories. I still don't understand who are "mainstream" historians like you said.
Anyways, looking at the great effort of the Institute, I don't know if it is feasible to build mutual agreements upon the history between different regimes, but I know it would be much better than nothing.

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Originally Posted by Kionon

Are we, as a global community, so unwilling to forgive that we must dwell on the actions of those which are mostly dead, and will be completely very soon?

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I think that's an important question you ask. I found this keynote address to the International Citizens’ Forum on War Crimes and Redress: Seeking Reconciliation and Peace for the 21st Century, Mark Wientraub, Dec. 10 1999, Tokyo:

quote: Accountability, Justice and the Importance of Memory in the 'Era of War'

Accountability and justice have the potential to redeem evil and therefore have the potential to be massively transformative experiences; for these are the only paths to rescue humanity from the depths of inhumanity. All peoples, as a single human family must commit and re-commit themselves to the post-Holocaust cry of “Never again!” We hope this Conference will one day be seen as a great human rights watershed; ... even if it accomplishes nothing else, stands as a beacon of light to the victims, to present and future generations of Asians and to all citizens of the world.

Also see IENAGA Saburo 家永三�ｶ, nominated for Nobel Peace Prize: The Letter

Anyone know about US "collateral damage/civilian casualties" since WW1?
Seems with all the wars the US has been involved in using Naval bombardment and air bombing the numbers must be fairly high? Just Germany and Japan alone must make those figures high. It must be hard to figure a correct number when whole cities are destroyed with all written records destroyed.

Frank

:?

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Originally Posted by ralian

Also, I would like to point out that in the book written by Iris Chan ”The Rape of Nanking”, so many fabricated photos were found. Of course, the provider of those photos was Chinese government.

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The caracterization 'fabricated' could be considered loaded; perhaps 'misidentified' might serve the purpose better, reserving the term 'fabricated' for genuinely forged instances only. With critical cross-examinations such as offered by Hata Ikuhiko the reliability of existing photos should become more reliable in future studies.

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Originally Posted by bossel

The actual number of Nanjing inhabitants at the time is hard to calculate, since the city was full of refugees. It may have been up to 1m, but I never saw the number of 20m anywhere.

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Acc. to Tawara Yoshifumi 俵 義文 Nanjing area consisted of

1. NCD Nanjing City Ditrict 南京城區
2. NSA Nanjing Suburban Area 南京近郊區
3. NISZ Nanjing International Safety Zone 南京� 際安全區

"Within NCD lies NISZ, the International Safety Zone."

"Nanjing Massacre involved not only NCD but also NSA."

"At that time, immediately preceding Najing's takeover by Imperial Japanese Army, NCD had around 1 million people, NSA around 1.5 million, adding up to around 2.5 million. (Kasahara Jugyushi 笠原十九司 Nanjing Incident 南京事件 Iwanami shoden 岩波書店 1997)."

"When Imperial Japanese Army attacked Nanjing many people including the rich left the NCD; however there also flowed from the NSA into NCD. Hence the population of NCD was in a constant flux."

"NCD population was around 500,000; in addition to that were Nanjing Defence Force numbering 150,000. (Nanjing Mayor Ma Chaojun 馬超俊 in his letter to KMT Military Committee dated 1937.11.23 wrote 'current population around 500,000, and expecting an increase of around 200,000 refugees.')"

"The (oft quoted population of 'Nanjing' of) 200,000 refers to (only) those concentrated in the Nanjing International Safety Zone including some refugees (who made it into the safery zone). After the Imperial Japanese occupation of Nanjing, additional refugees fleeing from the massacre and rapes caused the Safety Zone's population to rise to around 250,000 within a month."

"The scheme of downplaying/neglecting the magnitude of the Nanjing Massacre can be seen in the right-wing nationalist group of historians' (Association for Creating New Textbooks) attempt at forging revisionist history books) is conuing although the stated facts have been elucidated byt Nanjing Massacre researchers (南京事件照査硏究會 ed. '13 Lies of Nanjing Massacre Sceptics' 柏書房, 1999)."

Source: Tawara Yoshifumi 俵 義文, a Japanese expert on textbooks, examined the situation in a recent article: "Kenpo Ihan/Shinryaku Senso Kotei no 'Abunai Kyokasho' no Jittai" (The facts of a 'dangerous textbook' that violates the constitution and that affirms the aggressive war), published in _Kikan Senso Sekinin Kenkyu_, no.30 2000

Acc. the information above the estimated population in NCD alone would have been around 500k + 200k + 150k = 850k = 850,000 on December 13, 1937, at the time of Nanjing's fall. To this should be added the remaining population of NSA, Nanjing suburbs comprised of 6 regional districts 懸府 which can only raise the population estimate.

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Originally Posted by Maciamo

But the Spaniards could not have massacred 20 million Amerindian for the sole reason that there were not 20 million Amerindian in the whole Americas when they got there.

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Where's you're source for that? I've heard people claiming as many as a hundred million people living in the Americas before the europeans came, where of 90 per cent or so died mainly because of deseases and the destruction of their social structures. I've no idea what the numbers where, but you seem to simply assume a low number?

I think that Japan was not the only country responsible for killings, during a war casualties are inevitable, even killings of innocent (unfortunately), there are are other countries too which are responsible for world war 2 except Japan, Germany killed millions of people during world war 2 , and Stalins victims are tens of millions therefore blaming only Japan is something inacurate from the historical point of view.

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Originally Posted by Dorian1977

I think that Japan was not the only country responsible for killings, during a war casualties are inevitable, even killings of innocent (unfortunately), there are are other countries too which are responsible for world war 2 except Japan, Germany killed millions of people during world war 2 , and Stalins victims are tens of millions therefore blaming only Japan is something inacurate from the historical point of view.

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Of course many (if not all) countries can be blamed. This thread just concentrate of the worst atrocities and largest killing of civilians (not so inevitable in a war) ever. Japan, Russia, China and Germany are very likely the top 4. The question was "Has Japan actually killed more civilians than the others ?" Compared to Germany, I think the answer is "yes", but it's true that Stalin and Mao have comitted such atrocities against their own people that Japan may well rank 3rd. Japan would be first for the killing of "foreign civilians".

The Nanjing Incident
Recent Research and Trends
by
David Askew
Associate Professor
Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University
Lecturer
Monash University
Research Editor
History of Ideas and Law
electronic journal of contemporary japanese studies
http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/articles/Askew.html

Acknowledging Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi's research "The Nanking 100-Man Killing Contest Debate," Gregory Smits of Penn. State Univeristy states, "the sheer quantity, wide variety and high quality of evidence available today that attest to this massacre makes it more difficult than ever for anyone with intellectual integrity to dismiss or minimize it."

Japanese Views of the Second Sino-Japanese War:
Through the lens of the Nanjing Massacre and Events Connected with It by Gregory Smits

Above page with extensive, informative links was built as part of
Making Japan: Modern Japanese History at Penn. State Univ. by Gregory Smits

Other material in topics of histories of Japan and China to be found at main page
East Asian History Textbooks, Gregory Smits

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Originally Posted by Maciamo

But the Spaniards could not have massacred 20 million Amerindian for the sole reason that there were not 20 million Amerindian in the whole Americas when they got there. The world population has increased a lot in the last 2 centuries. We are now 6 billion people, but were only 1 billion in 1802 and about 500 million in 1500. Wikipedia tell us that the population of Latin America in 1750 (250 years after the Europeans arrived) was 16 million, including the European settlers.

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Ahem.

Do not underestimate us iberians, my friend. At the time of the spanish conquest in 1532, the Inca Empire had 12 million inhabitants. And the total population of Mesoamerica is estimated at 25 million people.

That's 37 million natives, and it's not even counting the population north of the Aztec Empire, nor those outside the Inca Empire, and much less those that lived in what is now Brazil and Argentina, the latter ones estimated at about 10 million people.

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=28051

The population of the Inca Empire at the time of the
Spanish conquest in 1532 is commonly estimated to have been around 12 000 000 (...)

http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/.../sacrifice.htm

(...) Later, however, he and his colleague Woodrow Borah revised his estimate of the total central Mexican population upward to 25 million (...)

So, if the population of Latin America 250 years later was just 16 million people, with millions of european settlers included... you do the math.