THE FACE OF HISTORY AND TOUCHING EVENT

Second Sino-Japanese War Second Sino-Japanese War , (1937–45), conflict that broke out when China began a full-scale resistance to the expansion of Japanese influence in its territory (which had begun in 1931). The war, which remained undeclared until December 9, 1941, may be divided into three phases: a period of rapid Japanese advance until the end of 1938, a period of virtual stalemate until 1944, and the final period when Allied counterattacks, principally in the Pacific and on Japan’s home islands, brought about Japan’s surrender. The establishment of Manchukuo and the creation of the United Front For much of the early 20th century, Japan had exercised effective control of Manchuria, initially through the terms of the Twenty-one Demands (1915) and later through its support of Chinese warlord Zhang Zuolin. However, a serious conflict was developing, and the Chinese in Manchuria were especially restive under the privileges held by the Japanese. Chinese citizens formed the vast ma

City of Life and Death Made “in memory” of the some 300,000 victims of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre (also known as the Rape of Nanking),  City of Life and Death  (2009) is important and difficult viewing. Behind the opening credits are pieces of history; postcards written in English from inside Nanking by John Rabe (a member of the Nazi party who tried to protect many Chinese refugees during Japanese occupation through the establishment of the “Nanking Safety Zone”.) The handwritten words on the postcards reflect desperation but not hopelessness. Sadly, the images and events that follow unravel so as to leave no room for hope; merciless and relentless in their revealing of many truly horrific crimes against humanity. Like a tide pulling out from the shore, waves of Chinese civilians are massacred; shot, beheaded as a form of trophy-ism, buried alive. In addition to the massacres, thousands of women were repeatedly raped by Japanese soldiers. Even hope itself is symbolically taken from t

The Terrifying Story of the Rape of Nanking Often overshadowed by other global events of the World War II era, the Rape of Nanking is not just a historical footnote but a reminder of wartime barbarity and human suffering on an unimaginable scale Mass grave of Nanking Massacre victims. Inthe winter of 1937–1938, the ancient city of Nanking (now Nanjing), then the capital of Nationalist China, bore witness to one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century. The Japanese Imperial Army, having captured the city, embarked on a six-week campaign of violence.  This period, known as the Rape of Nanking, saw the systematic mass murder and sexual assault of tens of thousands of Chinese civilians and disarmed soldiers. Sour Sino-Japanese Ties The historical tensions between China and Japan can be traced back centuries, marked by conflict and uneasy truces. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Japan’s rapid industrialization and militarization contrasted sharply with China’s Qing Dyn

These are the worst rape stories you will ever read Let me play the devils advocate here, If you’ve been on Twitter since 2014, you’d know that #MenAreTrash is a hashtag that trends every now and again. Like the battle between Nigerian and Ghana Jollof rice, it wanes and then something happens and it gains momentum, then wanes again. Is the hashtag right? Of course not. It is a generalisation and those are never good. But before you go on being righteous, before you generally dispense abuse at those who use the tag, before you tell us how many good men there are and how you’re blessed to have one of them, take a moment to consider something. There are women in this life, who have NEVER encountered a good man. Like many Nigerian citizens who have never met an honest policeman, their lives have been systematically littered by one atrocity or the other, all perpetrated by men. I came to know her during our field work. We’ll call her Asana. Asana was raped both anally and vaginally b

The Most Horrible Gang Rape Ever in the History of India Has India lost its chastity and humanity? What is wrong with today’s generation? Everyday there are infinite cases that are registered under the category of rapes, sexual harassment, physical abuse, and many more shameful sexual crimes. The purity of the India is degrading as days are passing by. On one hand, a woman is worshipped as a Goddess, in the form of Laxmi, Saraswati, Durga, Kali and much more, while on the other hand, she is sexually exploited by the unsympathetic and ruthless men. Despite several laws, regulations, and punishments, an Indian woman’s life is always at a high risk. Out of all the rape cases, one of them is the most shameful and drastic for all the Indians. A student of Haryana was raped by a gang of men. And shockingly it was the second time she was been raped by and more surprisingly, by the same men. It was a gang of five men who once exploited her in 2013 in Bhiwani and the second time this year on

Nanking Massacre denial .       Nanking Massacre denial  is denial that Imperial Japanese forces murdered hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers and civilians during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and is a highly controversial episode in Sino-Japanese relations. Although not many outright deny that certain atrocities occurred, it is about the scope of the situation and the number of victims and whether command was given to do the atrocities or the soldiers themselves took the situation in their own hands. Despite the popularity of denialism in Japan, it is considered as a revisionist viewpoint and is not accepted in mainstream academia, even within Japanese academia.  Most historians accept the findings of the Tokyo tribunal with respect to the scope and nature of the atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army after the Battle of Nanking. In Japan, however, there has been a heated debate over the extent and nature of the massacre. Because denial of the massacre is seen as p

Nanjing Massacre The Nanjing massacre was the most horrible massacre to happen in 20th century In 1937, the Osaka Mainichi Shimbun and its sister newspaper, the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun, covered a contest between two Japanese officers, Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda of the Japanese 16th Division. The two men were described as vying to be the first to kill 100 people with a sword before the capture of Nanjing. From Jurong to Tangshan (two cities in Jiangshu Province, China), Mukai had killed 89 people while Noda had killed 78. The contest continued because neither had killed 100 people. By the time they had arrived at Zijin Mountain, Noda had killed 105 people while Mukai had killed 106 people.  Both officers supposedly surpassed their goal during the heat of battle, making it impossible to determine which officer had actually won the contest. Therefore, according to journalists Asami Kazuo and Suzuki Jiro, writing in the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun of December 13, they decided to begi

Holodomor Holodomor is the Ukrainian word for “ki**lling by hunger.” It is now the proper term for Josef Stalin’s forced starvation genocide against Ukraine from 1932 to 1933. How Stalin forced it on the Ukrainian people is open for discussion. Still, most historians agree that he knew what was happening in Ukraine and refused to provide relief of any kind, even ordering food shipments diverted from Ukraine and what food its population had confiscated, violently if necessary. He imposed this particularly cruel death sentence on so many solely out of retaliation for Ukraine striving for national recognition and independence. Today, we refer to it as a country, Ukraine, with Kiev as its capital city. But at that time, it was still referred to as the “Ukrainian SSR,” or simply, the “Ukraine,” one of many areas of Russia. The famine was manmade, an imposition directly from Stalin, but whether he premeditated it beforehand is difficult to determine. Most of Russia was experiencing famine at

The Black Death There is no one cause to blame for the Bubonic plague’s rise to power in 1346 or so, but Europe, in general, can be criticized strongly for its primitive belief in witches. Because “witches” were hunted down wholesale from the insufferably pervasive fear of the Devil, domestic and feral cats were also killed by the hundreds of thousands because they were thought to be witches’ “familiars.” And, without one, a witch could not adequately cast spells. , once witch-hunts showed up in full swing and cats started disappearing into the fires, the entire European world was ripe for an epidemic of rats. And the rats showed up in full swing in 1346 in Crimea via the Silk Road from China. There were no cats to check the rats stowing away on board merchant ships, and these rats were infested with fleas. The fleas carried yersinia pests, better known as plague. Today, this bacteria has been all but eradicated in most places around the world because cleanliness is next to Godliness.

Earthquake And Tsunami, Japan — The Power Of Resilience In 2011, Japan was hit with a 9.0 magnitude earthquake, the largest ever recorded in the country. This event caused widespread damage, leading to over 15,000 deaths and countless injuries. It was followed by a massive tsunami that destroyed entire cities, causing nuclear plant failures and leaving the country devastated. The disaster had far-reaching consequences for Japan, impacting its economy, social structure, and cultural traditions. The government had to deal with enormous reconstruction costs and loss of human life. Thousands of people were displaced, leading to homelessness and mental trauma. It also affected the global economy, causing a ripple effect in the international market. The 2011 Japan Earthquake and Tsunami was a devastating event that no one would ever want to experience. It is a reminder of the importance of disaster preparedness and the need for a global response to natural disasters. Even though it was

Muddy Hell: The realities of the Western Front conflict landscape during the Great War The intense and mechanical destruction of Belgium and Northern France in the First World War created a new and terrifying landscape that had hitherto only ever been imagined or seen in medieval visions of hell: one of mud and death unlike anything ever seen before. Saunders describes the landscape of the Western Front as an artefact, the product of human activity and not a natural process (Saunders 2004: 6).  The resultant Mudscape became the landscape in which the war was fought and lived and a major part of the material culture of the war. A multi-disciplinary study of this material culture makes it possible both to understand the war in greater detail and to see the depth to which mud affected the conflict and the way it was fought. Almost every painting, photograph, poem, diary or book about the First World War involves mud. It is as much a part of the war as artillery or trenches, barbed wire o

Face to Face: Were the First World War executions of 25 CEF members justified? Twenty-five men   were  executed during the First World War. Twenty-two men faced the firing squad for the crime of desertion, two for murder and one for cowardice. Whether these executions should have taken place  has been fiercely debated for decades. While our modern sensibilities likely find these executions wrong, it is important to examine why they were indeed wrong, even in the context of 1914-1918. According to military law as it existed in 1914, the executions of 25 members of the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) were justified. Each of the executed was tried by field-general court martial and found guilty of the crime of which he was accused. By most measures, these trials were fair. Defendants had the opportunity to speak in their own defence, and to have others do so on their behalf. But the trials were lacking in legal expertise. Three officers sat on a court martial, and there was no requir

The Japanese WWII Soldier Who Refused to Surrender for 27 Years Unable to bear the shame of being captured as a prisoner of war, Shoichi Yokoi hid in the jungles of Guam until January 1972 When Japanese sergeant Shoichi Yokoi returned to his home country after almost three decades in hiding, his initial reaction was one of contrition: “It is with much embarrassment that I return.” Then 56, Yokoi had spent the past 27 years eking out a meager existence in the jungles of Guam, where he’d fled to evade capture following American forces’ seizure of the island in August 1944. According to historian Robert Rogers, Yokoi was one of around 5,000 Japanese soldiers who refused to surrender to the Allies after the Battle of Guam, preferring life on the lam to the shame of being detained as a prisoner of war. Though the Allies captured or killed the majority of these holdouts within a few months, some 130 remained in hiding by the end of World War II in September 1945. Yokoi, who only rejoined

This is a shocking story of how Saltwater Crocodiles Devoured 500 Japanese Soldiers in Burma During World War 2 The Ramree Island massacre of 1945, the deadliest crocodile attack recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records Circa 1945 was the year when the Imperial Japan invasion of Asia was nearing its ends. On all fronts, they were attacked by the Allied forces in full strength, leaving them to either surrender or perish. However, one of the deadliest battles the Japanese soldiers had to endure was the Battle of Ramree, an island in Myanmar, formerly called Burma. The Japanese were trapped with two kinds of predators: the British Army and deadly saltwater crocodiles. Japanese Invasion of Burma and deadly saltwater crocodiles. Since the nineteenth century, the British ruled Burma from 1824 to 1948, from the Anglo-Burmese Wars through the creation of Burma as a province of British India to the establishment of an independently administered colony, and finally independence. After t

A Tale of Nanjing Atrocities That Spares No Brutal Detail Two terrible faces stare out from “City of Life and Death,” a fictionalized telling of the Rape of Nanjing, a pair of indelible bookends for this anguished film. The first belongs to Lu (Liu Ye), who, with hundreds of other soldiers, has been rounded up by invading Japanese troops amid a frenzy of violence. The close-up of Lu’s impassive face locked in unspoken emotion floods the screen. Much later, after innumerable deaths and acts of barbarism and heroism, the face of a woman will similarly fill the screen in close-up, her frantic eyes stretched wide, as if they had been permanently shocked open by what they have seen. These faces are mirrors of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians tortured and killed during the mass butchery also known as the Nanjing (formerly Nanking) massacre and recounted with reverberant melancholy in “City of Life and Death.” Some 70 years after it made world news, the story of Nanjing h

After France was liberated from German occupation, many within the country borrowed Nazi tactics to publicly shame women. From 1940 to 1944, Nazi Germany occupied northern and western parts of France, in what to this day remains a source of deep humiliation for the country. Moments after France was liberated in the summer of 1944, celebration expanded to include demonization, with Allied victors engaging in some of the same revenge tactics against women as their enemies. Many French women believed to have had children or collaborated with German occupiers were publicly humiliated. Sometimes this meant having their heads shaved; other times -- even in addition to head shavings -- it meant public beatings. The decision to shave a woman's head is imbued with gender power dynamics. In the dark ages, the Visigoths removed a woman's hair to punish her for committing adultery, according to historian Antony Beevor. Centuries later, the practice was revived when French troops occup

World War II was the Greatest Moral Failure in Western History There are quite a few other problems with the war too. Though the West appeased Hitler in the beginning, the Nazis’ monstrous behavior did provoke extreme anger toward them. As justified as it was to be angry with the Nazis for bombing civilians in London and the Japanese for massacring people in the Pacific, does that really justify exterminating entire populations of people with incendiary bombs and nuclear weapons? Why did delighted French mobs humiliate women and shave their heads? What was their crime, exactly? Falling in love with German soldiers? I guess when it came time to bully girls, people suddenly found their courage. Furthermore, the West’s actions following the war are simply disgusting, and there is no other word for it. Churchill in particular decided to save as many Nazis he could from Eastern Europe. Stalin found out and bullied him into giving many of them back. Are we really expected to believe that W