Less well known in this country are the great cruelties practiced by Japanese forces in other countries in Asia. There were no equivalents of the Nazi death camps, but Japanese soldiers routinely raped, tortured, and murdered civilians in China, the Philippines, Korea, Burma, Indonesia, and other Asian countries. The “Rape of Nanking,” which began in December 1937 with Japan’s conquest of the city, which was then the Chinese capital, lasted for a period of several months. Up to 300,000 Chinese were murdered, and an estimated 20,000 rapes took place in the first month of the Japanese occupation of the city.
On a visit to contemporary Nanjing in 2005, I went to the very large museum, established in 1985, that commemorates that episode. In one respect, there was not much to see. My recollection is that most of the exhibits I saw were framed copies of faded photos and bulletins from that era. In another respect, however, there was a great deal to see. The crowd in the museum and the lines waiting to get in were the largest I can ever remember seeing at a museum or memorial site anywhere in the world, and it was evident that the visitors considered their visit to be a solemn occasion.
In China, Korea, and other Asian countries, many thousands of young women were forced into sexual slavery for Japanese forces. On a visit to Indonesia about 20 years ago, I met with a group of these so-called “comfort women,” many of whom were then in their seventies and eighties, in the offices of a lawyer who was suing the Japanese government for compensation for them. Many were teenagers when their enslavement took place. I learned that they had not been able to bring suit earlier because, during the 32 years that the dictator Suharto was in power in Indonesia, he had not wanted to jeopardize Japanese investments in his country.