- The Nanjing Massacre -
By the end of 1937, there were only seventeen military policemen who had come to Nanjing. They became mixed in with the raping and pillaging committed by the ground forces and were unable to act independently. By the spring of 1938, more than 1,000 military police had been periodically dispatched to Nanjing. They were divided into the military police battalions under Kanbayashi and Yamamoto. All were stationed within the city, except for one group which was quartered at Tang Mountain. Although they did not kill people as flagrantly and openly as did the ground forces, their savagery and cruelty were just the same. They wantonly seized people and if they did not falsely accuse them of being government officials, they accused them of being soldiers and used torture to extort the desired confessions. Sometimes the military police would tie their prisoners to a tree, slap them across the face right and left, and ruthlessly kick them: they called this tactic "converging from three directions" and didn't stop until their victim was dead.
In another incident, the Kanbayashi Military Police Battalion stationed at Tang Mountain arrested dozens of residents, including Liang Tingju, Rao Degong, Shao Jugong and Cheng Dabiao. They used all sorts of cruel torture techniques to obtain confessions from the prisoners, but were unsuccessful. In the end the entire group of prisoners was murdered. They also arrested Han Decheng, along with more than 230 people whom they had falsely accused of being soldiers, and disposed of them in the same way.
That which is recounted above represents some of the atrocities committed in the second stage of the massacre. The two largest scale massacres took place during the first two months following the occupation of Nanjing. The massacre certainly did not end after this point, but was merely carried out in a more clandestine manner. For example, Mrs. Dong Ding (of Liuhe Prefecture) was employed as a nurse by a family that lived in Yuangu Tower in Big Bell New Village. Her only son, a freshman high school student, was named Dong Xiaochun. By that time, the Japanese had occupied Nanjing for quite some time and her family had returned to the village and was living in a make-shift grass hut. One day, two Japanese soldiers came to their home and, although she managed to hide herself, her husband and only son were seized. They murdered the son, Xiaochun, right there on the spot. As for the husband, they shut him up inside the house and set it on fire. Although he was able to escape, their son was lost along with all of their worldly goods. Soon afterwards the husband also died, and then it was just Mrs. Dong Ding, left lonely and helpless. There was another nurse, Mrs. Huang Shi (of Wuwei Prefecture in Anhui Province), whose husband, tailor Huang, was seized by the Japanese on Big Stone Bridge Street. They set him free right away, but Huang had walked only a few steps when the Japanese sicked a ferocious dog on him. The rabid dog pounced on Huang and bit him all over. A few days later, Mr. Huang died.
