#273
Post
by Acolyte » Yesterday, 15:44
To bump this old thread with two questions:
First of all, I don't consider myself that well-versed in this topic as I haven't read monographs about it, but I did listen to a 2-part series on it on the History of Japan podcast by historian Dr. Isaac Meyer, and in an episode of The Last Podcast on The Left. (I'm aware that those guys aren't professional historians, but let's ignore that for a moment.) Two pieces of information from these caught my attention:
Apparently the IJA units attacking the city were aided by riverine forces of the IJN operating on the Yangtze. The Wikipedia entry on the massacre actually mentions this as well, although without going into any detail. Oddly it mentions two such fleets taking part, but I guess I only find that odd because I know nothing about riverine warfare. Maybe it's necessary in such cases to screen both banks of the river?
Anyway, the additional detail regarding this is that masses of desperate KMT soldiers deserted when the city fell, and tried escaping to safety by swimming across the river, only to be cut down in large numbers by machine gun fire from the patrol boats that were already present. The argument is that this is how most of the corpses on the riverbank photographed afterwards actually ended up there. Again, massacre is massacre in either case, but anyway, does anyone have additional information regarding this?
Also, the city has a busy inner port, but military command closed it down and prevented civilians and soldiers from trying to flee up the river, in order to avoid a stampede and chaos. I never heard about this before. Are there further details about this?
