Tongzhou Incident

[Damas]

I would like to know more. Anyone with more information?

"The Tongzhou Incident (July, 1937) was the assault incident on Japanese troop and residents (including Koreans) which Chinese troop caused.

Tongzhou (Chinese:通州 tong zhou) was a strategic post in the eastern district of Beijing. At that time, there were Japanese troop and "the East Ji Anti-Communist Autonomous Administration" which was a Japanese puppet in Tongzhou. On July 29, the troop of "the East Ji Anti-Communist Autonomous Administration" assaulted Japanese troop, then killed Japanese residents (including Koreans who were Japanese nationals at that time). According to Japanese materials, approximately two hundred Japanese residents were killed in the massacre. All women were raped and most of the body parts were scattered as an act of beasts. The massacre shocked public sentiment in Japan, and it is used to justify military intervention under the guise of protecting Japanese property in Beijing by the Japanese authority. Chinese historians insist that this incident was one of the excuses Japan used to expand the military campaign in China.

The Tongzhou Incident primarily appears in Japanese far-right literature, and very rarely in Western, Chinese and other sources. Chinese historians insist that the right-wing organizations in Japan use this incident to downplay the atrocities committed by the Imperial Army in the Nanjing Massacre, focusing on the cruelty of the Chinese army.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongzhou_Incident""

[Larry D.]

Every reputable, scholarly account that I have read states that the Japanese, intent on provoking an "incident", sent an infantry patrol into an area occupied by armed Chinese where, shortly after dusk, they intentionally opened fire on them without provocation. Naturally, the Chinese fired back which started a fire fight. The next day, the Japanese commanders who plotted and planned the incident began operations against the Chinese. The so-called "Peiping Incident" of 29 July 1937 immediately blossomed into full-scale war that lasted until 15 August 1945. Terrible atrocities were committed on both sides, but the instigators were the Japanese who considered the Chinese to be sub-humans. This freed them of any inhibitions they might have about what they were doing to them.

You should explore this subject with your search engine as I would suspect that there is quite a bit available on the "Peiping Incident".

--Larry

[Damas]

Thank you Larry for your reply but I'm not asking about the "Marco Polo Bridge Incident" but another one.

[Larry D.]

OOPS! I'm embarrassed.
I can't say that I've ever heard of the other one. That's why I just assumed you were talking about the one I mentioned, but that you had a different name for it due to using difference sources that I have.

Sorry.

--Larry

[Damas]

Larry D.

I searched the net and found some horrible nationalistic Japanese sites regarding this incident. It is connected to the "Marko Polo Bridge Incident", probably happened at the same time or shortly afterward.

I'm afraid I'm not very comfortable with some of your comments but I don't want to start another discussion, not related to the topic. Just a couple clarifications please.
When you say:

"the Japanese who considered the Chinese to be sub-humans"

Are you talking about the Japanese as a nation, the Japanese common people, the Japanese politicians or the Japanese military? And could you please state your sources for this?

And "Every reputable, scholarly account that I have read states that the Japanese, intent on provoking an "incident"..."

Could you please state just two? (because my sources say the the instigator of the incident is still unknown to this day)

[Larry D.]

Larry D.

When you say:

"the Japanese who considered the Chinese to be sub-humans"

Are you talking about the Japanese as a nation, the Japanese common people, the Japanese politicians or the Japanese military? And could you please state your sources for this?

And "Every reputable, scholarly account that I have read states that the Japanese, intent on provoking an "incident"..."

Could you please state just two? (because my sources say the the instigator of the incident is still unknown to this day)

Re Sub-Humans:
The Japanese military, of course. See:
CHANG, Iris. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. New York: Penguin Books, 1997.
COOK, Haruko and Theodore F. Cook. Japan at War: An Oral History. New York: The New Press, 1992.
DOWER, John W. War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War. New York: Pantheon, 1986.
HARRIES, Merion and Susie Harries. Soldiers of the Sun: The Rise and Fall of the Japanese Imperial Army. New York: Random House, 1991.

Re Marco Polo Bridge, etc.:
BOYCE, Robert and Esmonde M. Robertson (eds.). Paths to War: New Essays on the Origins of the Second World War. New York, 1989.
IRIYE, Akira and Warren Cohen (eds.). American, Chinese, and Japanese Perspectives on Wartime Asia 1931-1949. Wilmington (DE), 1990.
SUN, Youli. China & the Origins of the Pacific War, 1931-41. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993.
WEI, Ju-lin et al. History of the Sino-Japanese War. Taipei: U.S. Army Military Assistance Advisory Group, 1967.

I'm outta here. I've got other things to do.

[Damas]

Okay. Thank you for the reply.

[Tycoon2002]

http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9609/23/rare.photos/index.html

This is a link I found that might be regarded to the incident. Although I believe the pictures are wrong because some of those pictures are actually pictures of Communists who were executed by Chaing's troops. Thats my opinion anyway.

[Larry D.]

The public torture and execution of prisoners has been common practice since the dawn of time, so the fact that it occurred in 1937 China should come as no surprise. The Japanese did it, the Chinese did it, everybody did it. The daily noontime executions of common criminals and political enemies in the Roman Coliseum were a big, well-attended attraction for the citizens of that supposedly civilized city, and those were a thousand times more grisly and horrific than anything the Chinese were doing in Shanghai.

FWIW.

[Tycoon2002]

The public torture and execution of prisoners has been common practice since the dawn of time, so the fact that it occurred in 1937 China should come as no surprise. The Japanese did it, the Chinese did it, everybody did it. The daily noontime executions of common criminals and political enemies in the Roman Coliseum were a big, well-attended attraction for the citizens of that supposedly civilized city, and those were a thousand times more grisly and horrific than anything the Chinese were doing in Shanghai.

FWIW.

I agree, its just that the Japanese right wing like to use this to retaliate against their own war crimes as well as the crimes that happened in the occupation of Japan.

[Kim Sung]

You can see details of this incident in this link.

[Peter H]

Japanese statements on the massacre.

From the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s Overseas Information Division, recorded in Volume 3 of Defense Exhibits Rejected by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East(IMTFE):

The Chinese had intended to massacre every single Japanese resident, including women and children. Most of the women were abducted. After being tortured for 24 hours, they were dragged through the streets (some by the ropes with which their hands and feet had been bound, others by wires that had been forced through their noses or throats), and killed outside the East Gate. The corpses were dumped into a nearby pond. Some of the bodies had been coated with a virulent poison, which corroded the skin on their faces, rendering them unrecognizable.

IMTFE Testimony of General Kayashima Takashi,commander of the Tianjin garrison at the time,Volume 5 of Reports of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East:

The scene inside the town was ghastly. Brutally murdered bodies of Japanese settlers were lying everywhere. Most of them had ropes tied around their necks. I had to force myself to look at the mutilated corpses of women and innocent children.I no longer have the report I wrote at the time. I have relied on my memories for this statement. But I assure you that what I witnessed was so horrifying that I will never be able to forget it.I went to a restaurant (I think it was called Asahiken) to investigate. There were seven or eight women there, ranging in age from 17 or 18 to 40. They had all been raped, and then shot to death as they lay naked on the floor. Four or five of them had been stabbed in the genitals with bayonets. ... The living quarters had been ransacked, and all the furniture, bedding, and clothing stolen. The situation was virtually the same at the homes of the other Japanese victims.The scene at the Kinsuiro Inn was gruesome. Since many of the Japanese had gathered there, sensing danger, there had been mass carnage. ... The owner of Kinsuiro and the maids had been tied together, raped, and decapitated.

IMTFE testimony of Major Katsura Shizuo,2nd Infantry Regiment,same source above:

When I walked through the gate to the Kinsuiro Inn, I was shocked at its transformation. It was in ruins. I was nauseated by the stench of the corpses. ... I went into the combination service area and office. There I found a man and two women dead, lying on their sides or face down. I don’t know if the women had been raped, but it was clear that the victims had tried to fight off their attackers. The man’s eyes had been gouged out,and his torso was riddled with bullets.I went to a cafe that I had visited a year before the tragedy.When I opened the door, nothing seemed to have been disturbed.At first I thought that the cafe had been spared, but when I investigated further, I saw the body of a naked woman in one of the booths. She had been strangled with a rope. Behind the cafe was a house where a Japanese family lived. There I saw a mother and child who had been slaughtered. The child’s fingers had been hacked off.There was a Japanese-owned store near the South Gate. The body of a man, probably the owner, who had been dragged outside and killed, had been dumped on the road. His body had been cut open, exposing his ribs and his intestines, which had spilled out onto the ground.

IMTFE testimony of Major Sakurai Fumio,2nd Infantry Regiment:

When we passed through the East Gate of the garrison, the first thing we saw was the mutilated bodies of Japanese settlers of both sexes, lying on the ground just about every few yards. Every one of us was overcome with grief and anger. Since we detected no signs of the enemy, we concentrated on rescuing the survivors,until midnight. We went to every home, calling out repeatedly,“Are there any Japanese here?” During the course of our inspection, the survivors began to crawl out from their hiding places — from trash and garbage containers, from inside the moat,from behind walls. Among them were children whose noses had been pierced with wire, just like cattle. There were old women, now one-armed, the other arm having been chopped off. And there were pregnant women whose bellies had been stabbed with bayonets.Inside a restaurant, a whole family had been slaughtered. The enemy had cut off their arms. Every woman over 14 or 15 had been raped. It was a pitiful sight.When I entered another restaurant, Asahiken, I saw the corpses of seven or eight women lying on the floor, naked. They had been raped before they were killed. A broom protruded from the genitals of one of them, where it had been shoved. The mouth of another had been stuffed with dirt. The belly of yet another had been sliced open, vertically. It was truly a dreadful sight.There was a pond near a Korean-owned shop, at the East Gate.In it I saw the corpses of a family of six. Their necks and hands had been bound with rope, and then pierced with No. 8 wire. They had then been tied together with the same wire, and obviously dragged for a distance before they died. The water in the pond was red from all the blood.

[Kim Sung]

The Tongzhu massacre was carried out by pro-Japanese Chinese security forces (冀東保安隊) who was offended by Japanese forces' killing of their comrades on July 27. This incident is not diectly related with KMT or Chinese communist forces, which means Japanese were killed by the troops they forstered themselves.

[Peter H]

I've wondered if the atrocity stories related to this incident somehow contributed to the Japanese actions at Nanking?

[Kim Sung]

This incident was used for propaganda use to instigate anti-Chinese sentiment in Japan. There was an unconfirmed rumor that infuriated Japanese soldiers of the 16th Division massacred Chinese civilians at Nanjing as we see Hata Ikuhiko's『中村粲氏への反論』('Argument against Nakamura Akira'). But it is still not evident how much their propaganda contributed to the massacre at Nanjing.

Basically, this incident was caused by the Japanese provocation and the Chinese troops of the pro-Japanese puppet regime. And KMT implication in this incident is not proven. That's why the Japanese right wingers didn't use this incident fully to rationalize Japanese behavior in China at that time.