December 13 is the National Day of Commemoration for the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre to commemorate the heroic souls of 300,000 compatriots in Nanjing who died under the butcher's knife of the Japanese army. Remembering history, we can better move forward!
The Japanese army committed heinous crimes during World War II, in addition to creating the Nanjing Massacre that shocked China and foreign countries, it also created another tragedy comparable to the Nanjing Massacre- the Ryukyu Massacre, which was no less tragic than the Nanjing Massacre, causing more than 260,000 casualties on the island.
Located at the junction of the continental shelf extension zone and the deep sea in the East China Sea, the Ryukyu Islands run in a northeast-southwest direction and consist of the Osumi Islands, the Tugala Islands, the Amami Islands, the Ryukyu Islands, the Miyako Islands, the Yaeyama Islands and other islands, with an area of about 4,645 square kilometers and a population of about 1.5 million people.
The Ryukyu Kingdom was originally a Chinese vassal state, and during the Ming and Qing dynasties, chinese emperors named their kings the King of Ryukyu and gave them seals. From 1609 onwards, Japanese power began to gradually invade the Ryukyu Islands, and in 1879 the Ryukyu Kingdom was annexed by Japan, and Japan established Okinawa Prefecture in Ryukyu.
In 1945, with the strategic counteroffensives of the Allies in Chinese mainland and Southeast Asia, Japan's defeat was a foregone conclusion. Considering that the overseas territories it had occupied after its defeat might be deprived, Japan issued a so-called "Jade Crushing Order" on the grounds that the "Ryukyu" (Ryukyu aborigines) would lead the Chinese to liquidate Japan, ordering the Japanese troops stationed in the Ryukyu Islands to kill all the Ryukyuan people on the islands.
So why are the Japanese afraid of the reckoning of the Ryukyuans?
Because the Japanese do a lot of evil. Since Japan annexed the Ryukyu Kingdom in 1879 and established Okinawa Prefecture, the Japanese did not treat the Ryukyuans as their own citizens. In the face of Japan's long-term colonial rule, the Ryukyu people never stopped resisting and were bloodily suppressed by Japan; in the Battle of Okinawa, the Japanese army ordered 30,000 Ryukyu soldiers to charge as cannon fodder, and the Ryukyuans suffered many casualties. Therefore, the people of Ryukyu hated the Japanese.
Another reason why the Japanese suffered a killer, that is, Japan was afraid that after the defeat of the war, Ryukyu would become an independent anti-Japanese country. Instead of setting up an anti-Japanese country in the surrounding area, it is better to directly slaughter it all, and how can people go to independence and oppose Japan when they are dead!
As a result, Japan went on a killing spree against the inhabitants of Ryukyu. The commander of the Ryukyu garrison, Ushima Man, who had participated in the Nanjing Massacre, repeated the same trick and carried out a frenzied massacre of the Ryukyu people. The Japanese massacres were extremely brutal and varied. Due to the shortage of Japanese troops, the Ryukyuans were forced to kill each other themselves: relatives killed each other, neighbors killed each other, and tragedies were staged.
The Ryukyu people did not have guns, and under the threat of the Japanese army, they used kitchen knives, axes and other sharp weapons to end the lives of their relatives. They threatened husbands to kill wives, sons to kill mothers, fathers to kill children, and then they committed suicide. In order to kill faster, the Japanese army also forced the Ryukyu people to "group self-determination": forcing the Ryukyuan people to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff en masse, or driving civilians into caves and providing gasoline, grenades and other weapons for their self-determination.
The Ryukyu Massacre killed more than 260,000 people in Ryukyu, and the scale of the massacre is second only to the Nanjing Massacre. However, Japan hid this incident for fear of revealing it. History is like a mirror that illuminates both justice and ugliness.
Article VIII of the Potsdam Proclamation of 1945 stipulates that "the conditions of the Cairo Declaration shall be implemented, and the sovereignty of Japan shall be limited to Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku and other small islands as determined by our people."
At this time, it was the best time for China to regain sovereignty over the Ryukyu Islands, but the Republic of China government did not pay much attention to the importance of the islands, so that it did not include the Ryukyu Islands in the list of Japanese returns to China. It is also suggested that, given the complexity of the Ryukyu Islands, they should be jointly administered by China and the United States.
However, in April 1947, the United Nations "Agreement on the Former Japanese Mandate to Rule the Islands" arbitrarily handed over the Ryukyu Islands to the United States for trusteeship, and China could not regret it even too late. Then the world entered the Cold War period between the United States and the Soviet Union, and in 1970, the United States and Japan secretly signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty behind China's back, transferring the management of Ryukyu to Japan. Since May 15, 1972, Japan has regained administrative authority over the Ryukyu Islands.
How would the survivors of the Ryukyu Islands feel when they heard the news that the United States had transferred the administration of the Ryukyu Islands to Japan? Heartbreak, or despair?
According to documents of international legal force, such as the Cairo Declaration and the Bostan Proclamation, "Japan's sovereignty shall be limited to Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku, and other small islands as determined by our people." Therefore, Japan does not enjoy sovereignty over the Ryukyu Islands, and now the driving is only administrative power, and the Ryukyu people still have hope.