The Japanese were disposing of the bodies
During the Nanjing Massacre, the Japanese army disposed of the bodies of the slaughtered people, in order to kill all the seriously injured who were on the verge of death, and at the same time dispose of the bodies cleanly, they adopted the practice of burning. With such a cruel treatment, it is unlikely that the company will be able to avoid killing by "pretending to be dead".
Japanese journalist Katsuichi Honda interviewed a former Japanese soldier under the pseudonym "Tanaka." Tanaka details the bloody scenes of massacres and burnings on December 18 and 19, 1937.
The bodies were thick, and it was a heavy task to open the pile of corpses in the dark to confirm whether there were still ten thousand corpses alive. So, the way that came to mind was to burn. The corpses were all dressed in thick winter cotton suits, so it was not easy to extinguish the fire, and it could illuminate the night sky, bringing convenience to the work. As soon as the clothes are on fire, no matter how they pretend to be dead, they will move. We lit fires all over Corpse Hill. Looking closely in the light of the fire, he could see that the one who thought he was dead was still alive, and he couldn't stand the burning, and was secretly trying to put out the fire with his hands. As soon as we saw any movement, we immediately stabbed him to death with a bayonet. In the smoke and fire, the pile of corpses was ripped open and the final operation of the bayonet treatment was continued endlessly. (Interview with Hondo Katsuichi, "Interviews with the Beginning and End of the Nanjing Massacre")
From the description of this Japanese soldier, it can be seen that they burned the corpses, not only to destroy the corpses, but also to expose the people who pretended to be dead, lest they expose the atrocities of the Japanese army after they escaped.
In April 1938, the American "Time Magazine" also disclosed the Japanese army's practice of massacring about 10,000 Chinese men and then burning them. The report says:
"A seventeen-year-old (Chinese) boy came to the hospital and said that 10,000 Chinese men between the ages of fifteen and thirty had been escorted out of the city on the fourteenth day of January 1938 to the bank of the river next to the ferry. There, the Japanese opened fire on them with field guns, grenades, and machine guns. Most of the bodies were pushed into the Yangtze River, some were burned from a high shelf, and only three people escaped. The boy speculated that of the ten thousand people, about six thousand were soldiers and four thousand were civilians. He was shot in the chest and was not seriously injured. (Nanjing Massacre: Eyewitness reports of Anglo-Americans)
This is a very fortunate boy, who escaped the fate of being finally "mended" by the Japanese army under the strict slaughter procedures of the Japanese army. Relying on the burning of corpses to eliminate traces, avoid survivors or pretend to be dead, was extremely common in the Nanjing Massacre of the Japanese Army, especially in the larger mass massacres.
Guo Qi, commander of the Nanjing garrison, who had personally visited Wu Changde, a survivor of the Hanzhongmen mass massacre, wrote afterwards in the "Records of Blood and Tears in the Fallen Capital":
"There was a policeman who was caught in shui ximen and was about to be killed. Probably this time there were more than three thousand people, standing in the open space, behind the machine gun strafing, he did not wait for the bullet to arrive, that is, first lying upside down and pretending to die, after the orc killed, in order to eliminate the traces, burned the corpse with gasoline, divided into dozens of piles, he was pressed under a pile, and when the fire was over, the orc soldier left, he climbed out of the pile of burned corpses, which I personally asked him. ”
This is also a survivor who escaped the Japanese incineration by "pretending to die", he was not killed by bullets, and he was just under the pile of corpses. Obviously, there are very few such survivors. Most of the people who pretended to be dead were killed when they were burned, because they could not stand the severe pain, and were found by the Japanese army and killed.
The bodies of people killed at the Xiaguan Wharf in Nanjing
In the "Diary of the Formation", The commander of the 3rd machine gun of the 20th Regiment of the former Japanese 16th Division also recorded the burning of a large number of corpses outside the Hanzhong Gate. In his diary dated December 27, 1937, he wrote: "At 8 o'clock in the afternoon, he set out to collect vegetables, passed through the Hanzhong Gate, and headed for the Yangtze River. In a place outside the Hanzhong Gate, the bodies of five or six hundred Chinese soldiers were burned black and stacked on top of each other. ”
(Above: During the Nanjing Massacre, the Japanese army poured the slaughtered corpses on the Yangtze River in Xiaguan, Nanjing, and burned them with gasoline)
Citizen Wang Hengshan once rescued a Chinese soldier who escaped from the cremation site and learned of the atrocities committed by the Japanese army in burning more than 100 slaughtered people in the house of Yin Debiao, the "Erdaozi" outside the Hanzhong Gate. He said:
"(December 1937) At 9:00 p.m. on the fifteenth day, the enemy gave a password, and a group of devils stabbed them with bayonets, stabbed them, and then poured kerosene on the corpses and burned them." As a result, 96 people were killed and burned, and only 7 escaped with injuries and did not die.
In a letter to his family, Smyth, secretary of the International Commission for the Safe Zone, described the japanese army's horrific practice of burning 140 refugees after massacre. He wrote:
"Another man ran back today, his face was all burned out, and it was likely that his eyes were burned blind. He reported that 140 of them were tied together, poured with gasoline and set on fire! It was horrible! ...... The man who escaped death was crushed underneath and was finally able to run away...".
This is also a survivor who survived because he was under the crowd. There are many Japanese sources that record the scene of the Japanese army burning the corpse, repairing the knife to fill the dead, or the injured and incomplete dead. In his diary, former Japanese soldier Iike Kazuichi recounts the massacre and burning of 161 Chinese near Gurinji Temple on December 22, 1937. He wrote:
"In the darkness, he stabbed the fleeing guys, and he shot them with guns, and for a moment it became hell. When it was over, gasoline was poured on the upside-down corpse, a fire was lit, and the guy who was still alive moved in the fire and killed again. ”
Former Japanese soldier Kenzo Okamoto once described the burning of 400 to 500 slaughtered corpses near the Nanjing airfield. He wrote:
The shooting began, and someone preemptively grabbed the road and fled. Even if you escape, you will be shot because you have machine guns everywhere. At that time, it was estimated that four or five hundred people were killed. After the incident, the Japanese army piled up the tracks, put corpses on them, stuffed firewood underneath, poured gasoline on them, and burned them all. ”
In such a well-defended massacre by the Japanese army, and then completely burned with gasoline after the massacre, even if it was pretended to be dead, even if it was buried under the pile of people, it was impossible to survive. There will be no survivors who will tell the story of being slaughtered.