History has its own life, it is like a person, both easy-going and self-respecting. ——Yu Qiuyu
On September 18, 1931, Japan launched the September 18 Incident against China, which shocked China and foreign countries, and since then the Japanese army has begun a long-planned war of aggression against China, bringing iron hooves and war fires to various parts of China in the past 14 years, burning and plundering without evil, and bringing deep disasters to the people of Chinese. This photograph was taken during the fall of Shenyang, where several Japanese troops were buried alive Chinese, while the woman on the far left was forced to kneel on the ground.
After the "August 13" Incident in 1937, the Battle of Songhu broke out. On August 28, Japanese aircraft bombed the Shanghai South Railway Station. At that time, the railway station was crowded with people preparing to flee, and the Japanese army bombed them, killing more than 1,300 people on the spot and injuring countless people in the two bombings. Wang Xiaoting, a Chinese photojournalist who was working for the Hearst News Agency in the United States, witnessed at the scene: a toddler covered in blood sat on the railway tracks and cried. She published the photo on the cover of life magazine in the United States, and the world was in an uproar, but the Japanese army excused itself by accidental bombing. The picture shows the baby sitting on the railroad tracks, wailing and crying.
The photograph, also taken in Nanjing, shows people being forcibly escorted to a car. After the Battle of Songhu, Shanghai was lost, the gateway to Nanjing was opened, and the Japanese army marched to Nanjing in three ways, and soon Nanjing was occupied, and then a frenzied massacre of soldiers and civilians in Nanjing was carried out. After the Japanese army occupied Nanjing, they killed the people of Nanjing City and the soldiers who laid down their weapons in the name of eliminating the "plainclothes team", and found that there were marks of hats on their heads, or wounded and calluses on their shoulders were arrested and killed indiscriminately.
This photograph was taken during the Nanjing Massacre, where Japanese troops are beheading Chinese fighters. In the war of aggression against China, the Japanese army violated the humanitarian spirit and the convention on captivity, and did not hesitate to massacre soldiers and unarmed people who had laid down their arms. According to Japanese records, the headquarters of the Japanese 6th Division, which occupied Nanjing, received an order: "Regardless of women and children, all Chinese are killed, and all houses are set on fire." The diary of Nakajima Imaga, commander of the Japanese 16th Division, also recorded: "In general, no prisoners are retained, and all are disposed of."
In the photo, a Japanese soldier is standing by the river and watching, and at his feet is the Chinese who was killed by the Japanese army. On January 11, 1938, Japanese Foreign Minister Hiroshi Hirota wrote in a telegram: "Since returning to Shanghai a few days ago, I have investigated reports of atrocities committed by the Japanese army in Nanjing and other places, and it has been proved that no less than 300,000 Chinese civilians have been killed by the Japanese army and its means of continuing the atrocities. The diary of a Japanese army wrote: "The corpses in the Xiaguan River in Nanjing were washed away like drifting wood by the waves, and the corpses piled up on the shore overlapped on the shore were endless." These bodies may be thousands, tens of thousands, and the number is very large. ”
This photo was taken on November 3, 1938, when the Japanese army set up a card at the Haizhu Bridge to intercept the civilians and tied them to the bridge for interrogation. Scenes like this are common in the photographs left behind, and they don't need any reason to tie up Chinese people for interrogation, or even kill.
A Chinese woman is photographed being forcibly injected. The Japanese army used poison gas bombs many times during the Battle of Xuzhou, and during the Battle of Taierzhuang, the Japanese army was met with stubborn resistance from the Chinese army, and in a panic, they used poison gas bombs against the Chinese army. In addition to poison gas bombs, the Japanese army also used bacteria for the Chinese army and civilians, resulting in the death of a large number of Chinese civilians. In order to control the plague caused by germ warfare within a certain range and avoid spreading to the core area occupied by the Japanese army, the Japanese army and the local puppet regime organized epidemic prevention personnel to force the people to inject preventive injections.
In the photo, a Japanese ghost is interrogating three Chinese people, and if the answers of these people are not satisfactory to the Japanese army, the people will be killed by the Japanese army at any time. During the period of Japan's invasion of China, the Japanese army in North China, where the anti-japanese activities behind enemy lines were active, never found an effective way to deal with our army's guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines. After suffering the blows of our army's guerrilla warfare, the Japanese army suffered great losses, which also greatly shaken the Japanese colonial rule in north China and restrained the dispatch and use of its troops. In order to extinguish the anti-Japanese armed forces under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, the Japanese army carried out a frenzied sweep of the anti-Japanese base areas.
This is a photograph from the collection of the Yale Theological Seminary Library. In the photo, a Chinese woman was detained by the Japanese army invading China for 38 days, raped 7 to 10 times a day, and suffered from 3 serious venereal diseases, and suffered a serious mental blow. During the Japanese invasion of China, in disregard of international law, the Chinese civilians were brutally enslaved and devastated, countless lives were taken away, and millions of families were broken. Although the smoke of war has long since dissipated, we must not forget this humiliating and sad history, because forgetting is tantamount to betrayal.
This photograph was taken during the fall of Xuzhou, where Japanese troops were killing captured soldiers. After occupying Xuzhou, the Japanese brutally killed many disarmed defenders. In addition, they also killed innocent people in Xuzhou. The Japanese army created many tragic cases in Xuzhou, such as Xiao County, Han Wang, Xiao Guo Zhuang, Yan Wo, etc., and even women and children were tragically killed by the Japanese army.
The road of history is full of twists and turns, and there is a lesson: "Conscientious and strong, the wind is the death"; "the prosperity is not sluggish, and strive to be strong". Only by keeping history in mind, taking history as a mirror, and being brave after knowing shame can we make our motherland prosperous and forever stand tall in the east of the world!