When Japanese invaders reached the foot of mount ZiJing, they buried alive two thousand refugees.
Japanese invaders encountered the resistance of KMT armies at YuHuaTai. A
lot of refugees dispersed over the nearby villages and fields, dared not
to move. After the battle, large number of wounded and defeated soldiers
mixed into the refugees. Japanese invaders picked them out, a total of twenty
thousand people, and killed in separate groups at YuHuaTai.
The sandbank outside of the HanXi gate was also a place of massacre. After the Japanese entered NanJing, they killed a lot refugees and disarmed Chinese policemen here. In one occasion, the number of victims reached six to seven thousand. This time, they did not use machine guns, instead they drove the victims in groups to the sandbank, the sprayed Kerosene in the crowd, and burnt them to death. The Japanese invaders stood along side, laughed wildly in the horrifying cries of the victims.
Wu ChangDe was the only surviver in this killing game. He and two thousand
refugees were driven in three groups to the outside of HanXi gate with their
hands tied behind their back. Japanese soldiers with machines guns escorted
them. They were ordered to stop for a moment near the slaughtering place.
Wu ChandDe was at the end of line, and he heard clearly the killing guns
shots from ahead. After quite a while, Japanese continued to drove his group
into the slaughtering place, facing the city moat. Japanese soldiers shot
them from behind. Wu ChangDe fell on the ground before being shot. After
the firing stopped, groups of Japanese invaders stabbed the bodies on the
ground with their bayonets, to kill all those still alive. Wu ChangDe was
bayoneted once, the wound was six inches long, blood was streaming down,
and he thought he would definitely die.
All
the bodies were then sprayed Kerosene and burnt. Wu rolled down to the city
moat to die faster. It was cold winter, there was not much water in the city
moat, he was not drown, instead the fire was extinguished. Although the wound
was serious, it was not fatal. He struggled to reached the ground, and walked
to a straw shed with the cover of the darkness of midnight. A old lady cared
for him. After that, he managed to escape, and was finally healed and survived.
(Note: Wu ChangDe was a witness in the "International Military tribunal
for the Far East" testifying about the massacre. He now lives at 96 TangFangQiao,
ChangJiang Ave, NanJing)
Japanese drove disarmed policemen (in dark uniforms) from inside the Safety Zone to massacre them outside HanXi gate. See the map of NanJing
On December 23rd, Japanese invaders used several dozens of trucks, drove more than one thousand elderly, women and children to the sandbank, and buried them alive in a huge pit dug beforehand. All the victims' hands were tied behind their backs, they could only cry and curse, they had no way to resist.
Another
place of concentrated massacre was at ShangYuan gate. On December 24th, Japanese
invaders massacred eight to nine thousand people here. A refugee named Yin
YouYu, laid in the pool of blood, and escaped death. The NanJing egg processing
factory near BaoTa bridge was a large facility. After the fall of NanJing,
tens of thousands of refugees hid there. Japanese later discovered them,
tied them up in groups and killed all of them. XinHe at FenFangJie was also
a big slaughtering place. At one time, Japanese tied up several thousand
wounded and sick POWs and elderly and young refugees, forced them into the
river, then threw hey sprayed with kerosene on them, burnt them to death.
See the map of NanJing
All that recorded above was only the large scale massacres done by the Japanese invaders within the first week after their capture of NanJing. There were countless other smaller scale killings of ten or scores of people. There were too many to be all accounted here.
