Dehumanization In The Nanking Massacre

Chen Jiashou was born on September 16, 1918, in Nanking, China. When the Imperial Japanese Army invaded her city in 1937, she was living in a small Nanking district with her Uncle, Mother, and Father, two brothers and sister. At that time, she was only 19-years old and working as an apprentice. After the Japanese came, she escaped to a refugee camp where she was temporarily safe. When she left the camp to replenish the food supply, she was taken by the Japanese and forced to watched hundreds of Chinese soldiers be murdered. Then she faked her own death to avoid being shot. She remembers being buried in the dead bodies and only moving after a few hours. She escaped, but only to be captured once more. She witnessed several atrocities

This event is considered a genocide because of the steps that it took to be an event of this importance. Not all of the steps were followed because of how rushed this attack against the Chinese people was. The first three steps, classification, symbolization, and discrimination were not used, as all Chinese people were targeted without fail. (The Nanking Massacre.com) Dehumanization was used a lot during this genocide in particular. One thing that the Japanese did with the Chinese Soldiers was that they would call them cowards before either mercilessly beating them to death, or beheading them. They would rape the women from the age of 8 to older than 70. If they found anyone with their family they would make members of the family do horrible things to other family members, just to tear the family apart before killing them. Organization was used, as groups of Japanese soldiers would gather and go on mass killing sprees. Polarization was not used, because all of the Japanese already hated the Chinese, and they were already separated.(The Nanking Massacre.com) During the stage of preparation, the Japanese transported Chinese soldiers to a remote location on the outskirts of Nanking to be assembled for killing, and after soldiers were gone the Japanese soldiers targeted the citizens. During the Nanking massacre there wasn’t a persecution because the Japanese soldiers would just kill the Chinese people after dehumanizing them, and once they were dead then the Japanese would take what they wanted. The Japanese carried out the extermination by rape, burning people alive, torn apart by dogs, tortured by needles, decapitation, and stabbing by bayonet. (The Nanking Massacre.com) Denial is the final step of Genocide. The Japanese and several other people still deny that this event ever happened and that it was propaganda by the Chinese for support in their fight against the Japanese. They claim the were exaggerating and the death counts were not that high. Today in