SDHF Newsletter No.188 The Nanjing Incident-Japanese eyewitness 4

The Nanjing Incident: Japanese Eyewitness Accounts
-Testimony from 48 Japanese Who Were There-
By Ara Ken’ichi
No. 4: Chapter 1 Nanjing, as Observed by Journalists
5. Others (local newspapers)

November 10, 2017

We present No. 4 in this series, which contains Chapter 1: Nanjing, as Observed by Journalists, 5. Other newspapers (four staffers).
Similar to other journalists who were interviewed earlier in this series, all four journalists in this segment said that they neither saw nor heard of a massacre at that time.
On the contrary, Mr. Minami Masayoshi, Shin Aichi Shimbun, was shocked to see Japanese soldiers being hanged from plane trees that lined the streets. This was at the Zhongshan East Road, stretching from the Zhongshan Gate. The bodies were burned from below. He said that this was the most impressive incident, among others things, that he saw in Nanjing. After the war, he visited Nanjing again and went to see the plane trees. Time had passed–40 years–but the trees were still there.
Some would think that the reason why no reports of massacres appeared in the papers was because of military censorship. However, as seen thus far, most of the journalists who were in Nanjing said they neither saw or heard of any massacres. Even after the war, most of the journalists did not report of any massacres. So, the assumption that journalists were censored is invalid.
Mr. Yanai Shogoro, of the Fukushima Minpo Newspaper , said that they didn’t report on prisoners or massacres, not because of censorship, but because they were simply not raised as topics. Reporters were, however, strictly prohibited from writing names of places and the name of units since revealing locations or units could be exploited by the enemy.

URL: https://www.sdh-fact.com/book-article/1065/

PDF: https://www.sdh-fact.com/CL/Ara-Nanjing-4.pdf

Questions are welcome.

MOTEKI Hiromichi, Acting Chairman
for KASE Hideaki, Chairman
Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact