Estimates indicate upwards of 80,000 women were raped and mutilated sadistically by the Japanese soldiers. Girls as young as eight and women as old as 70, were raped with no regard for their humanity. Male civilians were slaughtered by beheading, buried alive, used as bayonet practice, raked with machine-gun fire, or doused with gasoline and burned in mass graves. The Rape of Nanking remains an obscure event in the West, according to gallery curator Sandra Ward Povse, unlike the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Jewish holocaust in Europe. Emperor Hirohito was exonerated from any responsibility for war crimes, and remained in power till his death in 1989.
War makes people cruel, bestial and insane, as the photos in the exhibit so gruesomely document.
The Suraci Gallery is located on the second floor of the Visual Arts Building. This page was last updated on Monday, November 6, 2000. All rights reserved.