How Japan Committed Crimes Against Humanity in Pursuit of Self-Interest

Japan was one of the major powers of Axis Powers during the World War II. From 1937 to 1945, Japan started a series of wars, and resulted in millions of casualties along the way. Japanese battlefield consists of three parts: China, Pacific and Southeastern Asia. Japanese started these wars because they wanted to gain resources and war advantages for their own country. Japan committed crimes against humanity during their wars, which means they neglected human dignity and degraded human value by humiliation. During the Sino-Japanese War, the Pearl Harbor Attack and wars in Southeastern Asia, Japan, in pursuit of self-interest, violated human rights and committed crimes against humanity. Japan's attacking China in 1937 is a crime against humanity. On July 7, 1937, Japan attacked Beijing using a missing soldier as an excuse, without no official declaration to war against China. On December 13, 1937, Japan started a series of massacre in Nanking, which resulted in a casualty of 300,000. During the three-month-long massacre, Japanese army kill for pure fun, and their crime include brutal rape of innocent women, beheading civilians as competition, and murder newborn babies. Unit 731 of Japanese army used Chinese people as human test subjects to develop chemical weapon to win the war. They performed amputation and poison gas test on innocent Chinese civilians. When the war reached stalemate, and Japanese troops suffered from hunger, they kill war prisoners and eat the bodies. Japanese officers forced Chinese women to be "comfort lady" for the troops. While the name sounded great, reality was that these "comfort ladies" ended up raped by Japanese soldiers over and ov er again until death. (Yoshimi 146) These were all crime against h... ...self-interest contradicts humanity and one fails to protect the latter, then it is the unforgivable crime against humanity, and should be punished. Works Cited "Unmasking Horror" Nicholas D. Kristof (March 17, 1995) New York Times. A special report.; Japan Confronting Gruesome War Atrocity Keenan, Joseph Berry and Brown, Brendan Francis, Crimes against International Law, Public Affairs Press, Washington, 1950. Secondary sources: Yoshiaki Yoshimi, 2001–02, Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military during World War II. Columbia University Press. Lord Russell of Liverpool (Edward Russell), The Knights of Bushido, a short history of Japanese War Crimes, Greenhill books, 2002 Willmott, Hedley P., and Michael Barrett. "World War II (Causes)." World at War: Understanding Conflict and Society. ABC-CLIO, 2014. Web. 18 May 2014.