Nanking massacre reason?

Question:why did the japanese torture so many people during the nanking massacre?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: why did the japanese torture so many people during the nanking massacre?

TO understand this you need to understand the Japanese view of war. It is the same reason they all killed themselves at Iwo Jima as opposed to surrendering. It is the same reason that 2 Japanese soldiers were still "fighting" WWII on the Philippenes until two years ago. Their warrior mentality is such that they see surrender or asking for mercy as weakness punishable by death. That is why they were so cruel and inhuman to our POW's, they saw US soldiers who surrendered as having no honor. So the people of Nankning were seen as weak and deserving of what they got.

The Japanese at that time period were probably the most racist individuals in the world. They saw all other Asian races as inferior and as such they could do what they wanted to/with them.

Because they could. They looked upon the Chinese as being not much more than dogs. The world had done nothing about the Japanese march into China and I guess power went to their heads. It was not in retaliation for some event (none occurred), or because the Chinese resisted (which they didn't) it was simply for their own fun and pleasure.
Hard to comprehend for certain, but these are the atrocities committed by combatants during war. War is hell, and if you get the chance you take it out on someone.

Think of it this way.
A cockroach is landing on your food. You smash it right? Do you mourn it's passing? No?
Now you know how the Japanese at that time viewed other, weaker Asian nations.

Loss of Command and Control .
Rapine is a part of war that occurs when the higher echelons of control have been lost at the unit level ; Iris Chang wrote an excellent book on the subject .
The collapse of the Chinese Nationalist forces that retreated into the city of Nanking were forced to capitulate ; good luck on a good question .
:0)

Tojo was Emperor at time and it was his will that the Nanking massacre take place. He often told his Generals to go into a city and get rid of certain ethnic groups. He never told them how to do it which left them to their own devices. Not being a Christian nation, they were taught to hate people around them who didn't think and act like the ruling class. The soldiers were brutalized during their training to make them less sensitive to the methods used to interrogate prisoners.