Japanese Invasion Of China Unjust

To what extent was the Japanese Invasion of China Unjust?

During World War II, specifically the second Sino-Japanese war from 1937 to 1945, the Japanese empire was completely unjustified in the prosecution of the war. Whether or not the war was justified or unjustified can judged by the the Principles of Just War, the Geneva Convention, as well as the Hague convention.

Unit 731 was a unit of the Japanese army used for lethal human experiments on prisoners of war during the years 1939-1945. The majority of the prisoners were Chinese, Korean, and Mongolian. Some of these experiments conducted included vivisection without the use of anesthesia after intentionally infecting subjects with diseases like typhus and cholera, locking up diseased prisoners
Field tests were conducted throughout Northern and Eastern China from late 1939 to 1942, created to see how pathogens were spread. Some of the methods the Japanese used were contaminating the water and food and spreading plague infested rats. Qui Mingxuan was a bacteriologist that had lived in Quzhou, one of the infected towns as a child. Six years following the first plague outbreak in 1940, Qui estimated that the death toll was 50,000 (Harris, 101-103). Within the Asian theatre during WWII, Japan was the only nation that had accessed and used biological warfare. Not only does this go against the Hague Convention of not using chemical and biological warfare, but it can also be argued that it meant that the violence used by the Japanese empire was not proportional to the injury suffered, going against the principles of just war. While the Japanese military had many advanced weapons, both the communist party and the nationalist party in China was far behind Japan. The CCP’s red army had used weapons like “old-fashioned firearms, spears, knives, poles, axes, hoes, and stones” (Fan, 209). As for the nationalist party, the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) “had historically been poor in modern artillery, and most field guns were of light and mountain classes.” In 1941, there were only 800 artillery pieces in the entire Chinese army (“Chinese Nationalist Army”).
During the Rape of Nanking in December 1937, China fell to Japan’s military. In the duration of a month long program, Commander Asaka Yasuhiko of Japan had ordered his soldiers “to kill all captives” (Lynch, 22). According to the International Military Tribunal of Far East (IMTFE), around 260,000 noncombatants were killed by the Japanese soldiers during the rape of Nanking alone (Chang, 4). The Japanese soldiers would use methods like “shooting, bayoneting, beheading, burying alive, soaking in petrol and setting on fire, and suspending on meat hooks” (Lynch, 22). Other experts estimate that the casualty rates exceeded 350,000 (Chang, 4). Furthermore, around 20,000 girls and women were raped by the Japanese soldiers “regardless of age” (Lynch, 22). Many of them “died from the rape itself or the mutilations that were inflicted afterwards; those who did not die were bayoneted to death” (Lynch, 22). Since Chinese women were not soldiers during WWII that the women were non-combatants. From this event, it can be argued that the Japanese did not avoid combat with Chinese civilians due to high casualty and rape victims rates.

Gathering together the information, it can be argued that the Japanese empire was extremely unjust in the prosecution of the war. The Japanese army had went against the principles of just war, the Geneva convention, as well as the Hague convention and committed