The Japanese Soldiers Who Competed to Kill 100 People
And what we can take away from their war crimes
“As the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel warned years ago, to forget a holocaust is to kill twice.” — Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking
During World War II, two Japanese soldiers got into a contest to see who could kill the most people. Specifically, the soldiers wanted to see who could kill 100 people the fastest.
According to Takashi Yoshida in The Making of the ‘Rape of Nanking,’ two men, 2nd Lieutenants Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda, used swords to kill Chinese people during the war. On December 5, 1937, Mukai had killed 89 people, and Noda had killed 78. Five days later, they had both killed 100 people. Since they both met the goal, no one actually knew who won the contest.
However, the controversy over the event is whether Mukai and Noda were killed in the name of war and hand-to-hand combat or as part of a mass killing of Chinese soldiers. According to journalist Katsuichi Honda in The Nanjing Massacre, Noda noted that most people weren’t killed in hand-to-hand combat. When the Japanese captured a Chinese trench, many Chinese soldiers would rush at the Japanese soldiers, and Mukai and Noda would cut people down as they rushed towards them.
“I was praised for having killed…
