Editing Nanjing Massacre (section)

=== Japanese war crimes in the countryside ===
Advancing Japanese forces transformed the 170 miles between Shanghai and Nanjing into "a nightmarish zone of death and destruction". Japanese aircraft frequently strafed unarmed farmers and refugees "for fun".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Timberley |first=Harold |title=Japanese Terror in China |publisher=Books for Libraries Press |year=1969 |pages=91}}</ref> Civilians were subjected to extreme violence and brutality in a foreshadowing of the upcoming massacre.<ref name=":5" />

In one example on November 23, the Nanqiantou hamlet near [[Wuxi]] was set on fire, with many of its inhabitants locked within the burning houses. Two women, one a 17-year-old girl and the other pregnant, were raped repeatedly until they could not walk. Afterwards, the soldiers rammed a broom into the teenager's vagina and stabbed her with a bayonet, then "cut open the belly of the pregnant woman and gouged out the fetus". A crying two-year-old boy was wrestled from his mother's arms and thrown into the flames, while the hysterically sobbing mother was bayoneted and thrown into a creek. The remaining thirty villagers were bayoneted, disemboweled, and also thrown into the creek.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Katsuichi |first=Honda |title=The Nanjing Massacre: A Japanese Journalist Confronts Japan's National Shame |date=1998 |pages=63–65}}</ref><ref name=":5" />

In another case on November 29, the Japanese 3rd Battalion from [[16th Division (Imperial Japanese Army)|the 16th Division]] rounded up eighty civilians in the village of Changzhou. The Japanese then massacred the villagers with heavy machine guns. According to army doctor Hosaka Akira, "The people were all gathered in one place. They were all praying, crying, and begging for help. I just couldn’t bear watching such a pitiful spectacle. Soon the heavy machine guns opened fire and the sight of those people screaming and falling to the ground is one I could not face even if I had had the heart of a monster."<ref name=":11" />

According to Kurosu Tadanobu of the [[13th Division (Imperial Japanese Army)|13th Division]]:<ref>{{Cite book |last=Harmsen |first=Peter |title=Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze |date=2013 |publisher=Casemate |pages=252}}</ref> <blockquote>“We'd take all the men behind the houses and kill them with bayonets and knives. Then we'd lock up the women and children in a single house and rape them at night... Then, before we left the next morning, we'd kill all the women and children, and to top it off, we'd set fire to the houses, so that even if anyone came back, they wouldn't have a place to live.”</blockquote>Chinese civilians often committed suicide, such as two girls who deliberately drowned themselves near [[Pinghu]], an event witnessed by Japanese First Lieutenant Nishizawa Benkichi.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Nishizawa |page=670}}</ref>