“All attempts to justify the massacre of the wretched people of Port Arthur and the mutilation of their bodies, are mere afterthoughts. The evidence is clear and overwhelming that it was the sudden breaking down of Japanese civilization under the stress of conscious power. The tremendous facts revealed by the war so far are, that there is practically no Chinese army in existence; that Japan has been arraying herself in the outward garb of civilization, without having gone through the process of moral and intellectual development necessary to grasp the ideas upon which modern civilization is founded; that Japan at heart is a barbarous nation, not yet to be trusted with sovereign power over the lives and property of civilized men. Up to the moment Port Arthur was entered I can bear witness that both of her armies now in the field were chivalrous and generous to the enemy. There was not a stain on her flag. But it was all blind sentiment. The Japanese were playing with the Red Cross as with a new toy and their leaders were never weary of calling the attention of other nations to the spectacle.
“When Port Arthur fell, not even the presence of the horrified British and American military attaches and of foreign newspaper correspondents served to check the carnival of murder. I have again and again tried to save helpless men from slaughter by protest and entreaty, but in vain. The sign of the Red Cross was jeered at, and in the midst of the orgies of blood and rapine, with troops tramping over the bodies of unarmed victims who lost their homes, the fat field marshal and his generals paced smiling, content at the sound of rifle shots mingling with the music of the national hymn and the clink of wine glasses. I am satisfied that not more than one hundred Chinamen were killed in fair battle at Port Arthur and that at least two thousand unarmed men were put to death. It may be called the natural result of the fury of troops who have seen the mutilated corpses of their comrades, or it may be called retaliation, but no civilized nation could be capable of the atrocities I have witnessed in Port Arthur. Every scene I have described I have looked upon myself, either in the presence of the American and British military attaches, or in the company of Mr. Cowan or Mr. Villiers. The field marshal and all his generals were aware that the massacre was being continued day after day.
MARSHAL OYAMA.
“We watched the Second regiment as it marched into town, firing volleys as it advanced. Not a shot was fired in reply. The soldiers had made their escape, and the frightened inhabitants were cowering in the streets. As the troops moved on they saw the heads of their slain comrades hanging by cords with the noses and ears gone. There was a rude arch in the main street decorated with bloody Japanese heads. A great slaughter followed. The infuriated soldiers killed every one they saw. I can say as an eyewitness that the wretched people of Port Arthur made no attempt to resist the invaders. Just below me was a hospital flying the Red Cross flag, but the Japanese fired upon the unarmed men who came out of the doorway. A merchant in fur cap knelt down and raised his hands in entreaty. As the soldiers shot him he put his hands over his face. I saw his corpse the next day, slashed beyond recognition. Women and children were hunted and shot at as they fled to the hills with their protectors. All along the streets I could see the bleeding store keepers shot and sabered. A junk was discovered in the harbor crowded with fugitives. A platoon was stretched across the end of a wharf, and fired into the boat until every man, woman and child was killed. The torpedo boats outside had already sunk ten junks filled with terror stricken people.
“The Japanese had tasted blood, and the work went on the second day. I saw four men walking peaceably along the edge of the town, one man in the street carried a naked infant in his arms. As he ran he dropped the baby. I found it an hour later, dead. The third, the father of the baby tripped and fell. In an instant a soldier had pounced upon his back with a naked bayonet in his hand. I ran forward and made the sign of the Red Cross on the white non-combatant’s bandage around my arm, but the appeal was useless. The bayonet was plunged three or four times into the neck of the prostrate man, and then he was left to gasp his life out on the ground. I hurried back to my quarters and awakened Frederick Villiers, who went with me to the spot where I left the dying man. He was dead, but his wounds were still smoking.
“While we were bending over the corpse we heard shooting a few yards around a road, and went forward to see what it was. We saw an old man standing with his hands tied behind his back. On the ground beside him were the writhing bodies of three other pinioned men who had just been shot. As we advanced a soldier shot the old man down. This was the third day after the battle. Next day I went in company with Mr. Villiers to see a courtyard filled with mutilated corpses. As we entered we surprised two soldiers bending over one of the bodies. They had ripped open the corpse. When they saw us they cowered and tried to hide their faces.”
It is but fair to the Japanese to relate what they had to offer in contravention of these shocking reports so well substantiated. The Japanese minister to Great Britain, Mr. Takaki Kato, while passing through New York some weeks after the taking of Port Arthur, offered these explanations.
“Port Arthur, while vastly important as a strategic[strategic] point, was scarcely more than a village as far as the number of its inhabitants was concerned. These, which at the outside could not have numbered more than two or three thousand, consisted of a few petty merchants, laborers, and workmen in the docks, their families, and the wives and children of some of the soldiers. This was all that Port Arthur consisted of, as far as population was concerned in times of peace, except the military forces that manned the forts. Second, it had long been known that the Japanese forces were advancing on the fort. All the non-combatants, women and children, were removed to places of safety long before the battle began; indeed the exodus was begun fully a month beforehand. Third, in the face of these reports of wholesale slaughter, how do you account for the fact that between three and four hundred Chinese soldiers were taken prisoners in and about the town of Port Arthur immediately after its occupation?
“The victorious army was compelled before entering the town to pass through a narrow defile which was strewn with the mutilated bodies of their advance troops. There lay their comrades in arms, not only dead, but with every evidence that they had been tortured to death by the most revolting and brutal methods. Picture such a scene of horror, and you will have a faint conception of the sight that greeted our victorious soldiers as they marched through that narrow pass. These were their comrades, their companions, that lay before them as ghastly evidences of inhuman brutality. Can you appreciate the low murmur of horror that passed along the line? Can you understand how each man then and there in his heart determined to avenge such fiendishness, and then can you blame our men for killing every Chinese soldier found hidden in the town when they first entered? Yes, there were excesses, regrettable but surely exhonorable excesses, after the battle of Port Arthur. But these wild tales of the wholesale slaughter of innocent women are fiction pure and simple. A few women may have been killed in the general melee that followed the first entrance into the town, but that was accident, not intention, if it occurred at all. With a very few exceptions all the men killed proved to be Chinese soldiers who had discarded their arms and uniforms.