Japan was one of the major Axis powers during World War II. From 1937 to 1945, Japan began a series of wars that claimed millions of lives along the way. The Japanese battlefield consists of three parts: China, the Pacific, and Southeast Asia. The Japanese started these wars because they wanted to gain resources and war advantages for their country. Japan committed crimes against humanity during its wars, which means it neglected human dignity and degraded human value through humiliation. During the Sino-Japanese War, the Pearl Harbor attack and the wars in Southeast Asia, Japan, in pursuit of its own interest, violated human rights and committed crimes against humanity. The Japanese attack on China in 1937 is a crime against humanity. On July 7, 1937, Japan attacked Beijing using a missing soldier as an excuse, without any official declaration of war on China. On December 13, 1937, Japan began a series of massacres in Nanjing, resulting in 300,000 casualties. During the three-month massacre, the Japanese army kills for fun, and their crimes include the brutal rape of innocent women, the beheading of civilians for competition, and the murder of newborns. The Japanese Army's 731 Unit used the Chinese as human guinea pigs to develop chemical weapons to win the war. They performed amputations and poison gas tests on innocent Chinese civilians. When the war reached a stalemate and Japanese troops went hungry, they killed prisoners of war and ate the bodies. Japanese officers forced Chinese women to be "comfort ladies" for the troops. While the name sounded fantastic, the reality was that these "comfort women" ended up being raped by Japanese soldiers over and over again until they died. (Yoshimi 146) These were all crimes against h...... middle of paper ...... self-interest contradicts humanity and one fails to protect humanity, then it is an unforgivable crime against humanity humanity, and should be punished.Works Cited"Unmasking Horror" Nicholas D. Kristof (March 17, 1995) New York Times. A special relationship.; Japan Confronting Cruesome War AtrocityKeenan, Joseph Berry and Brown, Brendan Francis, Crimes Against International Law, Public Affairs Press, Washington, 1950. Secondary sources: Yoshiaki Yoshimi, 2001–02, Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military during the Second War world wide. Columbia University Press.Lord Russell of Liverpool (Edward Russell), The Knights of Bushido, a brief history of Japanese war crimes, Greenhill books, 2002Willmott, Hedley P. and Michael Barrett. “World War II (causes).” World at war: understanding conflict and society. ABC-CLIO, 2014. Web. 18 May 2014.