The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II

I strongly disagreed with one of the reader's review for criticizing this book as "ridiculous". The reasons for my disagreement are as followed:
1. Criticizing Point:
"Iris Chang is a fourth-Generation Chinese American. She does not speak or understand any of the languages needed to examine this issue (Chinese, Japanese and German). I have concluded that all information used in this book is second-hand information, most of them is propaganda."

Disagreement:
First of all, there are a lot of first hand references written in English, as were listed in the book. In fact, one of the reasons that Nanking Massacre was known to the world was because quite a few Europeans and Americans happened to witness and documented the event. If the reviewer considered none of those documents are first-hand documents, I am not sure what the definition of "first-hand" information is. In addition, some of the documents are even reported by Japanese themselves. It is not reasonable to report something against their own country if it is not truth, especially during the war time.

Second, according to what the author stated in the book, the author is a second generation Chinese American (not a very important point here, but it implies the reviewer may not read the book clearly before jumping into conclusion). In her book she thanks her parents and many other people for helping her translating needed documents from different languages. Many of these helpers are scholars with knowledge of multi-languages. Take her parent as an example, they were born in Mainland China, grew up in Taiwan and received their Ph.D.s from Harvard University in American. Is it reasonable to believe that they have enough knowledge in both Chinese and English to translating some of those documents for her?

2. Criticizing Point:
The reviewer stated: "My great uncle was in the Japanese Army. He told me several times not to believe in this kind of nonsense. It is impossible to kill so many people in such a short period. Especially with soldiers who were not equipped with machine guns or other weapons for mass-destruction. Just take a minute and think. According to my uncle, it took almost 3 days to burn 6 corpses of his comrades after an attack. How long will it take to burn 300.000 corpses?"

Disagreement:
First, it maybe true to take 3 days to completely burn 6 bodies. However, we were not talking about cremation ceremony here. We were talking about burn to death. How many minutes can a human being endure before he or she was burn to death? Thanks heaven it is not 3 days!! Besides, if the reviewer had read through the book (or any other documents), not all 300,000 corpses were burn, a lot of them were buried or dumped into river. Please read the book before jump into conclusion and make such a harsh criticism.

Second, Japanese soldier did have machine gun. Of course not as powerful as the modern model, but they did have machine gun. Japanese did not start the war un-prepared. Besides, how difficult it is to kill civilians (especially elderly, small children and babies) who have no weapon at all? It did not even need weapons for mass-destruction. In addition, if one likes to play the number, here it is: The number of the Japanese troop invaded Nanking was around 50, 000. The peak of the ciaos was around 6 to 8 weeks. The conservative estimation of casualty is from 260, 000 to 350,000 during that period. Do the math yourself! See how possible it is! I have to emphasize that it is not my intension to use these numbers to prove the Massacre did occurred, that would be too shaky. The real evidences were presented in the book and the documents it referred. I merely use these numbers here to show that one can not use these numbers to claim it is not possible that the Massacre occurred.

Third, though I have no intension to dishonor anybody's ancestor, I have to point out that the credential of reviewer's great uncle's words is really questionable for the following reasons:

Scenario 1: His great uncle was in Nanking with the Japanese army while the Massacre occurred. Then it is possible he participated in the crime (thought may not be voluntarily, I hope). It is a common sense that one can not use the words from the accused as objective evidence. Especially when he or she is denying the crime accused.

Scenario 2: His great uncle was not in Nanking while the Massacre occurred. Then all he knew about the event were from the propaganda in the army, which by all means could only be more misleading than any outside propaganda.

One question I would like to ask here: how many casualties qualify it as a massacre? Even if it is propaganda, even if only 10% or even 1% of the reports were true, it is still a horrible crime. Besides, Nanking Massacre was such a crime not only for the number of civilian casualty, but also the cruel way the victims were killed. Think about it, if one of the women, just ONE, that were tortured, raped, before they were killed were your own mother, wife or daughter, could anyone just shrug and say "it is ridiculous, it is just propaganda...."? If one of the victims of the "killing game" (reported by the Japanese newspaper, not Western or Chinese propaganda) is your own father, brother or son, could anyone just shrug and say "it is ridiculous, it is just propaganda...."?

A tragedy such as this must not be forgotten if we don't want history repeat itself. Human being will only advance if we can recognize the mistakes we made and put in effort to prevent it from happening again.


gripping no-nonsense documentary of Japan's gory past   January 8, 2000
Ping Lim (Christchurch)
494 out of 617 found this review helpful

This book is written plainly & straight to the point. At times, I'm finding it intolerable to read the book as the activities committed by the Japanese during the war is totally inhumane & immoral. The necessity of us reading & understanding history is that we learn from our mistakes & building a better future for younger generations. What I'm finding intriguing is that till these days, the Japanese Government is still reluctant to apologise & pay compensations to the war victims. Besides, history text books in Japan are written in a way that the war guilt is not with Japan. In a way, Asian countries are not as pro-active as what the Jews have done in claiming reparations from Germany. But what Germany is doing now deserves to be commended for its willingness to work hand-in-hand with the war victims. Its memorials are a reminder to its citizens that in any wars, there are only losers. The truth is now in the open, & this book by Iris Chang is opening door to the war victims & has prompted the Senate to take some actions. I hope the surviving war victims are able to see the silver lining at the end of the tunnel.


Superb Book On Nanking Atrocities Committed By Japanese!   July 22, 2004
Barron Laycock (Temple, New Hampshire United States)
249 out of 327 found this review helpful

For the last twenty five years I have become increasingly something of an auto-didactic world war two scholar, and have read so many books on the subject to easily recall or remember. Often in all this time I have had to stop abruptly from reading particular passages in whatever book I happened to be reading to collect my thoughts about what seems to be yet more undeniable proof of the innate murderous impulses of the human animal. This is true, it seems for all combatant entities in all wars. It seems to hold true for every war, for every army, for every conflict. War is the ultimate de-humanizing experience, and it is a central lesson in understanding the constraints and limitations inherent in evaluating mankind's destiny.

In truth, we are none of us immune from such blood-lust, whether we be Germans, Serbs, Vietnamese, Russians, Americans, English, Italian, French, Polish, Czech, Chinese, or Japanese (witness, for example, our own murderous treatment of the American Indian populations). Yet the magic of this superb book is to show just how massive, how planned, and how brutal the Japanese incursion into China was, despite the consistent denials by the Japanese government in the several decades since. Like the gruesome Russian purges, or the almost unimaginable scale of the Nazi death machine, the war against the Chinese population of Nanking and the surrounding area was total in its exercise of murderous force.

Even as the Japanese mouthed platitudes of acting to free their Chinese 'brothers' of the yoke of western domination, in truth their intent from the very outset was to enslave and dominate the Chinese people for economic and cultural reasons. This is a difficult book to read, but one which is filled with important truths about what happened. Let the Japanese continue to deny it, telling themselves and those naive enough to listen to their attempts to rewrite this revisionist version of history, we who can read and discern can discover the truth. This is an important book, and one I can heartily recommend. Enjoy!



Face the truth of Jananese crime   November 12, 2004
Chris Newman (Harford, CT USA)
203 out of 298 found this review helpful

Japan should learn from Germany and stop denying their crime during WW2. Now they even say their purpose in the WW2 was to "help" other Asian countries. What a BS.
And don't forget they also try to "help" the US, don't forget the Pearl Harbor.
I am glad US finally "help" them to stop their crime with 2 bombs. And I hope if they continue to act like this, they will receive more, from angry victim countries.



you can't say it didn't happen!!   November 12, 2004
drenchedinwine (NYC)
166 out of 261 found this review helpful

Reading these reviews are making me more and more upset. First of all, I'm not trying to comment on Ms. Chang's journalism technique/sources/etc, because I don't have enough information to be a judge of that. I'm also not commenting about the "numbers war" in the reviews etc., because I didn't count the bodies; therefore, I don't know. But regardless of the discrepancies in numbers or the level of objectivity of Ms. Chang's work, the fact remains that the Japanese soldiers' atrocities against the Chinese DID happen.

I KNOW for sure that the Japanese soldiers did in fact commit many terrible atrocities against Chinese civilians, and often times in very sickeningly cruel systematic ways. Though I am American, both my parents are from Asia, and my father was a child in China during WWII. Ever since I was young, they've both told me about many of the horrible crimes that the Japanese committed against the Chinese during the war, as well as direct accounts that they've heard from people older than them. (So I guess my experience was similar to Iris's...hearing oral accounts from the older generation etc.). A lot of the atrocities that my parents told me about as a child coincided with the exact same happenings that Ms. Chang describes in the book. And mind you, my parents are NOT communist!! In fact, my Fathers family fought AGAINST the communist party in China, so he has no reason for spreading what many here are calling "communist propaganda." My experience is similar to many other second-generation Chinese people my age, in that many of my Chinese peers have parents who told them similar accounts as well. Do you mean to tell me that my parents, the people they knew, and all my peers' parents are all communist and liars who, for some deranged reason, all want to spread random lies and propaganda about the Japanese for no good reason? No. That's just ridiculous! NOT ALL CHINESE ARE COMMUNIST LIARS. It's so unfair to consider all Chinese accounts as being propaganda based on the assumption that it's all from the Communist government.

It. Happened.
Face it.

How is it fair that according to some of these reviews, the only credible sources about the killing of Chinese are European/Western accounts & figures?? That is ridiculous...keep in mind how obviously racist & close-minded the West was in the 1940's compared to today (and even today, we have a long way to go in terms of racism & how America treats the rest of the world). How can you ONLY trust Eurocentrically skewed outsider perspectives for Asian history? While I'm not saying that the Chinese communist government is a very credible source, relying only on non-Asian accounts is also VERY seriously flawed. How can you ignore all Chinese accounts when attempting to reconstruct Chinese history?

It makes me sick.
But if it makes you feel any better, TIME magazine (I think it was TIME...if it wasn't time it was U.S. news) ran an article on it a few years ago, and also acknowledges many atrocities & interviewed soldier's etc. So there's a "credible" Western source for you.

and here's another from the San Francisco Chronicle:
"The Rape of Nanking, the infamous World War II siege by the Japanese Imperial Army, left Ni Cuiping with numerous scars.
The 75-year-old's traumas ranged from witnessing seven family members and relatives brutally killed to being shot in her shoulder. Now 50 years after Japan officially made peace with the United States and much of the world, Ni lives to remind people that the wounds and atrocities inflicted by Japan remain unresolved.
"I'm a witness to the Nanking massacre," said Ni, who still lives in Nanking in China. "I'll never allow the Japanese government to deny history. As a witness I will testify to the last day of my life."
Ni's stirring testimony at a press conference yesterday began a four-day event protesting the 50th anniversary of the San Francisco Peace Treaty.
The treaty, which is being commemorated this weekend in San Francisco by Japanese and U.S. government officials, formally ended the war between Japan, the United States and many of its allies. It also has been cited by the Japanese government as proof that it has fulfilled its wartime obligation and is no longer liable against personal lawsuits.
But critics of Japan, including the Rape of Nanking Redress Coalition, see the anniversary as an opportunity to demand an official apology and individual compensation for war victims, sex slaves and forced laborers, something Japan has refused to do. The protest is highlighted by a conference at the San Francisco Radisson Miyako hotel called "Fifty Years of Denial: Japan and Its Wartime Responsibilities."
Ni was among several redress advocates speaking yesterday morning. With tears in her eyes, she recalled how her family fled to the countryside outside Nanking in 1937 when the Japanese army invaded and eventually killed hundreds of thousands of Chinese.
Shortly after, the army discovered her family. Her father, who was washing vegetables in a nearby pond, was the first to fall.
"They fired at my father and he was killed at the first shooting, I thought," said Ni. "But they shot three more times and he died by the water."
Her mother and grandfather were killed there, too, and Ni was shot in the shoulder. Later, she witnessed an uncle, two aunts and one of their unborn children killed by Japanese soldiers.
Soon Duk Kim, a speaker from South Korea, told of her experiences as one of approximately 200,000 sex slaves, called comfort women. The 82-year-old said she was 17 when she was forced to go work for the Japanese army.
Though she was originally told she would be a temporary nurse in Japan, she was instead shipped to Shanghai, where she began three years as a slave servicing Japanese soldiers. In small tents, the women were raped countless times, some fainting, others struggling violently.
"Every single day, the war soldiers lined up," said Kim. "There were so many, we couldn't count them."
Many girls committed suicide. Kim tried three times.
"I wanted to die," said Kim. "The shock was so much, it was beyond words."
She was later sent home due to medical problems but she never married because she felt she would be unacceptable to a potential husband.
"What I endured and experienced, I cannot forget," said Kim. "Every bit of it is inscribed in my memory.""

R.I.P Iris Chang, and all those who died and have been forgotten.

****EDITED LATER TO ADD:
Unfortunately, I feel that this review site has somewhat degenerated into extremes & simplistic offensive comments all around, especially because the set up does not allow reviewers to respond directly to other reviewers' comments for clarification and intelligent discussion.

In any case, I, as a Chinese person, find it very offensive that many of the Japanese soldiers and the government responsible for the atrocities are denying them to this day and even go so far as to attempt to distort history and portray themselves as victims rather than aggressors. That makes me sick. The damage caused was bad enough, but to so blatantly deny it afterwards is just completely inexcusable and very nauseating to me.

But on the other hand, I am also extremely against racism. While these atrocities (which certainly extend beyond Nanking) against Chinese (and other Asian) civilians WERE indeed committed by Japanese soldiers in WWII, this DOES NOT mean that ALL Japanese are barbaric, evil, soulless, *insert extreme negative adjective here* people. It is important to hold the guilty individuals and government system accountable for their war crimes, but it is ALSO important to not make racist blanket statements about the Japanese people as a whole. There are cruel, cowardly people in EVERY race, and to single out the Japanese race as the epitome of this very HUMAN flaw is simply unfair, unreasonable, illogical, and hypocritical. The events were a horrific example of the epitome of human cruelty and sadism, and the events were caused by Japanese soldiers, but again, it is important to emphasize the difference between innocent Japanese people as a race, and those guilty of the atrocities & coverup. This is just a reminder for the need to be clear in distinguishing between the guilty and the innocent.

But aside from that whole debate, the most important thing for me is that...I truly hope that the dead and the victims will see justice done.