The Rape of Nanking
Although some conservative historians in Japan still question whether a rape of Nanking ever happened, Iris Chang presents a compelling account of the rape, torture, and murder that killed over 200,000 Chinese men, women, and children in Nanking during December, 1937. She quotes one scholar as saying, "Japan's denial of the rape of Nanjing would be.....the same as German denial of the Holocaust."
This six week wartime atrocity is literally named the Rape of Nanking because Japanese soldiers raped any females they could find, from young girls to old women, before killing them. Men were usually killed by firing squads, in bayonet practices, or being set on fire. Two Japanese soldiers achieved personal fame in a "killing contest", where each man killed over 100 Chinese in a matter of hours.
Bodies were disposed of in trenches or pits which Chinese men dug for themselves before being shot. Filling trenches with human bodies made it possible for tanks to pass over them into Nanking. Some bodies were thrown in the Yangtze River, but many others fell in after being lined up along the edge and shot. It became rightly known as the Blood River.
The only escape possible, mainly for women, was the Nanking Safety Zone, which included a school, a hospital, as well as some food and shelter facilities. This was supervised by John Rabe, a German business man, who as a member of the Nazi Party wrote letters to Hitler asking for help. Robert Wilson, an American, was the only doctor at the Safety Zone, but there were other foreigners from France, Denmark, and Russia. Minnie Vautrin, a United Christian missionary, and George Fitch, a secretary of the YMCA, were also active in the Nanking Safety Zone. Several times Chang compares what John Rabe and the other volunteers did for homeless Chinese to the story of Schindler's List.
A good portion of Chang's book, maybe too much, dwells on the question of why the Japanese did what they did, and why they are unwilling to apologize for it today. One Japanese soldier who had witnessed the Nanking massacre admitted the highest honor in the war was to come back dead. So "If my life was not important, an enemy's life was less important." A Christian priest once asked another Japanese soldier, "Who is greater, God, or the emperor of Japan?" and the soldier answered, "The Emperor!"
Chang concentrates on exposing the Nanking massacre because it received so little attention as one of the great atrocities of World War II, such as the Holocaust in Germany or the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States. Even though some Japanese officers at Nanking were found guilty in the war crimes trials, hardly any mention of the massacre is made in Japanese history textbooks. (She fails to acknowledge American atrocities in Viet Nam or if they are exposed in our classroom history books today.)
But Iris Chang's research on the Rape of Nanking is commendable, with a bibliography of over 50 pages. Even though this book is still controversial in this country and Japan, it still should be ranked as one of the important historical works since World War II.