70 years ago today, December 13th, 1937, the Nationalist China capital city Nanking fell to the Japanese. What ensued over the next few months is known as “The Rape of Nanking.” In today’s New York Times, the newspaper reviews the documentary, “Nanking” in the article titled “Giving Testimony on the Horror That Was Nanking“:
” “Nanking” is a swift, incisive documentary about one of the lesser-known horrors of the 20th century: the 1937 Japanese invasion of the Chinese city
now called Nanjing, where more than 200,000 civilians and prisoners of war were slaughtered in a matter of weeks. The capital of the Republic of China at the start of World War II and the headquarters of the Chiang Kai-shek government, this attractive, cosmopolitan city of parks and thoroughfares was largely destroyed in what is known as the rape of Nanking. Though some Japanese scholars dispute the statistics determined after the war by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, it is widely agreed that during the occupation in 1937 and 1938, more than 20,000 rapes were also committed by the rampaging Japanese Army. In its concentrated savagery, the catastrophe was comparable to the even more numerous mass murders in Rwanda in 1994.”
The definitive book, at least in English in the United States, was authored by Iris Chang, titled “The Rape of Nanking - The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II.” To understand the post-World War II underlying animosity between China and Japan, one has to understand that Japan has never fully acknowledged publicly, and especially in their school textbooks, the atrocities it committed to the Chinese, especially The Rape of Nanking. Unfortunately, mankind has not learned the lessons of history and has repeatedly waged war and genocide against each other many times over since Nanking.
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ancient one wrote:
FYI, he life of Iris Chang is a sad but interesting story (probably worth a post by itself). She committed suicide a few yeares ago after bouts with mental illness.
Posted on 14-Dec-07 at 10:15 pm | Permalink
Simon Bao wrote:
There was an extended news report this week on BBC Radio about the Nanjing anniversary, and the report highlighted an interesting twist in the developments.
There has been, for some time, a project being jointly conducted by Chinese and Japanese researchers that’s working to uncover and document the “truth” about the Nanjing massacre and war crimes. At least, a verifiable truth that both the Chinese and Japanese publics can agree to. And despite the UberNationalists and Deniers in Japan, that project has had a lot of success. But along the way, something unexpected began to happen. Something the government of China didn’t anticipate and doesn’t like.
The Chinese researchers were most interested in enabling their Japanese counterparts to examine evidence of Japan’s government-sponsored brutality and human rights violations, to acknowledge the wrongfulness of it, the whole Truth & Reconciliation script. But while working on that, some of the researchers began also to begin considering their own front yards, and to look afresh at China’s government-sponsored brutality and human rights violations. And to acknowledge the wrongfulness of that.
So, the Chinese researchers who were supposed to only talk about the Rape of Nanjing began talking with one another and with their Japanese counterparts about the disastrous Great Leap Forward, and its body count. It became clear that the Japanese government’s efforts to sanitize what happened to Chinese people in Nanjing was exactly the same as the Chinese government’s efforts to sanitize what happened to Chinese people as a result of the Great Leap, the Cultural Revolution… the suspension of all human rights, the forced displacements, systematic killings, torture… and then of course they came to the topic of Tibet.
And all that was SOOOOOOOO not what the Chinese government had bargained for. Too much reflection, too much examination of the evidence, too much truth. Sweetly funny, and sweetly tragic, as it wasn’t the Japanese researchers who ever brought up China’s own conduct. It was simply the Chinese researchers picking up a thread and following it where it led…
Posted on 15-Dec-07 at 10:03 am | Permalink
John wrote:
ancient one: thanks. Yes, I was thinking of posting something about Iris Chang, especially since there has been something in the news recently regarding a friend, fellow college classmate/professional rival who wrote something about Iris recently.
Posted on 15-Dec-07 at 1:07 pm | Permalink
Halfdeck wrote:
As far as I’ve read, the images and videos associated with the Rape of Nanking incident are all fake. Also consider the fact that there were hundreds of journalists embedded in the Japanese army which invaded Nanking, some highly critical of the Japanese government, and none of them reported any sightings of abuse.
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/unko/tamezou/nankin/whatreally/index.html
Without solid proof, the Japanese goverment is not going to admit to any wrongdoing. I’m not claiming Rape of Nanking never happened; but I’d like to see something besides fake images and fake video footage.
Posted on 17-Dec-07 at 6:22 am | Permalink
Simon Bao wrote:
Halfdeck, while not passing judgment one way or the other on your views, or the source for them that you cite… do you at least understand how and why some would compare you or others to Holocaust Deniers? One way or another, it’s still important that *you* understand why the comparison is made and is seen to be so strong.
Posted on 17-Dec-07 at 9:35 am | Permalink
Halfdeck wrote:
“do you at least understand how and why some would compare you or others to Holocaust Deniers?”
The comparison would be ridiculous, Simon, since I clearly stated “I’m not claiming Rape of Nanking never happened.” For me to be a denier, I would have to say “it never happened.” The fact of the matters is that while the holocaust is thoroughly documented, the Rape of Nanking is not. I’m not using that to deny the event took place: I’m urging you and others to come up with hard evidence. I am keeping an open mind.
Posted on 17-Dec-07 at 10:11 am | Permalink
Halfdeck wrote:
Let me add that if the Rape of Nanking did happen, the Japanese government should take full responsibility. I don’t like seeing soldiers who commit atrocities in Iraq, for example, let off the hook with a slap on the wrist. My primary question here is did it really happen? I, for one, am not convinced, but you can change that - not by calling me a Holocaust denier but by laying out the facts.
Posted on 17-Dec-07 at 10:19 am | Permalink
Simon Bao wrote:
Well Halfdeck, if you don’t like that Holocaust Denier comparison, I’ll rescind it. And instead compare you to those who deny global warming and say they haven’t seen the evidence. You cannot claim to have an open mind while denying decades of careful documentation, scholarly research, massive amounts of evidence verified by Chinese historians, Japanese historians, other historians who have no particular dog in that fight…
Posted on 17-Dec-07 at 10:53 am | Permalink
Halfdeck wrote:
“And instead compare you to those who deny global warming and say they haven’t seen the evidence.”
Compare me to George Bush for all I care. If you prefer to call me names instead of have a rational discussion based on facts, be my guest. In my book I call that a cop-out.
Posted on 17-Dec-07 at 11:32 am | Permalink
Ben wrote:
Can “documented facts” not be fake? Can conflicted “facts” be all true? I’m not convinced of anything, and no one can change that. Has anyone seen:
http://movies.nytimes.com/2007/12/12/movies/12nank.html?ref=movies ?
Posted on 17-Dec-07 at 12:46 pm | Permalink
Andy wrote:
Half-deck - There is solid proof. Thousands of bodies have been found in mass graves in the Nanking area. There were many Western eyewitnesses. The site you point to is full of inaccuracies. Would you believe Imperial Japanese “reporters” (they were really propagandists) over corroborated evidence from various Western and Chinese sources? So that site basically says what was said by a Imperial Japanese journalist, basically a propaganda agent of the Imperial Japanese, is more trustworthy that what a member of the Red Swastika society and an American professor both testified that they witnessed? This was also corroborated by what John Rabe said in his diary. I find it stunning that you point to one single revisionist site and then claim you can’t find any proof the Nanking Massacre occurred?
Posted on 25-Dec-07 at 10:07 pm | Permalink
Andy wrote:
Halfdeck - Another egregious error in the link you pointed out. It says “There were no mention of ‘Nanking Massacre’ in American or British press.” But in the article itself, it says there are two articles that mentioned the massacre. The specific words “Nanking Massacre” doesn’t appear, but it appears the Japanese author is trying to use word play to make you think there are no mention of the Nanking massacre at all. The author says there is an article from Dec. 18th, 1937 by Frank Tillman Durdin from the New York Times which criticized the “Chinese orgy of burning.” But the article he referred to is from Dec 8, 1937. The Nanking Massacre started on December 13th, 1937. And in fact, the article from Durdin that appeared in the New York Times from Dec. 18th 1937 DOES refer to the brutal actions of the Japanese army:
“In one building in the refugee zone 400 men were seized. They were marched off, tied in batches of fifty, between lines of riflemen and machine gunners, to the execution ground.”
“Just before boarding the ship for Shanghai the writer watched the execution of 200 men on the Bund [dike]. The killings took ten minutes. The men were lined against a wall and shot. Then a number of Japanese, armed with pistols, trod nonchalantly around the crumpled bodies, pumping bullets into any that were still kicking”
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/nanking.html
http://tinyurl.com/yowflx
http://tinyurl.com/2gof8s
Who do you believe - on one side, American journalists, Western professors, Chinese witnesses, German Nazi witnesses, or on the other side, the 150 Imperial Japanese “journalists” who followed the Japanese army around??
The site you point to is in fact the “fake” information here. Apparently, you’ve done no research at all on this matter.
Posted on 25-Dec-07 at 10:45 pm | Permalink
Halfdeck wrote:
“The site you point to is in fact the “fake” information here. Apparently, you’ve done no research at all on this matter.”
You can blame Iris Chang for the Japanese’ unwillingness to believe that a massacre in Nanking ever took place. If she used real photographs the Japanese would not have brushed off her book. When the photos are proven to be fake, naturally some readers will ask what else in the book is fabricated?’ Chang is not a historian.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1998/07/26/SC77214.DTL
“One photo, which the book credits to the military Politburo of the Chinese Nationalist government, shows women and children walking across a bridge with Japanese soldiers, and carries the caption: “The Japanese rounded up thousands of women. Most were gang-raped or forced into military prostitution.”
The truth is, Hata said, that, although the photo was published with a similar caption by the Chinese Nationalists in 1938, apparently as anti-Japanese propaganda, it originally appeared the previous year as one of four in a Japanese newspaper, Asahi Gurafu, showing peaceful scenes of Chinese villagers under Japanese occupation, with women and children returning home from the fields. In the sharper original photo, it is possible to see that two of the villagers are smiling, and there is a woman pulling a cart of freshly harvested cotton that was cropped out of the Nationalist Chinese version. The cropped photo appeared in a recent book on Nanjing by a Japanese professor as an illustration of Japanese army atrocities in China. But after its interpretation was challenged, the publisher of his book apologized and retracted it.
Other mistakes occur in Chang’s book, which quotes as “compelling evidence” a secret telegram by Japan’s foreign minister admitting that Japanese troops, “in a fashion reminiscent of Attila and his Huns,” had slaughtered “not less than 300,000 Chinese civilians.” This was, in fact, a quotation from the cable of a British reporter, and concerned deaths not only in Nanjing but elsewhere.
The book also describes Japan as the first nation to use air power “as a means of terrorizing civilian populations,” a distinction generally attributed to the Germans in World War I.”
Since you seem to be incapable of discussing this without peppering your comments with insults I’m done with this thread. I never said I fully researched this topic; What part of “show me some evidence” do you not understand?
Posted on 26-Dec-07 at 10:09 am | Permalink
Takeo wrote:
I think it’s silly for anyone to claim that the Rape of Nanking did not happen. There is a mountain of evidence that it did occur. The larger question is this: What is to be done about it?
My view is that there is no reason to continue the roots of this conflict into our generation. The crimes were utterly heinous and reprehensible, and I am not at all looking for any kind of excusal of the forces that conducted this naked aggression against a mostly unarmed populace.
First, let’s talk about the desire for an apology on the part of the Japanese government. I don’t see how this could possibly have any meaning. The government of Japan post 1945 is not at ALL like the government that existed from the Meji Restoration to 1945. Most of the leaders of the Showa reign (excepting the emperor himself, who did not escape unscathed) were shot, hanged, imprisoned or killed themselves in gruesome fashion. In addition the very government that people are asking an apology from is now a nominally democratic state. To ask for an apology from this government is as meaningless as asking for reparations from the Fifth French Republic for the crimes of the Fourth. The people in power in Japan now are NOT the same people who ordered those crimes.
Second, I’d like to talk on the subject of the desire for revenge by Chinese people against the current citizens of Japan. Besides being a political misdirection by the Chinese government, I would argue that revenge for Nanking, and the occupation of Korea has already been taken.
From October of 1944 to August of 1945, the US Army Air Forces (predecessor of the now United States Air Force), reduced nearly every Japanese city of consequence to rubble and ash. In a famous raid on Tokyo (a city comparable in size and density to NYC) B-29s destroyed 55% of the city and killed 100,000 people in a single evening. The firebombing was so intense that it was reported that bomber crews at the tail end of the formation were inundated with the smell of burning flesh. Half a million Japanese citizens paid the price for supporting the war effort that extended from Burma in the West to Pearl Harbor in the East.
The ground campaigns were even worse, Iwo Jima (where there is some evidence that suggest many Nanking veterans were sent there) out of 21,000 men less than 220 (~1%) survived the campaign. At the end of 1945, only a tiny fraction of the total fielded forces by the Imperial Japanese State returned home. In the end the Japanese Emperor was demoted from a God to a man, the whole of the Japanese nation destroyed (physically and psychologically), used as a test ground for nuclear weapons and forced to accept a democratic constitution written by an American General.
For Nanking, Burma, Singapore, Philippines, Korea and Hawaii, the full weight of American vengeance was brought upon the people of Japan, and I do no see why we as Americans, Japanese and Chinese need to carry this horrific conflict into our generation. I say it is our duty not to forget, however almost no one reading this column can argue that they have anything but a historical (or perhaps a distant family)
connection to these events. It’s time to let the past be the past.
Posted on 27-Dec-07 at 10:28 am | Permalink
SImon Bao wrote:
Takeo, there’s no point in carrying forward this or any other historic conflict. Though people *almost* always do. Shout out to friends in the Balkans.
But it requires something very special to put such conflicts behind us. It requires some truth-telling. That’s the premise of various “Truth & Reconciliation” efforts. Efforts which, when carried out faithfully, yield tremendous results. Consider South Africa, if ever there was a land that might have exploded in bitterness and vengeance and retaliations, it *was* South Africa. But they secured a peace and reconciliation for themselves, by first going to the truth of what had happened among themselves. And everytime someone somewhere tries to “shortcut” that “Truth & Reconciliation” process by skipping the truth-telling part, neither progress nor peace are obtained.
So there’s a lot to be said for that project in Nanjing that’s been underway, Chinese and Japanese historians working together, to try to establish a truth that all can agree to. Not in all details and specifics, but at least in general. Wounds heal so much faster and more thoroughly when the truth is stated and acknowledged by all sides…
Posted on 27-Dec-07 at 10:54 am | Permalink
Takeo wrote:
Simon,
I’d like to see one other thing that would do even more to foster peace:
The movement of the place of rest for the Japanese war dead from the private Yasukuni shrine to a national memorial. This way we can symbolically leave the spirits of the Class A war criminals at the private memorial and abolish this major point of contention between the average citizens of Japan AND China.
You want some practical effort to support for world peace? Support that.
Posted on 27-Dec-07 at 4:31 pm | Permalink
Takeo wrote:
Also, what you call “truth-telling” to me is code-word for demanding an apology from people who had nothing to do with the crime.
The fact is what is in the textbooks is a moot point, the revisionist history in Yaskuni shrine is a moot point. Why? Because the internet makes these facts readily available. The only place where there is widespread editing and a systematic cover-up of facts available on the internet is in Socialist, Stalinist, Communist dictatorships.
The Native Americans have a saying: “Buried secrets make their way to the surface so that men may know them.”
Folks we live in a time where it is very hard to keep secrets for a long time.
Posted on 27-Dec-07 at 7:41 pm | Permalink
SImon Bao wrote:
Takeo, I believe you are both misinterpreting the phrase truth-telling, and then over-reacting to your misinterpretation.
Truth-telling routinely involves people who had no involvement or participation in any crimes. Or in any misdeeds.
Truth-telling applies directly to what happened yesterday, to what happened 50 years ago, 150 years ago. It applies to European actions in the New World, much further back than that. In the US it applies to our own governments’ action and our own people’s actions toward native populations, Africans and slaves and people of color, toward immigrants, Hawaiians, Filipinos, etc..
Truth-telling applies to what happened between Turkey and Armenia, and to British colonial rule in Kenya or French rule in Vietnam, to what happened under Fascist rule in Spain and elsewhere, under communist rule in Eastern Europe, “Cold War” actions undertaken by the West that seemed right at the time but maybe need some truth to be told about them now, because deep injuries were inflicted on others.
In fact, there’s a lot of demand out there for some Truth-Telling about all kinds of things that involved people now gone. But that honestly makes zero difference, none at all. Wounds and injuries inflicted on others, individuals or nations, those typically don’t just disappear when those directly involved die away. Nope, the deepest wounds linger, and often worsen. Again, shout out to friends in the Balkans. And the Baltics. Good morning Cyprus and Lebanon, and shall I go on?
So I do think you misunderstand what “truth-telling” is all about and why people do it. You can get a better understanding of the purpose, process, and outcomes at places such as:
http://www.salzburgseminar.org/ihjr/index3.cfm
Posted on 27-Dec-07 at 10:37 pm | Permalink
Takeo wrote:
Hey I’m all for transperancy in public affairs, I’ll give you an example for what I consider “truth-telling” as politics.
This year the political majority in Congress passed a resolution that dubbed the 1915 Massacre in Armenia a “Genocide”. The facts I have read of the case would seem to support the claim. My main problem with the resolution is this:
The Turks are some of our strongest allies in the region, and they are at a very sensitive stage with regards to our involvement in Iraq. Our passing of the resolution gave them pretext to begin military operations in Kurdish Northern Iraq against the KPP, in what is currently the most stable and most prosperous part of the country.
In effect the current political majority used the murder of people from almost a hundred years ago to rile up the foreign policy situation now (mostly to tweak GWB’s nose). That would be all well and good, but there is a very real risk (and this has proven to be the case in recent events) that it could cost lives in the here and now.
Under no circumstances do I find it acceptable to sacrifice the lives and well-being of people that live in the NOW for what has happened in the past, and that is PRECISELY what I mean by bringing a conflict that belongs to our grandparents and bringing it into our generation.
Posted on 28-Dec-07 at 10:52 am | Permalink
SImon Bao wrote:
Takeo, a couple points… #1, nothing about any Congressional resolution would ever be mistaken for any form of a truth and reconciliation process. It’s best to leave that kind of thing out of the conversation entirely. That applies to Congressional resolutions about things long past, or about things that happened yesterday.
#2, truth and reconciliation processes aren’t imposed by some uninvolved third parties (i.e., a United States Congress). The processes are engaged in by the peoples, nations, ethnic groups, factions, tribes that had been directly involved and impacted by a conflict.
#3, those processes only work when people engage in them willingly. Only when people are ready. Sometimes that readiness is almost instantaneous (South Africa) and sometimes generations must pass before people are willing to risk exposure, willing to risk what they might find. As is the case with the Chinese and Japanese historians. Such processes can’t and won’t work today with Turkey because the Turkish people are unwilling to examine that past and see what they might find there. And unwilling to let anyone else examine that past too. Dead give-away, always a sure sign that folks aren’t ready…
#4, in so many conflicts around the world, armed and otherwise, you will find that people are ALREADY sacrificing the lives and well-being of those here and now, BECAUSE of what happened in the past. You may not find that acceptable but people having been waiting around to find out what you think - people are already out there sacrificing their presents and their futures all along, because of what happened in the past. We’ve been doing it forever. And the very thing you propose, denying the past, burying the past, ignoring the past is precisely the kind of thing that so inflames passions, fuels enmity and sustains all the hatred and mistrust.
So don’t dismiss this entirely, the value in people knowing the truth, acknowledging it, and then agreeing to move on to a different future. That’s the goal of what’s been going on with the joint examination in Nanjing, and it seems likely to benefit everyone.
Posted on 28-Dec-07 at 11:22 am | Permalink
Takeo wrote:
I’ll concede to a limited extent your points in #1 and #2, I’ll address point #3 in a moment. My real beef is with point #4,
So because the sacrifice of the present and the future for the past is still occurring, we, personally, directly need to aid in the continuance of such? I’m not all suggesting we should deny, burying and ignoring anything about the past, however continually revisiting the issue when it is relatively recent history I believe is of questionable utility.
Passions, enmity and hatred come as a result of an inability to distance yourself from events that in reality have nothing to do with the modern you ( I use “you” in a rhetorical sense, not you, Simon personally). You see this a lot in the Arab/West, frankly as Westerners we had nothing at all to do with the Crusades and yet it still fuels passions in the Middle East.
I am strongly versed in matters of defense, national strategy and I view the increase defense budgets of China, Japan, and South Korea with a slight dread. I think you need to remember that the facts of history aren’t words on a sheet of paper, they are pawns in regional power plays. If all parties involved were able to examine the facts as dispassionately as you propose (which I would have no problem supporting) then I cannot see how anyone could oppose the effort. However, dispassionate discussion (as the comment thread above ours would indicate) is not possible given our nearness to the historical events being discussed. The facts of the WHOLE of the first part of the 20th century needs to be examined in the circles of Academia, not in the larger political sphere. When such discussions take place in the political sphere they lead to arms races.
So in terms of point #3, I agree with you, the discussion will come out when the people are ready. My analysis says that the PRC, DPRK, ROK and Japan are not ready to have this discussion in the tone that it needs to happen, especially not when I see the deployment of offensive strike fighters like SU-27MKKs and Chengdu J-10’s in the PRC Air Force being accelerated
.
Posted on 28-Dec-07 at 11:42 am | Permalink