(no subject)
Meghan Capello
World History 1112
05/01/06
The Secret Holocaust of World War II
The Rape of Nanking was a horribly destructive incident when Japan was in the midst of its quest for military domination of East Asia in the late 30’s. In Iris Chang’s Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, she discusses how the Japanese cruelly exterminated countless of Chinese citizens. Furthermore, Chang discusses and reveals that decades after the defeat of the Japanese military and liberation of China, Japan is still reluctant to acknowledge the war crimes they committed in Nanking and throughout East Asia. This reluctance is one of the main concepts and focal points which I plan to discuss further.
Iris Chang grew up in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, to Chinese immigrant parents. Both of her parents had grown up in China during World War II and fled China with their families to Taiwan when communist forces took over in 1949. They later came to the United States, studied at Harvard and went on to become science professors at the University of Illinois at Champaign- Urbana. Her parents would tell her in great detail about the horrors of war and didn’t forget to tell her of the Rape of Nanking or Nanjing Datusha. Iris was intrigued by the massacre and would try and research the incident even as a young child. Around the time she became a professional writer, a friend of hers discussed the fact that there was a documentary on the Rape of Nanking except that it was difficult to get it distributed. Through this, she became interested in learning all about the massacre and the efforts to bring awareness to people about this horrific event in both Chinese and world history. Through her friend she was able to get in contact with various filmmakers and Chinese-American activists like Shao Tzuping, who worked at the U.N. Headquarters in New York and who also served as a past president of the Alliance in Memory of Victims of the Nanjing Massacre. She also met Nancy Tong who was an independent filmmaker who produced a documentary on Japanese Imperialism called In the Name of the Emperor. Through these people, she met other Chinese Americans and Canadians who all wanted the same thing she did: a way to document the atrocity and to bring some type of restitution to the victims of the massacre before they all became history themselves. Iris Chang and many other activists wanted to share this important part of their heritage and make sure that no one would be able to discredit the truth particularly the Japanese government who for decades, refuse to officially acknowledge their crimes against the Chinese people.
Iris Chang was able to connect and get support from various groups of interest, and was able to truly capture the story of the destruction of the Japanese. Through chronicling the events before and after the occupation, she discusses in The Rape of Nanking how historically the Japanese believed that they were superior to the many people of East Asia and believed in their right to colonize and expand their rule. They were trained methodically for decades for brutal warfare, and declared an unofficial war (Many call it the second Sino-Japanese war.) and took over the Manchurian providence. She goes into further detail, discussing and providing numerous military reports and bombardment strategies that the Japanese military used to regroup and prepare for the siege and introduces the key leaders of this military machine, such as Matsui Iwane, the head commander, and Prince Asaka, who commanded the siege of Nanking. Once Nanking surrenders in December 1937, she goes into detailed accounts of the bloodshed, explaining how the Japanese used captured Chinese soldiers for bayonete practice, and tortured them by burning them alive and having them torn to pieces by mad dogs. They improvised and used similar devices of torture on civilians. But women seemed to be the most targeted and were raped on the streets, in their houses, and even in front of families. Much of the time, many were mutilated and killed soon afterwards. A picture gallery also shows us in grisly detail the horrific reality that many people witnessed and many more succumbed to. Chang uses the accounts of former Japanese soldiers, foreign correspondents and journalists and even survivors to bring this ghastly account to life.
The bright spot of this tragedy is the International Nanking Safety Zone which was neutral territory and the kind Nazi, John Rabe who did all he could to save as many Chinese as possible. Through his diaries and other materials obtained by his granddaughter, Ursula Reinhardt we get a glimpse of this man, a picture of a loyal German who found the strength to go against the occupation giving the refugee Chinese everything from the clothes on his back to sending an urgent letter to Adolf Hilter himself, believing that he would be outraged himself and tell his Japanese counterparts to refrain from using such brutality. Of course, there was no such luck but to countless thousands of Chinese, Rabe is their savior along with many other German and American civilians, who gave their all to the 300,000 traumatized Chinese in the Safety Zone, regardless of bloodthirsty Japanese, bent on wiping out the entire 600,000 Chinese population of Nanking that stayed after the city fell. Unfortunately, the Japanese eventually wiped out half of that remaining population. In August 1945 the occupation ended with the defeat of Japan, including the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
This book was a very interesting read, a very comprehensive historical guide into this human tragedy. While it is extremely informative and accurate, it doesn’t exactly paint a neutral picture of the historical event which is one of its downfalls. Rather it presents a great deal of negative propaganda against the Japanese soldiers who it seems are regarded as victims in their own right, because of their culture and how it manifested at that particular time in the psyche of the people of Japan. Iris Chang explains how “Some Japanese scholars believe that the horrors of the Rape of Nanking and the other outrages of the Sino-Japanese War were caused by a phenomenon called “the transfer of oppression”(Chang 217). This is regarding how “….the modern Japanese army had great potential for brutality from the moment of creation for two reasons: the arbitrary and cruel treatment that the military inflicted on its own officers and soldiers, and the hierarchical nature of Japanese society, in which status was dictated by proximity to the emperor. Before the invasion of Nanking, the Japanese military had subjected its own soldiers to endless humiliation. Japanese soldiers were forced to wash the underwear of officers or stand meekly while superiors slapped them until they streamed with blood….” (Chang 217). Because of this brutality subjected upon them, you can almost understand how it’s “…suggested that those with the least power are often the most sadistic if given the power of life and death over people even lower on the pecking order, and the rage engendered by this rigid pecking order was suddenly given an outlet when the Japanese went abroad” (Chang 217). Of course this doesn’t exactly make us anymore sympathetic to the cruel soldiers who mercilessly tortured the Chinese people. But it does make you think about how put in a situation like that, how you would act yourself. If you are presented with cruelty and are vulnerable and young enough to believe that this is perfectly acceptable, you must figure you’d be more likely to cause suffering upon someone else lower on the “food chain” so to speak, because it’s what you learn from your superiors. And in a culture like Japan’s that reveres it’s elders and leaders, what they say and do must be right. The other rather disturbing part of this book was the grisly photos of the carnage itself. One in particular, shows the magnitude of how destructive the Japanese were. It depicts the shore of the Yangtze River, covered in corpses. Logs, and twigs, cover the mass of human flesh. The caption reads “Corpses of Nanking citizens were dragged to the banks of the Yangtze and thrown into the river” (Moriyasa Murase). What really disturbed me though, are the pictures of the women included in the gallery which consist of a humiliated woman made to pose for a picture where she is half naked, and accompanied by a smirking soldier. It states that “Japanese soldiers sometimes forced their victims to pose in pornographic pictures, which were kept as souvenirs of rape” (Fitch Family).Another was the disgusting photo of a naked unconscious girl bound to a chair that, “The Japanese bound this young woman to a chair for repeated attack” (New China News Agency). These pictures are terrifyingly gruesome but even though I could have gone without seeing these atrocities, it brings a new dimension to the historical account. I don’t think I could possibly relate or feel as much compassion towards the victims of the massacre, if they weren’t displayed so vividly and bluntly in the text. However, it still is hard to stomach. It makes it that much more difficult to comprehend that this much evil was experienced by so many people.
As mentioned earlier, the thing that most impressed me and enriched my concept of the atrocity which like Iris Chang, the Rape of Nanking is one of the historical events that most intrigue me throughout modern history. I too, believe that while the Japanese made a huge mistake and were horribly, unrelentingly, carried away in their brutality, I believe that it had more to do with the trauma and the conditioning brought upon by the heavily regimented and sadistic military tradition of Japan. But I also agree that the Japanese need to make amends for the atrocities they carried out throughout East Asia. I enjoyed how Iris Chang explains the vast amount of cover-ups that are used to prevent the Japanese nation from coming to terms with their “mark” upon the Chinese nation, a relationship that is still reeling from WW II.I found to be the most important part of the book was how it revealed how the Japanese tried to dissuade the global community of any wrongdoing by trying to wipe out as much of the history of the brutality. However, this is more successful at their home then in the rest of the world though it still has not gotten the attention it deserves.
She explains about the various scopes of the cover up such as the textbook controversy, which is how schoolchildren grow up in Japan with such a distorted view on that time period. Simply put, “The entire Japanese education system suffers from selective amnesia, for not until 1994 were Japanese schoolchildren taught that Hirohito’s army was responsible for the deaths of at least 20 million Allied soldiers and Asian civilians during World War II” (Chang 205). In addition she expresses how even in the 1990’s high school students are “surprised to learn that Japan had been at war with the United States…” (Chang 205). How incredible is that?! A very basic historical truth that most of us learn at a very young age is unheard of in the Japanese school system. Iris Chang also expresses that even the most educated minds in history help the cover up to continue. Many believe that, “…Not enough time has gone by to render the subject worthy of historical study, or for historians to judge Japanese wrongdoing. Some even react indignantly to criticism of Japanese wartime misdeeds (“How long must we apologize for the mistakes we have made?” one said heatedly.)”(Chang 209).
Obviously, the Japanese people are not apologizing for much. Rather, many continue to
make excuses such as Professor Nobukatsu Fujioka of Tokyo University, who is one of the strongest advocates of the cover-up, and expresses openly many of the common excuses that the Japanese believe such as, “….Far fewer people were killed in the Rape of Nanking than the Chinese claim; that most of the victims of Nanking were guerilla soldiers, not civilians; and that the Asian sex slaves or “comfort women,” of the Japanese military were ordinary prostitutes” (Chang 209). Not only does the government help cover-up the massacre by editing texts, but the media helps distort the truth and keep tabs on what is shown to the public. Movies, television, it is all carefully censored which
ensures a Japan free of its conscience.
It is surprising how we can drag Germany through the dirt and demand staggering amount of reparations but when it comes to Japan, the world backs away. Japan was no innocent in the war. This book boldly and vividly demonstrates this truth.
What The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, helped me understand is how easily genocide can be carried out and then carefully concealed from
the rest of the world and even the generations that come afterwards. How we need to address this, and force the Japanese to face their guilt, and how we need to stop tolerating this type of inhumanity. Right now as we speak, a genocide is in full force in Darfur,
Sudan and who knows when and where another will begin or when. The fact is we need to stop being so blind, and finally force these issues into the light instead of letting the issue and the victims be hidden and swallowed up in the darkness.
Bibliography
Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocasut of World War II.
1997. Basic Books, 1 May. 2006.
World History 1112
05/01/06
The Secret Holocaust of World War II
The Rape of Nanking was a horribly destructive incident when Japan was in the midst of its quest for military domination of East Asia in the late 30’s. In Iris Chang’s Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, she discusses how the Japanese cruelly exterminated countless of Chinese citizens. Furthermore, Chang discusses and reveals that decades after the defeat of the Japanese military and liberation of China, Japan is still reluctant to acknowledge the war crimes they committed in Nanking and throughout East Asia. This reluctance is one of the main concepts and focal points which I plan to discuss further.
Iris Chang grew up in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, to Chinese immigrant parents. Both of her parents had grown up in China during World War II and fled China with their families to Taiwan when communist forces took over in 1949. They later came to the United States, studied at Harvard and went on to become science professors at the University of Illinois at Champaign- Urbana. Her parents would tell her in great detail about the horrors of war and didn’t forget to tell her of the Rape of Nanking or Nanjing Datusha. Iris was intrigued by the massacre and would try and research the incident even as a young child. Around the time she became a professional writer, a friend of hers discussed the fact that there was a documentary on the Rape of Nanking except that it was difficult to get it distributed. Through this, she became interested in learning all about the massacre and the efforts to bring awareness to people about this horrific event in both Chinese and world history. Through her friend she was able to get in contact with various filmmakers and Chinese-American activists like Shao Tzuping, who worked at the U.N. Headquarters in New York and who also served as a past president of the Alliance in Memory of Victims of the Nanjing Massacre. She also met Nancy Tong who was an independent filmmaker who produced a documentary on Japanese Imperialism called In the Name of the Emperor. Through these people, she met other Chinese Americans and Canadians who all wanted the same thing she did: a way to document the atrocity and to bring some type of restitution to the victims of the massacre before they all became history themselves. Iris Chang and many other activists wanted to share this important part of their heritage and make sure that no one would be able to discredit the truth particularly the Japanese government who for decades, refuse to officially acknowledge their crimes against the Chinese people.
Iris Chang was able to connect and get support from various groups of interest, and was able to truly capture the story of the destruction of the Japanese. Through chronicling the events before and after the occupation, she discusses in The Rape of Nanking how historically the Japanese believed that they were superior to the many people of East Asia and believed in their right to colonize and expand their rule. They were trained methodically for decades for brutal warfare, and declared an unofficial war (Many call it the second Sino-Japanese war.) and took over the Manchurian providence. She goes into further detail, discussing and providing numerous military reports and bombardment strategies that the Japanese military used to regroup and prepare for the siege and introduces the key leaders of this military machine, such as Matsui Iwane, the head commander, and Prince Asaka, who commanded the siege of Nanking. Once Nanking surrenders in December 1937, she goes into detailed accounts of the bloodshed, explaining how the Japanese used captured Chinese soldiers for bayonete practice, and tortured them by burning them alive and having them torn to pieces by mad dogs. They improvised and used similar devices of torture on civilians. But women seemed to be the most targeted and were raped on the streets, in their houses, and even in front of families. Much of the time, many were mutilated and killed soon afterwards. A picture gallery also shows us in grisly detail the horrific reality that many people witnessed and many more succumbed to. Chang uses the accounts of former Japanese soldiers, foreign correspondents and journalists and even survivors to bring this ghastly account to life.
The bright spot of this tragedy is the International Nanking Safety Zone which was neutral territory and the kind Nazi, John Rabe who did all he could to save as many Chinese as possible. Through his diaries and other materials obtained by his granddaughter, Ursula Reinhardt we get a glimpse of this man, a picture of a loyal German who found the strength to go against the occupation giving the refugee Chinese everything from the clothes on his back to sending an urgent letter to Adolf Hilter himself, believing that he would be outraged himself and tell his Japanese counterparts to refrain from using such brutality. Of course, there was no such luck but to countless thousands of Chinese, Rabe is their savior along with many other German and American civilians, who gave their all to the 300,000 traumatized Chinese in the Safety Zone, regardless of bloodthirsty Japanese, bent on wiping out the entire 600,000 Chinese population of Nanking that stayed after the city fell. Unfortunately, the Japanese eventually wiped out half of that remaining population. In August 1945 the occupation ended with the defeat of Japan, including the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
This book was a very interesting read, a very comprehensive historical guide into this human tragedy. While it is extremely informative and accurate, it doesn’t exactly paint a neutral picture of the historical event which is one of its downfalls. Rather it presents a great deal of negative propaganda against the Japanese soldiers who it seems are regarded as victims in their own right, because of their culture and how it manifested at that particular time in the psyche of the people of Japan. Iris Chang explains how “Some Japanese scholars believe that the horrors of the Rape of Nanking and the other outrages of the Sino-Japanese War were caused by a phenomenon called “the transfer of oppression”(Chang 217). This is regarding how “….the modern Japanese army had great potential for brutality from the moment of creation for two reasons: the arbitrary and cruel treatment that the military inflicted on its own officers and soldiers, and the hierarchical nature of Japanese society, in which status was dictated by proximity to the emperor. Before the invasion of Nanking, the Japanese military had subjected its own soldiers to endless humiliation. Japanese soldiers were forced to wash the underwear of officers or stand meekly while superiors slapped them until they streamed with blood….” (Chang 217). Because of this brutality subjected upon them, you can almost understand how it’s “…suggested that those with the least power are often the most sadistic if given the power of life and death over people even lower on the pecking order, and the rage engendered by this rigid pecking order was suddenly given an outlet when the Japanese went abroad” (Chang 217). Of course this doesn’t exactly make us anymore sympathetic to the cruel soldiers who mercilessly tortured the Chinese people. But it does make you think about how put in a situation like that, how you would act yourself. If you are presented with cruelty and are vulnerable and young enough to believe that this is perfectly acceptable, you must figure you’d be more likely to cause suffering upon someone else lower on the “food chain” so to speak, because it’s what you learn from your superiors. And in a culture like Japan’s that reveres it’s elders and leaders, what they say and do must be right. The other rather disturbing part of this book was the grisly photos of the carnage itself. One in particular, shows the magnitude of how destructive the Japanese were. It depicts the shore of the Yangtze River, covered in corpses. Logs, and twigs, cover the mass of human flesh. The caption reads “Corpses of Nanking citizens were dragged to the banks of the Yangtze and thrown into the river” (Moriyasa Murase). What really disturbed me though, are the pictures of the women included in the gallery which consist of a humiliated woman made to pose for a picture where she is half naked, and accompanied by a smirking soldier. It states that “Japanese soldiers sometimes forced their victims to pose in pornographic pictures, which were kept as souvenirs of rape” (Fitch Family).Another was the disgusting photo of a naked unconscious girl bound to a chair that, “The Japanese bound this young woman to a chair for repeated attack” (New China News Agency). These pictures are terrifyingly gruesome but even though I could have gone without seeing these atrocities, it brings a new dimension to the historical account. I don’t think I could possibly relate or feel as much compassion towards the victims of the massacre, if they weren’t displayed so vividly and bluntly in the text. However, it still is hard to stomach. It makes it that much more difficult to comprehend that this much evil was experienced by so many people.
As mentioned earlier, the thing that most impressed me and enriched my concept of the atrocity which like Iris Chang, the Rape of Nanking is one of the historical events that most intrigue me throughout modern history. I too, believe that while the Japanese made a huge mistake and were horribly, unrelentingly, carried away in their brutality, I believe that it had more to do with the trauma and the conditioning brought upon by the heavily regimented and sadistic military tradition of Japan. But I also agree that the Japanese need to make amends for the atrocities they carried out throughout East Asia. I enjoyed how Iris Chang explains the vast amount of cover-ups that are used to prevent the Japanese nation from coming to terms with their “mark” upon the Chinese nation, a relationship that is still reeling from WW II.I found to be the most important part of the book was how it revealed how the Japanese tried to dissuade the global community of any wrongdoing by trying to wipe out as much of the history of the brutality. However, this is more successful at their home then in the rest of the world though it still has not gotten the attention it deserves.
She explains about the various scopes of the cover up such as the textbook controversy, which is how schoolchildren grow up in Japan with such a distorted view on that time period. Simply put, “The entire Japanese education system suffers from selective amnesia, for not until 1994 were Japanese schoolchildren taught that Hirohito’s army was responsible for the deaths of at least 20 million Allied soldiers and Asian civilians during World War II” (Chang 205). In addition she expresses how even in the 1990’s high school students are “surprised to learn that Japan had been at war with the United States…” (Chang 205). How incredible is that?! A very basic historical truth that most of us learn at a very young age is unheard of in the Japanese school system. Iris Chang also expresses that even the most educated minds in history help the cover up to continue. Many believe that, “…Not enough time has gone by to render the subject worthy of historical study, or for historians to judge Japanese wrongdoing. Some even react indignantly to criticism of Japanese wartime misdeeds (“How long must we apologize for the mistakes we have made?” one said heatedly.)”(Chang 209).
Obviously, the Japanese people are not apologizing for much. Rather, many continue to
make excuses such as Professor Nobukatsu Fujioka of Tokyo University, who is one of the strongest advocates of the cover-up, and expresses openly many of the common excuses that the Japanese believe such as, “….Far fewer people were killed in the Rape of Nanking than the Chinese claim; that most of the victims of Nanking were guerilla soldiers, not civilians; and that the Asian sex slaves or “comfort women,” of the Japanese military were ordinary prostitutes” (Chang 209). Not only does the government help cover-up the massacre by editing texts, but the media helps distort the truth and keep tabs on what is shown to the public. Movies, television, it is all carefully censored which
ensures a Japan free of its conscience.
It is surprising how we can drag Germany through the dirt and demand staggering amount of reparations but when it comes to Japan, the world backs away. Japan was no innocent in the war. This book boldly and vividly demonstrates this truth.
What The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, helped me understand is how easily genocide can be carried out and then carefully concealed from
the rest of the world and even the generations that come afterwards. How we need to address this, and force the Japanese to face their guilt, and how we need to stop tolerating this type of inhumanity. Right now as we speak, a genocide is in full force in Darfur,
Sudan and who knows when and where another will begin or when. The fact is we need to stop being so blind, and finally force these issues into the light instead of letting the issue and the victims be hidden and swallowed up in the darkness.
Bibliography
Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocasut of World War II.
1997. Basic Books, 1 May. 2006.