The Rape Of Nanking The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II Paperback – June 16, 2012

I wanted to have a book about this topic in my bookshelf especially since I have interacted with people on the internet whose families were impacted by this and since certain interest groups have thrown around a lot of money to intentionally spread false information to deny this atrocity. This is the absolute perfect book for this, with tons of cited sources and documentation from witnesses.

This book was the effort from Chinese/American author Iris Chang to raise awareness of the horrifying events of December, 1937, when Nanking, then the capital of China was, along with Manchuria at large and nearby Shanghai attacked by Japanese forces who would carry out one of humanity's most brutal, sick and inexcusable acts the world ever knew. Already blazing a trail of murder by the thousands of Chinese civilians and anybody suspected of being a Chinese soldier, they took this to psychotic levels in Nanking.The details of the seven weeks of torture, mass killings and rapes are so putrid it is not advisable to discuss them here. While the Holocaust of Jews in Germany outnumbered the dead in Nanking, where most estimates hover around 350,000 deaths, most of them civilians - women, men, children, infants - it didn't matter to the Japanese, what made the Rape of Nanking stand out was the speed in which the atrocities occurred, in just over a one month period before a full military occupation took hold and residents were allowed to return home but forced to obey the Japanese unless they wanted to be killed for even the slightest implication of an insult or unwillingness to do what they were told.Chang argues that while the U.S. especially demanded rightfully so severe reparations from Nazi Germany, and dutifully executed most of the high ranking officials and many many underlings, with Mao Tse Tung's takeover of China in 1946 and Chiang Kai-Shek's exile to Taiwan which meant communism China style, the U.S., while trying and executing some Japanese officials, including some for the equally brutal Bataan march, they feared communism and pumped billions into the Japanese economy and ignored for the most part the horrifying deeds their Army committed so America could have an "ally" near Russia and China. Thus, Japan skated, and systematically excluded the rape of Nanking, Bataan and other atrocities from schools and universities. Those who did dare to demand Japan admit responsibility, many Japanese scholars and journalists, were faced with death threats, protests, and vile denials in the right wing media.Her efforts were not in vain, as the book was a best seller and Japanese officials even as late as 1998 were forced to come clean after a fashion and at least one offered a formal apology to the citizens of Nanking and China.Tragically, because she suffered from bi polar disorder, and a severe case of it, coupled with the stress of promoting her book, making speeches all over and sadly becoming more paranoid as the disease progressed, Iris Chang suffered a nervous breakdown and committed suicide in 2004. While she was not a direct victim of the Rape, her parents and grandparents told her many stories of what happened, and combined with the very thorough research she compiled, it is quite possible the very horror of the event could have contributed to her mental illness. She would not be alone, as thousands of victims who did live suffered severe health problems after being maimed, burned and otherwise tortured. One woman who worked at a university in Nanking during this holocaust was so effected by the brutality, gore and misery that she too succumbed to her own suicide.We can't fairly hold the Japanese collectively responsible as most are long gone. But to shove this terror under the proverbial rug only allows a population or armed forces of any nation the potential given the effectiveness of the nationwide propaganda and sense of nationalism to be just as bad. Witness Kosovo - the U.S. was involved as much to cover up Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky as any sense of duty, and the ethnic cleansing that took place was an equal horror. Tanzania, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot, attacking Iraq for 9-11 when it was totally innocent - hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis died for war profiteering and a not so subtle Islamic genocide because George W. Bush wanted it. We are no better than any other nation when it comes to the ability and willingness to use propaganda, controlled media and lies to commit terrible crimes for money and power.Chang valiantly tried to warn all of us that as the saying goes, those who ignore and obfuscate or destroy history are condemned to repeat it, and we do so over and over and over. This book is must reading, along with "Tears in the Darkness", a great book about the Bataan march of 1942, to remind all of us that as a species, we do not have to act like the tyrants leaders worldwide demand us to do.

I use a Kindle reader for iPad. When you finish a book, Amazon always pops in asking for a review. I had to ignore this for this book, because I wasn't ready to write yet, needing time to process what I had just read!Having taken several days to process, I can say I am certainly glad I read this book. Having read extensively about the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust and other 20th century atrocities, I was shocked at having never heard of this massacre.It was a hard book to read. Hard, because of the content, and hard because it exploded my preconceptions of the Japanese as being always gentle, kind people. I have always harbored guilt for the internment of the Japanese on American soil. I still feel some shame, having many colleagues of Japanese ancestry whose families were uprooted from there homes and sent away. But this book put that period into more of a context to perhaps understand what a previous generation did, since these crimes were front page news in 1937-1938.I will not do an extensive review of the content, since others have summarized this very well. But, it is the story about the Japanese Imperial Army taking the Capitol of China, which was then called Nanking (now Nanjing), at the end of 1937, as part of the Sino-Japanese war. They were brutal to the Chinese civilians, slaughtering hundreds of thousands in cruel ways, including beheading, using humans for sword practice spearing infants and adults, and raping tens of thousands of Chinese women. Remember I said civilians, non-combatants. They took few, if any POWs, executing Chinese soldiers, and any male they thought could be a soldier, post haste on entering the city. The Yangtze River was clogged with dead bodies, and blood ran in the streets, as they couldn't bury them as fast as they killed them.I know, having read some of the writings from the Japanese, that there are deniers among many of that people. I also know that some historians take issue with some of her history telling and facts. Having read extensively about the Armenian Massacre in Turkey that began in April 1915, and killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions of the Armenian people, I know there are many who deny this mostly unknown holocaust as well. I am convinced the Turkish government and the Japanese government just want to deny their horrendous behavior, avoid the shame, and the paying of any reparations. Shame on them!I am in the medical field, and we have peer review for any medical work which is published, so I understand the need to criticize some facts that may not be correct or strictly confirmed by historical records. But even if some of this is wrong, it would be hard to convince me this never happened. They can argue about the numbers of dead and raped, but this massacre happened.I am thankful that Iris Chang wrote this history/remembrance. I am saddened that she took her own life after writing it, and before she could finish her book on the Bataan Death March, which would have expanded my knowledge of another atrocity. I would highly recommend picking up this book. As has been said, we should not ignore where we came from, and we do so at our own peril!The subject quote above is from George Fitch's diary, a member of the International Committee for the Protection Zone, created by expatriots to try and save as many Chinese as they could! They thus bore witness to the slaughter!I would give this 4.5 stars.