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Summary:
China has endured much hardship in its history, as Iris Chang shows in her ably researched The Rape of Nanking, a book that recounts the horrible events in that eastern Chinese city under Japanese occupation in the late 1930s. Nanking, she writes, served as a kind of laboratory in which Japanese soldiers were taught to slaughter unarmed, unresisting civilians, as they would later do throughout Asia. Likening their victims to insects and animals, the Japanese commanders orchestrated a campaign in which several hundred thousand--no one is sure just how many--Chinese soldiers and noncombatants alike were killed. Chang turns up an unlikely hero in German businessman John Rabe, a devoted member of the Nazi party who importuned Adolf Hitler to intervene and stop the slaughter, and who personally saved the lives of countless residents of Nanking. She also suggests that the Japanese government pay reparations and apologize for its army's horrific acts of 60 years ago.
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You will read it and reread it and reread it but it is all true
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From Kenneth Ellman, ke@kennethellman.com
Well what can be said. I have read this book more times than I remember over a period of many years. Published in 1997 perhaps it is no longer necessary to give another review. But some books form a bond with your mind and the author and the story become part of you. Iris Chang's story "The Rape of Nanking" is just this kind of book. What it did to the author who later committed suicide we can only imagine. You reread and reread it over many years because it is easy to read (very well written), very well factually supported (so you know it is true) and most important because it is such an extraordinary story the truth of which tells so much about the Japanese but perhaps most significantly about human beings and ourselves.
Importantly it again discusses the well established extraordinary German Nazi hero John H.D. Rabe. You could not make Rabe up in your imagination if you tried. You don't have to though because he, Rabe, is real and true and what he did was saintly. Perhaps this book, this story like other genuine historical facts, truly meets the phrase "the truth is stranger than fiction". Ironically remember while Rabe the German Nazi, saved Chinese from the Japanese, Sugihara a Japanese diplomat (of whom many books have also been written), not much later on, was saving Jews from Germans.
We want to think we are not like the Japanese of that time and place the same as we want to think we are not like the Germans who manufactured helpless children and adults to death. The terrible killing and military work of soldiers in warfare is not what affects us so much, because inside we expect that and know it is what a soldier is to do and a war to cause. We also know that in war civilians, woman and children, will die through the natural course of the destruction of countries and cities that warfare brings. That is not what shocks or surprises us. But it is the intentional, purposeful and planned killing and torture of so many helpless people that makes us see a different side of what humans are, and what the Japanese were, in this case and what the Germans did in that same time period.
Keep in mind the Japanese are not the Germans. They did not utilize engineering processes to burn and kill. They did not build ovens and chambers with poison gas. As Chang so clearly shows (and most importantly as the historical documentation shows), the Japanese were far more straightforward and simple in their actions. They just militarily conquered this city and then immediately raped, raped, raped and as a policy then burned, tortured and killed the inhabitants. How interesting that the Japanese, in some of the cases, would attempt to force the fathers to rape their daughters and the sons to rape their mothers. This was all done with simple brute military force of guns and bayonets etc. And it was done quickly.
What can we say. These events only define a part of what human beings are capable of. We know both the depths of evil and we also know the extraordinary heights to which human beings can attain. We know that both Rabe and Sugihara were examples of real people who stood against this at great personal risk to themselves.
I read the reviews here and see some challenge the facts of what occurred. Remember, this is not an account of a war from two thousand years ago where we might argue over what occurred. It is an account of a war so recent that it is still almost contemporaneous with our current lives. World War Two is just like yesterday and many of us have or had immediate family who lived through that period of time and served in that war and know what happened. Some are still alive today.
SO, I do find it somewhat strange that there are reviews here that have challenged whether this Japanese destruction and torture of human beings in Nanking even actually occurred. I must assume that such reviews are knowingly false. In any large event there will always be some dispute of a specific act or incident which occurred in the scope of a massive human turmoil or tragedy. But to argue about whether this occurred at all or is a fabrication, is not an argument. It is merely an effort to escape history and history will not allow such an escape.
Keep in mind that in addition to all of the eye witness accounts, newspapers accounts and both American and Japanese and other documentation, we have the extraordinary event of Rabe sending a detailed report of what occurred to Adolph Hitler and this report is available today to be read.
This type of history along with those human beings who acted so heroically in opposition to these human tragedies such as Rabe and Sugihara, should be part of the curriculum and education of all students. It helps us to teach our children what human beings are capable of in a very gut personal realistic level, the choices people may make and the heights to which they can rise in contrast to the depths to which they can sink. My heart and respect goes out to the family of Iris Chang for this accomplishment by their now deceased daughter. Kenneth Ellman, ke@kennethellman.com
the Hobo Philosopher
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This is one of those oh-my-god books. I was shocked to find out at the time that I read this book, that the Japanese had been following the Nazi handbook. I don't know if it was the Nazis or the Japanese who first thought up these extermination and human experimentation techniques. They also seem to have been into the Super Race Syndrome. The Imperial Japanese Navy took on a new meaning for me. That the Japanese had treated the Chinese people in this manner is mind boggling. It does seem that as the Jew was to the Nazis so was the Chinese to the Japanese. The author of this book even documented this horrible Rape and other atrocities with pictures - pictures taken by the Japanese soldiers to send home or keep as mementoes of their stay. This is a real-life horror story. It is a difficult book to read. I put it down several times just because I could not take any more of the horrible details. Sometimes I would let it sit idle for weeks before picking it up again. I had to force myself to continue to read it. But I wanted to finish, because these are the things about mankind and war that we can not afford to ever forget!
Books written by Richard Noble - The Hobo Philosopher: "Hobo-ing America: A Workingman's Tour of the U.S.A.." "A Summer with Charlie" "A Little Something: Poetry and Prose" "Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother"
A must read
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Although this book is horrifying in its detail, it is a must read for anyone who wants to learn more about what happened in Asia during WWII. It is truly sad that as Americans we seem to only focus on what has happened to us and our European neighbors during the war.
An Emotive, Powerful and Well-Researched Piece
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I had known about this book for quite some time, but only got around to reading it recently. You need quite a bit of mental fortitude to get through such a book; it is graphic in the extreme. I stealed myself for the effort, but got quite upset by about page 80. The accounts of savagery - gang rape almost always followed by murder, dousing people with gas and setting them alight, bayoneting practice, ad infinitum - require a kind of mental detachment that may be hard to summon. But the book is much, much more than accounts from diaries, etc., although these are fascinating. There is all sorts of research here; interesting tidbits on everything from the manner in which the city of Nanjing was abandoned by Chiang Kai-shek to the Tokyo War Crimes tribunal to CCP spin on the atrocities after it came to power to the incredible efforts to deny and cover up the event in Japan. I seldom use the phrase 'page-turner' to decribe a book (it's a bit cliche, no?), but that's what this book is; one mind-boggling, shocking scenario after another, brimming with facts and examples all penned in a fine style. The subtitle, 'The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II,' is apt, not some marketing ploy. The parts about John Rabe alone, a Nazi living in Nanjing at the time, who did whatever he could to save people's lives (including inform Adolf Hitler of the genocide), make this worth reading. The Rape of Nanking is a fascinating "lost chapter" of twentieth century world history.
From a Korean reader with Japanese friends.
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Reading this book reminded me about the unsightly tragedies that happened in Korea during the wartime as well. I remember my Korean grandmother telling me horrible stories of her childhood as she witnessed the people around her getting killed and bombed from the Japanese.
I am surrounded by Japanese-American and native Japanese friends, and I can say with a certain fact that they are not stupid or ignorant to this history. Also, they are very keen in understanding what has transpired and apologetic about their ancestors doings, but don't feel guilty themselves...for, why should they?
I remember many of my friend's Korean parents would tell me, as I grew up playing at my friend's house, to never play with Japanese people and that they were all cold-hearted. Maybe they were then, because of the pressures of the war, but this is not true now. My point is, we should not blame the current society and spread racist remarks or hatred to the individual people of Japan, but instead show our concerns to the government.
I also think that war makes people inhuman. This is unfortunate, but from the history I've studied, is true. Looking at the Al Qaeda, Nazi, Stalin's slaughters, Darfur, and the constant wars that go on today, it is not the people but the war itself that creates beasts within us.
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