The Rape Of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I read through the book and I think it is a very nicely written one. One minor point is that it would be nicer to note in the text the references documents in the style of academic articles. That would be easier for readers who are interested in digging into the original documents themselves. Nonetheless, I think that this book gave a very clear view of one of the saddest event ever happened in human history in a way that can be understood by general public.
I strongly disagreed with one of the reader's review for criticizing this book as "ridiculous". The reasons for my disagreement are as followed:
1. Criticizing Point:
"Iris Chang is a fourth-Generation Chinese American. She does not speak or understand any of the languages needed to examine this issue (Chinese, Japanese and German). I have concluded that all information used in this book is second-hand information, most of them is propaganda."
Disagreement:
First of all, there are a lot of first hand references written in English, as were listed in the book. In fact, one of the reasons that Nanking Massacre was known to the world was because quite a few Europeans and Americans happened to witness and documented the event. If the reviewer considered none of those documents are first-hand documents, I am not sure what the definition of "first-hand" information is. In addition, some of the documents are even reported by Japanese themselves. It is not reasonable to report something against their own country if it is not truth, especially during the war time.
Second, according to what the author stated in the book, the author is a second generation Chinese American (not a very important point here, but it implies the reviewer may not read the book clearly before jumping into conclusion). In her book she thanks her parents and many other people for helping her translating needed documents from different languages. Many of these helpers are scholars with knowledge of multi-languages. Take her parent as an example, they were born in Mainland China, grew up in Taiwan and received their Ph.D.s from Harvard University in American. Is it reasonable to believe that they have enough knowledge in both Chinese and English to translating some of those documents for her?
2. Criticizing Point:
The reviewer stated: "My great uncle was in the Japanese Army. He told me several times not to believe in this kind of nonsense. It is impossible to kill so many people in such a short period. Especially with soldiers who were not equipped with machine guns or other weapons for mass-destruction. Just take a minute and think. According to my uncle, it took almost 3 days to burn 6 corpses of his comrades after an attack. How long will it take to burn 300.000 corpses?"
Disagreement:
First, it maybe true to take 3 days to completely burn 6 bodies. However, we were not talking about cremation ceremony here. We were talking about burn to death. How many minutes can a human being endure before he or she was burn to death?Thanks heaven it is not 3 days!! Besides, if the reviewer had read through the book (or any other documents), not all 300,000 corpses were burn, a lot of them were buried or dumped into river. Please read the book before jump into conclusion and make such a harsh criticism.
Second, Japanese soldier did have machine gun. Of course not as powerful as the modern model, but they did have machine gun. Japanese did not start the war un-prepared. Besides, how difficult it is to kill civilians (especially elderly, small children and babies) who have no weapon at all?It did not even need weapons for mass-destruction. In addition, if one likes to play the number, here it is: The number of the Japanese troop invaded Nanking was around 50, 000. The peak of the ciaos was around 6 to 8 weeks. The conservative estimation of casualty is from 260, 000 to 350,000 during that period. Do the math yourself! See how possible it is! I have to emphasize that it is not my intension to use these numbers to prove the Massacre did occurred, that would be too shaky. The real evidences were presented in the book and the documents it referred. I merely use these numbers here to show that one can not use these numbers to claim it is not possible that the Massacre occurred.
Third, though I have no intension to dishonor anybody's ancestor, I have to point out that the credential of reviewer's great uncle's words is really questionable for the following reasons:
Scenario 1: His great uncle was in Nanking with the Japanese army while the Massacre occurred. Then it is possible he participated in the crime (thought may not be voluntarily, I hope). It is a common sense that one can not use the words from the accused as objective evidence. Especially when he or she is denying the crime accused.
Scenario 2: His great uncle was not in Nanking while the Massacre occurred. Then all he knew about the event were from the propaganda in the army, which by all means could only be more misleading than any outside propaganda.
One question I would like to ask here: how many casualties qualify it as a massacre? Even if it is propaganda, even if only 10% or even 1% of the reports were true, it is still a horrible crime. Besides, Nanking Massacre was such a crime not only for the number of civilian casualty, but also the cruel way the victims were killed. Think about it, if one of the women, just ONE, that were tortured, raped, before they were killed were your own mother, wife or daughter, could anyone just shrug and say "it is ridiculous, it is just propaganda...."?If one of the victims of the "killing game" (reported by the Japanese newspaper, not Western or Chinese propaganda) is your own father, brother or son, could anyone just shrug and say "it is ridiculous, it is just propaganda...."?
A tragedy such as this must not be forgotten if we don't want history repeat itself. Human being will only advance if we can recognize the mistakes we made and put in effort to prevent it from happening again.

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