The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang is a graphic and controversial account of the Japanese siege of China which resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of Chinese, including civilians, and the rape of tens of thousands of women. The unlikely hero of the tale was a Nazi named John Rabe who created a 'safe zone' protecting Chinese refuges. This paper summarizes the book and contextualizes it in the larger debate of what causes persons to engage in genocide.
¶ … Rape Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust WWII Iris Chang.
The Rape of Nanking
The Rape of Nanking, according to Chinese-American author Iris Chang, is one of the forgotten atrocities committed during World War II. Chang was the child of parents who had survived the Cultural Revolution in China before immigrating to America and the siege of the Japanese Army during the 1930s was an important part of their cultural history (Chang 7-8). Chang was determined that the event would not be erased in the historical memory, and wrote her book as a response to what she saw as a lack of interest and ignorance regarding the events.
Chang divides the book into three parts. The first part describes the massacre from Japanese, Chinese, and Western perspectives. The second part chronicles the immediate aftermath and the third explains the long-term consequences of the massacre, including why it was forgotten for so long. This forgetting Chang refers to as a kind of second rape. Chang states that the Japanese government has been particularly complicit in ignoring the implications of the Rape of Nanking, eliminating mention of the event in Japanese textbooks and resigning it "into historical oblivion" (Chang 220). Chang condemns this historical revisionist view which sees Japan's actions as an "attempt to free the region of Western imperialism," nothing more (Chang 200).
Chang chronicles seemingly unspeakable horrors, including scenes in which whole villages were beheaded -- one group was murdered, the second group was forced to bury the dead before they were summarily beheaded. Tens of thousands of women were raped and mutilated, including pregnant women. The massacre lasted seven weeks and was not the actions of one or two rogue units of soldiers, but a systematic effort of the Japanese to terrorize the Chinese into submission. Entire cities were systematically razed; farm animals were stolen; hospitals were stripped bare (Chang 161). "Fathers were forced to rape their daughters and sons their mothers" (Chang 6).
Chang's portrayal of the Japanese Imperial Army as a well-oiled killing machine is disturbing at times, particularly to the degree which she occasionally seems to characterize all Japanese soldiers as innately brutal servants of the military. She does state she does not intend her book to be a "commentary on the Japanese character or the genetic makeup of a people who could commit such acts" and attributes the events to the "power of cultural forces to make devils of us all" but her condemnation of Japanese culture can be scathing at times (Chang 13). This may be inevitable given the author's intent not to write a dispassionate work of history, but instead to create a rousing, clarion cry of remembrance of the suffering of the victims.
Chang uses a number of primary sources to substantiate her claims. Many of the first-person reflections of Japanese soldiers suggest a view of the Chinese as subhuman, in a manner that parallels the ways in which the Jews were regarded by the Nazis. Said one Japanese soldier: "It was impossible to believe that they were the enemy soldiers. I felt quite foolish to think we had been fighting to the death against these ignorant slaves. And some of them were even twelve- or thirteen-year-old boys" (Chang 44). Although the soldier felt pity, he also felt disgusted by what he saw as the Chinese cowardice, given that it had been inculcated in him by the Japanese Imperial Army that to surrender was dishonorable and worse than death.
Chang attributes the willingness of the Japanese soldiers to commit such atrocities to the totalitarian mindset encouraged by their socialization into the Japanese Army, and a society in which social hierarchy and militarism (the way of the samurai) was integral to its citizen's way of life (Chang 19). China was always viewed with a mixture of contempt and respect: the Chinese were despised, yet the cultural debt of Japan to China was also uncomfortably acknowledged, which made the hatred of the soldiers particularly virulent. These values were transmitted through the conformist Japanese school system onward. The Japanese also had a sense of cultural entitlement mixed with a fear of seeming to look weak in the eyes of the West and any other power deemed 'other' (Chang 28-30).
The unlikely hero of Chang's book is the Nazi John Rabe, who, despite his association with Hitler, managed to establish a 'safe zone' for many Chinese refuges and saved many lives as a result. He has been called the 'Oscar Schindler' of Nanking -- an uncomfortable title for many readers, but one which Chang embraces (Chang 109). Rabe was a staunch supporter of Nazism but had lived in China for thirty years and said he felt a strong sense of loyalty to the nation, given how well he had been treated by the Chinese. A businessman, he felt he had a social obligation to protect his employees (Chang 110). Rabe was instrumental in the creation of a Safety Zone which protected more than 250,000 refugees (Chang 110).
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