¶ … 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...

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…