Nanking Genocide 1937 Nanking\'s Genocide

Nanking Genocide 1937

Nanking's genocide and revisionist history

Nanking's genocide and revisionist history

There are numerous reports, studies and films that refer directly and explicitly to the events that occurred in the city of Nanking in 1937. As one report states,

The Chronicle of humankind's cruelty is a long and sorry tale. But if it is true that even in such horror tales there are degrees of ruthlessness, then few atrocities can compare in intensity and scale to the rape of Nanking during World War II.

Yet despite the plethora of reportage, eye-witness and first-hand accounts of the terrible occurrences that took place in the city when the Japanese invaded, there are many scholars, researchers and commentators who claim that the Rape of Nanking "…remains an obscure incident."

As one scholar notes, "Although the death toll exceeds the immediate number of deaths from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki… the horrors of the Nanking massacre remain virtually unknown to people outside Asia.

Some pundits are of the view that The Rape of Nanking has not had the same effect on the public consciousness as other occurrences of genocide, such as the Jewish Holocaust. Many critics claim that the reason for this silence about the events surrounding Nanking and Japanese aggression has been due to political aspects and motivations. Nevertheless, in the last decade there have been a wide array of articles and publications that have insisted on drawing attention to the atrocities that occurred in that city. The age of the Internet and the growth of the human rights movement internationally, as well as the publication of books such as Chang's The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (1997), have all contributed to the emergence of a growing awareness and need for an explanation of these events.

However, this has in turn led to an intense debate in Japanese society about the veracity and the authenticity of the reports of extreme atrocities and genocide in Nanking. The revisionist historians, journalists and politicians in Japan and elsewhere have questioned various accepted facts and some have even cast doubt on the fact that the massacre and rape occurred at all. This is also related to the critique that there is an avoidance mentality in sectors of the society that is also politically motivated.

This tendency towards revisionism includes the perception that those who would deny that acts of genocide have occurred are often motivated by ideologies and nationalist tendencies. This often results in the construction of false views in support of these aims and tendencies. It also refers to those who hide behind the construction of fallacious arguments as well as erroneous facts and historical distortions in order to argue and convince others that events that are reported are in fact untrue or grossly exaggerated.

The revisionist tendency is also often supported by what appears to be legitimate and credible scholarly research and writing. It is characteristic of revisionism to construct an alternative historical truth that counters the negative impact of the reportage and academic evaluation and condemnation of acts such as genocide. This paper will examine the revisionist interpretation and presentation of the massacre and rape of Nanking in relation to a variety of viewpoints or perspectives that contradict this revisionist stance.

2. Background and overview

2.1. Brief historical overview

The historical details of the events that led up to massacre of Nanking are clear and undisputable. After the Japanese had successfully invaded the city of Shanghai in 1937, they proceeded to initiate an attack on Nanking, which was the newly established capital of China.

After the attack the city was entered on December 13, 1937. From this point the Japanese soldiers proceeded to subdue the large Chinese population in a manner that can only be described as barbaric and without any concern for human dignity and rights. As one scholar states,

Japanese soldiers began an orgy of cruelty seldom if ever matched in world history. Tens of thousands of young men were rounded up and herded to the outer areas of the city, where they were mowed down by machine guns, used for bayonet practice, or soaked with gasoline and burned alive. By the end of the massacre an estimated 260,000 to 350,000 Chinese had been killed. Between 20,000 and 80,000 Chinese women were raped --and many soldiers went beyond rape to disembowel women, slice off their breasts, nail them alive to walls.

It is reported by one researcher that the behavior of the Japanese troops shocked even members of the Nazi party who were in the city and "… John Rabe, a German businessman who led the local Nazi party, joined other foreigners in working tirelessly to save the innocent from slaughter by creating a safety zone where some 250,000 civilians found shelter."

One could argue that the frustrations that the Japanese forces had experienced in their war with China was to some extent a 'cause' for the excessive reaction of the troops in Nanking. As one historian remarks, the battle of Shanghai prior to the Nanking invasion had created a deep enmity between the two sides.

The war in Shanghai was indeed a decisive battle that caused both sides exorbitant damages, left them with a deep-rooted loathing for each other, and begot vengeance. Many historians today say the Battle of Shanghai nurtured the psychological conditions for Japanese soldiers to go on a berserk rampage in Nanking

However this would not serve as an adequate reason or excuse for the massacre and rape in any sense. The events that took place in Nanking are described by many scholars simply and straightforwardly as genocide.

According to many studies and reports the numbers of those who were killed by the Japanese soldiers was staggering. In her research on the events Chang accepts that the number of those killed was at least 260,000 Chinese residents.

This figure is hotly contested by revisionists but her figures are based on sound

Her statistics are those cited by the Allied military tribunal in bringing the perpetrators (all 28 of them, we are told) to justice. Some estimates put the figure of those killed in the 350,000 range, while others go higher still.

The common or orthodox view of what took place in Nanking can be seen in a commemorative document that described this event and which was published on the sixtieth anniversary of the incident in 1997at Princeton University. "Most experts agree that at least 300,000 Chinese died, and 20,000 women were raped. Some estimate the numbers to be much higher -- 340,000 and 80,000, respectively."

However there is no definitive agreement about the numbers of those killed or wounded and there are divergent views that depend on whether the researcher takes the conservative or revisionist point-of-view.

This general condemnatory view is supported by numerous journalistic and scholarly report and assessments. For example, on December 17, 1937 Frank Tillman Durdin of the New York Times wrote that "Wholesale looting, the violation of women, the murder of civilians, the eviction of Chinese from their homes, mass executions of war prisoners and the impressing of able-bodied men turned Nanking into a city of terror…"

The siege and events that took place in Nanking are described by another journalist, Archibald Steele of the Chicago Daily News, as "Four Days of Hell."

Steel also reported that, "I saw Chinese troops looting shop windows, but later I saw the Japanese troops outdo them in a campaign of pillage which the Japanese carried out not only in the shops but in homes, hospitals and refugee camps."

Another report states that "Nanking killing continued for seven weeks in front of international witnesses, without any attempt at concealment, and with the sadism of recreational murder…"

These assessments and reports have to be taken into account and compared to the revisionist claims and histories that have been put forward to counter the negative impact of this event.

2.2. Overview of the revisionist reaction

The Nanjing or Nanking massacre has remained a centre of controversy and denial in Japanese society. While the more traditionalist view accepts that the atrocities occurred in Nanking there has been debate about the way that this event should be presented in school textbooks on the country's history. The extent of the debate and the divergent feelings about Nanking can be ascertained from the following comment by a participant in a recent conference on the issue, which included scholars from China, Japan and America. This participant, who was born in Hiroshima in 1942, "…described his feelings on visiting the site of the worst massacres as 'experiencing the original sin of being Japanese…"

The silence about the rape and massacre of Nanking has been broken in recent years, A number of well-received books and studies about the actual events have been published, as well as commentary and reports in various media, which have tended to encourage a resurgence of attention and criticism about the events that took place in the city under Japanese occupation.

This resurgence of open historical inquiry and the reiteration of the question as to why such an horrific incident should be relegated to the backwaters of historical and popular consciousness, has also led to a reassessment from the side of the revisionist historians and journalists. These include claims for Japanese revisionists that "… critics have stretched tales of Japanese brutality as means of putting political pressure on Japan and winning compensation."

There has in fact been a revisionist interpretation of the events at Nanking since the 1900s, with the intention of either ignoring or invalidating the resurgence of interest in the horrific facts of rape, torture and wanton slaughter attributed to the Japanese forces. For example, a report in 1995 states that the Japanese Supreme Court ruled that the "... government illegally deleted references in schoolbooks to atrocities the Japanese army committed during the war."

This revisionist attitude can be contrasted with the publication of the acclaimed bestseller by Iris Chang, entitled The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (1997), which has gone a long way to revitalizing the debate about the events and reigniting the condemnation of the massacre of thousands of civilians, including women and children. This work has also raised the ire and of the revisionists and resulted in a growing number of alternative histories of the incident.

Chang's book provides a detailed account of the events that occurred in Nanking in the winter of 1937 and the spring of 1938. While many previous histories only refer to the occurrence of rape in a cursory fashion, Chang provides a much more insightful and comprehensive view of what actually took place. Her book also presents the political and military background to the events of the time; and also includes the personal accounts of those who experienced the massacre. Furthermore, she "… attempts to demonstrate the considerable influence the Code of Bushido had on Japanese behavior, and to lay bare the political forces at work after the war which served to encourage amnesia on the subject."

she also suggest that there was considerable complicity in the silence about the massacre on the part of Japanese royal house.

There are also some scholars who can be seen as apologists rather than revisionists for the Nanking massacre. Some suggest that there were underlying reasons for the way that the Japanese troops acted. Referring to the history of Japan prior to Nanking there are those who suggest a war mentality was socialized into the people, which led to the social acceptance and socialization of extreme forms of aggression.

The molding of young men to serve in the Japanese military began early: In the 1930s, toy shops became virtual shrines to war, selling arsenals of toy soldiers, tanks, rifles, antiaircraft guns, bugles, and howitzers. Japanese schools operated like miniature military units. Indeed, some of the teachers were military officers, who lectured students on their duty to help Japan fulfill its divine destiny & #8230;Teachers also instilled in boys hatred and contempt for the Chinese people, preparing them psychologically for a future invasion of the Chinese mainland.

Some claim that Japan had,

"…recently…emerged from its medieval age: a scant 140 years ago, less than 100 at the time of the Rape. What European armies did during the Thirty Years War & #8230;.the soldiers of Hirohito did at Nanking. The rules of war the Japanese were abiding by were those of the twelfth century, not the twentieth."

this is a view that is strongly condemned by many modern Japanese scholars as being extremely reductionist and simplistic.

However, there are many scholars and journalists who are strictly revisionist and who deny the claims of rape and atrocity put forward in books The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (1997). In political circles there has also been a revisionist denial of the scale of rape and deaths as well as a denial of the extent of the suffering of the Chinese people. Many senior Japanese politicians have referred to the rape as a lie or a fabrication or merely as a "part of war."

Textbooks in Japan were rewritten by the Ministry of Education to tone down the events that occurred in Nanking.

Furthermore, the newspapers in the country at the time of the Nanking massacre tended to paint a very different picture of the Nanking "incident," referring to peace instead of any reports about rape or massacre. For example, the Asahi Shimbun carried a photograph titled "Nanjing, Where Peace Has Been Restored," with the further caption "Soldiers of the Imperial Army Distributing Candy to Refugees."

Since 1970 there have been a growing number of contradictory scholarly and journalistic interpretations of the events that occurred at Nanking. The more orthodox or traditional view of Nanking are represented by individuals like Honda Katsuichi, a newspaper correspondent, and Hora Tomio, an academic.

Their views are in line with the view posited by most Western scholars and refer to the full scale of the atrocities and genocide. They have argued that Japan should bear responsibility for these events.

However, the more revisionist side of the argument is represented by many scholars, politicians and journalists who refute the claims of atrocity and genocide. "…they have questioned the traditionalist interpretations, especially the number of victims -- 300,000 people killed in six weeks."

An example of the denial of the horror that occurred at Nanking is evident in the utterances of senior Japanese politicians. For example,

Takami Eto, a 78-year-old three-time Cabinet minister who leads the third-largest faction in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, dismissed as "a big lie" estimates that the Japanese army killed as many as 300,000 civilians during the 1937-38 occupation of the Chinese city of Nanjing, then called Nanking.

The extent of the revisionist re-interpretation of the events of Nanking can be sen in the fact that some Japanese nationalist scholars and conservative lawmakers are of the opinion that the above figures are severely inflated and "… some even call the entire massacre a hoax"; and that "A museum at a shrine to Japan's war dead says the people of Nanjing were "once again able to live their lives in peace" after the Japanese army took over the city."

There are also scholars who interrogate the first-hand accounts of the massacre and search for inconsistencies which suggest that certain facts are exaggerated or overblown. For instance, one Western scholar notes that the German Johnn Rabe, who witnessed and write about the massacre and rape in his dairy, leaves out certain details of the atrocities that are later described by the Chinese - such as "…live burials, mass disembowelments, deaths by freezing or death by being eaten alive by dogs."

The rather spurious reasoning is that these horrific crimes were later embellishments by the Chinese commentators, as Rabie did not mention them specifically in his diary; and this leads to the conclusion that "…perhaps they did not occur at all."

However, views and attempts to discredit the first-hand accounts of what happened at Nanking only succeed in temporarily obscuring the facts. These facts are overwhelmingly supported by studies, reports and eyewitness testimony about the extent and veracity of the massacre and rapes that occurred at Nanking.

As one scholar states,

I interviewed people who had actually clawed their way out of mass graves in Nanking (now known as Nanjing) in 1937. I also met survivors in the city who had watched Japanese soldiers disembowel their neighbors and tear fetuses from the wombs of pregnant women.

Many scholars point out that narratives of the atrocities and genocide committed by the Japanese soldiers do not have only Chinese sources but also come from the numerous diaries and letters that were written by European missionaries and other eyewitnesses. There is also visual evidence of these atrocities." For example, a photograph of five Chinese prisoners being buried alive by Japanese soldiers was smuggled out of Nanking and published in Look magazine."