The
Nanking Massacre (also known as the Nanjing Massacre)
The
"Nanking Massacre" refers to the war crimes perpetrated
by Japanese troops during their invasion and occupation of Nanking,
China from November 1937 to February 1938. These crimes against
humanity included the execution and murder of over 200,000 defenseless
and unarmed Chinese soldiers and civilians; widespread rape and
torture of women and girls with estimates in the range of 20,000,
the dismembering of human bodies–both male and female; and
the widespread slaughter of domestic and farm animals. The "Massacre"
was not limited to Nanking, which was the capital of the Republic
of China, but encompassed the march of General Matsui Iwane's
10th Army and the Shanghai Expeditionary Force from Hangchow–the
landing site–through Shanghai and into Nanking. The blood
letting was only contained after the establishment of the Japanese
puppet government of Nanking in late March of 1938. .
General Matsui was found guilty of committing crimes against humanity
by the Tokyo War Crimes tribunal, and was sentenced to hanging.
Although
the Massacre was well-reported by the English press, its memory
was obfuscated by the refusal of the Japanese government to admit
to the crimes, and by the failure of the Chinese government to
raise the issue internationally. Today the history of the Massacre,
which is sometimes called the "Incident," is still controversial.
Recent historical analyses have raised new issues, and have unearthed
new documentation.
Three
major issues consume the writings of researchers: the number of
Chinese massacred and injured; the cause of and responsibility
for the killings, and the search for eyewitness accounts and primary
sources. During the 1960's and 70's, the Japanese government minimized
or ignored the number of victims. The military's extensive report
on the war in China (1975) shunts the "Nanjing Incident"
into a footnote. The Department of Education has engaged itself
in the battle to deny the existence of the massacre in secondary
school textbooks by not allowing it to be published or discussed.
This has resulted in several famous lawsuits brought against the
Ministry to include the history of the massacre as well as the
history of Japan's war of aggression against Asia. Individuals
such as the popular writer, Tanaka Masaaki, have argued forcefully
that the alleged "massacre" was a fabrication. This
group of deniers has been dubbed the "illusion" faction.
On the other side are scholars such as Honda Katsuichi who has
scoured the documents, and interviewed the survivors. He and his
allies, the so-called "Massacre" faction, contend that
there were over 100,000 victims, and possibly 200,000. This number
is lower than the War Crimes Tribunal estimate of 300,000, but
it still establishes the fact that there was a massacre.
It
was not until the 1980's that the Chinese began a serious study
of the Massacre. Their painstaking research of burial records,
documents, and interviews, concluded that the massacre took the
lives of nearly 300,00, thus corroborating the Tokyo War Crimes
Tribunal. The reason that these numbers are important is because
the nationalist movement in Japan is trying to deny the legitimacy
of the Tribunal. For them the war was a ptriotic and just struggle
against Western domination. The Chinese argue in support of the
Tribunal's findings with the political intent to remind Asians
that Japan has been and still is a threat to Asian nations.
It
should not be surprising that in the late 80's and early 90's,
Chinese Americans began to study the Nanjing Incident. The highly
acclaimed journalistic publication, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten
Holocaust of World War Two ( New York: Penguin, 1997) by Iris
Chang, popularized the history of Nanking's terror by narrating
many individual and group accounts of atrocity. She declared that
the cause for such Japanese atrocities laid within the Japanese
character–not just Japan's political and international goals.
She stretched her argument by charging the Emperor and his family
with complicity in the killings. Her greatest contribution was
the discovery of the leaders in Nanking's International Community
who saved thousands of Chinese from certain death and extermination
by offering them sanctuary within the borders of the foreign settlement.
Her descriptions of the heroic actions of John Rabe, and Wihelmina
Vautrin reveal that the Western community saved, according to
her estimate, 200,000 to 300,000 human beings. Ms. Chang concludes
that upwards to 350,000 Chinese lives were destroyed by the Japanese.
Without the foreigners, the toll would have been much higher.
The
Massacre of Nanking has inspired artistic representations. Meira
Chad's A Choice of Evils (London: The Orion Publishing Company,
1996) voluminous novel relates the personal struggles of missionaries,
Chinese, and Japanese caught up in the turmoil and tragedy of
Nanking's Holocaust. The International Committee to Study the
Nanking Massacre has commissioned a symphonic requiem to honor
and memorialize the victims of Japan's policies in Nanking in
particular, and Asia in general. In addition Chinese and Japanese
artists have created artistic representations of the killings.
More generally, the International Citizens' Forum on War Crimes
and Redress consists of members from throughout Asia who are dedicated
to researching Japan's atrocities in China and other theaters
of war. Gradually, the memory of the Nanking Massacre is becoming
part of the public domain.
Bibliography:
Fogel, Joshua. Ed. The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000.
Fogel, Joshua. Book review of Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanjing.
Journal of Asian Studies, 57, no.3 (August 1998): 818-819.
Honda, Katsuichi. The Nanjing Massacre: A Japanese Journalist
Confronts Japan's National Shame. Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe,
1999.
Yang, DaQing. "Convergence or Divergence? Recent Historical
Writings on the Rape of Nanjing." American Historical Review,
(June, 1999): 842-865.
