I had to put Iris Chang’s “The Rape of Nanking” down several times while reading. While the story at hand was gripping and intensely provocative, the description of severed breasts being nailed to the walls, men being forced to rape their daughters and pregnant women being bayoneted and disemboweled, was often too much for me to bear. It led me to think: “How in the hell did this Japanese WW2 story go unheard?”
In case you’re unfamiliar — as Chang discovers many Westerners are — “The Rape of Nanking” was a Japanese WW2 massacre of Chinese soldiers and civilians. “Massacre” is putting it lightly, however, as Chang discovers in addition to the 300,000 killed, 20,000–80,000 Chinese women were raped.
This included the elderly, children as young as 10-years-old and virgins who would often satisfy upwards of 20 Japanese soldiers at a time.
Not to mention killing prisoners of war and torturing Chinese soldiers and civilians. Methods ranged from crucifixion and mutilation to pushing hordes of people into pits and setting them on fire.
A Japanese Master Race?
The horrors of Nanking only make up 1/3 of the book however, as Chang tries to understand the Japanese psychology that could’ve permitted such an atrocity. Many are familiar with Hitler’s idea of the “Master Race,” but what’s surprising is that the Japanese took that concept a few steps further in WW2.
From the adolescent level, children were taught that Emperor Hirohito was a God. School teachers would promote Japanese ultranationalism while expounding Chinese racism.
“When you grow up you’ll have to kill one hundred, two hundred chinks!” One teacher says to his student.
The Japanese military — which believed in Bushidō code or the way of the samurai — viewed their mission as a crusade to “save” the rest of the Eastern world. General Matsui Iwane of the Japanese regime made the military’s delusion clear when he compared their war with China as a “struggle between two brothers within the Asian Family.”
“We do not do this because we hate them, but on the contrast, we love them too much,” telling his supporters before he left for war in 1937. “It is just the same as in a family when an elder brother has taken all that he can stand from his ill-behaved younger brother and has to chastise him…”
Japanese WW2: Final Thoughts
“The Rape of Nanking” is a book I’ll never forget.
Especially when discussing WW2. A war that is more commonly known for Nazi wickedness and two bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Seldom is this Japanese WW2 story ever discussed.
Chang doesn’t even mention (by name) Unit 731; a Japanese group that performed animalistic experiments on live human-subjects, akin to the Nazis in the concentration camps.
No, “The Rape of Nanking” doesn’t make good dinner conversation, and turning the pages is brutal. But Chang makes it explicitly clear that this book was written with a famous George Santayana quote in mind:
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
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Great Article. I know exactly how you feel, and agree 100%. There were two more events in WW2 Japan that never gets any attention either, (when compared to Germany), and one was the Japanese takeover of Manila, in the Philippines. (Brutal to say the least!) The second, and one of the most gruesome, devastating events in human history I’ve ever read about: The Firebombing of Tokyo. Many know that we, (along with every nation involved in WW2), carpet-bombed entire cities, which was inhumane. Few know that we once, for about 3 days if my memory still serves, “carpet-bombed” Tokyo with so much Napalm that the rivers in Tokyo boiled. People jumped in to escape the flames and sheer terror of burning alive, only to die from being cooked… From in inside out.
I assume you’re not a fan of Bill O’Reilly, (and I shouldn’t make that assumption of you without asking you), but I love your work and read all your stories. So I think it’s safe to assume here you’re a Democrat. Why does this matter? I don’t care if a person is a conservative, Boston-Tea-Party Republican, or a shirtless Bernie Sanders Liberal, wiping College Debt off the face of the world. Everyone is welcome to “sit on my yard couch” so to speak, as long as they aren’t an asshole. But back to why the hell I’m asking.
Well, it’s a book recommendation I have for you of course!
My father loves to read as does yours, but when I gave this same recommendation to him, and I know he’d loved it if given a chance, he just said “I’ll check it out.” There it sits to this day 5 years later. The reason…
He HATES Bill O’Reilly, and he’s a devout Democrat. Feels like it’s a betrayal or something.
His loss.
You should check out: “Killing the Rising Sun” By Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard. I think you will enjoy it very much.
The details, (and accuracy of them), these two authors were able to instill in the pages of this book is chilling, to say the least. They actually get you to feel the flames burning your flesh off your bones right alongside the Japanese people that suffered from the Napalm firestorm that rained down on them for days. You feel a mother’s utter devastation of losing her baby to “competition’s among Japanese soldiers” during their free time in between brutal, guerrilla-style-combat, seeing who could throw a baby against a wall and kill it from the furthest away. (Happened in Manila)
Or the Beheading Competitions of China, in which “The Japan Times” posted the soldiers’ records and tallies in their newspaper, hailing the record holder like we would Jackie Robinson. They made it a national past-time in WW2 Japan.
It has nothing, and I mean nothing to do with political beliefs or republican ideology. Which honestly, I was shocked. He just writes great history and stories. This book is right up there, with the one you suggest and discuss in this very article.
In fact, the first time I ever read an account of “The Rape of Nanking” was in O’Rilley’s book, Killing the Rising Sun. If you do, and you enjoy it, he also has Killing Patton, and many others that are just as good, but this one takes the cake. I had a hard time turning the pages sometimes as well.
Screw it, this comment already ran well past what I intended…
So I might as well ask you now.
I wanted to do this via Medium, and not for any work I’ve already published, but I have a few drafts that I’m finishing up, (as well as my website that I’m almost done coding), and I think that they would fit in perfectly with your Publication “The Yard Couch”
If you would consider it, I’ll submit a story through Medium to you the way that your Publication page says to. Then if you decide to accept it, you’re free to do with it as you will. Put it on here, on your Publication. Heck, I don’t even care if you cite me. I just want someone other than my small following, (for some reason none of which seem to be on Medium…), to read my stories.
Plus, it would be an honor to say that I contributed a story to “The Yard Couch”
BTW… Get this shit. My dad read you’re story, this very one I’m commenting to. Then he bought the book you talked about AND RECOMMENDED IT TO ME! lol. Some people never change. I guess he forgot that I am the one that told HIM about the story of “The Rape of Nanking”
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