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The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II Review

Although there are already hundreds of reviews attesting to the above, i felt i couldn't move on without casting my vote and giving those who (still?!) deny this massacre a resounding slap.

I'm from Singapore and i can assure you that Asians, especially those from countries victimized ( i believe the sorry Jap excuse for waging the war was "to liberate countries from their colonial masters") by the Japs during WWII, were taught in schools that:

1. The Nanking Massacre did indisputably happen;

2. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese (still but a drop in the pail of the total number killed in the entire war), including infants and old women, were raped/slaughtered in cold blood by the Imperial Army then;

3. To this day, more than 60 years after the event, the Japanese government still denies the atrocities committed by its army of "liberation";

4. To this day, many Asians are still angered by, i'd like to think, a minority of Japanese which includes their leaders, who refuse to acknowledge the above facts - much less apologize for them;

5. And to rub salt in the wounds of all, including the Allies, every year the Japanese PM would pay homage to the War Shrine honoring Japanese war criminals to placate a small but vocal constituency;

6. Japanese history text books still don't state facts about Japan's role as a warmonger in WW II.

How many of the 127 million Japanese really know the truth about Japan's crimes in WW II and Nanking? It scares me to even think about it.

I'm only middle aged but i doubt i'll live to see the day when the Japanese PM do a Willy Brandt.

The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II Feature

ISBN13: 9780140277449
Condition: New
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The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II Overview

In December 1937, the Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking. Within weeks, more than 300,000 Chinese civilians were systematically raped, tortured, and murdered--a death toll exceeding that of the atomic blasts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Using extensive interviews with survivors and newly discovered documents, Iris Chang has written what will surely be the definitive history of this horrifying episode. The Rape of Nanking tells the story from three perspectives: of the Japanese soldiers who performed it, of the Chinese civilians who endured it, and of a group of Europeans and Americans who refused to abandon the city and were able to create a safety zone that saved almost 300,000 Chinese. Among these was the Nazi John Rabe, an unlikely hero whom Chang calls the "Oskar Schindler of China" and who worked tirelessly to protect the innocent and publicize the horror. More than just narrating the details of an orgy of violence, The Rape of Nanking analyzes the militaristic culture that fostered in the Japanese soldiers a total disregard for human life. Finally, it tells the appalling story: about how the advent of the Cold War led to a concerted effort on the part of the West and even the Chinese to stifle open discussion of this atrocity. Indeed, Chang characterizes this conspiracy of silence, that persists to this day, as "a second rape."

The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II Specifications

China has endured much hardship in its history, as Iris Chang shows in her ably researched The Rape of Nanking, a book that recounts the horrible events in that eastern Chinese city under Japanese occupation in the late 1930s. Nanking, she writes, served as a kind of laboratory in which Japanese soldiers were taught to slaughter unarmed, unresisting civilians, as they would later do throughout Asia. Likening their victims to insects and animals, the Japanese commanders orchestrated a campaign in which several hundred thousand--no one is sure just how many--Chinese soldiers and noncombatants alike were killed. Chang turns up an unlikely hero in German businessman John Rabe, a devoted member of the Nazi party who importuned Adolf Hitler to intervene and stop the slaughter, and who personally saved the lives of countless residents of Nanking. She also suggests that the Japanese government pay reparations and apologize for its army's horrific acts of 60 years ago.

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Customer Reviews

Horrific story that is a real page turner - ZoSo - boston, ma
This is a Horrific story that is a real page turner. Chang describes, in great detail, the horrors which the Chinese endured at the hands of the Japanese. She brings to light this almost forgotten story of barbarianism. It is summed up niceley and flows well from the begining of the invaion on. Chang chronicals the afemath, what the world saw, and the lasting memories of this holocast without dragging the story out with minute details (which is often seen in many comparable stories)

Christina Rosetti expressed it best, ""We must not look at goblin men, We must not buy their fruits" - Cleo - USA
Christina Rosetti wrote that in the 19th Century but I didn't hear of her poem "Goblin Market" until after Iris Chang passed away. Not coincidentally, her uncle wrote "The Vampyre." If you don't like what the Japanese have done, don't buy their products. I own an Oppo brand (California company) dvd player and I am committed to buying only Mattel/Fisher Price brand toys because so many American brands are now owned by Japanese companies. Don't freak out on Iris Chang's Amazon pages.

This book needs an annotated edition AND it needs to be edited for readability. Why not side by side text with a photograph of the source material. None of her detractors have actually been able to show that she was wrong. In fact, she was surprisingly careful although her writing style seems simplistic and emotional. Maybe she was even cleverer than she was ever given credit for. But I personally need an annotated edition and I need it rewritten. I don't care about negative reviews or any claims that she was mistaken or misrepresented. I wouldn't bother nitpicking but just like the family lineage scrolls lost to so many Overseas Chinese and the abrupt ending of lineage recording as a direct result of the Japanese attempted conquest of China, I need to see the source materials and I don't want to pursue a Ph.d. in order to have access to the source materials. She talked to a lot of people and made a lot of friends including American former Prisoners-of-War of the Japanese. I don't care if it's multi-volumes. I would pay for an annotated set of her work. I'm sure a lot of people would encourage and support such a project.

Mixed feelings - annadanna -
On the one hand, it's a must read. So many people have no idea how brutal and barbaric the Japanese were. Or, for that matter, how brutal war really is.

On the other hand, to tell the story from the point of view of the Japanese and then retell it from the point of view of the Chinese was somewhat tedious and redundant, as if a professor were writing it to fill a semester's worth of study and tests, rather than to chronicle the story of Nanking.

My other complaint is the incessant call for reparations at the end of the book. If everyone in history got reparations for "man's inhumanity to man", we'd all be paying each other and we'd be right back where we started. It was okay to point it out in the book, I guess, but it seems to deserve the description of "incessant."

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Monday, August 30, 2010