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

The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II
by Iris Chang

The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II
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Book Summary Information

Author: Iris Chang
Edition: Paperback
Published: 1998-11-01
ISBN: 0140277447
Number of pages: 328
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)

Book Reviews of The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II

Book Review: From a Korean reader with Japanese friends.
Summary: 5 Stars

Reading this book reminded me about the unsightly tragedies that happened in Korea during the wartime as well. I remember my Korean grandmother telling me horrible stories of her childhood as she witnessed the people around her getting killed and bombed from the Japanese.

I am surrounded by Japanese-American and native Japanese friends, and I can say with a certain fact that they are not stupid or ignorant to this history. Also, they are very keen in understanding what has transpired and apologetic about their ancestors doings, but don't feel guilty themselves...for, why should they?

I remember many of my friend's Korean parents would tell me, as I grew up playing at my friend's house, to never play with Japanese people and that they were all cold-hearted. Maybe they were then, because of the pressures of the war, but this is not true now. My point is, we should not blame the current society and spread racist remarks or hatred to the individual people of Japan, but instead show our concerns to the government.

I also think that war makes people inhuman. This is unfortunate, but from the history I've studied, is true. Looking at the Al Qaeda, Nazi, Stalin's slaughters, Darfur, and the constant wars that go on today, it is not the people but the war itself that creates beasts within us.

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

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.
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."

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