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

published	November 1st 1998 by Penguin (Non-Classics)
binding	Paperback
isbn	0140277447 (isbn13: 9780140277449)
pages	328
description	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 horrib...more [close] 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. [close]
date added	02-12-07 edit book

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Bruce rated it:

02/18/08

Read in February, 2008

recommends it for: those interested in historiography

After all the hype, I found this book to be a bit disappointing. It was a bestseller, largely I suspect because it blew the English-language lid off a major Japanese WWII atrocity. The book isn't long -- about 220 pages -- nor does it have much to say about the Rape of Nanking itself, an awful, brutal rampage in which the Japanese army ran amok in the captured city, looting, burning, torturing, and killing over 300,000 (over 400,000?) civilians and disarmed combatants alike and raping (and oth...more After all the hype, I found this book to be a bit disappointing. It was a bestseller, largely I suspect because it blew the English-language lid off a major Japanese WWII atrocity. The book isn't long -- about 220 pages -- nor does it have much to say about the Rape of Nanking itself, an awful, brutal rampage in which the Japanese army ran amok in the captured city, looting, burning, torturing, and killing over 300,000 (over 400,000?) civilians and disarmed combatants alike and raping (and otherwise torturing and/or killing) any post-pubescent female they could find. Though nearly half of the book is spent on narrating the horrific events of the Rape from the perspectives of the Japanese, the Chinese, and foreign nationals ("These courageous men and women created the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone. This is their story." - p. 106), little of this attempts to raise it from the level of metaphoric abstraction ("Few could predict that within months war would march by their very doorsteps -- leaving their homes in flames and their streets drenched with blood." - p. 64) and is told in much the same language as my review.

Individual horrors are mentioned in passing in a way that minimizes their outrage. The extent of the destruction is addressed largely clinically, as in a six-page-long passage ("The Death Toll," at p. 99) which academically contrasts various published estimates of the victim count. Without sensationalizing, this book could have used better chronological narrative to make these unthinkable events comprehensible (see "Bloody Williamson: A Chapter in American Lawlessness" by Paul M. Angle for a fantastic example of how troubled history can be brought to vivid life). Those seeking a gripping, first-hand account of Nanking will probably want to read "The Good German of Nanking: the Diaries of John Rabe" (a work that "Rape" author Iris Chang helped to unearth and for whose discovery and publication she can take partial responsibility).

This is not to say the book is without merit. It is a terrific introduction to a neglected and important piece of history and the conclusion of the book, which examines the attempted suppression of information about the event and analyzes the psychology of the historic cover-up, is fascinating. It is curious that the author does not bring the same realpolitik insight on how the community of nations can turn their backs on an event like this to bear on more contemporary atrocities. In any case, her closing point about the tragic ease with which humanity's thin veneer of civilized behavior is stripped away is ominous and chilling. It echoes Jared Diamond's "Collapse" thesis as an unrelenting scream of terror....less

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Ed rated it:

06/21/08

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in June, 2008

recommends it for: Anyone who is unaware of this incident

Iris Chang committed suicide. I can't help wondering if doing the research for this book didn't create or deepen her depression. She was an obviously passionate person and turning that passion loose on uncovering what really happened in Nanking in December 1937 must have shook her deeply.

Just reading it shook me deeply.

As a history major in college, I was aware of the allegations against the Japanese in WWII, not just in Nanking but all over S.E. Asia. As an ongoing student of WWII an...more Iris Chang committed suicide. I can't help wondering if doing the research for this book didn't create or deepen her depression. She was an obviously passionate person and turning that passion loose on uncovering what really happened in Nanking in December 1937 must have shook her deeply.

Just reading it shook me deeply.

As a history major in college, I was aware of the allegations against the Japanese in WWII, not just in Nanking but all over S.E. Asia. As an ongoing student of WWII and someone who has traveled all over S.E. Asia, I am even more convinced that the level of brutality that the Japanese visited on the "liberated" peoples of the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere was matched or exceeded only by the Holocaust in Europe.

I, too, have talked to survivors of the Japanese occupation in the Philippines, Indonesia, Hong Kong, China, and Malaysia and their stories, while not as dramatic as Chang's, were nevertheless riveting and horrifying. I stood in the hallway of what was once a Girl's high school in Manila where 400 young women were raped and eventually killed by drunken Japanese soldiers who expected to die as the Americans approached Manila. I met an old nun who still could not keep the tears from her eyes as she related the story.

So, I have no problem believing that the incidents Chang chronicles and the eyewitness and diary accounts she relates are true. I am also enough of a historian to recognize that she wrote the book as a journalist not as a historian. That belief does not lessen the importance of what she has done in trying to lift the veil from an episode the Japanese would love to have the world forget.

That some Japanese continue to deny, not only the brutality of the rape of Nanking, but also the brutality they visited on every country they occupied is a stain on the rest of the Japanese people. Ahmadinejad denying the Holocaust is a joke compared to Japanese officials and academics denying the Rape of Nanking.

This book is also a must read for anyone who believes that these kinds of brutal happenings are anomalies for as Chang points out in the epilogue, "The Rape of Nanking should be perceived as a cautionary tale...." She goes on to say that human beings are capable of the worst kind of inhuman behavior if the circumstances are right.

Our civilization is a thin veneer....less

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