The Nanking Massacre and Iris Chang's Book The Rape of Nanking

[JoeB131]

You're sorry you weren't around to piss yourself and hide under the bed? Yeah, the Greatest Generation really missed out on a hero like you. YOUR greatest achievement has been acting out as an uneducated racist on the internet. Way to go, champ.

Again, I have a DD214, what do you have, other than that restraining order the Asian girls at your school swore out?

 

[mikegriffith1]

Here is one of the better short videos on some of the indications of fakery/alteration/mislabeling of photos that are included in most books that espouse the huge-massacre theory:



The video includes shadow analysis and other analysis to prove that some of the photos were not even taken--could not have been taken--during the time when the massacred occurred (mid-December to mid-January/mid-February).

The video page comes with a link to a PDF that provides a more detailed analysis.

Someone who read part of this thread e-mailed me and asked me to summarize my position on the Nanking Massacre. I told them I think my position is identical to the one expressed by Justice Radhabinod Pal of India in his dissent to the IMTFE ruling:

Keeping in view everything that can be said against the evidence adduced in this case in this respect and making every possible allowance for propaganda and exaggeration, the evidence is still overwhelming that atrocities were perpetrated by the members of the Japanese armed forces against the civilian population of some of the territories occupied by them as also against the prisoners of war. (p. 609)​

The only real issue is the scale of the massacre. I believe that around 12,000 civilians, and possibly as many as 40,000 civilians, were killed by the Japanese in Nanking and in the immediate surrounding area (not the gigantic area claimed by Iris Chang). I think the number was in the lower part of that range, but I would not be shocked to learn one day that it was closer to 40,000.

A related issue is who was punished for the massacre. I think it was wrong to punish General Matsui with the death penalty. He wasn't even near Nanking and was seriously ill for part of the period when the massacre occurred. I think some of the division and brigade commanders deserved severe punishment, in some cases capital punishment, and I think the Japanese army should have made a concerted effort to identify the soldiers who committed the crimes. But I think it was wrong to hold General Matsui "responsible" for the massacre, given the fact that he was not even in the area and was seriously ill part of the time, given that he issued clear orders before the battle that prohibited such crimes, given that he was outraged and disgusted when he heard about the massacre, given that he severely reprimanded the division commanders for the massacre, and given that he ordered that the guilty parties be punished.

 

[JoeB131]

The only real issue is the scale of the massacre. I believe that around 12,000 civilians, and possibly as many as 40,000 civilians, were killed by the Japanese in Nanking and in the immediate surrounding area (not the gigantic area claimed by Iris Chang). I think the number was in the lower part of that range, but I would not be shocked to learn one day that it was closer to 40,000.

Not sure why you think it makes a difference at all, but I'll take Ms. Chang's studious research over your Axis Apologetics any day.

A related issue is who was punished for the massacre. I think it was wrong to punish General Matsui with the death penalty. He wasn't even near Nanking and was seriously ill for part of the period when the massacre occurred. I think some of the division and brigade commanders deserved severe punishment, in some cases capital punishment, and I think the Japanese army should have made a concerted effort to identify the soldiers who committed the crimes. But I think it was wrong to hold General Matsui "responsible" for the massacre, given the fact that he was not even in the area and was seriously ill part of the time, given that he issued clear orders before the battle that prohibited such crimes, given that he was outraged and disgusted when he heard about the massacre, given that he severely reprimanded the division commanders for the massacre, and given that he ordered that the guilty parties be punished.

Oooh. Severe reprimands for a massacre of 40K to 300K people? Wow. That'll teach them!!! Did he also stamp their meal cards "No Dessert"?

Point was, he was in command. If he were an effective commander, his subordinates would have known a massacre on that scale was going to get them in a lot more trouble than a "reprimand"

You see, funny thing, when I was in the service, I had commanders who were laid back, and commanders who were real hard asses... and you knew what you could get away with and what you couldn't.

The fact that guys from Division Commanders down to average soldiers thought they could get away with wide-scale rape and murder of civilians tells me exactly what kind of officer General Matsui was.

The reality - after the Massacre, the Imperial High Command SACKED Matsui. So what kind of absolute bastard was he that other genocidal war criminals were like "Damn!!!!"

The only crime in his trial is that he didn't have a lot more company on the gallows.

 

[mikegriffith1]

The only real issue is the scale of the massacre. I believe that around 12,000 civilians, and possibly as many as 40,000 civilians, were killed by the Japanese in Nanking and in the immediate surrounding area (not the gigantic area claimed by Iris Chang). I think the number was in the lower part of that range, but I would not be shocked to learn one day that it was closer to 40,000.

Not sure why you think it makes a difference at all

All kidding aside, you make some of the dumbest, most bizarre arguments I've ever seen made in a public forum. You're not sure why killing 300,000 people would be much worse than killing 40,000 or 12,000 people? I mean, really? You really don't understand why "it makes a difference at all"?

Well, let me tell you why: Because any rational, even modestly educated person understands that killing 300,000 people is a lot worse than killing 40,000 or 12,000 people.

but I'll take Ms. Chang's studious research over your Axis Apologetics any day.

That's because you're consumed with anti-Japanese hatred and have read next to nothing on the massacre. If you had done even a little bit of serious research, you would know that even many scholars who lean toward the higher end of the death toll range for the massacre have acknowledged that Chang's book was poorly researched and tainted with clear bias. Here's just one example, from a review by historian Robert Entenmann:

Chang seems unable to differentiate between some members of the ultranationalist fringe and other Japanese. . . .

Moreover, although Chang explicitly rejects explanations of national character, her own ethnic prejudice implicitly pervades her book. Her explanations are, to a large extent, based on unexamined ethnic stereotypes. . . .

The Japanese historical background Chang presents is clichd, simplistic, stereotyped, and often inaccurate. (Entenmann on Chang, 'The Rape Of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II' | H-Asia | H-Net)​

In fact, some large-massacre historians have complained that the numerous errors and wild accusations in Chang's book have made it possible for the no-massacre school to look more credible.

A related issue is who was punished for the massacre. I think it was wrong to punish General Matsui with the death penalty. He wasn't even near Nanking and was seriously ill for part of the period when the massacre occurred. I think some of the division and brigade commanders deserved severe punishment, in some cases capital punishment, and I think the Japanese army should have made a concerted effort to identify the soldiers who committed the crimes. But I think it was wrong to hold General Matsui "responsible" for the massacre, given the fact that he was not even in the area and was seriously ill part of the time, given that he issued clear orders before the battle that prohibited such crimes, given that he was outraged and disgusted when he heard about the massacre, given that he severely reprimanded the division commanders for the massacre, and given that he ordered that the guilty parties be punished.

Oooh. Severe reprimands for a massacre of 40K to 300K people? Wow. That'll teach them!!! Did he also stamp their meal cards "No Dessert"?

You're a high school student, aren't you? Did you miss the part where he also "ordered that the guilty parties be punished"? At that point he had only heard partial accounts of what had had happened, but even those disgusted and outraged him. He wanted the matter investigated and the guilty parties punished. But you're so blinded by anti-Japanese hatred that you don't care.

Point was, he was in command. If he were an effective commander, his subordinates would have known a massacre on that scale was going to get them in a lot more trouble than a "reprimand."

Yeah, of course you'd say that, never mind the contrary facts that I've presented to you several times. You just keep repeating your arguments without dealing with the facts that refute them. Matsui was not just in command of the forces in Nanking but of other forces in China. He was not even in Nanking at the time and was seriously ill for part of the period when the massacre occurred.

You see, funny thing, when I was in the service, I had commanders who were laid back, and commanders who were real hard asses... and you knew what you could get away with and what you couldn't.

The fact that guys from Division Commanders down to average soldiers thought they could get away with wide-scale rape and murder of civilians tells me exactly what kind of officer General Matsui was.

The reality - after the Massacre, the Imperial High Command SACKED Matsui. So what kind of absolute bastard was he that other genocidal war criminals were like "Damn!!!!"

The only crime in his trial is that he didn't have a lot more company on the gallows.

Oh, blah, blah, blah with more drivel based on your hatred of all things Japanese. This drivel shows you know nothing about the command structure and operations of the Japanese army and how the Japanese army operated in China at the time. And I've already pointed out to you that over 100 Japanese soldiers were court martialed for rape and murder in Nanking and that the General Staff sent General Homma to investigate the matter and apologize to the Western diplomats in Nanking for what had occurred.

Yes, the General Staff did recall Matsui, but they did not punish him because they knew that he was not to blame for the massacre, that the soldiers who committed the massacre acted directly contrary to his orders, and that he had taken steps to investigate the matter and punish those who had committed criminal acts.

A large part of the reason that Matsui was recalled was his advanced age and his health issues. He had been retired for many years before he was called up to active service again to take command in China.

No matter what, you're not going to give credit to any Japanese general for being decent and human and for trying to do the right thing. You're just going to demonize any and every Japanese general and politician because you're consumed with anti-Japanese hatred and have no interest in dealing with this subject in an honest, objective manner.

And, finally, it's interesting to note that while you excoriate the Japanese and refuse to give them any credit for good or decent act, you take a very different approach when it comes to Mao Tsetung, the worst mass murderer in human history, and the Communist thugs who helped him impose his murderous regime on the Chinese people. Oh, boy, when it comes to those monsters, you can't bring youself to utter anything more than the blandest, limpest, equivocal, mildest criticism, while at the same time you make the horrendous claim that Mao brought prosperity, stability, and respect to China. ​

 

[mikegriffith1]

A related issue is who was punished for the massacre. I think it was wrong to punish General Matsui with the death penalty. He wasn't even near Nanking and was seriously ill for part of the period when the massacre occurred. I think some of the division and brigade commanders deserved severe punishment, in some cases capital punishment, and I think the Japanese army should have made a concerted effort to identify the soldiers who committed the crimes. But I think it was wrong to hold General Matsui "responsible" for the massacre, given the fact that he was not even in the area and was seriously ill part of the time, given that he issued clear orders before the battle that prohibited such crimes, given that he was outraged and disgusted when he heard about the massacre, given that he severely reprimanded the division commanders for the massacre, and given that he ordered that the guilty parties be punished.

Oooh. Severe reprimands for a massacre of 40K to 300K people? Wow. That'll teach them!!! Did he also stamp their meal cards "No Dessert"?

Well, uh, yeah, what else was he supposed to do at that point? Within the preceding few hours, he had heard rumors, mainly from the Japanese diplomatic staff in Nanking, that there had been numerous cases of murder, rape, and theft committed by some Japanese soldiers in the city. He had just arrived to march in the victory parade in Nanking. There had been no investigation yet. At that point, he didn’t know which units’ soldiers had been involved, how widespread these cases had been, who knew what, how reliable the reports were, etc., etc. Yet, even then, when he reprimanded the divisional commanders in his meeting with them before he left Nanking to return to Shanghai, his reprimand was so severe that it shocked the staff officers who attended the meeting.

And just to provide some added perspective on General Matsui’s reprimand, if you add up all the cases described in the letters that the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone sent to the Japanese embassy in Nanking, and if we assume that the diplomats described to Matsui every single case from the letters, here are the cases and their numbers that he would have heard about: 49 cases of murder, 311 cases of rape, 390 cases of abduction, and 179 cases of looting and vandalism.

Yes, those are the total numbers of those cases that are described in the letters of protest from the Safety Zone committee members, and those letters were based on reports received from Chinese Nationalists in the city and on events that some of the Westerners in the city had witnessed firsthand (including Rabe, Wilson, and Vautrin).

Let’s repeat those totals, shall we? 49 cases of murder, 311 cases of rape, 390 cases of abduction, and 179 cases of looting and vandalism. Not tens of thousands of murders, much less hundreds of thousands of murders. And not thousands of rapes, much less tens of thousands of rapes. Anyone can go through those protest letters and add up the numbers themselves. Here is a collection of the letters: The Nanking Massacre Archival Project: Documents | Yale University Library. All such letters were published in the famous 1939 book Documents of the Nanking Safety Zone. And here's a helpful article on those and other contemporary and near-contemporary primary sources: https://chinajapan.org/articles/14/14.03-23askew.pdf.

So before anyone knew what they were supposed to say, and before the Chinese Nationalist propaganda machine kicked into high hear on the issue, none of the Westerners in Nanking said a word about a gigantic massacre of 300,000-plus people. As mentioned earlier, James McCallum, who drove all over the city during the first weeks of the occupation, put the maximum number killed at 10,000, and he was reporting what he had heard from others—that “as many as” 10,000 people had been killed--and clearly agreed with them. And, coincidentally enough, that’s almost identical to the number that Smythe and Bates reached after they studied the burial records: they said about 12,000, with about 1,000 of those being deaths caused by crossfire, and it's likely that quite a few Chinese soldiers who had shed their uniforms were included in those burials and were counted as civilians.

And, by the way, just FYI, one of the reasons that General Matsui was so outraged by the reports of misconduct that he received, besides the fact that he was a decent person, was that before the war he had been active in promoting better Chinse-Japanese relations. He spent considerable time in China before the war and even helped set up the Greater Asia Association in China.

 

[JoeB131]

All kidding aside, you make some of the dumbest, most bizarre arguments I've ever seen made in a public forum. You're not sure why killing 300,000 people would be much worse than killing 40,000 or 12,000 people? I mean, really? You really don't understand why "it makes a difference at all"?

Well, let me tell you why: Because any rational, even modestly educated person understands that killing 300,000 people is a lot worse than killing 40,000 or 12,000 people.

After a certain point, it just becomes a number, buddy. The Japanese were ruthless, murdering raping bastard at the "Inappropriate Touching of Nanking".

That's because you're consumed with anti-Japanese hatred and have read next to nothing on the massacre.

Naw, i love Japanese people. I even dated a Japanese gal once. I'm also half German (my dad was born in the Rhineland). But the Japanese and Germans were absolute fucking evil in World War II.

Here's just one example, from a review by historian Robert Entenmann:

Wow.. Another White Guy telling a person of color that it's no big deal. I kind of wish we'd start treating Japanese apologists like Holocaust deniers.

Chang seems unable to differentiate between some members of the ultranationalist fringe and other Japanese. . . .

Mostly because the "other Japanese" are like the "Good Germans". The Nazis or the "Ultra-Nationalists" were only a small fraction of the German or Japanese nations, but everyone else JUST KIND OF WENT ALONG WITH IT. Nobody said, "Wait a minute, this is wrong." Oh, wait, a few Germans did when Germany started LOSING the war, but the Japanese, man, they were ready to fight and die to the last man. I consider the person who stands by and says nothing to be JUST AS GUILTY as the guy who engages in the slaughter.

You're a high school student, aren't you?

Nope, I'm 58 and really sick of fascist cocksuckers like you.

Did you miss the part where he also "ordered that the guilty parties be punished"? At that point he had only heard partial accounts of what had had happened, but even those disgusted and outraged him. He wanted the matter investigated and the guilty parties punished. But you're so blinded by anti-Japanese hatred that you don't care.

Again, you hear a partial account, you go out and find out what happened. A least one contributing factor to the Really Bad Date of Nanking was that Mutsui wanted to have a triumphal entry into the city, but his soldiers really didn't have anywhere to put all the Chinese POW's, so they killed them so they could make the big parade.

Yeah, of course you'd say that, never mind the contrary facts that I've presented to you several times. You just keep repeating your arguments without dealing with the facts that refute them. Matsui was not just in command of the forces in Nanking but of other forces in China. He was not even in Nanking at the time and was seriously ill for part of the period when the massacre occurred.

Okay, guy, the "I had my mind on other things" excuse won't fly. The Nanking operation was KIND OF A BIG DEAL. Nanking was the capital of the Republic of China. Taking it was supposed to break the back of Peanut's government. That's why the massacre was a big deal. It was meant as exactly what it was.... you murder and rape the shit out of a lot of people and break their will to resist. Sounds good on paper, never really works out well in real life.

And I've already pointed out to you that over 100 Japanese soldiers were court martialed for rape and murder in Nanking and that the General Staff sent General Homma to investigate the matter and apologize to the Western diplomats in Nanking for what had occurred.

"OOOOOOhhhh, So Solly we killl all those people. Most apologizing for terrible thing".

Fucking please. Sending one War Criminal to apologize for another war criminal. The good things was, at the end of the war, Homma AND Mutsui ended up at the business end of a noose!

No matter what, you're not going to give credit to any Japanese general for being decent and human and for trying to do the right thing. You're just going to demonize any and every Japanese general and politician because you're consumed with anti-Japanese hatred and have no interest in dealing with this subject in an honest, objective manner.

No, I'm not going to give ANY of them a pass. Certainly not war criminals like Mutsui and Homma. Not a guy like Yamamoto who knew the war was a stupid idea, but went ahead and attacked Pearl Harbor anyway. The best thing we did for Japan was hold it's leaders to account.

And, finally, it's interesting to note that while you excoriate the Japanese and refuse to give them any credit for good or decent act, you take a very different approach when it comes to Mao Tsetung, the worst mass murderer in human history, and the Communist thugs who helped him impose his murderous regime on the Chinese people. Oh, boy, when it comes to those monsters, you can't bring youself to utter anything more than the blandest, limpest, equivocal, mildest criticism, while at the same time you make the horrendous claim that Mao brought prosperity, stability, and respect to China.

Because - again- internal matter. After a century of imperialist humiliation, China rose up and broke free. And yes, in that process, there was a lot of blood spilled. The Chinese people STILL revere Mao, even if they aren't so sold on Communism.

Um, yeah, China is a great power today. Mao had a lot to do with it. And in the process of unifying and building his country, he had to bust up a lot of faces. Probably made a lot worse by the fact we kept trying to fuck with him until Nixon finally accepted reality and realized he was someone we could work with.


.

 

[JoeB131]

So before anyone knew what they were supposed to say, and before the Chinese Nationalist propaganda machine kicked into high hear on the issue, none of the Westerners in Nanking said a word about a gigantic massacre of 300,000-plus people.

Well, it's not like they were killing White People or something. If they were, we'd never fucking hear the end of it. Every Producer in Hollywood would be treating us to movies about it every year like we all have to suffer through depressing movies about the Holocaust.

I think I've seen one movie on the Inappropriate Touching of Nanking, and it was mostly told through the perspective of white people.

And, by the way, just FYI, one of the reasons that General Matsui was so outraged by the reports of misconduct that he received, besides the fact that he was a decent person, was that before the war he had been active in promoting better Chinse-Japanese relations. He spent considerable time in China before the war and even helped set up the Greater Asia Association in China.

Ah, yes, he was active in that. The various incarnation of the "Co-Prosperity Sphere" where the Japanese found QUISLINGS in every country they invaded and looted.

Mutsai wasn't a "decent" person, he was a cocksucking murderer who got put at the end of a rope where he belonged. It's just a pity he didn't have more company.

 

[mikegriffith1]

So before anyone knew what they were supposed to say, and before the Chinese Nationalist propaganda machine kicked into high hear on the issue, none of the Westerners in Nanking said a word about a gigantic massacre of 300,000-plus people.

Well, it's not like they were killing White People or something. If they were, we'd never hear the end of it. Every Producer in Hollywood would be treating us to movies about it every year like we all have to suffer through depressing movies about the Holocaust.

I think I've seen one movie on the Inappropriate Touching of Nanking, and it was mostly told through the perspective of white people.

And, by the way, just FYI, one of the reasons that General Matsui was so outraged by the reports of misconduct that he received, besides the fact that he was a decent person, was that before the war he had been active in promoting better Chinse-Japanese relations. He spent considerable time in China before the war and even helped set up the Greater Asia Association in China.

Ah, yes, he was active in that. The various incarnation of the "Co-Prosperity Sphere" where the Japanese found QUISLINGS in every country they invaded and looted.

Mutsai wasn't a "decent" person, he was a murderer who got put at the end of a rope where he belonged. It's just a pity he didn't have more company.

Because - again- internal matter. After a century of imperialist humiliation, China rose up and broke free. And yes, in that process, there was a lot of blood spilled. The Chinese people STILL revere Mao, even if they aren't so sold on Communism.

Oh, wow. Let me read that again. Surely I misread it. Hold on. . . .

Nope, you actually did say that when the Communists came to power in China, China "broke free"! I'm going to quote this at least once a month for the foreseeable future. So your idea of "breaking free" is to have a murderous Communist tyranny take over, a tyranny that kills over 30 million people and sends at least a million others to forced-labor camps.

China would have been much better off and would have suffered far, far fewer deaths under Nationalist or Japanese rule.

By the way, I'm *still* waiting for you to provide evidence to back up your spurious claims (1) that the Communists fought the Japanese as much as/more than the Nationalists did; (2) that with Iris Chang's version of the massacre in full swing, somehow the tens of thousands of people who returned to Nanking starting in late December did so because "they thought it was safe"; (3) that FDR's draconian sanctions on Japan in the fact of Japan's repeated efforts to make peace had plenty of precedents (you still haven't named one, much less several); (4) that the Western observers in Nanking were all just a bunch of people who stayed in their houses and thus did not really know what they were talking about; and (5) that Mao Tsetung brought prosperity, stability, and respect to China when he took over (funny how you defend Mao but excoriate decent, honorable men like Matsui and Homma).

 

[JoeB131]

Oh, wow. Let me read that again. Surely I misread it. Hold on. . . .

Nope, you actually did say that when the Communists came to power in China, China "broke free"! I'm going to quote this at least once a month for the foreseeable future. So your idea of "breaking free" is to have a murderous Communist tyranny take over, a tyranny that kills over 30 million people and sends at least a million others to forced-labor camps.

They killed nowhere near 30 million and most of the people they DID kill were collaborating with Peanut or the Japs... Shit, they didn't even kill Puyi, even though that fucker totally had it coming.

China would have been much better off and would have suffered far, far fewer deaths under Nationalist or Japanese rule.

Given the Chinese people threw the Japanese and Nationalists out, they didn't agree.

y the way, I'm *still* waiting for you to provide evidence to back up your spurious claims

Why. Your stupid Mormon ass would shit your magic underwear if anyone challenged your racist world view.

 

[JoeB131]

(funny how you defend Mao but excoriate decent, honorable men like Matsui and Homma).

You should ask survivors of the Bataan Death march how honorable Homma was. They referred to him as "The Beast of Bataan."

Oh, yeah, and he was forced to retire because he wasn't enough of a ruthless cocksucker.

Thankfully, this story has a "happy ending".

On February 11, 1946, Homma was convicted of all counts and sentenced "to be shot to death with musketry",[16] which is considered to be more honorable than a sentence of death by hanging.[9] Homma's wife visited Douglas MacArthur to urge a careful review of her husband's case.[9] MacArthur affirmed the tribunal's sentence, and Homma was executed by firing squad by American forces on April 3, 1946, outside Manila.[12]

 

[mikegriffith1]

Regarding the ludicrous claim that there were 600,000 people left in Nanking when the Japanese took the city, we should keep in mind that on November 14, nearly a month before the city fell, the Nationalist Government ordered all women and children to leave Nanking, which meant the departure of at least half of the city’s 1 million residents. We should also keep in mind that the mass exodus from the city, seen by many Western observers, continued until December 8, when the Chinese army closed all the gates of the walled city.

On January 13, Chancellor Scharffenberg reported from Nanking to the German Embassy that as of that date the population of the city was about (“circa”) 200,000, that nearly everyone was in the Safety Zone, and that most of the suburbs had been burned by the Chinese, not the Japanese:

The suburbs were burned down almost in their entirety by the Chinese [as part of a scorched earth policy] and the center of the city has largely been burned down by the Japanese. No one lives there now. The rest of the population--circa 200,000--is confined to the Safety Zone. . . . The streets outside the Zone are deserted. (https://chinajapan.org/articles/13.2/13.2askew2-20.pdf)​

By the way, an indication that the Japanese force that took Nanking was not massive but was no more than about 70,000 in size is the fact that entire division-sized units of Chinese troops were able to sneak out of the city and through Japanese lines after the Japanese occupied the city (Peter Harmsen, Nanjing: Battle for a Doomed City, Kindle Edition, loc. 4254). The Japanese simply did not have enough troops to impose a dragnet around the city.

This, in turn, casts further doubt on Iris Chang’s fantastic claim that the area of the massacre included the six counties around Nanking, an area the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined!

 

[JoeB131]

Regarding the ludicrous claim that there were 600,000 people left in Nanking when the Japanese took the city, we should keep in mind that on November 14, nearly a month before the city fell, the Nationalist Government ordered all women and children to leave Nanking, which meant the departure of at least half of the city’s 1 million residents. We should also keep in mind that the mass exodus from the city, seen by many Western observers, continued until December 8, when the Chinese army closed all the gates of the walled city.

Okay, Axis Mikey, now you are just getting silly.

Most of the residents of Nanking in 1937 didn't have cars. How far were they going to get on foot, exactly, with women and children in tow? Where were they going to go that had food and shelter?

By the way, an indication that the Japanese force that took Nanking was not massive but was no more than about 70,000 in size is the fact that entire division-sized units of Chinese troops were able to sneak out of the city and through Japanese lines after the Japanese occupied the city (Peter Harmsen, Nanjing: Battle for a Doomed City, Kindle Edition, loc. 4254). The Japanese simply did not have enough troops to impose a dragnet around the city.

This, in turn, casts further doubt on Iris Chang’s fantastic claim that the area of the massacre included the six counties around Nanking, an area the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined!

Well, no, not really. It's just not that big of an area. The point is, the soldiers had vehicles and training and the ability to escape. That's not quite the same as a family living there, who knew damned well whatever they had, if they left it, wouldn't be there when they got back. So most of them probably didn't leave.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Regarding the ludicrous claim that there were 600,000 people left in Nanking when the Japanese took the city, we should keep in mind that on November 14, nearly a month before the city fell, the Nationalist Government ordered all women and children to leave Nanking, which meant the departure of at least half of the city’s 1 million residents. We should also keep in mind that the mass exodus from the city, seen by many Western observers, continued until December 8, when the Chinese army closed all the gates of the walled city.

Okay, Axis Mikey, now you are just getting silly.

No, you're about to stick your foot deep into your mouth again because you don't know what you're talking about. It is comical that you, of all people, would talk about anyone being "silly," given the jaw-dropping howlers you've spewed in this and other threads.

Most of the residents of Nanking in 1937 didn't have cars. How far were they going to get on foot, exactly, with women and children in tow? Where were they going to go that had food and shelter?

Oh, boy. . . . Just oh boy. . . . This isn't as absurd as some of your other arguments, but it ranks right up there with the worst and the silliest. The miles and miles of lines of refugees trudging on the roads out of Nanking were described by numerous Western observers. I've cited articles for you that discuss this fact.

You also apparently don't know that quite a few refugees were able to escape by boat, since the Yangtze River runs right by Nanking. There were also these things called trains back then, and a number of refugees took trains away from the city. How can you not know this stuff?

Furthermore, there are numerous cases where huge numbers of refugees traveled hundreds of miles on foot to escape from anticipated destruction and tyranny. Good grief, how can you not know this? Again, what Cracker Jack box did you get your history degree from?

By the way, an indication that the Japanese force that took Nanking was not massive but was no more than about 70,000 in size is the fact that entire division-sized units of Chinese troops were able to sneak out of the city and through Japanese lines after the Japanese occupied the city (Peter Harmsen, Nanjing: Battle for a Doomed City, Kindle Edition, loc. 4254). The Japanese simply did not have enough troops to impose a dragnet around the city.

This, in turn, casts further doubt on Iris Chang’s fantastic claim that the area of the massacre included the six counties around Nanking, an area the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined!

Well, no, not really. It's just not that big of an area.

Uh, no, actually, it is that big of an area. Do you know how to Google a map of that region? Get your mom to show you how.

Those 6 counties were right around the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. Dr. Smythe surveyed 4.5 of those 6 counties in his agricultural survey, an area of 2,438 square miles, which equals an area the size of Delaware plus nearly half of Rhode Island. When you add the 1.5 counties that Smythe did not survey, you get an area of nearly 3,000 square miles--Delaware has 1,955 square miles and Rhode Island has 1,034 square miles.

The point is, the soldiers had vehicles and training and the ability to escape. That's not quite the same as a family living there, who knew damned well whatever they had, if they left it, wouldn't be there when they got back. So most of them probably didn't leave.

Just more of your ignorant myth-defending drivel. Every single solitary primary source put Nanking's population at between 150,000 and 250,000 when the Japanese took the city, and all but one of them said it was no more than 200,000. Dozens of Western observers, including Western journalists, chronicled the massive weeks-long exodus from Nanking. They described seeing miles and miles of refugees trudging on the roads to leave Nanking. Some said the lines of refugees ran "for as far as the eye could see," and this isn't counting the ones who left by boat and train.

But, of course, you can't concede that the evidence overwhelmingly points to a population of around 200,000 as of December 13 because that destroys your 300,000-killed myth. Nor can you admit that the fact that thousands of Chinese began to return to the city a few weeks after it fell clearly suggests that there was no large-scale massacre. According to your version, those people would have been returning at the same time when Japanese soldiers were still wantonly killing thousands of people per day, when the gunfire and screams of these killings were audible for miles, when huge piles of dead bodies were supposedly in plain view all over the place, and when the Japanese controlled all the roads leading to the city.

 

[JoeB131]

Oh, boy. . . . Just oh boy. . . . This isn't as absurd as some of your other arguments, but it ranks right up there with the worst and the silliest. The miles and miles of lines of refugees trudging on the roads out of Nanking were described by numerous Western observers. I've cited articles for you that discuss this fact.

I dismiss anything from Western Observers, to be honest. The west was criminal in it's avoidance of Japanese War Crimes for years before doing anything about them.

What, you killed a bunch of white people at Pearl Harbor, now we are going to get you bastards. Oh, wait, you think Pearl Harbor was justified because FDR wouldn't sell them materials to keep killing other people of color.

Those 6 counties were right around the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. Dr. Smythe surveyed 4.5 of those 6 counties in his agricultural survey, an area of 2,438 square miles, which equals an area the size of Delaware plus nearly half of Rhode Island. When you add the 1.5 counties that Smythe did not survey, you get an area of nearly 3,000 square miles--Delaware has 1,955 square miles and Rhode Island has 1,034 square miles.

Rhode Island and Delaware aren't that big of an area. Fuck Dr. Smythe, the little apologist bastard. Point was, they couldn't have gotten that far on foot.

But, of course, you can't concede that the evidence overwhelmingly points to a population of around 200,000 as of December 13 because that destroys your 300,000-killed myth.

Except the population of Nanking was close to a million before the war started.

Nanking

By 1937, Nanking, which usually boasted a population of about 250,000, had swelled to more than 1 million people. This large population growth might be attributed to refugees fleeing the Japanese forces, running to the nation’s capital.

Though the Chinese outnumbered the invading Japanese troops, the fall of Nanking was a relatively quick event. The Japanese on their way to China had razed the countryside and burned and pillaged all the villages on the way between Shanghai and Nanking. By the time the Japanese were closing in on Nanking, half the population had fled, leaving about 500,000 in the city.

The Japanese did not limit themselves to killing just the soldier prisoners. From the first, Japanese troops scoured the city, searching houses for soldiers and killing the city-dwellers. The next six weeks saw Japanese soldiers committing a huge number of atrocious acts, acts which are now labeled as crimes against humanity. Door to door, soldiers demanded to be let in, only to open fire on the occupants. Chinese captives would be forced to dig graves and bury a group of captives alive, only to be buried by the next group of captive diggers. Others were buried halfway in the ground and attacked by dogs. Japanese soldiers tortured citizens with mutilation, including disembowelment, decapitation, dismemberment, and more creative means. Victims were also pushed into pits, tied together, and burned en masse. Others were forced into the River to freeze to death. Soldiers engaged in decapitation contests which would leave participants exhausted after a days’ sport. For example, coverage in the Japan Advertiser reported that “the score [between two competing soldiers] was: Sub-Lieutenant Mukai, 89, and Sub-Lieutenant Noda, 78” in an article entitled “Sub-Lieutenants in Race to Fell 100 Chinese Running Close Contest.” The contest the article was covering was a decapitation contest held between Japanese soldiers on Chinese prisoners. In total, estimates of the Chinese dead from Nanking alone range from 200,000 to 350,000. The International Military Tribunal of the Far East places the death toll at 260,000. Perhaps even worse than the mass murders was the mass rapes that took place. Anywhere from 20,000 to 80,000 Chinese women are estimated to have been raped. Fathers were forced on daughters and sons on mothers. Women were subjected to gang rape, forced to perform countless sexual acts, and often killed after soldiers tired of them.

THIS IS WHAT YOU ARE DEFENDING, YOUR MORMON COCKSUCKER!!!

 

[mikegriffith1]

Oh, boy. . . . Just oh boy. . . . This isn't as absurd as some of your other arguments, but it ranks right up there with the worst and the silliest. The miles and miles of lines of refugees trudging on the roads out of Nanking were described by numerous Western observers. I've cited articles for you that discuss this fact.

I dismiss anything from Western Observers, to be honest.

Of course you do, because those accounts, written mostly by people who were very pro-Chinese and anti-Japanese, destroy the 300,000-killed myth. And I guess you forgot that all of my Smythe's field workers were Chinese.

What, you killed a bunch of white people at Pearl Harbor, now we are going to get you bastards. Oh, wait, you think Pearl Harbor was justified because FDR wouldn't sell them materials to keep killing other people of color.

I already answered this nonsense. And, uh, aren't white people also "people of color"? Isn't white a color?

Those 6 counties were right around the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. Dr. Smythe surveyed 4.5 of those 6 counties in his agricultural survey, an area of 2,438 square miles, which equals an area the size of Delaware plus nearly half of Rhode Island. When you add the 1.5 counties that Smythe did not survey, you get an area of nearly 3,000 square miles--Delaware has 1,955 square miles and Rhode Island has 1,034 square miles.

Rhode Island and Delaware aren't that big of an area.

3,000 square miles is not that "big of an area"?! Yeah, okay. What a yo-yo.

Screw Dr. Smythe, the little apologist bastard. Point was, they couldn't have gotten that far on foot.

Oh!!!! So now Smythe was a Japanese "apologist"?!!! Not even Iris Chang made such a bonkers idiotic claim.

Point was, they couldn't have gotten that far on foot.

Umm, as I pointed to you in my previous reply, history is full of examples of large groups of refugees traveling long distances on foot. As I also pointed out to you, the miles and miles of lines of refugees on the roads leading from Nanking were documented by numerous contemporary observers, both Western and Chinese.

But, of course, you can't concede that the evidence overwhelmingly points to a population of around 200,000 as of December 13 because that destroys your 300,000-killed myth.

Except the population of Nanking was close to a million before the war started.

Do you suffer from amnesia? I already pointed out to you that Nanking's population was 1 million before the war. I quoted two Western diplomats who noted that 80% of Nanking's 1 million citizens fled the city before the Japanese arrived. I also pointed out that those observations agree with every other primary source that commented on the size of Nanking's population when the city fell.

But, as we have seen, you can't allow yourself to go where the evidence clearly leads on this issue because it destroys your 300,000-killed myth.

Instead, you have to make the ridiculous assumption that 600,000 people were still in Nanking when the Japanese took the city. That would mean that about 540,000 of them were somehow crammed into the 2.39 square miles of the Nanking Safety Zone, since numerous observers, including the Japanese, said that the overwhelming majority of the remaining residents--some sources said 90% of them--were in the safety zone and that the rest of the city was virtually deserted when the Japanese arrived.

 

[CWayne]

I wonder what Iris Chang thought about Chairman Mao's ten year cultural revolution (1966-1976) that killed ten times more than the Japanese did. Maybe Ms. Chang was one of the victims.

I'm thinking you don't really have a point here other than to obfuscate. What Mao did has no bearing on what was done in Nanking.

 

[Picaro]

lol fake history buffs arguing over whose fake history is the least fake. Hilarious.

 

[MaryL]

The claim that the Japanese army killed 300,000 people in Nanking, China, in 1937 became widely accepted with the publication of Chinese author Iris Chang’s book The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II in 1997.

Before we discuss this matter, one thing must be made clear: Killing 20 civilians and/or POWs, much less thousands or hundreds of thousands, is a war crime, and those who take part in such crimes should be severely punished. There is no credible doubt that many of the Japanese soldiers who fought in Nanking committed war crimes and deserved to be punished. What is a “massacre”? I think the killing of “just” a few dozen innocent people constitutes a massacre or an atrocity. I believe that about 40,000 people—soldiers plus civilians—were wrongfully killed in Nanking, so I have no problem with the term Nanking Massacre to describe the crime.

With these stipulations understood, let us look at some facts regarding the 300,000 figure and Chang’s book. The points below do not address all the problems with the 300,000 figure, but they are a decent introduction to the problems with Chang’s case.

* To provide some context and perspective, even if one assumes that the 300,000 figure is correct, it should be pointed out that the Chinese Nationalists killed at least 400,000 people in Xuzhou in 1938. When the Nationalists were retreating from Xuzhou in June 1938, they purposely breached the southern dyke of the Yellow River in order to flood the Japanese’s path to Wuhan (even though the Japanese were not advancing), and in so doing they killed a bare minimum of 400,000 civilians (Peter Harmsen, Storm Clouds Over the Pacific, 1931-1941, Casemate Publishers, 2018, locs. 1895-1907). This is still the largest, deadliest act of environmental warfare in history.

Some scholars conclude that at least 500,000 innocent civilians were killed in the Yellow River flood, calling 500,000 “the lowest estimate” (Diana Lary, "Drowned Earth: The Strategic Breaching of the Yellow River Dyke, 1938," War in History. April 1, 2001, pp. 191–207, SAGE Journals: Your gateway to world-class research journals). Why didn’t FDR condemn this atrocity? Why haven’t the Nationalist Chinese been subjected to the same kind of withering criticism that the Japanese have endured over Nanking? Why isn’t there a memorial at Xuzhou to honor the 400,000-plus victims of Chinese Nationalist barbarism?

* Nearly all the photos in Chang’s book had nothing to do with the Nanking Massacre. Chang either did not know this or deliberately used irrelevant photos to mislead her readers. The Japanese scholar Dr. Ikuhiko Hata, who is widely respected even by some of Chang’s defenders, has done the most to work to discredit the photos. Dr. Joshua Fogel notes,

Hata is largely responsible for discrediting virtually every one of the photographs that adorn the pages of Iris Chang’s book. (“Response to Herbert Bix,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, August 9, 2003, p. 4, https://apjjf.org/-Joshua-A--Fogel/1637/article.pdf)​

* The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), aka the Tokyo Tribunal and the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, spent considerable time on the massacre, and the prosecution offered four figures for the death toll: 100,000, 127,000, 200,000, and 300,000-340,000. The IMTFE seemed to settle on the figure of 200,000.

* In February 1938, just two months after the massacre, the Nationalists’ Central News Agency stated that the Japanese had killed 60,000 to 70,000 POWs in Nanking (Masahiro Yamamoto, Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity, Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000, p. 110). At the same time, an official Nationalist spokesman said that 20,000 civilians had been killed in Nanking (Ikuhiko Hata, "The Nanking Atrocities: Fact and Fable," Japan Echo, August 1998, pp. 47-57).

Yet, four years later, Chiang Kaishek, the Nationalist leader, claimed that 200,000 people had been killed in Nanking (Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, "The Messiness of Historical Reality," in Wakabayashi, editor, The Nanking Atrocity, 1937-38: Complicating the Picture, New York: Berghahn Books, 2008, pp. 3-5).

* Months after the massacre, the Chinese Communists claimed that the Japanese had killed 42,000 people in Nanking.

* The burial records do not support a figure anywhere close to 300,000:

The Red Swastika Society, a charitable organization that was operating with the approval of both the Japanese occupiers and the International Safety Zone Committee, reported having buried 40,000 people. Another charitable group, which was called the Tsun-shan-tang but whose history is not well known, said it buried 110,000 bodies. The sum of these figures is 150,000. The average daily figure for the Red Swastika was 320 burials, and the average for the Tsun-shan-tang was 75 through March 1938. But in a three-week period of April, the latter society claimed to have buried an additional 105,000 corpses, or a staggering 5,000 per day; this is close to an impossible feat. I surmise that this group operated as a "subcontractor" of the Red Swastika and judge its count to be unreliable. Because the two charity organizations probably overlapped in their responsibilities at some of the burial sites, at least some of the corpses are likely to have been counted twice. Also, burials would have included those of soldiers killed in action and civilians who died either of illness or from being caught in the crossfire. (Hata, “The Nanking Atrocities: Fact and Fable,” Japan Echo, online reprint, available at A Japanese Perspective on the Nanjing Massacre - China Politics Links)​

* At the Tokyo Tribunal, the defense tried to enter evidence that the 300,000 figure could not be correct because Nanking’s population was only about 200,000 in December 1937, when the massacre occurred. Defense attorney Michael Levin said,

Mr. Brooks calls my attention to the fact that in another portion of the affidavit is contained the statement that 300,000 were killed in Nanking, and as I understand it the total population of Nanking is only 200,000 [at the time of the massacre]. (IMTFE, Proceedings, Court Reporter’s Transcript, August 29, 1946, p. 4551)​

The presiding judge, William Webb, refused to allow the defense to enter evidence of Nanking’s population at the time of the massacre.

Six contemporaneous records from Nanking support the figure of 200,000 for the population of Nanking when the Japanese army entered the city, and none suggest a higher figure:

Between December 13 (the day the Japanese breached the gates of Nanking) and February 9, 1938, the International Committee issued 61 missives addressed and hand-delivered to the Japanese, American, British, and German embassies, on an almost daily basis. Most of them are of complaints about misconduct on the part of Japanese military personnel or requests to military authorities for improved public safety or food supplies. These 61 documents are contemporaneous records, and should certainly be considered primary sources. . . . They were compiled by Dr. Hsü Shuhsi, a professor at Beijing University, under the title Documents of the Nanking Safety Zone. They also appear in their entirety in What War Means, edited by Manchester Guardian correspondent Harold Timperley, and were submitted as evidence to the IMTFE. As shown in the photograph on p. 4, the version edited by Hsü Shuhsi bears the imprimatur of the Nationalist government: “Prepared under the auspices of the Council of International Affairs, Chunking.” It was published by the Shanghai firm Kelly & Walsh in 1939. Any treatment of the Nanking Incident that disregards these valuable resources is suspect.​

There are four references to the population of Nanking in late 1937 in Documents of the Nanking Safety Zone; all of them state that the total refugee population was 200,000. A report written by James Espy, vice-consul at the American Embassy, and dispatched to the United States, and another report written by John Rabe, chairman of the International Committee, also mention that Nanking’s population was 200,000. (Masaaki Tanaka, What Really Happened in Nanking, Tokyo: Sekai Shuppan, Inc., 2000, pp. 3-5, available at http://www.sdh-fact.com/CL02_1/7_S4.pdf)​

Clearly, the Japanese army could not have killed 300,000 people in a city with a population of 200,000.

* In June 1938, six months after the massacre, John Rabe, a German business leader in Nanking and the chief of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone, provided a written estimate of how many people were killed in Nanking, and it was far below Chang’s number. Rabe is famous and honored for sheltering Chinese citizens during the sacking of Nanking and for protesting to Japanese officials about the conduct of Japanese troops. In his letter to the German government, Rabe said the following:

According to Chinese claims, 100,000 civilians were killed; this, however, is probably somewhat of an overstatement. We foreigners view the figure as having been from about 50,000 to 60,000.​

* Japanese army field reports on the fighting in Nanking seem to indicate the total number of soldiers and civilians killed in Nanking was about 40,000, according to Dr. Hata:

Both the veterans' group KaikÙsha and I accordingly decided to shift our attention to a search for the field reports of the units involved. We managed to find reports from 16 of the 56 battalions directly involved in the battle for Nanking--in other words, just under 30% of the total. These documents of course do not use the word "massacre." But they record, as part of their military operations, the "annihilation" of the remnants of the defeated army, including soldiers who had changed into civilian clothes (a common practice in the Nationalist Army), and the "execution of prisoners." One reason such records were kept was to serve as future reference for the granting of medals. If those keeping them had had any sense that these acts were illegal killings, they would naturally not have put them down in writing.​

Fujiwara Akira has calculated that these field reports record the killing of 12,921 Chinese soldiers who were either prisoners or remnants of the defeated army.6 The figure for the Japanese Army as a whole can only be estimated by extrapolation. This is not such a simple task, however. A full 60% of the 12,921 killings recorded were carried out in two incidents involving just two units, namely, the execution of prisoners by the Yamada Detachment and the extirpation of those thought to be soldiers in civilian clothing in the International Safety Zone conducted by the Seventh Infantry Regiment. It is hard to reach a consensus on how the actions of the recorded battalions should be extrapolated to the battalions whose field reports cannot be found.​

Using the existing reports and adding in various estimations, I have come up with a figure of 40,000 for the total of soldiers and civilians killed. . . . (A Japanese Perspective on the Nanjing Massacre - China Politics Links).​

* Some people later claimed that they saw “mountains of dead bodies” near the Guanghua Gate, but other eyewitnesses dispute this claim:

In The Battle of Nanking, Vol. 6, former Asahi Shinbun correspondent Kondo states that “there were corpses of both Chinese and Japanese military personnel outside Guanghua Gate, the result of the bloody battle fought there. But I don’t recall there being a lot of them. I saw no dead civilians.” Also, Futamura Jiro, a photographer who worked for Hochi Shinbun and later Mainichi Shinbun, states, “Together with the 47th Infantry Regiment, I climbed over the wall into the city, but I saw very few corpses there.” (Tanaka, What Really Happened in Nanking, p. 14, http://www.sdh-fact.com/CL02_1/7_S4.pdf)​

* Many Japanese soldiers who were in Nanking during and/or just after the battle emphatically denied that “hundreds of thousands” of people were killed there. Most of them admitted that war crimes occurred and that some of their fellow soldiers behaved in a disgraceful manner, but they insisted that the number of wrongful deaths was nothing close to 300,000. Of course, many people will immediately dismiss their claims as self-serving lies. But one of those soldiers, a staff officer with the 10th Army, happened to have taken a picture of the Guangha Gate soon after the Japanese army captured the city, and Theodore and Heroka Cook confirmed that it showed no piles of dead bodies (Theodore and Heroka Cook, Japan At War: An Oral History, New York: The New Press, 1992, pp. 35-37).

* Very few books on the Nanking Massacre mention what the Chinese did to the Japanese in Tongzhou, a few months before the Japanese army captured Nanking. On July 29, 1937, when all but a handful of the Japanese soldiers in the small city of Tongzhou left the city to aid in the attack on Beijing, the city’s Chinese auxiliary police force attacked. They killed most of the few Japanese soldiers in the city and 63% of the Japanese and Korean civilians in the city, including many women and children (223 out of 385) (locs. 1384-1398).

The Chinese hung some of the victims’ heads in wicker baskets from the parapets of the city’s gates. One family of six was thrown into a well with their hands tied together and pierced with steel wire. A pregnant Japanese woman was stabbed with a bayonet, and a child had his nose pierced crosswise with wire—amazingly, both survived but were scarred for life. “Avenge Tongzhou” became of rallying cry for Japanese soldiers as they headed south toward Nanking (Harmsen, Storm Clouds Over the Pacific, 1931-1941 (Casemate Publishers, locs. 1384-1398). This does not excuse the Japanese army’s conduct in Nanking, but it does provide context.

For those who want to do more research on the Nanking Massacre, I have found the following sources to be valuable, especially Dr. Hata’s research. I don’t agree with all these sources contain, but I think they present important information on the subject:

A Japanese Perspective on the Nanjing Massacre - China Politics Links
Dr. Hata’s long article “The Nanking Atrocities: Fact and Fable”

http://www.sdh-fact.com/CL02_1/7_S4.pdf
Tanaka’s book What Really Happened in Nanking: The Refutation of a Common Myth. I think some of Tanaka’s conclusions are wrong, but he presents a great deal of important evidence that contradicts the 300,000 figure and that casts serious doubt on Iris Chang’s reliability.

https://apjjf.org/-Joshua-A--Fogel/1637/article.pdf
Dr. Joshua Fogel’s reply to Herbert Bix on the Nanking Massacre. Dr. Fogel says the following about Dr. Hata: “Hata, no matter how much one may disagree with him, is an eminent scholar who has for over forty years been writing numerous excellent studies of Japan at war. He was certainly writing about the Nanjing Massacre before Iris Chang or Lee En-han were, and his book on the subject, first published in 1986 and translated into Chinese, is still an authority in the field.”

https://www.amazon.com/Nanking-Anatomy-Atrocity-Masahiro-Yamamoto/dp/0275969045&tag=ff0d01-20
Masahiro Yamamoto’s book Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity. This book includes chapters written by authors from both camps in the debate.

THE NANKING MASSACRE: Fact Versus Fiction | Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact
Shūdō Higashinakano’s book The Nanking Massacre: Fact vs. Fiction. Dr. Higashinakano is a professor of history at Asia University. I think his death toll estimates are far too low, but he presents a lot of valid information that you won’t find in most books on the subject.

The outrages Japan committed in China in the 30s was exactly WHY America embargoed oil exports to Japan that led to Pearl Harbor...The Japanese started Americas involvement in WWII and led to the nuking of Hiroshima.

 

[JoeB131]

Of course you do, because those accounts, written mostly by people who were very pro-Chinese and anti-Japanese, destroy the 300,000-killed myth. And I guess you forgot that all of my Smythe's field workers were Chinese.

No, I just kind of don't care, because frankly, a quick survey taken during a battle is going to be less accurate than a more complete survey after the war when they exhumed all the graves and found out how bad things were.

We really had no idea how bad the Holocaust was, either, until after the war was over.

I already answered this nonsense. And, uh, aren't white people also "people of color"? Isn't white a color?

Well, you are the one who belongs to a cult that thinks that non-white races have been cursed with darkness.. so there's that.

(Yes, this is what Mormons Really believe.)

Umm, as I pointed to you in my previous reply, history is full of examples of large groups of refugees traveling long distances on foot.

NOt in that short of a time, not in those numbers, and not when they really had nowhere to go.

But, as we have seen, you can't allow yourself to go where the evidence clearly leads on this issue because it destroys your 300,000-killed myth.

Nope, because that is what was documented after the war and that's what they hung the Jap Bastards for.

Instead, you have to make the ridiculous assumption that 600,000 people were still in Nanking when the Japanese took the city. That would mean that about 540,000 of them were somehow crammed into the 2.39 square miles of the Nanking Safety Zone, since numerous observers, including the Japanese, said that the overwhelming majority of the remaining residents--some sources said 90% of them--were in the safety zone and that the rest of the city was virtually deserted when the Japanese arrived.

Or that the Jap bastards slaughtered those people in the safe zone, outside the safe zone, in the surrounding countryside and anywhere else they found them. Which is pretty much what they did.

 

[MaryL]

Excuse me, Japan in the 30s was an imperialist state. They invaded China and murdered millions to feed their imperialist ambitions in Manchuria. America, FDR tried to stop that with a boycott and instead we got Pearl Harbor.