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

[JoeB131]

Yes, and that was a revealing, damning omission, not to mention the fact that most of the photos Chang put in her book had nothing to do with the Nanking Massacre.

Right. She used pictures of OTHER Chinese being slaughtered by the Japanese Army. That makes it so much better, somehow.

The Japanese were bastards in WWII. It's why most of Asia still hates them today.

Yes, Rabe and the Nanking International Relief Committee did God's work during the massacre, but the figure of 200,000-250,000 is impossible. There were only about 225,000 people in Nanking when the Japanese began their assault on the city. Understandably, a large majority of the city's population had already fled.

Uh, you realize Rabe was a Nazi, right? I mean, it kind of sucks when something is so horrible that the Nazi is the good guy in the story.

The population of Nanjing was 1 million in 1937, according to Chiang's government. True, a lot of them fled when the Japanese advanced.

Population of Nanjing in December of 1937 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Where did these people supposedly flee to? Most of them didn't have cars, they would have had to have fled on foot.

Or are you one of these people who thinks if the Japs killed them outside the city limits, it doesn't count as part of the massacre.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Right. She used pictures of OTHER Chinese being slaughtered by the Japanese Army. That makes it so much better, somehow.

You're kidding, right? No, you're not. Well, let me educate you: it is considered fraud to use pictures that supposedly show crimes in a certain area at a certain time that were not taken in that area and were not taken at that time but were taken in several other areas and at different times.

There were plenty of occasions/areas where the Japanese did not ravage the town/area. Sometimes they did; other times they did not. To use pictures taken in other areas at different times and falsely present them as evidence about the Nanking Massacre is fraudulent conduct.

The Japanese were bastards in WWII. It's why most of Asia still hates them today.

More of your mindless anti-Japanese bigotry. I notice you snipped the info on the fact that it is China, not Japan, that the rest of Asia fears now. Again, this is not the late 1930s and early 1940s. This is 2025.

Uh, you realize Rabe was a Nazi, right? I mean, it kind of sucks when something is so horrible that the Nazi is the good guy in the story.

You know this is misleading to the point of abject dishonesty. You just keep lying through your teeth. We're talking about 1937, when no one yet knew what a monster Hitler was. Plenty of good, decent Germans joined the Nazi Party, many of them reluctantly. When Rabe returned from China, the Gestapo arrested him because he wrote to Hitler asking him to persuade the Japanese to stop further violence, and he was only released because some leading German industrialists intervened in his behalf. Scholars who have studied Rabe have universally concluded that he was good, decent man who helped many Chinese escape Japanese brutality.

The population of Nanjing was 1 million in 1937, according to Chiang's government. True, a lot of them fled when the Japanese advanced.

Population of Nanjing in December of 1937 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

You're lying again. You know I already destroyed this argument earlier in this thread. The overwhelming weight of the evidence shows that Nanking's population was no more than 250,000 tops when the Japanese took the city.

For those who are new to this thread, see my previous replies on the issue.

Where did these people supposedly flee to? Most of them didn't have cars, they would have had to have fled on foot.

Again, we already discussed this at length, as you well know. I guess you're just hoping that newcomers to the thread won't read the replies that were posted before I bumped the thread yesterday. Nanking residents began leaving the city well in advance of the arrival of Japanese forces. Primary sources mention seeing enormous lines of fleeing Chinese that spanned as far as the eye could see, day after day, well before the Japanese arrived.

For newcomers to this thread, see my previous replies on Nanking's population when the Japanese took the city, as well as the population after the massacre ended.

Or are you one of these people who thinks if the Japs killed them outside the city limits, it doesn't count as part of the massacre.

You're lying again. I already refuted this argument at length in previous replies, but, as usual, you ignore contrary facts and repeat your falsehoods. Again, the surrounding countryside was, understandably, virtually deserted.

"Japs"??? So you're not only an anti-Semitic bigot, you're also an anti-Japanese bigot who's willing to use a racial slur to describe them.

 

[mikegriffith1]

[Here is part of one of my previous replies regarding Nanking's population and Iris Chang's claim that the Japanese killed 300,000-plus there.]

Notice that JoeB131, like other Iris Chang apologists, has to reject every single primary source on Nanking’s population during the time in question, even though all the primary sources agree with the population number that Dr. Lewis Smythe determined when he did his survey weeks after the massacre.

When confronted with the substantial evidence from contemporary primary sources that the population was about 200,000 when the city fell, JoeB131 can only lamely sputter, “First of all, how did westerners know how many people lived in the area? Did they do a census. We know damned well Peanut and his government weren't capable of doing a census.”

Umm, well, those Westerners had lived in the city for a long time, so they knew what the population was before the residents began to flee, and those Westerners saw the huge masses of people leaving and saw the people who were still in the city. Nanking was not a large city geographically speaking, and it had a large wall. Those Westerners did not just stay holed up in their homes; many of them were out and about in the city trying to help people, among other things.

German diplomat John Rabe and American diplomat James Espy (sometimes spelled Epsy) both came to their population numbers by noting that about 800,000 of the city’s one million people had fled (https://chinajapan.org/articles/13.2/13.2askew2-20.pdf). Thus, they based their estimates not just on how many people they saw remaining in the city but on how many people they saw leave the city. By the way, George Fitch, who was another member of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety, also put the city’s December 1937 population at 200,000 and noted that the city’s pre-war population had been one million (Ibid.)

By the way, the Wikipedia article on Nanking’s population, titled “Population of Nanjing in December of 1937,” does not even mention Espy (Population of Nanjing in December of 1937 - Wikipedia). Also, the article’s table in the Primary Sources segment misrepresents Smythe’s findings by putting them at 200,000-250,000, which shows that the authors of the article failed to read Smythe’s report with sufficient care. However, the article does acknowledge that most of the primary sources that it cites originally put Nanking’s population at between 150,000 to 200,000 as of December 1937:

In December, members of the International Committee, including George Ashmore Fitch and its leader John Rabe, estimated the city's civilian population at approximately 200,000.[12] Rabe, however, revised his estimate upwards on January 14 to "250,000 to 300,000 civilians" in a letter to the Japanese embassy. Rabe stated that earlier figures had been "deliberately cautious guesses".[13] However, when another committee member, Lewis Smythe, compiled a population survey of Nanking the same year, he reaffirmed that Nanking's civilian population at the time the city fell was between 200,000 and 250,000.[14]

By contrast, most Western journalists who were in Nanking in November and December 1937 put forward much lower population numbers of around 150,000.[15] For instance, New York Times reporter F. Tillman Durdin supported the estimate of 150,000.[16] By the time that the Japanese forces occupying Nanking attempted to formally register the city's entire population in late December, 1937, and early January, 1938, 160,000 people were recorded. However, the Japanese often did not count young children and elderly women in their registration.[17]

If you look at the table that follows these paragraphs, which lists the primary sources and their estimates for Nanking’s December 1937 population, you see that

-- 8 of the 11 primary sources put the population at between 150,000 and 200,000
-- 2 of the 11 primary sources put the population at between 200,000 and 250,000 (although the table misrepresents/exaggerates their estimates)
-- 1 of the 11 primary sources (Rabe) put the population at between 250,000 and 300,000 (although the article admits that originally Rabe gave a lower number)

And, of course, folks like JoeB131 can’t allow themselves to accept Dr. Smythe’s population survey, even though Smythe took nearly four weeks to do the field work for it and used only Chinese assistants, and even though Smythe’s number matches the numbers originally given by every other primary source on Nanking’s population.

For Iris Chang’s 300,000 myth to be even halfway credible, Nanking’s December 1937 population would have needed to be at least 450,000, since nobody but nobody ever claimed that the population was below 150,000 as of February and March 1938, especially given the fact that Smythe determined that the city’s population actually began to gradually increase just a few weeks after the Japanese took the city and had risen to 221,000 as of March.

This brings us to one of JoeB131’s most amazing howlers: his claim that people began to return to Nanking soon after the Japanese took the city because they thought it was safe! No, I’m not exaggerating. Let me quote him:

Second, as stated many times, people flooded into Nanking from the surrounding countryside because they THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE. [original emphasis]

This, of course, obviously begs the question: How, how, how in the world could anyone have thought it was safe to return to Nanking just weeks after the Japanese had taken the city if the Japanese had just killed, and/or were still in the process of killing, hundreds of thousands of people, and if there were huge piles of dead bodies outside the city, and if much/most of the city had been burned down?

I will conclude by quoting part of Australian historian David Askew’s superb article “The Nanjing Incident: An Examination of the Civilian Population”:

Although the estimates made in the primary sources are given further credence by Smythe's survey and the Japanese registration of the population, the other contemporary sources also need to be examined. They can be divided into three groups: the accounts of the Western journalists in Nanjing; the various letters and diaries of the members of the International Committee; and embassy reports. Although not all are official documents, they provide a valuable complementary source that can be compared with the story that emerges from official documents.

Most Western journalists believed that the civilian population of Nanjing was considerably smaller than 200,000, setting it at 150,000. One German journalist, Lily Abegg, wrote that it was 150,000 in late November. After the fall of the city, the New York Times stated that the Safety Zone "shelters 150,000.” Arthur Menken wrote that "[m]ore than 100,000 Chinese sought refuge in the zone." Hallett Abend used exactly the same phrase: ''More than 100,000 Chinese sought refuge in the zone.” In an article dated December 18, F. Tillman Durdin speaks of" upward of 100,000 non-combatants" in the Safety Zone and "residents, numbering upward of 50,000, who sought no sanctuary in the zone.” This suggests that, in early to mid-December, Western journalists believed that the entire civilian population of Nanking was about 150,000, with 100,000 within the Zone and a further 50,000 outside it. As noted above, at least one member of the international community in Nanjing also believed that the civilian population was "perhaps 150,000 or more,” and Wilson thought that the population was between 150,000 and 200,000. . . .

Thus, for instance, one "foreign resident who has spent almost the whole of his life" in China wrote on Christmas eve, 1937, that "we have only enough rice and flour for the 200,000 refugees for another three weeks." In a letter dated December 14, 1937, Wilson stated that the "entire” population of Nanjing, "some 150 or 200 thousand individuals," had "crowded into the zone.” Finally, George Fitch's autobiography also gives the population of Nanjing as 200,000. (https://chinajapan.org/articles/13.2/13.2askew2-20.pdf)

 

[Unkotare]

LOL! Only you could interpret my latest reply and my previous ones as even remotely saying the massacre "wasn't so bad."

Of course, what you're actually referring to is the number of civilians killed. You buy the absurd, impossible Communist Chinese figure of 300,000-plus. I do not. The primary sources clearly indicate that about 10,000 to 12,000 civilians were killed, which, as I've repeatedly said, is a horrific, awful crime. Killing 100 civilians is an atrocity.

But, I suspect you'll just keep on telling your lie that this means I'm saying the massacre "wasn't so bad," "wasn't all that bad." You'll only keep discrediting yourself in doing so.


Another howler, and another one of your racist comments. FYI, many of those Asia scholars are Asians, not that a scholars' race really matters (only to you and other racists).


Huh??? What in the world? Just to show what a wingnut you are, let's quote the statement to which you are responding here:

"The Nanking Massacre was a terrible crime. There is no need to muddy the waters by severely exaggerating the death toll and by presenting photos that had nothing to do with the event. Chang's book was part of a long-standing and ongoing effort by the Chinese government to smear Japan. The Japanese army's conduct during WWII was atrocious in far too many cases, but the Chinese armies, both Nationalist and Communist, were often just as brutal."

Somehow, someway you read this as saying "the poor Japanese are such victims"!


What jaw-dropping ignorance. Uh, Jihad Joe, FYI, most Asian nations fear China, not Japan. This isn't the 1940s. It's 2025.

In fact, in 2024, the Philippines, in response to China's growing power and aggressiveness, requested that Japan and the U.S. provide more military aid, and they agreed to do so. And Japan and India increased their security ties to counter China as well.

Even Joe Biden recognized the threat that China increasingly poses to the region, which is he why he upgraded our security ties with South Korea, the Philippines, and Japan.

Did you somehow miss all this news?

I mean, I know you're a Mao apologist, and an apologist for China's brutal regime, but don't you watch the news? Even legacy news outlets carried this story.

The U.S. and Japan announce a historic upgrade in security ties to counter China

President Joe Biden, who is hosting Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on an official visit, views Japan as an important bulwark against Chinese dominance in the Asia-Pacific.

www.nbcnews.com

Under Biden, US reimagines Asian alliances as 'lattice' fence

Officials in Biden's administration say it could have big implications as they try to create durable plan to respond to China's growing power

www.voanews.com

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www.bloomberg.com

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www.usnews.com

It is genuinely comical that you seem oblivious to how you keep discrediting yourself and exposing yourself as an uneducated, brainwashed wingnut.

He is trying to score points with somebody else.

 

[JoeB131]

You're kidding, right? No, you're not. Well, let me educate you: it is considered fraud to use pictures that supposedly show crimes in a certain area at a certain time that were not taken in that area and were not taken at that time but were taken in several other areas and at different times.

There were plenty of occasions/areas where the Japanese did not ravage the town/area. Sometimes they did; other times they did not. To use pictures taken in other areas at different times and falsely present them as evidence about the Nanking Massacre is fraudulent conduct.

22 Million Chinese were killed by the Japanese. It was a bigger slaughter than the Holocaust. The only reason why you haven't heard about it is that Hollywood isn't run by the Chinese.

Also, Hollywood can't make a movie about Asia without engaging in White Savior Complex.

More of your mindless anti-Japanese bigotry. I notice you snipped the info on the fact that it is China, not Japan, that the rest of Asia fears now. Again, this is not the late 1930s and early 1940s. This is 2025.

Yes, they fear China so much that they are buying their stuff and inviting them in to build roads for them.

You know this is misleading to the point of abject dishonesty. You just keep lying through your teeth. We're talking about 1937, when no one yet knew what a monster Hitler was. Plenty of good, decent Germans joined the Nazi Party, many of them reluctantly.

No decent German joined the NSDAP. If you were a complete coward who joined the NSDAP, like my grandfather's half-brother, to keep his government job, you were contemptable.

When Rabe returned from China, the Gestapo arrested him because he wrote to Hitler asking him to persuade the Japanese to stop further violence, and he was only released because some leading German industrialists intervened in his behalf. Scholars who have studied Rabe have universally concluded that he was good, decent man who helped many Chinese escape Japanese brutality.

And here's the thing. When the Gestapo told him to stop saying bad stuff about the Japanese, he promptly yelled "Seig Heil" and kept his mouth shut for the remainder of the war. Again- a coward.

Again, we already discussed this at length, as you well know. I guess you're just hoping that newcomers to the thread won't read the replies that were posted before I bumped the thread yesterday. Nanking residents began leaving the city well in advance of the arrival of Japanese forces. Primary sources mention seeing enormous lines of fleeing Chinese that spanned as far as the eye could see, day after day, well before the Japanese arrived.

How far were they going to get on foot with no money? Now you are just being stupid. Do you think the same Japanese who were killing and raping in the city were being nice out in the countryside when they came across Chinese civilians?

You're lying again. I already refuted this argument at length in previous replies, but, as usual, you ignore contrary facts and repeat your falsehoods. Again, the surrounding countryside was, understandably, virtually deserted.

"Japs"??? So you're not only an anti-Semitic bigot, you're also an anti-Japanese bigot who's willing to use a racial slur to describe them.

Actually, your arguments are stupid.

The Japanese were bastards in WWII. As bad as the Nazis. the biggest mistake we made after the war is we didn't hang Hirohito and all the rest of the bastards.

Incidently, one of my dearest friends about three jobs back was a Japanese woman married to an American. I once asked her why she didn't get a job utilizing her Japanese language skills. She said that she didn't want to work for a Japanese company because they treat their female employees like garbage.

 

[JoeB131]

Although the estimates made in the primary sources are given further credence by Smythe's survey and the Japanese registration of the population, the other contemporary sources also need to be examined. They can be divided into three groups: the accounts of the Western journalists in Nanjing; the various letters and diaries of the members of the International Committee; and embassy reports. Although not all are official documents, they provide a valuable complementary source that can be compared with the story that emerges from official documents.

The slaughter wasn't so bad. White people said so.

 

[mikegriffith1]

22 Million Chinese were killed by the Japanese. It was a bigger slaughter than the Holocaust. The only reason why you haven't heard about it is that Hollywood isn't run by the Chinese.

22 million? I'm guessing that figure includes the Chang/Communist Chinese figure of 300,000-plus for Nanking.

Mao killed tens of millions of Chinese after the war to gain and hold power, as numerous scholars have documented. I won't bother reposting the myriad of scholarly links on this subject.

Also, Hollywood can't make a movie about Asia without engaging in White Savior Complex.

Uh, yeah, whatever you say. You're another uneducated woke liberal who sees everything through the prism of racism, your own racism.

Yes, they fear China so much that they are buying their stuff and inviting them in to build roads for them.

Okay, so you are actually denying that Asian nations are worried about Chinese aggression. Duly noted. Wow.

No decent German joined the NSDAP. If you were a complete coward who joined the NSDAP, like my grandfather's half-brother, to keep his government job, you were contemptable.

That's just raw ignorance. What a clown. This nonsense is further evidence that you are not to be taken seriously. No historian who has written about Nazi Germany agrees with you on this. There were plenty of good, decent Germans who joined the Nazi Party because no one yet knew what monsters the Nazi leadership were.

And here's the thing. When the Gestapo told him to stop saying bad stuff about the Japanese, he promptly yelled "Seig Heil" and kept his mouth shut for the remainder of the war. Again- a coward.

More raw ignorance, and demagoguery. Of course, you have to smear an honorable man like Rabe because his early accounts of events in Nanking destroy the Chang/Communist Chinese version of the incident. I'll just repeat again that every scholar who has written about Rabe has concluded he was a noble man, that he turned against the Nazis, and that he saved many lives in Nanking.

How far were they going to get on foot with no money? Now you are just being stupid.

You can't really be so dumb as to believe this lame argument. The problem is that the evidence regarding Nanking's population is so compelling and abundant that you have to resort to lame speculation such as this.

FYI, destitute Mormons who crossed the Western plains in the 1850s while pulling handcarts in bad weather, and while caring for children and infants, managed to travel 12-15 miles per day. The mass exodus from Nanking began well before the Japanese arrived. Even assuming this slow rate of travel, they would have been at least 100 miles from Nanking, at the bare minimum, when the Japanese showed up.

Do you think the same Japanese who were killing and raping in the city were being nice out in the countryside when they came across Chinese civilians?

Huh??? Dealing with you is like dealing with a teenager. The point, which you carefully avoided, is that the countryside around Nanking was, understandably, largely deserted by the time the Japanese approached city.

Now, just on a point of fact, the Japanese army did not have much time to stop and ravage the countryside because they were hurrying to Nanking. They were hurrying to get there before the Nationalists could bring reinforcements to the city.

Actually, your arguments are stupid.

The Japanese were bastards in WWII. As bad as the Nazis. the biggest mistake we made after the war is we didn't hang Hirohito and all the rest of the bastards.

Incidently, one of my dearest friends about three jobs back was a Japanese woman married to an American. I once asked her why she didn't get a job utilizing her Japanese language skills. She said that she didn't want to work for a Japanese company because they treat their female employees like garbage.

Blah, blah, blay. Yes, we get it: You passionately hate the Japanese and love and admire Mao Tse-Tung, who made the Japanese look like amateurs when it came to killing millions of people--and his own people at that.

I notice you never talk about the conduct of the Chinese armies, both Nationalist and Communist, during the war. On some occasions, they were every single bit as bad as the Japanese army could be at times. The Nationalists drowned at least 400,000 of their fellow Chinese when they purposely breached the Yellow River dikes in a misguided effort to halt a Japanese advance. Some scholars put the figure as high as 900,000.

But, oh, nahhhhh, nothing to see here, right? Just blame everything on those lousy "Japs"--and of course the slimy Jews must have been behind it all, since they've controlled the world for ages, right?

 

[JoeB131]

Mormon Mike and more silliness.

22 million? I'm guessing that figure includes the Chang/Communist Chinese figure of 300,000-plus for Nanking.

You mean the people who actually ran the place? Um, yeah.

Heck, I was about to throw Unit 731 in there, but I just found out that the Japanese had no less than SEVEN units that were out there performing biological warfare experiments on Chinese people.

But for some reason, Shiro Ishii doesn't have the notoriety of Josef Mengele.

Shirō Ishii - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Hmmmm.... I wonder why.

Mao killed tens of millions of Chinese after the war to gain and hold power, as numerous scholars have documented. I won't bother reposting the myriad of scholarly links on this subject.

So, okay, so taking out the famines, how many people did Mao actually kill by violence? Maybe 2 million in the Cultural Revolution?

Shit, Mao didn't even execute Puyi, who collaborated with the Japanese.

Now, the Great Leap Forward was definitely a clusterfuck, from Mao's decrees, to the lower level bureaucrat who overreported rice yeilds to curry favor with Beijing, to the dumb-ass peasent who went out and killed sparrows as part of the Four Pests program. But China has Famines on a regular basis, and the Kumotang or Qing or Ming didn't handle them any better.

The Famine of 1906 killed 20 million people.

List of famines in China - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Do you know what, though? The Famine of 1959 was the last famine China ever had.

Uh, yeah, whatever you say. You're another uneducated woke liberal who sees everything through the prism of racism, your own racism.

No, I just watch Hollywood movies. The ones set in Asia where the hero often tends to be a white guy.

Last Samurai - Hero was a white guy.
47 Ronin - Hero was a white guy.
Great Wall - Hero was a white guy.

Sweet evil Jesus, when they released Gojira into America, they shoehorned in a bunch of scenes with Raymond Burr to make the white guy the hero. (You might know this movie better by its American title, "Godzilla". )

Okay, so you are actually denying that Asian nations are worried about Chinese aggression. Duly noted. Wow.

Not enough to avoid becoming economically dependent on China, no.

Let's review how much trade each of these countries does with China vs. the US.

Japan - 350 billion in trade with China, compared to 227B with the US.
South Korea - 267B in trade with China, 197B with US,
Philippines - 70 billion in trade with China vs. 36B with US
Taiwan. Yes, Taiwan -380 Billion with China vs. 158B with US,

That's just raw ignorance. What a clown. This nonsense is further evidence that you are not to be taken seriously. No historian who was written about Nazi Germany agrees with you on this. There were plenty of good, decent Germans who joined the Nazi Party because no one yet knew what monsters the Nazi leadership were.

Bullshit. They all knew what was going on. Did you think they didn't notice the war or that all their Jewish neighbors disappeared mysteriously?

More raw ignorance, and demagoguery. Of course, you have to smear an honorable man like Rabe because his early accounts of events in Nanking destroy the Chang/Communist Chinese version of the incident. I'll just repeat again that every scholar who has written about Rabe has concluded he was a noble man, that he turned against the Nazis, and that he saved many lives in Nanking.

Again, the Japanese were such rat-bastards that the Nazi was the good guy isn't a very compelling argument for your claim that the Rape of Nanking was more of an inappropriate touching.

You can't really be so dumb as to believe this lame argument. The problem is that the evidence regarding Nanking's population is so compelling and abundant that you have to resort to lame speculation such as this.

Except it really isn't. 300,000 residents of Nanking were systematically raped and murdered by the Japanese.

FYI, destitute Mormons who crossed the Western plains in the 1850s while pulling handcarts in bad weather, and while caring for children and infants, managed to travel 12-15 miles per day. The mass exodus from Nanking began well before the Japanese arrived. Even assuming this slow rate of travel, they would have been at least 100 miles from Nanking, at the bare minimum, when the Japanese showed up.

The Mormons were hardly destitute and no one was actively trying to kill them as a group. They had wagons, resources, and a government that was actively encouraging people to move westward. (If they didn't mind slaughtering a few Native Americans along the way.)

Huh??? Dealing with you is like dealing with a teenager. The point, which you carefully avoided, is that the countryside around Nanking was, understandably, largely deserted by the time the Japanese approached city.

Now, just on a point of fact, the Japanese army did not have much time to stop and ravage the countryside because they were hurrying to Nanking. They were hurrying to get there before the Nationalists could bring reinforcements to the city.

300,000 dead. Deal with it.

I notice you never talk about the conduct of the Chinese armies, both Nationalist and Communist, during the war. On some occasions, they were every single bit as bad as the Japanese army could be at times. The Nationalists drowned at least 400,000 of their fellow Chinese when they purposely breached the Yellow River dikes in a misguided effort to halt a Japanese advance. Some scholars put the figure as high as 900,000.

Wait, now, you are claiming that poor Chinese could easily evade an oncoming army with rape on its mind, but they couldn't avoid some water?

But, oh, nahhhhh, nothing to see here, right? Just blame everything on those lousy "Japs"--and of course the slimy Jews must have been behind it all, since they've controlled the world for ages, right?

Here's the problem. The Japanese were just imitating the worst behaviors of white people. They look at Franch and England and the US genociding native peoples to take their shit, and said, "Man, we need to get in on some of that action!"

The main reason why China was in such a weakened state (they had a hell of lot more people than Japan did) was because for 100 years, the West had been undermining it for a profit. From the Opium Wara to the Chinese Revolution, Chinese call that 百年国耻 - 100 years of national humiliation

And then you wonder why China acts the way it does sometimes.

Now, since we are talking about what a rat bastard Mao was, let's talk about child mortality, shall we?

Under the Qing, the child mortality rate in China was a staggering 482 deaths per 1000 births.

China: child mortality rate 1850-2020 | Statista

The child mortality rate in China, for children under the age of five, was 417 deaths per thousand births in 1850.

www.statista.com

By the time Mao kicked Peanut to the Curb, that figure had only declined to 320 per 1000.

By 1955, it was down to 200. By the time Mao shuffled off this mortal coil in 1976, it was down to 100. Today, it is a mere 9. Still much too high, but what an improvement.

 

[mikegriffith1]

The Mormons were hardly destitute and no one was actively trying to kill them as a group. They had wagons, resources, and a government that was actively encouraging people to move westward. (If they didn't mind slaughtering a few Native Americans along the way.)

I'm not going to bother responding to your repetition of your surreal, disingenuous arguments about the Nanking Massacre, Mao, and modern China. It is just incredible that you would get on a public board and continually deny that Mao murdered tens of millions of people, when this crime has been documented by literally hundreds of scholars. You might as well argue the Earth is flat. Anyway, I will address your erroneous statements about the Mormon westward trek.

One, yes, the Mormons were destitute. They were walking and pulling handcarts because they could not afford to take the train for even a small part of the journey. Most of them had been driven from their homes in Nauvoo by anti-Mormon mobs and with no compensation. Clearly, you know next to nothing about the Mormon handcart companies.

The Mormons were heading west to escape anti-Mormon mob persecution in Illinois and Missouri. Mormon settlements had been ravaged by anti-Mormon mobs. Many Mormon women had been raped. The anti-Mormon mobs in Illinois gave the Mormons in Nauvoo an ultimatum to either leave or be destroyed.

The U.S. Government did not provide a scrap of aid to the Mormon handcart companies that crossed the plains.

"Slaughtering a few Native Americans along the way"??? Can you cite a single source that backs up this fiction?

Your inexcusable falsehoods about the Mormon pioneers who crossed the plains are more examples of your lack of education and credibility. The Mormon westward trek has been extensively discussed by Mormon and non-Mormon historians. The information is readily available. Yet, you come on here and peddle myths and falsehoods about the trek, just as you do about the debunked Communist Chinese version of the Nanking Massacre, about Mao's mass murders, about China's aggression in our day (trade is no indicator of peace--the Soviets and the Nazis engaged in massive trade before the Nazis invaded Russia), etc., etc.

Finally, I note that you avoided dealing (1) with any of the evidence regarding Nanking's population when the Japanese arrived, and (2) with the fact that the Mormon handcart companies, traveling over open plains with no paved roads, and while caring for children and infants, were able to travel 12-15 miles per day, proving that the Nanking residents who fled Nanking well before the Japanese arrived could have easily traveled at that pace, which would have put them an absolute bare minimum of 100 miles away when the Japanese attacked the city.

 

[Unkotare]

22 million? I'm guessing that figure includes the Chang/Communist Chinese figure of 300,000-plus for Nanking.

Mao killed tens of millions of Chinese after the war to gain and hold power, as numerous scholars have documented. I won't bother reposting the myriad of scholarly links on this subject.


Uh, yeah, whatever you say. You're another uneducated woke liberal who sees everything through the prism of racism, your own racism.


Okay, so you are actually denying that Asian nations are worried about Chinese aggression. Duly noted. Wow.


That's just raw ignorance. What a clown. This nonsense is further evidence that you are not to be taken seriously. No historian who has written about Nazi Germany agrees with you on this. There were plenty of good, decent Germans who joined the Nazi Party because no one yet knew what monsters the Nazi leadership were.


More raw ignorance, and demagoguery. Of course, you have to smear an honorable man like Rabe because his early accounts of events in Nanking destroy the Chang/Communist Chinese version of the incident. I'll just repeat again that every scholar who has written about Rabe has concluded he was a noble man, that he turned against the Nazis, and that he saved many lives in Nanking.


You can't really be so dumb as to believe this lame argument. The problem is that the evidence regarding Nanking's population is so compelling and abundant that you have to resort to lame speculation such as this.

FYI, destitute Mormons who crossed the Western plains in the 1850s while pulling handcarts in bad weather, and while caring for children and infants, managed to travel 12-15 miles per day. The mass exodus from Nanking began well before the Japanese arrived. Even assuming this slow rate of travel, they would have been at least 100 miles from Nanking, at the bare minimum, when the Japanese showed up.


Huh??? Dealing with you is like dealing with a teenager. The point, which you carefully avoided, is that the countryside around Nanking was, understandably, largely deserted by the time the Japanese approached city.

Now, just on a point of fact, the Japanese army did not have much time to stop and ravage the countryside because they were hurrying to Nanking. They were hurrying to get there before the Nationalists could bring reinforcements to the city.


Blah, blah, blay. Yes, we get it: You passionately hate the Japanese and love and admire Mao Tse-Tung, who made the Japanese look like amateurs when it came to killing millions of people--and his own people at that.

I notice you never talk about the conduct of the Chinese armies, both Nationalist and Communist, during the war. On some occasions, they were every single bit as bad as the Japanese army could be at times. The Nationalists drowned at least 400,000 of their fellow Chinese when they purposely breached the Yellow River dikes in a misguided effort to halt a Japanese advance. Some scholars put the figure as high as 900,000.

But, oh, nahhhhh, nothing to see here, right? Just blame everything on those lousy "Japs"--and of course the slimy Jews must have been behind it all, since they've controlled the world for ages, right?

He's just trying to impress somebody.

 

[mikegriffith1]

He's just trying to impress somebody.

Yeap.

Let's look at the Nanking burial records.

Another fatal flaw in the 300,000-dead story is the burial records, which, even after obvious double-counting and the inclusion of combat deaths, not to mention subsequent outright fabrication, do not support anything close to Iris Chang’s incredible claim of 300,000-plus civilian deaths.

When Smythe and Bates studied the burial records shortly after the massacre, they concluded there had been about 12,000 civilian deaths, with Smythe adding the caveat that about 1,000 of those were people who were killed by crossfire during combat. This figure is consistent with the numbers given by other primary sources.

In early April, the two organizations that handled the burials—the Red Swastika Society and the Tsun-shan-tang—reported that they buried a combined total of 150,000/155,000 bodies, from both in and outside the city, as of March. Then, months later, the Tsun-shan-tang claimed that during three weeks in April, they buried an additional 105,000 bodies. Nobody denies that the burials from December through April included thousands of soldiers who died in combat, thousands of soldiers who were executed because they had shed their uniforms (under the standard laws of war, the Japanese had the right to execute them), and some non-massacre-related deaths (illness, old age, etc.).

Even taking these numbers at face value, they get you nowhere near 300,00 civilian deaths. 155,000 burials plus the alleged additional 105,000 burials equals 260,000 burials. Assuming that only half of those burials were soldiers killed in combat or executed for being in civilian clothes, that gets you to 130,000 civilian deaths, less than half the number posited by Iris Chang and her defenders.

Furthermore, as we’ve seen, even positing 130,000 civilian deaths is problematic given the population evidence and the death-toll estimates in the primary sources.

Moreover, there is also the fact that the burial evidence is riddled with problems. For example, let’s take a look at the Tsun-shan-tang’s claim that they buried an additional 105,000 bodies in three weeks in April. 105,000 burials in three weeks? This would have required an amazing rate of 5,000 burials per day. One reason this number is extremely doubtful is that during the period from mid-December through March, the Tsun-shan-tang, according to their own report, buried an average of 75 bodies per day. Yet we’re supposed to believe that in a three-week period in April, they buried 666 times more bodies per day than they had buried in the preceding three months, a staggering increase of 6,600 percent.

Significantly, the IMTFE, after studying the Tsun-shan-lang records, concluded that the group buried a total of 112,266 bodies from December 26 to April 20 (IMTFE transcript, August 29, 1946, p. 4537). So even the IMTFE did not buy the organization’s claim that they buried 215,000 bodies from December through April.

Even the figure of 150,000 to 155,000 burials from mid-December to March is problematic. Many scholars have pointed out several problems with the 155,000 figure. Dr. Hata points out that even Yoshiaki Itakura, the highly respected Japanese scholar who exposed Masaaki Tanaka's tampering with General Matsui’s diary, rejected the 155,000 number as unrealistic and adjusted it down to 39,859:

The number of corpses buried by both of the two private charity groups is often said to have been a total of 155,000. This statistic counts civilians who died during the battle or died of disease, and probably also soldiers who died in combat. Furthermore, doubts have been expressed about the accuracy of the records. Itakura's calculations adjust this statistic to 39,859 corpses, a figure which comes close to the roughly 40,000 corpses estimated by Bates and Smythe of the International Committee. (The Nanking Incident: The Structure of a Massacre, pp. 211-212)

When you read the IMTFE transcripts, you discover that most of the incidents described in the statements occurred during the first two or three weeks after the Japanese occupied Nanking, and that most of them—not all, but the vast majority—describe a small number of victims—two here, three there, ten here, four there, eight here, six there, etc., etc. If you doubt this, just go read the IMTFE prosecution exhibits.

Another fact you will clearly see in the IMTFE transcripts is that the violent acts were not done as part of any systematic or official command policy of General Matsui, much less of the Japanese government, but were done by some local units and by roaming bands of enlisted personnel. The December 16 protest that the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone sent to the Japanese Embassy in Nanking noted that “most of the trouble has come from wandering groups of three to four soldiers without an officer” (IMTFE transcript, p. 4510, prosecution document 1744, exhibit number 323).

Two weeks later, on December 29, the International Committee reported that the number of cases of violence and crime were declining and that the situation had “much improved”:

We are glad to report that cases are declining and conditions are much improved. (IMTFE transcript, p. 4533)

On January 2, four days after the December 29 report, the International Committee told the Japanese Embassy that, although there were still some cases of criminal acts, the situation had improved “a great deal”:

We appreciated very much your statement to us on the 29th that wandering Japanese soldiers had been ordered to stay out of the Safety Zone. This has improved the situation a great deal. (IMTFE transcript, p. 4534)

 

[JoeB131]

I'm not going to bother responding to your repetition of your surreal, disingenuous arguments about the Nanking Massacre, Mao, and modern China. It is just incredible that you would get on a public board and continually deny that Mao murdered tens of millions of people, when this crime has been documented by literally hundreds of scholars. You might as well argue the Earth is flat. Anyway, I will address your erroneous statements about the Mormon westward trek.

Um, sorry, it isn't murder if you die in a famine or a flood. It's murder if someone goes out and kills you intentionally.

Otherwise, we should hold Trump accountable for the 1 million people who died of Covid due to his incompetence.

One, yes, the Mormons were destitute. They were walking and pulling handcarts because they could not afford to take the train for even a small part of the journey. Most of them had been driven from their homes in Nauvoo by anti-Mormon mobs and with no compensation. Clearly, you know next to nothing about the Mormon handcart companies.

I know that you were a deranged cult that got driven out of NY for Fraud, OH for Fraud, MO for Domestic Terrorism, and Illinois for polygamy. I'm proud to say my State shot that cocksucker, Joseph Smith.

The Mormons were heading west to escape anti-Mormon mob persecution in Illinois and Missouri. Mormon settlements had been ravaged by anti-Mormon mobs. Many Mormon women had been raped. The anti-Mormon mobs in Illinois gave the Mormons in Nauvoo an ultimatum to either leave or be destroyed.

Again, your inability to get along with your neighbors is hardly something to be proud of. Those mobs attacked you for a good reason.

The U.S. Government did not provide a scrap of aid to the Mormon handcart companies that crossed the plains.

"Slaughtering a few Native Americans along the way"??? Can you cite a single source that backs up this fiction?

Are you trying to pretend that we didn't genocide the Native Americans? Oh, wait, you would claim that.

But since we are directly addressing what your deranged cult did to these people...

Native Americans in Utah | History to Go

historytogo.utah.gov

Yet, as Mormon settlement expanded north and south along the front range, conflict increased with Indians displaced from traditional subsistence areas. Young countered Ute raiding with an iron fist. The Walker War (1853–54) and the Black Hawk War (1863–68) revolved around Indian subsistence raiding to avoid starvation.

During this period the Indian Bureau and the Mormon church operated reservation farms for the benefit of Indian peoples, but they either proved inadequate or failed completely. Weakened by disease and starvation, Ute Indians faced annihilation or retreat. In 1861 President Abraham Lincoln set aside the Uintah Valley Indian Reservation for the Utah Ute people. In 1881–82 the federal government removed the White River and Uncompahgre Ute from Colorado to the Uintah and Ouray Reservations in eastern Utah. Today these three bands are collectively called the Northern Ute Tribe.

Your inexcusable falsehoods about the Mormon pioneers who crossed the plains are more examples of your lack of education and credibility. The Mormon westward trek has been extensively discussed by Mormon and non-Mormon historians. The information is readily available. Yet, you come on here and peddle myths and falsehoods about the trek, just as you d

Yes, we get it, after being chased out of various states for skullduggery, you finally ended up in Utah. Hey, do you want to talk about the Utah War and the Mountain Meadows Massacre, I'm all up for that.

Finally, I note that you avoided dealing (1) with any of the evidence regarding Nanking's population when the Japanese arrived, and (2) with the fact that the Mormon handcart companies, traveling over open plains with no paved roads, and while caring for children and infants, were able to travel 12-15 miles per day, proving that the Nanking residents who fled Nanking well before the Japanese arrived could have easily traveled at that pace, which would have put them an absolute bare minimum of 100 miles away when the Japanese attacked the city.

First, the Nationalist Census figures said there were a million people in Nanking in January 1937. So any evidence you have is bullshit, I'm going with official figures, not what some white people saw looking out their windows.

Second, It took you clowns years to move 70K people between shooting Joseph Smith (YEAH!!!) and when you arrived in Utah. Also, they had wagon trains, which meant they had horses and oxen.

TO believe your nonsense, you would have to believe that 800,000 residents of Nanjing (not Nanking) fled on foot, and went, where exactly, in a period of days.

 

[JoeB131]

Let's look at the Nanking burial records.

Another fatal flaw in the 300,000-dead story is the burial records, which, even after obvious double-counting and the inclusion of combat deaths, not to mention subsequent outright fabrication, do not support anything close to Iris Chang’s incredible claim of 300,000-plus civilian deaths.

When Smythe and Bates studied the burial records shortly after the massacre, they concluded there had been about 12,000 civilian deaths, with Smythe adding the caveat that about 1,000 of those were people who were killed by crossfire during combat. This figure is consistent with the numbers given by other primary sources.

more white people saying it wasn't so bad. COlor me shocked.

You do realize that when there's a mass slaughter going on, no one is keen on keeping records, right?

The only reason why we such detailed records of the Holocaust is because Germans are really anal about keeping records.

In early April, the two organizations that handled the burials—the Red Swastika Society and the Tsun-shan-tang—reported that they buried a combined total of 150,000/155,000 bodies, from both in and outside the city, as of March. Then, months later, the Tsun-shan-tang claimed that during three weeks in April, they buried an additional 105,000 bodies. Nobody denies that the burials from December through April included thousands of soldiers who died in combat, thousands of soldiers who were executed because they had shed their uniforms (under the standard laws of war, the Japanese had the right to execute them), and some non-massacre-related deaths (illness, old age, etc.).

First, did these soldiers die in combat, or were they slaughtered after they surrendered because that was another wonderful thing your Japanese heroes did... completely ignore the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war.

Second,

They had the right to execute UNARMED people because they shed their uniforms? Do you fucking hear yourself sometimes, you Mormon Creep?

So they buried at least 260K bodies according to you.

You know, you sound like that guy from Northwestern who claimed the Holocaust didn't happen because it was too many people for the Nazis to have possibly killed.

Another fact you will clearly see in the IMTFE transcripts is that the violent acts were not done as part of any systematic or official command policy of General Matsui, much less of the Japanese government, but were done by some local units and by roaming bands of enlisted personnel. The December 16 protest that the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone sent to the Japanese Embassy in Nanking noted that “most of the trouble has come from wandering groups of three to four soldiers without an officer” (IMTFE transcript, p. 4510, prosecution document 1744, exhibit number 323).

If you ever served in the military, you'd know that commanders are responsible for the conduct of all their men. That would make Matsui guilty. Which is why he found himself at the end of a rope in 1948

Two weeks later, on December 29, the International Committee reported that the number of cases of violence and crime were declining and that the situation had “much improved”:

Oh, look, the white people stopped being offended by the slaughter, that makes it okay now.

 

[mikegriffith1]

The Chinese version of the Nanking Massacre is similar to the wild and now-debunked British tales of German atrocities in Belgium during World War I. There were indeed some German atrocities in Belgium, but they were not as grotesque and not nearly as numerous as British propaganda portrayed them. The British accounts of German war crimes in Belgium inflamed public opinion against Germany. The extent of the exaggeration and fabrication in the British accounts was not uncovered until years after the war.

During the war, in 1915, the British government asked Viscount Bryce, a leading historian at the time, to chair the Committee on Alleged German Outrages to investigate the allegations of atrocities. The committee's report pretended to prove many of the atrocity claims, especially the most lurid ones. The report made a huge impact on public opinion in the U.S. and played a key role in persuading the American public to support entering the war against the Germans.

In the immediate aftermath of the war, the British continued to peddle this anti-German propaganda to justify the harsh terms of the Versailles Treaty.

The first indications that the British government's atrocity stories were a mixture of falsehood and exaggeration came when, after the war, historians tried to examine the documentation for the Bryce committee's report and were told the files were inexplicably "missing." Historians then discovered that surviving correspondence between the committee members revealed that the committee had had severe doubts about the credibility of the stories they were investigating.

In the years that followed, the shocking extent of the British exaggeration and fabrication of German wartime atrocities was exposed. This disclosure became something of a scandal, and there was a sharp backlash among the American people against U.S. entry into World War I as a result.

Sadly and ironically, the exposure of the British WWI anti-German propaganda made American officials in World War II hesitant to believe the initial reports that the Germans were systematically murdering massive numbers of Jews and were forcing millions of others to work as slaves in concentration camps. American officials did not want to fall victim to false/exaggerated atrocity stories again.

You can read more about the exposure of British WWI propaganda regarding German atrocities in Celia Kingsbury's book For Home and Country: World War I Propaganda on the Home Front (University of Nebraska Press, 2010).

The shredding of the British WWI propaganda is similar to the shredding that has been done to the Chinese version of the Nanking Massacre as embodied in Iris Chang's book. Not only did the emotionally disturbed Chang fraudulently use photos that had nothing to do with the events in Nanking, but she ignored or severely misrepresented the mountain of primary source evidence regarding the size of Nanking's population when the Japanese arrived, the number of civilians killed, the Japanese leadership's reaction to reports of the massacre, the area in which the massacre occurred (Chang was forced to enlarge the area far beyond what the primary sources described), and the conduct of the Chinese troops in Nanking.

 

[Unkotare]

Chang's exposure led her to suicide.

 

[JoeB131]

Chang's exposure led her to suicide.

Wow, really? You went there?

Chang was a respected scholar and still is. What caused her suicide was probably being the one to document horrible events like Nanjing and Bataan.

 

[Unkotare]

Wow, really? You went there?
...

The truth is the truth.

 

[JoeB131]

The Chinese version of the Nanking Massacre is similar to the wild and now-debunked British tales of German atrocities in Belgium during World War I.

Why is it when you can't make your case on one thing, you need to talk about something else. Like on the USS Liberty Thread, where you used unrelated friendly fire incidents to absolve the Zionists.

Come on, guy. The subject here is the Nanjing Massacre, not the British in WWI.

(The Germans really did horrible shit in WWI, BTW. Not as bad as what they did in WWII, though.)

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/380270

 

[mikegriffith1]

Chang's exposure led her to suicide.

Wow, really? You went there?

Chang was a respected scholar and still is. What caused her suicide was probably being the one to document horrible events like Nanjing and Bataan.

JoeB131 is hoping that people won't read the previous replies in this thread because then they'll know that he does nothing but repeat the same falsehoods and distortions over and over again, even though those lies and distortions have been refuted in replies to him.

First off, Iris Chang was an emotionally disturbed woman, to put it gently. She held the paranoid belief that when she visited Louisville, she was being "recruited" by "the CIA or some other organization." She believed she was being "followed in the streets." She claimed she was being "persecuted by forces more powerful than I could have imagined." One of her own research assistants checked her into a psychiatric facility in Louisville (the Norton Psychiatric Hospital), where she was diagnosed with "reactive psychosis." Yet, she described her time at the hospital as a "detention" and claimed it was "the government’s attempt to discredit me." Can you say "paranoid"?

At the time she committed suicide, she was taking two drugs commonly prescribed to tread bipolar disorder, epilepsy, and schizophrenia (valproate and risperidone). (And, folks, FYI, I discussed Chang's emotional instability in at least two previous replies, but, as usual, JoeB131 has ignored them and has just repeated his praise of Chang.)

Iris Chang was also a shoddy, dishonest scholar. Her book on the Nanking atrocity has been torn to shreds and exposed as fraudulent by Asia scholars. Her book is filled with inexcusable errors and mischaracterizations, starting in the book's introduction, where she bafflingly completely mischaracterizes the message of the 1950 film Rashomon. Asia scholar Paul De Vries:

In the introduction, Chang cites the 1950 Akira Kurosawa movie Rashomon. She describes it as a tale that "goes to the heart of history," before claiming that her book has been written with the same resolve.

The film is about a rape-murder case in tenth-century Kyoto. It is told at trial by four witnesses with contradictory accounts. Rashomon's core message, deployed countless times as an analogy in other works, is that there is more than one side to every tale. It is a caution against absolutism.

There are three schools of thought concerning the Nanjing Massacre. The Great Massacre school, the Illusion school, and what is commonly referred to as the Middle-of-the-Road school. I would prefer to classify the latter as "the school which employs common sense and is supported by the evidence."

If evaluating the Nanjing Massacre from the Rashomon principle, an author would set out the arguments of all three factions. Or at the very least, those of the Great Massacre and Illusion schools.

Instead, Chang details the Great Massacre argument with near exclusivity. She rationalizes adherence to the spirit of Rashomon in that she did so from the point of view of the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Westerners who had remained within the city.

This is quite extraordinary, comical even. Not only did Chang totally misread the movie's central lesson, but she also engaged in the absolutism that it cautions against. It is hard to conceive of a more inauspicious preface for a book that purports to be revelatory. ('The Rape of Nanking': Looking For the Spirit of 'Rashomon' | JAPAN Forward)

 

[JoeB131]

First off, Iris Chang was an emotionally disturbed woman, to put it gently. She held the paranoid belief that when she visited Louisville, she was being "recruited" by "the CIA or some other organization." She believed she was being "followed in the streets." She claimed she was being "persecuted by forces more powerful than I could have imagined." One of her own research assistants checked her into a psychiatric facility in Louisville (the Norton Psychiatric Hospital), where she was diagnosed with "reactive psychosis." Yet, she described her time at the hospital as a "detention" and claimed it was "the government’s attempt to discredit me." Can you say "paranoid"?

Mormon Mike, being unable to rationalize a human rights abuse, now moves on to character assassination of a dead woman.

Yes, Chang had a mental breakdown at the end of her life, no one disputes that.

Iris Chang was also a shoddy, dishonest scholar. Her book on the Nanking atrocity has been torn to shreds and exposed as fraudulent by Asia scholars. Her book is filled with inexcusable errors and mischaracterizations, starting in the book's introduction, where she bafflingly completely mischaracterizes the message of the 1950 film Rashomon. Asia scholar Paul De Vries:

Wow, this is your argument, that she took a different view of a film than you did?

There are three schools of thought concerning the Nanjing Massacre. The Great Massacre school, the Illusion school, and what is commonly referred to as the Middle-of-the-Road school. I would prefer to classify the latter as "the school which employs common sense and is supported by the evidence."

If evaluating the Nanjing Massacre from the Rashomon principle, an author would set out the arguments of all three factions. Or at the very least, those of the Great Massacre and Illusion schools.

Except that is horseshit, guy.

Even you admit that at least 260,000 HUMAN BEINGS died at Nanjing. You try to downplay it by saying, "Well, some of them were soldiers who shed their uniforms and tried to escape, so that makes it okay, then."

It's the kind of dishonest shit I would expect from Mormons, who have to reject logic and reason every day to remain active in their cult.