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

[mikegriffith1]

Unkotare said:
Chang's exposure led her to suicide.
JoeB131 said:
Wow, really? You went there?
Unkotare said:
The truth is the truth.

Yeap. After all, lots of people have written books about the Nanking Massacre and the Bataan Death March, but did not become (and never were) paranoid and schizophrenic, and then kill themselves. I mentioned some of Iris Chang's paranoid claims in my previous reply. In addition, in her suicide note, she said the U.S. Government was listening to her phone conversations and opening her mail.

One of the first things that scholars zeroed in on about Chang's 300,000-plus civilian deaths figure was the sheer impossibility of it due to the clear evidence that Nanking's population was no more than 250,000 when the Japanese arrived.

And one of the sources that so many scholars have identified as refuting Chang's 300,000-plus figure for civilian deaths is Dr. Lewis Smythe's survey of Nanking's population and of civilian deaths, which he did soon after the Nanking Massacre ended. Authors who peddle the 300,000 figure have always had to lamely dismiss Dr. Lewis Smythe's survey.

Smythe was a sociology professor at Jinling University and a member of the Nanking International Relief Committee. He found that the Japanese had killed, wounded, abducted, or otherwise harmed a total of 10,950 people—including 2,400 killed (3,400 killed if you include killed in military operations and unknown causes), 3,050 wounded, and 4,200 abducted (pp. 6-8).

As mentioned several times previously, Smythe’s report, titled War Damage in the Nanking Area, agrees with several journals of European residents of the Nanking Safety Zone, who, during and just after the period of violence, recorded that it was believed that “as many as 10,000 people,” i.e., civilians, had been killed by the Japanese.

Smythe also determined that the population of Nanking when the Japanese arrived was no more than 250,000: “between 200,000 and 250,000” (p. 4). This, of course, would mean that the Japanese could not have killed 300,000 people in Nanking.

Chang apparently tried to anticipate this objection by vastly expanding the area of the massacre, but that doesn't work for three reasons. One, Smythe soon did another survey that covered a much larger area surrounding Nanking, and the death-toll finding from that second survey was nowhere near 300,000. I'll discuss Smythe's second survey in a future reply. Two, we know that the Japanese army did not even pass through most the expanded area that Chang cited. Three, all the primary sources reported that the massacre was limited to the immediate Nanking area, another fact that Chang simply ignored.

Another important part of Dr. Smythe’s report is that Smythe noted that people steadily began to return to Nanking after the Japanese occupied the city, which of course you would not expect to be the case if the Japanese had been engaged in a massive and prolonged killing spree that killed hundreds of thousands of people.

To help him conduct his survey, Smythe hired Chinese students. As students of the Nanking Massacre know, Smythe was one of the city officials who authored many official complaints to the Japanese Embassy in Nanking about the savage conduct of some Japanese soldiers, so no one can sanely suggest that he was some kind of Japanese apologist (JoeB131 has actually made this ludicrous claim). Indeed, he conducted his survey to determine just how much damage the Japanese had done and how many people the Japanese had killed.

Furthermore, it should be noted that Smythe did not confine his survey to the Nanking city limits but also surveyed Xiaguan and other areas outside the city limits (and his second survey covered an even larger area, a much larger area). The field work was done between March 9 and April 2, 1938. The survey of buildings was conducted between March 15 and June 15. Smythe also conducted an agricultural survey in six counties adjacent to Nanking, from March 8-23, covering damage to crops, seed, farming equipment, as well as human casualties.

Japanese author Masaaki Tanaka provides additional information about Smythe’s survey and report:

One of the most trustworthy primary sources relating to the Nanking Incident is Lewis S.C. Smythe’s War Damage in the Nanking Area, A Sociological Survey. The scientific and rational methods used in its preparation raise it to a status unparalleled by any other reference. Smythe, a professor of sociology at Jinling University, had conducted similar surveys in the past.

With the assistance of Professor Bates, Smythe hired a large number of Chinese students and, over a period of approximately two months, proceeded to conduct a survey on war damage sustained by the residents of Nanking. For the survey, Smythe used the random sampling method. He did everything he could to ensure that it would be meticulous, accurate, rational, and fair.

For the portion of the survey that focused on households, the students, working in teams of two, visited one out of every 50 occupied homes. They interviewed the residents and multiplied the figures obtained from those interviews by 50. For the portion relating to damage to houses, the teams inspected one house in 10. A certain amount of bias was inevitable, since the interviews were conducted by Chinese students, but the scientific methods used cannot be faulted. (What Really Happened in Nanking: The Refutation of a Common Myth, p. 40)

If anyone doubts Tanaka’s description of the survey, they can read Smythe’s report and see that it is accurate.

Chang’s defenders have thought it necessary to reject and denounce Smythe’s analysis even though Smythe made it clear that he believed there was “reason to expect under-reporting of deaths and violence at the hands of the Japanese soldiers, because of the fear of retaliation from the army of occupation” (p. 7). The problem is that even if you assume that Smythe’s survey findings were low by 300%, that gets you nowhere near 300,000 civilian deaths. Sampling is a recognized survey method. That is why American public opinion polls that survey 1,500 to 2,000 voters are considered reliable indicators of the views of American voters as a whole. The standard margin of error for such polls is 3-5%.

So you see the problem for Chang defenders regarding Smythe’s survey. It is just not reasonable or credible to assume a massive margin of error, given Smythe’s sampling size. Again, even if you posit a margin of error of 300%, that gets you nowhere near 300,000 civilian deaths. If Smythe’s finding of 3,400 deaths was off by 300%, that gets you to 13,600 civilian deaths. To get to 300,000 deaths, you would have to assume a staggering margin of error of at least 7,000%.

Jinling University Professor Miner Searle Bates, an American, also assisted Dr. Smythe. He testified at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMFTE), i.e., the Tokyo Tribunal, that based on his and Dr. Smythe’s survey and their checking of burials, he and Dr. Smythe concluded that 12,000 people were killed in Nanking:

Professor Smythe and I concluded, as a result of our investigations and observations and checking of burials, that twelve thousand civilians, men, women and children, were killed inside the walls within our own sure knowledge. (IMTFE transcript, July 29, 1946, No. 36.)

Such information, even though it came from an American who had no sympathy for the Japanese army, was very unwelcome at the Tokyo Tribunal, and Dr. Bates’ testimony has been rejected by those who claim that 300,000 people were killed in Nanking.

In his foreword to Dr. Smythe’s report, Dr. Bates made some interesting comments, among them being that the Chinese did some of the burning in Nanking and that Chinese bandits committed as many acts of robbery and violence as did Japanese soldiers, if not more:

The International Committee is aware, however, that statements have been published by Chinese, putting upon the Japanese an exclusive and exaggerated blame for the injuries to the people of the Nanking area; likewise that statements have been published by Japanese, charging the Chinese with burning and looting which they themselves benevolently checked.

In order to guard against controversial misuse of the present report, we feel it necessary to make a brief factual statement as to the causation of the injuries listed.

The burning in the municipal areas immediately adjoining the walled city of Nanking, and in some of the towns and villages along the southeasterly approaches to Nanking, was done by the Chinese armies as a military measure - whether proper or improper, is not for us to determine.

A very small amount of damage to civilian life and property was done by military operations along the roads from the south-east, and in the four days of moderately severe attack upon the city.

Practically all of the burning within the city walls, and a good deal of that in rural areas, was done gradually by the Japanese forces (in Nanking, from December 19, one week after entry, to the beginning of February). For the period covered in the surveys, most of the looting in the entire area, and practically all of the violence against civilians, was also done by the Japanese forces -- whether justifiably or unjustifiably in terms of policy, is not for us to decide.

Beginning early in January, there gradually developed looting and robbery by Chinese civilians; and later, particularly after March, the struggle for fuel brought serious structural damage to unoccupied buildings.

Also, there has latterly grown up in the rural areas a serious banditry which currently rivals and sometimes surpasses the robbery and violence by Japanese soldiers. (pp. i-ii)

Given the circumstances, I could see a margin of error as high as 300% to 500%, but to posit an error rate beyond that would be pushing the limits of credulity, survey experience, and logic.

The late Maeda Yuji, former correspondent for Domei Tsushin and former director of the Japan Press Center, described his recollections of his assignment in Nanking in Japan and the World.

Those who claim that a massacre took place in Nanking, leaving aside their accusations that 200,000-300,000 persons were murdered for the moment, assert that most victims were women and children. However, these supposed victims were, without exception, in the Safety Zone, protected by the Japanese Security Headquarters. The Nanking Bureau of my former employer, Domei Tsushin, was situated inside the Safety Zone. Four days after the occupation, all of us moved to the Bureau, which served both as our lodgings and workplace. Shops had already reopened, and life had returned to normal. We were privy to anything and everything that happened in the Safety Zone. No massacre claiming tens of thousands, or thousands, or even hundreds of victims could have taken place there without our knowing about it, so I can state with certitude that none occurred.

Prisoners of war were executed, some perhaps cruelly, but those executions were acts of war and must be judged from that perspective. There were no mass murders of noncombatants. I cannot remain silent when an event that never occurred is recognized as fact, and is described as such in our textbooks. Why was historical fact so horribly distorted? I believe that the answer to this question can be found in the postwar historical view, for which the Tokyo Trials are responsible. (p. 413)

 

[JoeB131]

Yeap. After all, lots of people have written books about the Nanking Massacre and the Bataan Death March, but did not become (and never were) paranoid and schizophrenic, and then kill themselves. I mentioned some of Iris Chang's paranoid claims in my previous reply. In addition, in her suicide note, she said the U.S. Government was listening to her phone conversations and opening her mail.

First, how do you know the government wasn't doing that shit? She took her life in 2004, when Dubya Bush and Cheney were wiretapping a whole lot of people, torturing suspects, etc. Chang had written several articles critical of the Bush regime at the time.

One of the first things that scholars zeroed in on about Chang's 300,000-plus civilian deaths figure was the sheer impossibility of it due to the clear evidence that Nanking's population was no more than 250,000 when the Japanese arrived.

And one of the sources that so many scholars have identified as refuting Chang's 300,000-plus figure for civilian deaths is Dr. Lewis Smythe's survey of Nanking's population and of civilian deaths, which he did soon after the Nanking Massacre ended. Authors who peddle the 300,000 figure have always had to lamely dismiss Dr. Lewis Smythe's survey.

What he a statistician, Did he do a census.

The only Census we have is the one from the Nationalist Government, which states the population of Nanjing was 1 million in January 1937.

Population of Nanjing in December of 1937 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

An official survey conducted in March 1937 had put the total civilian population of Nanjing at 1,019,667.<a .....

In the first weeks of December, as the Japanese were advancing on the city, rapid population movements took place both into and out of the city. On the one hand, many inhabitants of Nanjing attempted to flee to neighboring villages in the last days before the city's fall. On the other hand, refugees were streaming into the city from the rural villages around Nanjing which were being burned down by the Chinese Army.

Given the circumstances, I could see a margin of error as high as 300% to 500%, but to posit an error rate beyond that would be pushing the limits of credulity, survey experience, and logic.

The late Maeda Yuji, former correspondent for Domei Tsushin and former director of the Japan Press Center, described his recollections of his assignment in Nanking in Japan and the World.

Wow, the Japs investigated and found the Japs didn't do anything that bad.

We've been over this, you Mormon Piece of Shit. The Japanese have consistently downplayed what monsters they were during World War II. They've consistently denied that they killed upwards of 30 million people across Asia.

The 300,000 figure is not only the one that the CCP promotes, it's also the number that the Nationalist Government claimed at the time and still claims to this day.

 

[JoeB131]

Hey, Mormon Mike, do you have any figures that don't come from either a Western "scholar" or a Japanese source?

Because a bunch of white people saying, "This wasn't so bad", and the Japanese agreeing with them doesn't really impress anyone.

 

[mikegriffith1]

mikegriffith1 said:
In addition, in her suicide note, she [Iris Chang] said the U.S. Government was listening to her phone conversations and opening her mail.

JoeB131:
First, how do you know the government wasn't doing that? She took her life in 2004, when Dubya Bush and Cheney were wiretapping a whole lot of people, torturing suspects, etc. Chang had written several articles critical of the Bush regime at the time.

LOL! Oh my! I must admit that I thought that not even you would defend those paranoid delusions. But, hey, thanks for further discrediting yourself. So now you're arguing that Bush and Cheney may indeed have been tapping Chang's phone conversations and reading her mail! Yeah, that is so, so, so believable. Anyway, moving on from your latest wingnut defense of Chang.

One of Iris Chang’s many critics is Dr. Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, a professor of history at York University in Toronto, Canada, one of Canada’s largest universities. He was the co-editor of the book Opium Regimes China, Britain, and Japan, 1839-1952, published by the University of California Press, and the editor of the book Modern Japanese Thought, published by Cambridge University Press. He was also the editor of the highly acclaimed round-table book on the Nanking Massacre: The Nanking Atrocity, 1937-1938: Complicating the Picture, published by Berghahn Books in 2007.

Below are a few of the errors that Dr. Wakabayashi has identified in Chang’s scholarship, mainly in her books The Rape of Nanking and Thread of the Silkworm, along with the problems with Chang’s ahistorical approach and the dogmatism of her defenders. I am quoting from his essay “Iris Chang Reassessed” in The Nanking Atrocity:

After 1994–95, Chang affirmed that factual accuracy and logical rigor were expendable in the pursuit of her life work—to commemorate past victimization of “my people” and arouse group pride and ethnic identity needed for them to defeat US racism.

Peter Gries condemns PRC chauvinists who exploit Chang’s polemics for anti-Japanese purposes, yet he declines to refute “flaws in Chang’s argument” and chooses “not to question” her math in calculating the Nanking victim toll. Why, because he says: “Chang never claims to be a historian” and is “a sincere young woman enraged by what she learned” about the event.

Fruitful dialogue with Chang’s supporters is impossible because empirical history on the one hand and commemoration in moral agitation on the other are mutually exclusive endeavors.

Chang’s allies cling to the official PRC figure of “over 300,000” as symbolic of victimization at Nanking. Just to mention a lower estimate is to “play the numbers game,” which trivializes Chinese pain that must be memorialized and Japanese evil that must be castigated. Writer Jeff Kingston lampoons anyone who indulges in “caviling about” or “quibbling over the precise scale” of the Atrocity. Mike Honda, ex-member of the House of Representatives, normally cites the figure of 200,000 comfort women for all of Asia in the entire war, but in July 2015 told then-president Ma Ying-jeou that 200,000 were from Taiwan alone. If one’s goal is moral agitation, statistical imprecision is immaterial. Chang’s victim toll for Nanking varies widely within her book covers, and that for the war as a whole spiked from 3 million to 35 million over the brief course of her career.

She deftly exploited the plural “s”— in “the hundreds of thousands”—so as to inflate Nanking’s refugee population and thus the potential number of massacre victims. Through this ploy she insinuates “in the high six digits,” when the figures actually ranged from 200,000 to 250,000—the least required for a plural “s.” Arithmetic errors and semantic distortions do not mat ter for persons who invoke history in the service of virtue.

Unlike ancient or medieval tale-tellers, empirical historians distinguish fanciful or semi-fanciful accounts from those faithful to the documentary record. They authenticate sources with care and do not use dubious, much less spurious, ones. They do not alter sources with the intent to deceive or suppress portions therein that cast doubt on their claims. They do not misrepresent views advanced by experts in order to enhance the cogency and appeal of their own arguments. They welcome reputable revisionism that forces them to rework their claims more in line with the sources.

Barak Kushner rejects Chang’s portrayal of Nanking as “the forgotten Holocaust of World War II,” yet he affirms that this designation is “a perhaps acceptable hyperbole given her aim.” Such well-intentioned tolerance is misguided and subversive of history as an academic discipline.

She states that Japanese planes bombed Shanghai in 1932, producing “six hundred thousand refugees” and leaving the city “strewn with corpses and the charred ruins of tenement housing,” which “sent shockwaves throughout China” and “seared the national consciousness.” Chang seemingly mixed up the assault on Shanghai prior to Nanking in 1937 with the Shanghai Incident five years earlier, from 28 January to 3 March 1932, and she exaggerates the scale and impact of this 1932 Incident. Japan did not torch the entire city. Chang’s civilian death toll—unstated in Thread of the Silkworm—rose to “tens of thousands” in The Rape of Nanking. In fact, the thirty-three-day Shanghai Incident left 1,400 Chinese civilians dead and 14,000 Chinese military casualties, meaning dead and wounded.

Thread of the Silkworm contends that the Japanese at Nanking “killed between two and three hundred thousand Chinese.” Chang presumes that this figure—which appeared only several years later—got “worldwide coverage” in 1937 that “Tsien followed closely” in Los Angeles. Her anachronistic non-sequitur later became a delusive fixation. Some newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune, New York Times, and Washington Post did describe a barbaric “sack” or (small “r”) “rape” of Nanking in December 1937. Reporters cited helpless Chinese murdered en masse but treated this as part of a war with killing on both sides. They calculated Chinese belligerents who died in action plus civilians murdered in cold blood to estimate deaths in the thousands, not in six figures.

Based on hearsay in the PRC [Communist China], Chang writes that Chinese scholars who travel to Japan for research risk bodily harm or death from right-wing thugs. Thugs do exist, and ugly incidents of hate speech do occur, but violent hate crimes against Chinese are almost unheard of in Japan, where Chinese who deviate from the official PRC line on any major issue enjoy legal rights and personal safety denied to them at home. Chinese academics hold tenure at virtually all large Japanese universities. One of them, Chu Chien-jung (Zhu Jianrong), was indefinitely detained by the police in July 2013, being deprived of due process without the laying of charges—not in Japan where he works, but on a trip home to Shanghai. Protests from Japanese friends helped secure his release in January 2014.

Contrary to Chang’s claims, there was no intentional postwar cover-up of the Nanking Atrocity; rather, there were no special-interest groups demanding that disproportionate attention be paid to it. This is why so few books were devoted to Nanking—and the rub comes here—as a stand-alone topic. Wartime Western field reporters such as White, Belden, and Peck had tended to portray KMT [Nationalist Chinese]-inflicted horrors as worse than those by the Japanese, and postwar historians treated the Atrocity as one horror among many in a brutally cruel war.

The Rape of Nanking reflects the structure of Raul Hillberg’s Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders who stand for the Japanese, the Chinese, and uncaring foreign onlookers except for heroes such as the good Nazi, John Rabe. But Chang’s titular categories unravel when examined against key facts in the 1930s. She alleges a German-Japanese congruity dating from 1931 when Japan invaded Manchuria. . . .

Nazi Germany provided generous aid to China in the form of military hardware and experts to use it, plus a loan of 100 million marks in 1936 to finance Chinese exports of war matériel such as tungsten needed by Germany. The last German military advisors left China in July 1938, seven months after Nanking fell, and bilateral trade in Chinese war matériel for German weaponry continued until July 1941. KMT China gained significant military and financial benefits from Nazi Germany, which became a military ally of Japan only in September 1940. Thus, Chang’s view of Japanese-German collusion from 1931 is an anachronistic delusion.

Chang lauds R. J. Rummel, author of China’s Bloody Century (1991), as “perhaps the world’s greatest authority on democide (… genocide and government mass murder),” and she relies heavily on his work. Thus she writes that the total Chinese death toll was “incredible, between 1,578,000 and 6,325,000. R. J. Rummel gives a prudent estimate of 3,949,000 killed, of which all but 400,000 were civilians.” This much is an accurate quotation.

Then Chang goes on: “But he points out that millions more perished.… If those deaths are added to the final count, then one can say that the Japanese killed more than 19 million Chinese people in its war against China.” In actuality, Rummel gives a final count of about 19,440,000 Chinese war deaths, but he breaks down this aggregate to read “6,157,000” in the “KMT/COM democide” and “3,949,000” in the “Japan democide,” and he ascribes the remaining 9,334,000 deaths to KMT-induced famines, warlord conflicts, and “civilian war dead exclusive of democide.” In sum, Chang makes Rummel say that Japanese troops murdered all 19,440,000 Chinese who died in the eight-year war, when he in fact attributed 15,491,000 deaths in that total—about three out of four—to the Chinese side.

This is not an isolated example. Throughout his book, Rummel gives statistics and makes statements contrary to, or greatly at odds with, Chang’s. For instance, he quotes a contention by ROC war crimes prosecutor Shih Mei-yu that “the Kempeitai (secret police) had recommended to Tokyo that ‘Japan wipe out all Chinese from the map,’ a Japanese version of Hitler’s ‘final solution’ for the Gypsies and Jews.” But Rummel explicitly confutes Shih: “My reading of the transcript does not support his interpretation. In the main, Japan’s policy toward China appeared aimed at making her a docile member of a Japanese-dominated ‘co-prosperity sphere.’”

He [Rummel] also asserts that “the [KMT] nationalists likely murdered some 2,000,000 more [than did Japan] during the war, and this toll or something like it is virtually unknown.… Apparently the [KMT] nationalists got away with murder; responsible Japanese were tried as war criminals.”

You can read Dr. Wakabayashi’s entire essay here:

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www.berghahnbooks.com

 

[JoeB131]

LOL! Oh my! I must admit that I thought that not even you would defend those paranoid delusions. But, hey, thanks for further discrediting yourself. So now you're arguing that Bush and Cheney may indeed have been tapping Chang's phone conversations and reading her mail! Yeah, that is so, so, so believable. Anyway, moving on from your latest wingnut defense of Chang.

are you arguing that a regime that waged a war on a lie and tortured prisoners in violation of the Geneva Convention was somehow above wiretapping critics?

Is this what you were arguing?

NSA warrantless surveillance (2001–2007) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

NSA warrantless surveillance — also commonly referred to as "warrantless-wiretapping" or "-wiretaps" — was the surveillance of persons within the United States, including U.S. citizens, during the collection of notionally foreign intelligence by the National Security Agency (NSA) as part of the Terrorist Surveillance Program. In late 2001, the NSA was authorized to monitor, without obtaining a FISA warrant, phone calls, Internet activities, text messages and other forms of communication involving any party believed by the NSA to be outside the U.S., even if the other end of the communication lay within the U.S.

One of Iris Chang’s many critics is Dr. Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, a professor of history at York University in Toronto, Canada, one of Canada’s largest universities. He was the co-editor of the book Opium Regimes China, Britain, and Japan, 1839-1952, published by the University of California Press, and the editor of the book Modern Japanese Thought, published by Cambridge University Press. He was also the editor of the highly acclaimed round-table book on the Nanking Massacre: The Nanking Atrocity, 1937-1938: Complicating the Picture, published by Berghahn Books in 2007.

Wow, another Jap saying the Japs didn't do anything that bad.

Tell you what, find me a Chinese Scholar who says that Nanjing wasn't that bad.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Are you arguing that a regime that waged a war on a lie and tortured prisoners in violation of the Geneva Convention was somehow above wiretapping critics? Is this what you were arguing?

Oh my. So you're doubling down on wingnut craziness again, huh? Is there no far-left myth that you don't swallow? Mind you, I'm not complaining. I'm grateful that are you so willing to put your fringe views on full display.

So, tell me, do you also believe that the supposedly lawless, prisoner-torturing, police-state "Bush regime" staged 9/11 with controlled demolitions in the Twin Towers and with a missile strike to the Pentagon?

The idea that the government was tapping Iris Chang's phone and opening her mail is looney-tune material. It is one of Chang's many paranoid delusions, along with her belief that the CIA or some other shadowy government entity tried to "recruit" her, that "they" were following her in the streets, and that her stay in a psychiatric hospital was set up by the government to discredit her (actually, one of her own research assistants took her to the hospital because she was acting so erratically).

Oh, wait. Speaking of her other paranoid delusions, are you going to suggest that they, too, were entirely possible and not crazy after all?

 

[JoeB131]

Oh my. So you're doubling down on wingnut craziness again, huh? Is there no far-left myth that you don't swallow? Mind you, I'm not complaining. I'm grateful that are you so willing to put your fringe views on full display.

So, tell me, do you also believe that the supposedly lawless, prisoner-torturing, police-state "Bush regime" staged 9/11 with controlled demolitions in the Twin Towers and with a missile strike to the Pentagon?

Obviously not.

We know they didn't do that.
We know that they did tape the phones of American citizens and engaged in domestic spying.

The idea that the government was tapping Iris Chang's phone and opening her mail is looney-tune material. It is one of Chang's many paranoid delusions, along with her belief that the CIA or some other shadowy government entity tried to "recruit" her, that "they" were following her in the streets, and that her stay in a psychiatric hospital was set up by the government to discredit her (actually, one of her own research assistants took her to the hospital because she was acting so erratically).

I don't dispute that she had a mental breakdown at the end of her life, but given the shit she was studying, I'm also not surprised.

That really doesn't take away from the fact that the Bush Regime was tapping the phones of people they didn't like. And that's just what they admit to.

Or do you only trust the government when Republicans are in charge?

 

[mikegriffith1]

Obviously not. We know they didn't do that. We know that they did tape the phones of American citizens and engaged in domestic spying. I don't dispute that she had a mental breakdown at the end of her life, but given the &^&$# she was studying, I'm also not surprised. That really doesn't take away from the fact that the Bush Regime was tapping the phones of people they didn't like. And that's just what they admit to. Or do you only trust the government when Republicans are in charge?

Your far-left exaggerations about the "Bush Regime," given to excuse Iris Chang's paranoid delusions, are not worth answering. And Chang's odd behavior did not start only "at the end of her life."

Moving on, let us consider the devastating evidence from Dr. Smythe’s supplemental survey, i.e., the agricultural survey that he did after he did his population survey. His population survey was done in Nanking and in the immediate surrounding area, and concluded that 6,450/7,450 civilians had been killed or injured by Japanese soldiers in non-combat situations—2,400 killed (3,400 if you count killed in military operations and unknown causes of death), and 3,050 wounded (see table 4 in his survey report).

However, in his subsequent agricultural survey, Dr. Smythe determined that 30,905 civilians had been killed in the large surrounding area of the survey (see table 25 in his survey report). He conducted the supplemental survey in four and a half prefectures (roughly equal to American counties) around Nanking, beyond the area covered in his population survey, The prefectures were Luho, Kuyung, Lishui, Kaoshun, and Kiangning (in which Nanking was located).

Again, in this survey, Dr. Smythe found that 30,905 civilians had been killed in the surrounding areas. These killings were in addition to the 2,400/3,400 deaths from his population survey in and around Nanking. Keep in mind, too, that Dr. Smythe, realizing there was under-reporting, studied the burial records and concluded that about 10,000 people had been killed in Nanking. So why don’t we hear more about the agricultural survey, which added 30,905 people to the death toll? Because that additional death toll still gets you nowhere near Iris Chang’s ridiculous figure of 300,000-plus civilian deaths.

Also, it is important to remember that in order to inflate the death toll to 300,000-plus, Chang vastly expanded the area of the massacre. Instead of considering just Nanking and its immediate surrounding area, which was where the primary sources said the atrocity occurred, Chiang included most of the massive area covered in Smythe’s agricultural survey. But the agricultural survey, whose area was 750 times larger than Nanking, did not come up with anything close to numbers that would make Chang’s figure credible.

Moreover, and crucially, Japanese forces did not pass through or near most of Chang’s expanded area and most of the area surveyed in Smythe’s agricultural survey. The routes used by the two Japanese forces that fought in Nanking are well known. They are documented in a number of sources. They were observed by journalists, local residents, tracked by the Nationalist army, etc., etc. Many chunks of territory included in Chang’s expanded area and in Smythe’s agricultural survey were areas where Japanese forces simply had not traveled en route to Nanking.

Is this an indication that Smythe’s Chinese assistants, who were the ones who did most of the field work, might have inflated their findings, not bothering to consider what sectors the Japanese forces had and had not traveled through?

As you’ll recall, the Nationalists beached the Yellow River Dam in 1938 and caused massive flooding that killed at least 400,000 Chinese. At the time, the Nationalists claimed the Japanese had breached the dam with indiscriminate bombing, although this seemed so implausible that even some of the gullible foreign journalists in China doubted the claim. For one thing, there were no credible targets anywhere near the part of the dam that was breached. Moreover, in his memoirs, Guo Moruo, a high-ranking official in the Nationalist propaganda department, admitted that the Nationalist claims about the Yellow River Atrocity had been based on falsehoods and was a dismal failure tactically:

According to our propaganda, the cause was indiscriminate bombing on the part of the Japanese. In fact, our troops broke up the dikes on orders from top-ranking officers at the front line. This is one of our time-honored tactics: water can destroy huge armies, as the proverb goes. The damage done to the enemy was limited, but we experienced extraordinary casualties in terms of civilian lives and property. (Kenichi Ara, The Nanking Hoax: A Historian Analyzes the Events of 1937, 2007, p. 9)

I mention this to document that the Chinese Nationalists were quite willing to spread false tales about the Japanese. Yet, even the Nationalists at the time did not claim that hundreds of thousands of civilians had been killed in Nanking. In February 1938, the Nationalists asserted that the Japanese had killed 20,000 civilians and 60,000 to 70,0000 “POWs” in Nanking (Masahiro Yamamoto, Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity, Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000, p. 110; Ikuhiko Hata, "The Nanking Atrocities: Fact and Fable," Japan Echo, August 1998). I should add that many of those “POWs” had removed their uniforms and changed into civilian clothes, a violation of the rules of war that voided their POW status.

Significantly, the Chinese Communists, just months after the massacre, claimed that the Japanese had killed 42,000 people in Nanking (Hata, "The Nanking Atrocities: Fact and Fable," Japan Echo, August 1998). Not 100,000 or 200,000 or 300,000, but 42,000.

Asia scholar Dr. David Askew has provided a detailed study on the population of Nanking before, during, and after the massacre. It is titled “The Nanjing Incident: An Examination of the Civilian Population.” He documents that Nanking’s population was no more than 250,000 when the Japanese attacked the city. Here’s the link to the article:

https://chinajapan.org/articles/13.2/13.2askew2-20.pdf

Chang’s wild figure of 300,000-plus civilian deaths in the Nanking Massacre is not only impossible but is contradicted by every primary source, including the initial Nationalist and Communist statements on the number of civilian deaths.

 

[JoeB131]

Your far-left exaggerations about the "Bush Regime," given to excuse Iris Chang's paranoid delusions, are not worth answering.

Your concession is duly noted.

Moving on, let us consider the devastating evidence from Dr. Smythe’s supplemental survey, i.e., the agricultural survey that he did after he did his population survey. His population survey was done in Nanking and in the immediate surrounding area, and concluded that 6,450/7,450 civilians had been killed or injured by Japanese soldiers in non-combat situations—2,400 killed (3,400 if you count killed in military operations and unknown causes of death), and 3,050 wounded (see table 4 in his survey report).

However, in his subsequent agricultural survey, Dr. Smythe determined that 30,905 civilians had been killed in the large surrounding area of the survey (see table 25 in his survey report). He conducted the supplemental survey in four and a half prefectures (roughly equal to American counties) around Nanking, beyond the area covered in his population survey, The prefectures were Luho, Kuyung, Lishui, Kaoshun, and Kiangning (in which Nanking was located).

"And this is now we know the world to be Banana Shaped!"
"This new learning is fascinating, Bedimere!"

I'm just curious how this survey was conducted in an active war zone.

I mention this to document that the Chinese Nationalists were quite willing to spread false tales about the Japanese. Yet, even the Nationalists at the time did not claim that hundreds of thousands of civilians had been killed in Nanking. In February 1938, the Nationalists asserted that the Japanese had killed 20,000 civilians and 60,000 to 70,0000 “POWs” in Nanking (Masahiro Yamamoto, Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity, Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000, p. 110; Ikuhiko Hata, "The Nanking Atrocities: Fact and Fable," Japan Echo, August 1998). I should add that many of those “POWs” had removed their uniforms and changed into civilian clothes, a violation of the rules of war that voided their POW status.

First, you need to make up your mind if you love the Nationalists or hate them. (Chinese aren't confused on this point at all, they despite the Kumotang today).

The 300,000 figure was the accepted one at the Tokyo War trials where they strung up Mutsi by his neck.

As you’ll recall, the Nationalists beached the Yellow River Dam in 1938 and caused massive flooding that killed at least 400,000 Chinese. At the time, the Nationalists claimed the Japanese had breached the dam with indiscriminate bombing, although this seemed so implausible that even some of the gullible foreign journalists in China doubted the claim. For one thing, there were no credible targets anywhere near the part of the dam that was breached. Moreover, in his memoirs, Guo Moruo, a high-ranking official in the Nationalist propaganda department, admitted that the Nationalist claims about the Yellow River Atrocity had been based on falsehoods and was a dismal failure tactically:

The only way you get to that 400,000 figure is if you count in subsequent famines that resulted from all that good farmland being destroyed.

Both sides destroyed dams during the war, and it was an ecological catastrophe.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Your concession is duly noted.

Chuckle. Uh, yeah, okay. I mean, if that's how you choose to see it, I can't stop you. Let's be clear: I'm saying Chang's claim that the U.S. Government was opening her mail and tapping her phone was a paranoid delusion, while you're saying it just might be true.

"And this is now we know the world to be Banana Shaped!"
"This new learning is fascinating, Bedimere!"

I'm just curious how this survey was conducted in an active war zone.

This silliness is your answer to Smythe survey evidence?! What exactly are you pretending to be "curious" about? Smythe did the surveys after the Japanese had secured the city and life began to return to normal. Your nonsensical curiosity is at least not as bad as your earlier howler that Smythe was pro-Japanese.

First, you need to make up your mind if you love the Nationalists or hate them. (Chinese aren't confused on this point at all, they despite the Kumotang today).

More of your phony polemics. I've never said the Nationalists were angels. In this thread alone, I've heaped considerable criticism on the Nationalists. However, I've also noted the fact that the Nationalists were not as bad as the Communists.

The 300,000 figure was the accepted one at the Tokyo War trials where they strung up Mutsi by his neck.

Uh, no. Perhaps you're thinking of the Nanking War Crimes Tribunal, which did peddle the 300,000 figure. The Nanking Tribunal was even more of a kangaroo court than the Tokyo Tribunal, i.e., the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), aka the Tokyo Tribunal/Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. The Nanking Tribunal tried and executed people whom even the IMTFE declined to prosecute, and that's saying something.

The IMTFE 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 blood-thirsty, shamefully biased IMTFE seemed to settle on the figure of 200,000. I've already discussed the IMTFE's highly slanted, biased approach to the massacre--they wouldn't even call Dr. Smythe as a witness and refused to allow the admission of evidence that Nanking's population was no more than 250,000 when the Japanese arrived.

Again, before anyone knew what they were supposed to say, both the Nationalists and the Communists put the civilian death toll between 20,000 and 50,000.

The only way you get to that 400,000 figure is if you count in subsequent famines that resulted from all that good farmland being destroyed.

Uh, FYI, 400,000 is the low end of the death toll that scholars have reached. I've been going with the 400,000 figure to err on the side of caution.

Both sides destroyed dams during the war, and it was an ecological catastrophe.

Wow, you just can't admit anything, can you? How many people were killed when those other dams were destroyed? Huh? The Yellow River atrocity killed far, far more people than were killed when any other dam was breached. It's not even close.

And I'll just note again that you clearly have no answer for the compelling population evidence. When scholars began to dissect Chang's propaganda book, one of the first things they focused on was the clear, convincing evidence that there simply were not enough people in and around Nanking to make Chang's wild 300,000-plus number even possible, much less credible. Then came the discovery that she misrepresented most of the photos in her book, and that most of them had nothing to do with Nanking (indeed, some of them were of events that happened years earlier). In fact, scholars pointed out that of all the photos of Nanking and the surrounding area taken during the time in question, not one of them shows piles of dead bodies, not even the ones that provide a panoramic view.

 

[Unkotare]

Hey, Mormon Mike, do you have any figures that don't come from either a Western "scholar" or a Japanese source?

Because a bunch of white people saying, "This wasn't so bad", and the Japanese agreeing with them doesn't really impress anyone.

Do you really think you're "anyone"?

 

[JoeB131]

Do you really think you're "anyone"?

I think I've done far more than you have, but frankly, I keep you on ignore because you rarely add anything to a conversation.

 

[Unkotare]

I think I've done far more than you have....

Wow, bad guess.

 

[JoeB131]

Chuckle. Uh, yeah, okay. I mean, if that's how you choose to see it, I can't stop you. Let's be clear: I'm saying Chang's claim that the U.S. Government was opening her mail and tapping her phone was a paranoid delusion, while you're saying it just might be true.

Again, given Bush was wiretapping, starting wars based on lies, and torturing people, opening her mail doesn't seem that crazy.

Crazy was letting him quietly go off to retirement instead of prison.

This silliness is your answer to Smythe survey evidence?! What exactly are you pretending to be "curious" about? Smythe did the surveys after the Japanese had secured the city and life began to return to normal. Your nonsensical curiosity is at least not as bad as your earlier howler that Smythe was pro-Japanese.

How does life "return to normal" after a massacre and occupation by a genocidal enemy?

More of your phony polemics. I've never said the Nationalists were angels. In this thread alone, I've heaped considerable criticism on the Nationalists. However, I've also noted the fact that the Nationalists were not as bad as the Communists.

The Chinese would disagree.

Uh, no. Perhaps you're thinking of the Nanking War Crimes Tribunal, which did peddle the 300,000 figure. The Nanking Tribunal was even more of a kangaroo court than the Tokyo Tribunal, i.e., the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), aka the Tokyo Tribunal/Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. The Nanking Tribunal tried and executed people whom even the IMTFE declined to prosecute, and that's saying something.

Well, no, the IMTFE was only for the high level offenders - Ministers and Generals.

The local trials at Nanking and Manila went with the lower level offenders.

But again, the real problem. We didn't execute Hirohito, when they should have. They didn't execute Shiro Ishii, who was the Doctor Mengele of Unit 731.

(Wait, Mike will claim Unit 731 was a free health clinic. Right after he claims that the Bataan Death March was a nature walk.)

The IMTFE 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 blood-thirsty, shamefully biased IMTFE seemed to settle on the figure of 200,000. I've already discussed the IMTFE's highly slanted, biased approach to the massacre--they wouldn't even call Dr. Smythe as a witness and refused to allow the admission of evidence that Nanking's population was no more than 250,000 when the Japanese arrived.

You means they realized he was a crank.

Do you think that executing you for 300,000 dead is somehow less painful than executing you for 100,000?

Again, before anyone knew what they were supposed to say, both the Nationalists and the Communists put the civilian death toll between 20,000 and 50,000.

Before they got more accurate figures.

Uh, FYI, 400,000 is the low end of the death toll that scholars have reached. I've been going with the 400,000 figure to err on the side of caution.

But only if you count plague and famine. Only about 30,000 died in the actual flooding.

Wow, you just can't admit anything, can you? How many people were killed when those other dams were destroyed? Huh? The Yellow River atrocity killed far, far more people than were killed when any other dam was breached. It's not even close.

Or perhaps it saved lives by slowing down the Japanese advance, given what they were doing in the parts of the country they DID occupy.

And I'll just note again that you clearly have no answer for the compelling population evidence. When scholars began to dissect Chang's propaganda book, one of the first things they focused on was the clear, convincing evidence that there simply were not enough people in and around Nanking to make Chang's wild 300,000-plus number even possible, much less credible. Then came the discovery that she misrepresented most of the photos in her book, and that most of them had nothing to do with Nanking (indeed, some of them were of events that happened years earlier). In fact, scholars pointed out that of all the photos of Nanking and the surrounding area taken during the time in question, not one of them shows piles of dead bodies, not even the ones that provide a panoramic view.

The compelling evidence was- Wait for it - that you are selectively counting. Only civilians killed within the city limits of Nanking within a five day period in December 1937. You know, instead of everyone killed in the march between Shanghai to Nanjing and the surrounding areas, up until the campaign ended in February 1938, and including soldiers and POWs.

Then the 300,000 figure is just fine.

 

[mikegriffith1]

The compelling evidence was- Wait for it - that you are selectively counting. Only civilians killed within the city limits of Nanking within a five day period in December 1937.

I'm only answering this clown material for the sake of others.

When have I ever said that the massacre only lasted five days? When? This is a silly, dishonest strawman argument.

When have I ever said that the massacre occurred only within the city limits of Nanking? I've said, repeatedly, that it occurred in Nanking and in the immediate surrounding area, because that is where all the primary sources say the massacre occurred.

Again, as I have pointed out to you many times, and as you just keep ignoring, (1) most of the people in the surrounding area had fled, just as most of the city residents had fled, before the Japanese arrived; (2) the two wings of Matsui's army were racing toward Nanking as fast as they could move; (3) we know the routes that the two wings of the army used to get to Nanking, and they came nowhere near most of the absurdly expanded area that Iris Chang posited for the "Nanking" civilian deaths.

You know, instead of everyone killed in the march between Shanghai to Nanjing and the surrounding areas,

More abject clown material. Yes, of course, you, following Chang, want to vastly expand the area of the massacre to include the gigantic region between Shanghai and Nanking. Chang was forced to make this lame argument because she knew she could not even give the false appearance of accounting for 300,000 civilian deaths unless she vastly expanded the killing zone. However, not a single contemporary source supports this nonsense. Nobody said the Nanking Massacre occurred within such a gigantic area. And, again, the Japanese force that attacked Nanking was never even in most of that gigantic area.

And, of course, you must lamely wave aside Smythe's supplemental survey, which included a much larger area than his first survey, and which determined that 39,000 civilians were killed in this much larger area. You must also ignore the problems even with the 39,000 figure, since Japanese forces never went near or through most of the territory included in the expanded area.

Why not just accept the gruesome numbers that the evidence supports, instead of muddying the waters by vastly and implausibly inflating the death toll and expanding the killing zone? Even the killing of 20,000 civilians in Nanking and in the large area of Smythe's second survey would constitute a horrific crime, a barbaric massacre, and a terrible violation of human rights. BTW, the first Chinese Nationalist civilian death toll for the massacre was 20,000.

up until the campaign ended in February 1938,

Yes, that's what I've said. The primary sources indicate that most of the deaths occurred within the first week or two, and that the rest of the deaths occurred over the next six or seven weeks.

and including soldiers and POWs. Then the 300,000 figure is just fine.

What?! Say what?! This is further proof you have no business even talking about this subject, not just because of your lack of objectivity and candor but because of your apparent/feigned lack of knowledge.

Surely, surely even you know that Chang's 300,000 figure was for civilian deaths, not for all deaths. The debate has always been over the number of civilians deaths, not the total number of deaths. But, now you, going even beyond Chang's nonsense, want to throw in soldier and POW deaths to get to the 300,000 figure! Well, this is an embarrassing first. Even Chang never made this argument, and even Wikipedia does not make this argument. Nobody has ever made this argument. But then along came JoeB131. Congratulations.

Your novel argument that the 300,000 figure "is just fine" if we include soldiers and POWs is also a revealing admission that you know that the evidence simply does not support Chang's claim that 300,000-plus civilians were killed in the massacre.

 

[Unkotare]

Some people respond poorly to losing an argument.

 

[JoeB131]

Some people respond poorly to losing an argument.

Holocaust denial isn't an argument.

Denying what everyone else generally already agrees on (except the Japanese, of course, but they are in serious denial)

So I say we need to rename all the Japanese atrocities in WWII something nice to not offend your sensibilities.

Rape of Nanking will now be known as the "Inappropriate touching of Nanking".
The Bataan Death March will now be known as "The Bataan Nature Walk".
The Attack on Pearl Harbor will now be known as the "Pearl Harbor Splash Water Park"
Unit 731 shall be known as the "Unit 731 Day Spa".
The forced prostitution of Korean women will be known as "Comfort Women"- Oh, wait, the Japanese already used that obscene euphemism.
The Burma Death Railway shall now be known as "The Burma Choo-choo".

 

[JoeB131]

Again, as I have pointed out to you many times, and as you just keep ignoring, (1) most of the people in the surrounding area had fled,

Fled to where? Where could they have possibly fled to in a few days on foot carrying their worldly possessions (and I would assume food and water.) It should be pointed out that Chiang's Army practiced a "Scorched Earth" policy, so it wasn't like they could find food or shelter in the countryside.

(2) the two wings of Matsui's army were racing toward Nanking as fast as they could move;

And slaughtering anyone they encountered, that's the thing.

3) we know the routes that the two wings of the army used to get to Nanking, and they came nowhere near most of the absurdly expanded area that Iris Chang posited for the "Nanking" civilian deaths.

Why do you keep talking about Matsui like he was some kind of military genius? The man was a cheap butcher.

And, of course, you must lamely wave aside Smythe's supplemental survey

Yup, just another westerner thinking the deaths of Asians don't count for all that much. What made the Japanese such bastards is they looked at what the European Powers were doing around the world and said, "Hold my Beer".

Why not just accept the gruesome numbers that the evidence supports, instead of muddying the waters by vastly and implausibly inflating the death toll and expanding the killing zone? Even the killing of 20,000 civilians in Nanking and in the large area of Smythe's second survey would constitute a horrific crime, a barbaric massacre, and a terrible violation of human rights. BTW, the first Chinese Nationalist civilian death toll for the massacre was 20,000.

Yes, Killing 20,000 would have been horrible for westerners, for the Imperial Japanese Army it was a day ending in "Y".

Japanese war crimes - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Surely, surely even you know that Chang's 300,000 figure was for civilian deaths, not for all deaths. The debate has always been over the number of civilians deaths, not the total number of deaths.

No, that's the debate for you, to try to minimize it as much as possible because you are kind of sick, even for a Mormon.

 

[JoeB131]

But, now you, going even beyond Chang's nonsense, want to throw in soldier and POW deaths to get to the 300,000 figure! Well, this is an embarrassing first. Even Chang never made this argument, and even Wikipedia does not make this argument. Nobody has ever made this argument. But then along came JoeB131. Congratulations.

Executing a POW like the guys who engaged in the "Beheading contest" is a massive war crime.

You'd know this if you were ever a soldier.

This are Mike and Unkotard's "Heroes".

Hundred man killing contest - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The hundred-man killing contest (Japanese: 百人斬り競争, romanized: hyakunin-giri kyōsō, Chinese: 百人斬比賽) was a newspaper account of a contest between Toshiaki Mukai (3 June 1912 – 28 January 1948) and Tsuyoshi Noda (1912 – 28 January 1948), two Japanese Army officers serving during the Japanese invasion of China, over who could kill 100 people the fastest while using a sword. The two officers were later executed on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for their involvement.

At least the Germans had the decency to be ashamed of what they were doing.

 

[Unkotare]

Holocaust denial isn't an argument.
....

Has anyone on this thread denied the Holocaust?