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

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Mike Griffith
Oct 23, 2012
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The claim that the Japanese army killed 300,000 people in Nanking, China, in 1937 became widely accepted with the publication of Chinese author Iris Chang’s book The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II in 1997.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://www.sdh-fact.com/book-article/110/
Shūdō Higashinakano’s book The Nanking Massacre: Fact vs. Fiction. Dr. Higashinakano is a professor of history at Asia University. I think his death toll estimates are far too low, but he presents a lot of valid information that you won’t find in most books on the subject.
 
We need to keep in mind that Japan’s leaders were shocked when they began getting reports about rapes and murders committed by Japanese troops in Nanking. They never ordered any such conduct and did not condone it. Similarly, senior army officers responsible for the troops in Nanking were angered to hear about the criminal acts committed by some of those troops.

The International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone sent several reports to the Japanese government that gave accounts of violent, immoral conduct by some Japanese troops in Nanking. These reports alarmed Japan’s civilian leaders, and also many senior Japanese officers. Itaro Ishii, the head of the East Asian Bureau of the Foreign Ministry, described the Foreign Ministry’s reaction to these reports in his memoirs. He quoted from his diary entry for January 6, 1938, and then commented on it:

“We received letters from Shanghai detailing unspeakable acts of violence, including looting and rapes, committed in Nanking by our soldiers. The perpetrators of these crimes have disgraced the Imperial Army and betrayed the Japanese people. This is a matter with grave social implications. . . . How could men fighting in the name of our Emperor behave in such a way?”​

From that time on, I referred to those incidents as the “Nanking atrocities.” (A Diplomatic Career, Tokyo: Yomiuri Shimbunsha, 1980, pp. 305-306)​

Senior officers at Tenth Army HQ were likewise disturbed by the reports of serious misconduct by some Japanese troops in Nanking. On December 20, 1937, Tenth Army HQ sent a stern rebuke to the local Tenth Army commanders:

We have told troops numerous times that looting, rape, and arson are forbidden, but judging from the shameful fact that over 100 incidents of rape came to light during the current assault on Nanking, we bring this matter to your attention yet again despite the repetition. (Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, editor, The Nanking Atrocity 1937-38: Complicating the Picture, New York and London: Berghahn Books, 2007, p. 47)​

Tenth Army and Central China Area Army (CCAA) legal documents prove that senior officers were punishing some Japanese soldiers for criminal acts in Nanking. These sources include a Tenth Army legal department daily log from October 12, 1937, to February 23, 1938, and a CCAA battlefield courts martial daily ledger from January 4 to February 6, 1938. 102 men had been convicted as of February 18, 1938, 22 of them for rape, 27 for murder, and two for rape and murder. There were 16 men still awaiting trial as of that date, and two of them were charged with rape and one with murder.

When judging Imperial Japan, one must always be careful not to assume that all Japanese soldiers committed war crimes—many did not. Similarly, one must not project the actions of the military’s bad actors onto Japan’s leaders, much less onto all Japanese citizens. The vast majority of Japan’s leaders were good and decent men, and they were as saddened and embarrassed as anyone by the post-war disclosures of the horrible war crimes committed by some Japanese soldiers. Some of the cruelest army officers were lynched or shot by their own men after the war, and the Japanese public seemed to largely approve of these killings.

Assuming that most Japanese were like the war criminals in the Japanese army would be like assuming that most Americans in the North during the War Between the States were like the war criminals in General Sherman's army.
 
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In chapter 5 of The Nanking Atrocity, 1937-1938, which contains chapters by scholars from both sides of the debate, David Askew argues that period evidence of Nanking’s population in December 1937 refutes the 300,000 figure and indicates a considerably smaller number. Dr. Sven Salaar of Sophia University summarizes Askew’s argument in his review of the book:

In chapter 5, David Askew scrutinizes the claims for a large massacre, analyzing the population records for Nanjing in December 1937 and the numbers of victims as estimated in contemporary reports by the Australian journalist Harold J. Timperley, American anthropology professor Lewis S. Smythe, German businessman John Rabe, missionary John Magee (who managed to film abuses of Chinese civilians by Japanese soldiers and later smuggled this footage out of Nanjing), and NSZ administration officials like Miner Bates and John Fitch, another missionary. Although the point is often made in genocide studies that, notwithstanding discussions about the precise numbers of victims, the historical responsibility for an atrocity is not lessened for the perpetrators nor does the event become less traumatic for the victims based on casualty figures, the debate over numbers has been an all-consuming issue in both academic and popular discussions of events in Nanjing in 1937 and 1938.​

Most of the reports consulted by Askew estimate the total population of Nanjing in late 1937 as being no more than 200,000 to 250,000, fostering doubts about estimates of victims that reach a similar figure. On the other hand, the chaotic state of the war zone clearly made it difficult to conduct any kind of dispassionate investigation. Askew concludes that it seems most likely that accounts that speak of around 40,000 victims, including 12,000 POWs, are more or less correct. In arriving at this figure, he refers to the account of Harold Timperley, who in his first report gave a much higher number, but in later reports and publications refers to a figure of around 40,000 (p. 97ff)--a tally confirmed by the records of the Red Swastika Society (RSS), a Chinese charitable organization which claimed to have buried about 40,000 corpses of “unarmed persons” (p. 98ff).​

Furthermore, the RSS claimed that almost all the dead were male, and Askew takes a number of writers to task on this point. For example, he charges Edgar Snow with manipulation in his book The Battle for Asia (1941) and sees this as “the first in a long history of factual distortions.” According to Askew, Snow “inverts Bates’ breakdown, claiming that ‘a large percentage’ of those killed were ‘women and children’” (p. 107). Further, Agnes Smedley’s estimate in Battle Hymn of China (1943) of a death toll of “200,000 civilians and unarmed soldiers” is “totally unacceptable in that Nanking’s entire civilian population at the time was 200,000 to 250,000 at most” (p. 107). (H-Net Reviews)​

In his article Japanese Crimes in Nanjing, 1937-38: A Reappraisal” (in China Perspectives, January-February 2006), even Dr. Jean-Louis Margolin, who is harshly critical of the Japanese army’s conduct in Nanking, concedes that Iris Chang and other Chinese authors’ attempts to inflate Nanking’s population to support the 300,000 illegal-deaths figure is not supported by the evidence:

It should not be too difficult to estimate the number of civilians [in Nanking when the Japanese arrived]. Everybody agrees that, at the beginning of the war, Nanjing was inhabited by roughly one million people. Everybody (municipality, IC members, reporters...), during the events and in the years following, agreed too on the population remaining in December 1937: a maximum of 250,000, 90% (or more) having taken refuge in the Safety Zone. It is very important to stress that the figure had been given before the entry of the Japanese troops: Iris Chang and most Chinese authors agree that a few days later, indeed only a quarter of a million remained, but they claim that on December 13th the population was still 500,000 to 600,000, the balance corresponding to the massacred civilians. But, in Rabe's diary we can find that, as early as November 28th, “Wang Kopang, the chief of police, has repeatedly declared that 200,000 Chinese are still living in the city". Similar figures were given by the New York Times (November 22nd) and Newsweek (December 6th)—both then had reporters in Nanjing. (Japanese Crimes in Nanjing, 1937-38 : A Reappraisal)​
 
he claim that the Japanese army killed 300,000 people in Nanking, China, in 1937 became widely accepted with the publication of Chinese author Iris Chang’s book The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II in 1997.

Buddy, even the Japanese don't make the kinds of lame-ass excuses you make for their genocidal war.

I have a great deal of admiration for the Japanese and their culture, but what they did in WWII/the Second Sino-Japanese War was beyond the pale of common decency, as bad as what the Nazis did in Europe.

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

Considering she was born in 1968 and died in 2004, not likely. She was born in the United States...

Do some research before you open your pie-hole.

Iris Chang - Wikipedia
 
We need to keep in mind that Japan’s leaders were shocked when they began getting reports about rapes and murders committed by Japanese troops in Nanking. They never ordered any such conduct and did not condone it. Similarly, senior army officers responsible for the troops in Nanking were angered to hear about the criminal acts committed by some of those troops.

Right. So immediately after that, they decided this war with China was silly and negotiated a fair and just peace..

Um. No? They continued their invasion of China until 1945 and then attacked the United States when they objected to the whole thing?
 
he claim that the Japanese army killed 300,000 people in Nanking, China, in 1937 became widely accepted with the publication of Chinese author Iris Chang’s book The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II in 1997.

Buddy, even the Japanese don't make the kinds of lame-ass excuses you make for their genocidal war.

You don't know what in the world you're talking about. You clearly have not read the research of any of the better Japanese historians who have written about Japan's war in China and WW II, much less the writings of British, Australian, and American scholars who have written objective works on these issues.

I have a great deal of admiration for the Japanese and their culture, but what they did in WWII/the Second Sino-Japanese War was beyond the pale of common decency, as bad as what the Nazis did in Europe.

The Japanese did not kill as many people as the Nationalists did, and they killed far fewer people than the Communists did after Truman enabled the Communists to take over China.

And neither the Nationalists nor the Japanese killed as many people as the Nazis and the Soviets did. I notice you said nothing about the Soviets and the tens of millions of people they killed, which included about 20 million Russian citizens who didn't like Soviet rule.

But that's okay: Just keep bashing anti-Communist, pro-free enterprise Japan and never mind the fact that the Soviets and the Chinese Communists killed far more people than the Japanese did.

By the way, we killed at least five times more people when we took over the Philippines than the Japanese did when they took over Korea and Taiwan. England and France killed a lot more people when obtaining some of their colonies than the Japanese did when they obtained Korea and Taiwan.

You really need to free you mind and do a little reading other than in PC-syrup history sources. Here are some books you could start with:

Peter Harmsen, Storm Clouds Over the Pacific, 1931-1941 (Casemate Publishers, 2018)

Mark Peattie, Edward Drea, and Hans van de Ven, The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945 (Stanford University Press, 2013)

James Crowley, Japan's Quest for Autonomy: National Security and Foreign Policy, 1930-1938 (Princeton University Press, 1966)

Shigenori Togo, The Cause of Japan (Simon and Schuster, first U.S. edition, 1956)
 
You don't know what in the world you're talking about. You clearly have not read the research of any of the better Japanese historians who have written about Japan's war in China and WW II, much less the writings of British, Australian, and American scholars who have written objective works on these issues.

Iris Chang was a respected scholar... you, not so much.

And neither the Nationalists nor the Japanese killed as many people as the Nazis and the Soviets did. I notice you said nothing about the Soviets and the tens of millions of people they killed, which included about 20 million Russian citizens who didn't like Soviet rule.

Nope, I don't waste my time on bullshit Bircher Propaganda... To hear you guys tell it, there would be no Russians left at all Because Stalin supposedly killed all of them.

By the way, we killed at least five times more people when we took over the Philippines than the Japanese did when they took over Korea and Taiwan. England and France killed a lot more people when obtaining some of their colonies than the Japanese did when they obtained Korea and Taiwan.

I wasn't talking about Korea or Taiwan... I was talking about the Rape of Nanking, which is documented.

I'll criticize America when it deserves to be criticized, but the Japanese were real bastards in their wars in Asia, which is why no one really trusts them today, 70 years later.
 
You don't know what in the world you're talking about. You clearly have not read the research of any of the better Japanese historians who have written about Japan's war in China and WW II, much less the writings of British, Australian, and American scholars who have written objective works on these issues.

Iris Chang was a respected scholar... you, not so much.

You . . . uh . . . you didn't bother to read the OP, did you? Are you aware that nearly all of the photos in Chang's book had nothing to do with the Nanking Massacre?

And neither the Nationalists nor the Japanese killed as many people as the Nazis and the Soviets did. I notice you said nothing about the Soviets and the tens of millions of people they killed, which included about 20 million Russian citizens who didn't like Soviet rule.

Nope, I don't waste my time on Bircher Propaganda... To hear you guys tell it, there would be no Russians left at all Because Stalin supposedly killed all of them.

HUH?!!! "Bircher Propaganda"???! Oh, wow. Did you just beam into 2019 from the 1960s? You think that the research on the tens of millions of people whom Stalin killed is "Bircher Propaganda"?!! This is a cake-taker.

By the way, we killed at least five times more people when we took over the Philippines than the Japanese did when they took over Korea and Taiwan. England and France killed a lot more people when obtaining some of their colonies than the Japanese did when they obtained Korea and Taiwan.

I wasn't talking about Korea or Taiwan... I was talking about the Rape of Nanking, which is documented.

Uh, so you didn't read the OP, did you? Are you aware that in 1938 the Chinese Nationalists killed at least 400,000 people in Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu when they breached the Yellow River dike? Go read the OP.

I'll criticize America when it deserves to be criticized, but the Japanese were real bastards in their wars in Asia, which is why no one really trusts them today, 70 years later.

The Japanese were not as bad as the Chinese Communists and the Soviets in the in WW II, and Japan's actions in the Pacific War pale in comparison to those of the Chinese Communists after Truman enabled them to take over China. Not even close. But, keep peddling Communist propaganda about Japan.
 
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You . . . uh . . . you didn't bother to read the OP, did you? Are you aware that nearly all of the photos in Chang's book had nothing to do with the Nanking Massacre?

Don't care...

The Rape of Nanking is a historical event.... I put your shit up there with the Neo-Nazis who deny the Holocaust happened.

HUH?!!! "Bircher Propaganda"???! Oh, wow. Did you just beam into 2019 from the 1960s? You think that the research on the tens of millions of people whom Stalin killed is "Bircher Propaganda"?!! This is a cake-taker.

Again, you are the one who blurts out McCarthyite propaganda and expects me to get upset about it. Stalin was a bastard. He wasn't a genocidal bastard.

Uh, so you didn't read the OP, did you? Are you aware that in 1938 the Chinese Nationalists killed at least 400,000 people in Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu when they breached the Yellow River dike? Go read the OP.

Again, don't waste my valuable time with horseshit. There's also a big difference between some people drowing because of flooding and people dying because they were systematically raped and murdered by an occupying army.

The Japanese were not as bad as the Chinese Communists and the Soviets in the in WW II

No, they were worse... much, much, much worse, which is why the Japanese are still hated by the Chinese and Koreans.

Anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea - Wikipedia

Anti-Japanese sentiment in China - Wikipedia

First thing Japan needs to do... openly admit they did bad shit with massacres and comfort women and the rest of that shit. That would be a good start.
 
You . . . uh . . . you didn't bother to read the OP, did you? Are you aware that nearly all of the photos in Chang's book had nothing to do with the Nanking Massacre?

Don't care...

That's obvious.

The Rape of Nanking is a historical event....

Ok, partner, how about you try this: How about your crack open your PC-brainwashed mind and first read the OP? Hey? You see, I make it clear in the OP that the rape of Nanking did happen, that atrocities were committed, but that the numbers have been markedly inflated.

I put your *(%($% up there with the Neo-Nazis who deny the Holocaust happened.

Your repetition of this Chinese Communist talking point represents sheer ignorance. Again, if you would bother to read the OP before responding, you would discover that I most certainly do not deny that the Nanking Massacre happened. My main argument is that the number of victims has been markedly exaggerated.

HUH?!!! "Bircher Propaganda"???! Oh, wow. Did you just beam into 2019 from the 1960s? You think that the research on the tens of millions of people whom Stalin killed is "Bircher Propaganda"?!! This is a cake-taker.

Again, you are the one who blurts out McCarthyite propaganda and expects me to get upset about it. Stalin was a bastard. He wasn't a genocidal bastard.

Oh, so instead of being "Bircher Propaganda," citing the fact that Stalin killed tens of millions of his own citizens is now "McCarthyite propaganda"?! And you have the nerve to pose as a "conservative"? You're the first so-called "conservative" I've ever encountered who denies that Stalin killed tens of millions of Russians, plus millions of non-Russians.

Uh, so you didn't read the OP, did you? Are you aware that in 1938 the Chinese Nationalists killed at least 400,000 people in Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu when they breached the Yellow River dike? Go read the OP.

Again, don't waste my valuable time with %($%^%.

If you doubt that this occurred, you could start with this source: Diana Lary, "Drowned Earth: The Strategic Breaching of the Yellow River Dyke, 1938," War in History. April 1, 2001, pp. 191–207, SAGE Journals: Your gateway to world-class research journals. Wikipedia even has an article on this: 1938 Yellow River flood - Wikipedia

There's also a big difference between some people drowing because of flooding and people dying because they were systematically raped and murdered by an occupying army.

Uh, let me try to clarify this for you: The Chinese Nationalists deliberately caused the flood, and they didn't care that hundreds of thousands of their fellow Chinese would die as a result. The Nationalists breached the Yellow River dike to halt an imaginary Japanese advance.

And do you have any idea how painful it is to drown? Google what happens when you drown: it's quite horrific.

The Japanese were not as bad as the Chinese Communists and the Soviets in the in WW II

No, they were worse... much, much, much worse

No, they were not. Even the higher-end estimates for people killed by the Japanese army are below the numbers of people that the Soviets and the Communist Chinese killed.

which is why the Japanese are still hated by the Chinese and Koreans.

Anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea - Wikipedia
Anti-Japanese sentiment in China - Wikipedia

I'm certain you don't realize that you are repeating a standard, long-standing Chinese Communist talking point.

A number of Korean scholars have been willing to admit that Japanese rule in Korea was relatively mild and enormously beneficial for Korea in terms of economic growth, industrialization, infrastructure, education, sanitation, transportation, etc., etc. You might start with this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Colonial-Legacy-Korea-1910-1945/dp/1937385701&tag=ff0d01-20

First thing Japan needs to do... openly admit they did bad #(%$%^ with massacres and comfort women and the rest of that (%^$^%$. That would be a good start.

The first thing you need to do is to stop repeating Chinese Communist and FDR-Truman talking points and do a little serious reading. Why don't you demand that Nationalist China (the Republic of China on Taiwan) admit that it killed more people in China than the Japanese did? Why don't you demand that Nationalist China apologize for the 1938 Yellow River flood, which has been called the largest use of environmental warfare in history? Why don't you demand that Communist China admit that it killed far, far more Chinese than the Japanese ever even dreamed of killing? (Mao's Communists killed some 20-40 million Chinese to consolidate their power.)

How about the U.S. admit that Truman's nuking of Japan was unnecessary and immoral? How about the U.S. admit that FDR abandoned the Jews and sentenced hundreds of thousands of them to Nazi extermination?

Why don't you read John Dower's award-winning book War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War and then tell us if perhaps the Japanese were not the only ones who should have apologized for their soldiers' conduct during the war?

Just a handful of examples: Do you have any idea how many thousands of Japanese civilians our navy killed by sinking Japanese transport ships that were clearly transporting civilians? Do you know that the War Department had to launch a PR campaign and offer substantial incentives to get our soldiers to stop shooting so many Japanese POWs? And shall we talk about the FDR-Truman decision to firebomb over 60 Japanese cities, after we had screamed over Japan's bombing a fraction of that number of cities in China?

As for the comfort-women issue, I'm guessing you've never read a serious critical study on this issue. The truth about the comfort women, as with so many other issues in history, is not on either extreme but is somewhere in the middle. The comfort women were better off, sometimes far better off, than the millions of women who were raped by Soviet soldiers as Soviet forces moved through Eastern Europe and then into Germany. Do you suppose that the Japanese army was the only army in WW II that used comfort women?

You seem to have zero interest in doing any serious research, but here's one source from a highly respected scholar that gives a balanced, factual presentation on the comfort women:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GRGZCRB/?tag=ff0d01-20
 
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Ok, partner, how about you try this: How about your crack open your PC-brainwashed mind and first read the OP? Hey? You see, I make it clear in the OP that the rape of Nanking did happen, that atrocities were committed, but that the numbers have been markedly inflated.

I really didn't need to go past the first sentence... before realizing this was another Holocaust Revision thing. The Holocaust deniers put their words in pretty language, too.. but it's still bullshit.

A number of Korean scholars have been willing to admit that Japanese rule in Korea was relatively mild and enormously beneficial for Korea in terms of economic growth, industrialization, infrastructure, education, sanitation, transportation, etc., etc. You might start with this book:

You'd find some Uncle Toms in this country who will claim that slavery was kind of awesome...what's your point.

Most Koreans STILL hate the Japanese. In fact, it seems the more dealings with Japan a country had, the more they despise them.

How about the U.S. admit that Truman's nuking of Japan was unnecessary and immoral?

No, no, no, bombing Pearl Harbor was immoral. Bombing Hiroshima was because the Japanese were too stupid to surrender after they HAD ALREADY LOST.

As for the comfort-women issue, I'm guessing you've never read a serious critical study on this issue. The truth about the comfort women, as with so many other issues in history, is not on either extreme but is somewhere in the middle. The comfort women were better off, sometimes far better off, than the millions of women who were raped by Soviet soldiers as Soviet forces moved through Eastern Europe and then into Germany. Do you suppose that the Japanese army was the only army in WW II that used comfort women?

No, but they were the only ones to KIDNAP hundreds of thousands of women and systematically rape them. Most other countries had no problem finding willing prostitutes.
 
I am pretty sure that 300,000 figure is inflated. These things tend to be when people are attempting to amplify the 'evils' of their opponent.
 
HUH?!!! "Bircher Propaganda"???! Oh, wow. Did you just beam into 2019 from the 1960s? You think that the research on the tens of millions of people whom Stalin killed is "Bircher Propaganda"?!! This is a cake-taker.

Again, you are the one who blurts out McCarthyite propaganda and expects me to get upset about it. Stalin was a bastard. He wasn't a genocidal bastard.

Allow me to educate you just a bit on the tens of millions of people who were killed by Stalin and by Mao.

Before we begin, I should note that your use of the term “McCarthyite” implies that you buy the liberal lies about Senator Joseph McCarthy. Yet, you claim to be a conservative. Most conservatives consider Senator McCarthy to have been a hero who has been smeared by left-wing professors and our liberal news media. You might want to read M. Stanton Evans’ definitive book Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies (Crown Forum, 2009). This book has been endorsed by a wide range of conservatives, from Glenn Beck to Phyllis Schlafly to William Schulz to Cliff Kincaid to John Earl Haynes to Ann Coulter. Here’s a good online introduction on the facts about Senator McCarthy: Senator Joseph McCarthy and McCarthyism: What Are the Facts?

Anyway, here are some sources on the tens of millions of people who were killed under Stalin and Mao:

Stalin’s Genocides

How Many People Did Joseph Stalin Kill?

USSR--Genocide and Mass Murder

The Communist holocaust and its lessons for the 21st Century - CapX

The human cost of Communism - Taiwan Today

https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Letters-Untold-Story-Martyr/dp/1541644239&tag=ff0d01-20

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01GGCR76K/?tag=ff0d01-20

Who Killed More: Hitler, Stalin, or Mao?

Major Soviet Paper Says 20 Million Died As Victims of Stalin

The History Place - Genocide in the 20th Century: Stalin's Forced Famine 1932-33

The Butchery of Hitler and Stalin

Ukraine 1933: The Terror Famine — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
 
I wonder what Iris Chang thought about Chairman Mao's ten year cultural revolution (1966-1976) that killed ten times more than the Japanese did. Maybe Ms. Chang was one of the victims.




She was not. She took her own life.
 
Ok, partner, how about you try this: How about your crack open your PC-brainwashed mind and first read the OP? Hey? You see, I make it clear in the OP that the rape of Nanking did happen, that atrocities were committed, but that the numbers have been markedly inflated.

I really didn't need to go past the first sentence... before realizing this was another Holocaust Revision thing. The Holocaust deniers put their words in pretty language, too.. but it's still bullshit.

A number of Korean scholars have been willing to admit that Japanese rule in Korea was relatively mild and enormously beneficial for Korea in terms of economic growth, industrialization, infrastructure, education, sanitation, transportation, etc., etc. You might start with this book:

You'd find some Uncle Toms in this country who will claim that slavery was kind of awesome...what's your point.

Most Koreans STILL hate the Japanese. In fact, it seems the more dealings with Japan a country had, the more they despise them.

How about the U.S. admit that Truman's nuking of Japan was unnecessary and immoral?

No, no, no, bombing Pearl Harbor was immoral. Bombing Hiroshima was because the Japanese were too stupid to surrender after they HAD ALREADY LOST.

As for the comfort-women issue, I'm guessing you've never read a serious critical study on this issue. The truth about the comfort women, as with so many other issues in history, is not on either extreme but is somewhere in the middle. The comfort women were better off, sometimes far better off, than the millions of women who were raped by Soviet soldiers as Soviet forces moved through Eastern Europe and then into Germany. Do you suppose that the Japanese army was the only army in WW II that used comfort women?

No, but they were the only ones to KIDNAP hundreds of thousands of women and systematically rape them. Most other countries had no problem finding willing prostitutes.


You seem to enjoy wallowing in ignorance.
 
You . . . uh . . . you didn't bother to read the OP, did you? Are you aware that nearly all of the photos in Chang's book had nothing to do with the Nanking Massacre?

Don't care...

The Rape of Nanking is a historical event.... I put your shit up there with the Neo-Nazis who deny the Holocaust happened.

HUH?!!! "Bircher Propaganda"???! Oh, wow. Did you just beam into 2019 from the 1960s? You think that the research on the tens of millions of people whom Stalin killed is "Bircher Propaganda"?!! This is a cake-taker.

Again, you are the one who blurts out McCarthyite propaganda and expects me to get upset about it. Stalin was a bastard. He wasn't a genocidal bastard.

Uh, so you didn't read the OP, did you? Are you aware that in 1938 the Chinese Nationalists killed at least 400,000 people in Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu when they breached the Yellow River dike? Go read the OP.

Again, don't waste my valuable time with horseshit. There's also a big difference between some people drowing because of flooding and people dying because they were systematically raped and murdered by an occupying army.

The Japanese were not as bad as the Chinese Communists and the Soviets in the in WW II

No, they were worse... much, much, much worse, which is why the Japanese are still hated by the Chinese and Koreans.

Anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea - Wikipedia

Anti-Japanese sentiment in China - Wikipedia

First thing Japan needs to do... openly admit they did bad shit with massacres and comfort women and the rest of that shit. That would be a good start.
You can’t fix stupid. So, I will advise Mike G to stop trying.
 
Ok, partner, how about you try this: How about your crack open your PC-brainwashed mind and first read the OP? Hey? You see, I make it clear in the OP that the rape of Nanking did happen, that atrocities were committed, but that the numbers have been markedly inflated.

I really didn't need to go past the first sentence... before realizing this was another Holocaust Revision thing. The Holocaust deniers put their words in pretty language, too.. but it's still $(^&%$.

There is ironclad, indisputable evidence that 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis. There is no such evidence that 300,000-plus Chinese were killed in Nanking. I know you said you "don't care," but I would repeat the fact that nearly all of the photos in Iris Chang's book that supposedly support her case have been proven to be fraudulent, have been proven to have nothing to do with the Nanking Massacre. But you don't care.

A number of Korean scholars have been willing to admit that Japanese rule in Korea was relatively mild and enormously beneficial for Korea in terms of economic growth, industrialization, infrastructure, education, sanitation, transportation, etc., etc. You might start with this book:

You'd find some Uncle Toms in this country who will claim that slavery was kind of awesome...what's your point. Most Koreans STILL hate the Japanese. In fact, it seems the more dealings with Japan a country had, the more they despise them.

In other words, you'll never bother to read their research or any other research that challenges your PC, Chinese-Communist-Soviet view of Imperial Japan in WW II.

How about the U.S. admit that Truman's nuking of Japan was unnecessary and immoral?

No, no, no, bombing Pearl Harbor was immoral. Bombing Hiroshima was because the Japanese were too stupid to surrender after they HAD ALREADY LOST.

Oh, sheesh. Seriously? Wow. Just Wow. FYI, most of Japan's senior leaders were trying to surrender when we nuked two of their cities and killed over 200,000 civilians, and we did not need to nuke Japan to end the war without an invasion.

Furthermore, as has been shown to you, FDR provoked Japan to attack. The attack on Pearl Harbor was an attack on a military base, unlike our nuclear attacks on Japan. I again note that you have simply ducked the issue what any other self-respecting nation would do if three other nations did to it what we, the British, and the Dutch were doing to Japan.

As for the comfort-women issue, I'm guessing you've never read a serious critical study on this issue. The truth about the comfort women, as with so many other issues in history, is not on either extreme but is somewhere in the middle. The comfort women were better off, sometimes far better off, than the millions of women who were raped by Soviet soldiers as Soviet forces moved through Eastern Europe and then into Germany. Do you suppose that the Japanese army was the only army in WW II that used comfort women?

No, but they were the only ones to KIDNAP hundreds of thousands of women and systematically rape them. Most other countries had no problem finding willing prostitutes.

Sigh. . . . Right, of course. I can count on you to mindlessly repeat whatever propaganda the Chinese Communists have put out. So the Japanese kidnapped "hundreds of thousands" of women and forced them into sexual servitude? "Hundreds of thousands"? In that case, there would have been one comfort woman for every one, two, or three Japanese soldiers. No surviving comfort woman has alleged such a ratio but rather that the ratio was something like one comfort woman for every 10 to 20 Japanese soldiers, which is much more believable given the size of the Japanese army and how it was deployed in Asia and in the Pacific.

In any case, Stalin's troops raped MILLIONS of women as they moved across Eastern Europe into Germany. Scholars estimate that in Germany alone the Soviets raped some 2 MILLION women. I agree that what the Japanese army did regarding the comfort women was wrong, but the Soviet army's conduct toward women was far worse.

But you couldn't care less about that, right? You only care about Japanese war crimes. Okay.
 
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