The Rape Of Nanking The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II Paperback – June 16, 2012

It is definitely one of the most accurate books about the Japanese and the Chinese. In world War two. Most people have never heard about what the Japanese did to over 300,000 Chinese citizens and some of China's military men and women. This book will make you sick. It just might turn you to vehemently hate the Japanese. Some people in Japan still refuse to admit what they did to the Chinese. There were quit a few people who were there and managed to keep away from the Japanese military officers.The people who gave first hand accounts were some Chinese, some Europeans and even a few Americans. No body can say they are all lying. The truth hurts.

The late Iris Chang (sadly, overcome with depression, she killed herself in 2004) has crafted an excellent, but disturbing account of one of WWII's most horrific atrocities. The Rape of Nanking is written in an easy to read, non-academic style, making it accessible to all types of readers. Chang writes of numerous incidents of Japanese barbarity that occurred when the Japanese captured the city of Nanking in 1937. Repeatedly, the reader is bombarded with stories of rape, murder and outright excesses of violence, condoned at the highest levels of command. These do become repetitive but this only reinforces the horror of the situation, of men and women trying to keep their families together and to stay alive and out of the clutches of the Japanese.But it is easy to lose sight of the fact that the The Rape of Nanking isn't just about the atrocities - that Chang is able to tell the story at all is because of a small band of people, who risked their lives to help as many of the fleeing Chinese as possible. The British, Americans and Germans living in Nanking established a safe zone for Chinese refugees, and to help as many as they could. It is thanks to the records they left behind, that this horrific event is able to be told. The book is illustrated with a selection of black and white photographs, many of which only reinforces the sense of this tragic and disturbing atrocity. It should be noted that many of the images are disturbing and gruesome.Unfortunately, there is no separate bibliography although Chang does include a notes section which indicates her source material. She has relied on a number of sources, mainly westerners who wrote diaries and letters (there were a number of British, Americans, and Germans present in Nanking at the time - John Rabe, the Nazi who was "The Good German", even wrote a report to Adolf Hitler). Other sources of information were German diplomatic records and US Naval Intelligence records. She interviewed a number of Chinese survivors for their accounts, and also located Japanese sources for their side of the story - disturbingly at one point Chang discusses Japanese newspaper coverage of a race between two Japanese officers to kill as many Chinese as possible. I happen to have a copy of the book "Documents of the Nanking Safety Zone" which Chang references on a number of occasions in the notes section of her book, and it lists over 400 events of rapes, murders and other acts of violence prepetrated by Japanese soldiers, a number of which were verified by witnesses including a Reverend in Nanking at the time of the events, Rev. Magee, and John Rabe.From the number of reviews for this book, it is quite apparent that "The Rape of Nanking" is one of the more controversial books around. The main reason for this being the heated denials from the pro-Japanese faction that the events as portrayed in the book ever occurred. However, despite their best efforts to convince people otherwise, it is clearly obvious to anyone troubling to inform themselves of both sides of the argument, that a massacre of some proportions occured in Nanking. To my mind, there is just too much independent evidence to suggest anything but a massacre, whether it was 300000 people slaughtered or 200000. The Japanese denials come across as being factually inaccurate and baseless, and lack any sort of credibility given the Japanese government's position on a number of issue's arising out of their conduct in WWII including the treatment of POWs, comfort women, and the revisionist teachings in Japanese school's of Japanese actions in WWII. It is a tragedy that many young Japanese are unlikely to learn the extent of what their country did 70 years ago, in stark contrast to the youth of today's Germany, who are well aware of what their country and citizens did in WWII. However, just as I do not judge Germans today on what their grand parents generation did, nor do I judge the Japanese of today on what their countrymen did some 70 years ago. The Rape of Nanking is an account of a tragic event that all people, regardless of nationality should be aware of. If everyone was aware of this tragedy, then maybe such an atrocity will never be allowed to perpetuated again.

I use a Kindle reader for iPad. When you finish a book, Amazon always pops in asking for a review. I had to ignore this for this book, because I wasn't ready to write yet, needing time to process what I had just read!Having taken several days to process, I can say I am certainly glad I read this book. Having read extensively about the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust and other 20th century atrocities, I was shocked at having never heard of this massacre.It was a hard book to read. Hard, because of the content, and hard because it exploded my preconceptions of the Japanese as being always gentle, kind people. I have always harbored guilt for the internment of the Japanese on American soil. I still feel some shame, having many colleagues of Japanese ancestry whose families were uprooted from there homes and sent away. But this book put that period into more of a context to perhaps understand what a previous generation did, since these crimes were front page news in 1937-1938.I will not do an extensive review of the content, since others have summarized this very well. But, it is the story about the Japanese Imperial Army taking the Capitol of China, which was then called Nanking (now Nanjing), at the end of 1937, as part of the Sino-Japanese war. They were brutal to the Chinese civilians, slaughtering hundreds of thousands in cruel ways, including beheading, using humans for sword practice spearing infants and adults, and raping tens of thousands of Chinese women. Remember I said civilians, non-combatants. They took few, if any POWs, executing Chinese soldiers, and any male they thought could be a soldier, post haste on entering the city. The Yangtze River was clogged with dead bodies, and blood ran in the streets, as they couldn't bury them as fast as they killed them.I know, having read some of the writings from the Japanese, that there are deniers among many of that people. I also know that some historians take issue with some of her history telling and facts. Having read extensively about the Armenian Massacre in Turkey that began in April 1915, and killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions of the Armenian people, I know there are many who deny this mostly unknown holocaust as well. I am convinced the Turkish government and the Japanese government just want to deny their horrendous behavior, avoid the shame, and the paying of any reparations. Shame on them!I am in the medical field, and we have peer review for any medical work which is published, so I understand the need to criticize some facts that may not be correct or strictly confirmed by historical records. But even if some of this is wrong, it would be hard to convince me this never happened. They can argue about the numbers of dead and raped, but this massacre happened.I am thankful that Iris Chang wrote this history/remembrance. I am saddened that she took her own life after writing it, and before she could finish her book on the Bataan Death March, which would have expanded my knowledge of another atrocity. I would highly recommend picking up this book. As has been said, we should not ignore where we came from, and we do so at our own peril!The subject quote above is from George Fitch's diary, a member of the International Committee for the Protection Zone, created by expatriots to try and save as many Chinese as they could! They thus bore witness to the slaughter!I would give this 4.5 stars.

Where do you even begin with a book like this. Books like this are absolutely vital so that we can become educated to the atrocities that have happened and hopefully avoid them again. It's sad that we have such short memories because this happened not that long ago. And the grand scheme of history this was yesterday. People forgetting that this stuff happened and why it happened and how it happened will only lead to it happening again. Chang was right when she was worried about how the United States is going in the early 2000s. And we're only fast forwarding to an end that she could see coming back then. God help us all.

Good read

if I had to chose one of the most important books for me, I'd choose this one. shows you how far humans go in torturing and treating others as low-life-animals.how men can lose all compassion and empathy for others and go the complete other route towards evil

Probably the most accessible book about the devastation caused by the Japanese invasion of China in 1937 and the horrors it brought. It helps to explain much of Chinese resentment against the Japanese to this day, as Japan does not recognize much of the atrocities they have committed in China, Korea, etc. I find it important, however, to warn you that if you are an impressionable person and can't stand descriptions of atrocities, reading this book will be difficult.

Arrivato in anticipo e immediatamente aggredito dalla lettura. Libro eccellente per capire le responsabilità di tutti in quell'ennesimo orrendo episodio di violenza perpetrata da militari in guerra. Andrebbe letto tenendo conto di quanto riferito in "Shooting up", altro interessantissimo libro per confermare le responsabilità delle "linee di comando" delle alte gerarchie militari di tutti i paesi del mondo.L'unico appunto riguarda il libro in sé che mostra segni inequivocabili di uso, nonostante sia venduto come nuovo. (i segni d'usura riguardano l'uso di evidenziatore giallo su diverse pagine del libro: 1 a pag.64, 2 a pag.131, 1 a pag.133... per ora...)

This is a well researched and beautifully written book about "The forgotten holocaust" (Nanking Massacre). The massacre of Nanking is one of the forgotten chapters of the 2nd world war.Reading this book is a gut wrenching experience. It is full of anecdotes of atrocities committed against helpless Chinese men and women. The book describes the mass murder and rape of Chinese citizens in the hands of marauding Japanese army during the occupation of Nanking in 1937. Though the estimates vary, the general consensus is that, between 300,000 to 400,000 Chinese were mercilessly murdered by the invading Japanese army. An estimated 20,000 to 80,000 Chinese women were raped, mutilated and murdered. They did not spare even babies. Many a men were burnt alive. German Shepherd dogs were let loose on men, who were buried up to their waist. The dogs ripped apart these helpless men.During the 6 weeks of this horror, many foreigners stationed in Nanking risked their own life and heroically faced the Japanese soldiers. They tried saving as many Chinese citizens as possible. Notable among them were Rabe (A Nazi German), Wilson (an American physicist) and Vautrin (an American missionary). Stories of these brave foreigners who stood for the helpless Chinese, restores your faith in humanity.