Alejandro C
15th November 2006, 16:30
The NanJing Massacre of Chinese by Japanese as we all know is one of the worst genocidal moments in history. However, because of the Eurocentric view through which most of us have learned history, a lot of us know very little about it. i certainly don't remember reading about it in my history books. (Then again, there are a lot of very smart people here with a deep background of world history so probably we have all heard about this). In another post I casually questioned the figure of the massacred Chinese people as quoted by the government. This was in no way a denial that the massacre happened, nor that it was one of the worst moments in human history. The Chinese that I know still hate the Japanese because of this. A lot of people don't understand that, because it happened a long time ago. But if we read first hand accounts of what happened, it is perfectly understandable for such a traumatic event to have a very long lasting impact on the Chinese society.
My questioning of the Chinese government brought a lot of surprising backlash from people on the board, and I think it was a little unjustified. From the most well researched article I could find:
Unknown Number of Victims from the Beginning
The stone wall at the entrance of the Memorial Hall for Compatriot Victims of the Japanese Military's Nanjing Massacre.
Without doubt the total number of victims in the Nanking Atrocities per se by no means signifies the cruelty and barbarism of the incident.
No matter what the actual death toll was, the fact that Japanese soldiers were engaged in wanton executions and reckless rapes remains the same.
It is also true, however, that the number has been tinged with politically symbolic meaning and has maintained the emotional controversy for decades.
For Japanese conservatives, the figure of 200,000 connotes "victor's justice" at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. In their eyes it was an overly inflated estimate based on groundless evidence, and any number in the hundreds of thousands is a pure nonsense.
In China the figure of 300,000, the death toll reckoned at the Nanking War Crimes Tribunal, is the official estimate engraved on the stone wall at the entrance of the Qin-Hua Rijun Nanjing Datsusha Yunan Tongbao Jinianguan, or the Memorial Hall for Compatriot Victims of the Japanese Military's Nanjing Massacre.
As historian Yang Daqing at George Washington University points out, it denotes the "justice, legality, and authority of the postwar trials" in Nanking. Thus, for many Chinese any question about the death toll is considered motivated by ill will.175
However, as seen below, estimates of the total number of victims have never been definite and consistent, even after the release of the two tribunals' judgments.
Chinese refugees gathering near the headquarters of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone.
For instance, more than a month after the city fell, Miner Searle Bates, a professor of history at the University of Nanking and a member of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone, wrote on January 25, 1938, "close to forty thousand unarmed persons were killed within and near the walls of Nanking, of whom some 30 percent had never been soldiers."176
Lewis Smythe, a sociologist at the University of Nanking, initially reported on March 21, "... it is estimated that 10,000 persons were killed inside the walls of Nanking and about 30,000 outside the walls.... These people estimated that of this total about 30 percent were civilians."177
Then in the spring of 1938, Smythe conducted a field survey to assess the damages and losses at Nanking and its vicinity under the auspices of the International Relief Committee. His research resulted in civilian victims of 6,600 (2,400 massacred and 4,200 abducted (and mostly missing)) within the city and 26,870 in the vicinity.178
Robert Wilson, a surgeon at the American-administered University Hospital in the Safety Zone, wrote in his letter to the family, "a conservative estimate of people slaughtered in cold blood is somewhere about 100,000, including of course thousands of soldiers that had thrown down their arms" on March 7, 1938.179
The chairman of the International Committee, John Rabe, gave a series of lectures in Germany after he came back to Berlin on April 15, 1938, in which he said, "We Europeans put the number [of civilian casualties] at about 50,000 to 60,000."180
Farewell tea party for the Chairman of the Nanking Safety Zone, John Rabe.
According to reports from the United Press and Reuters, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek announced as early as December 16, 1937, three days after the city fell, in Hankow, "Chinese army casualties on all fronts exceed 300,000. The loss of civilian life and property is beyond computation."181
This was probably the first time a figure of hundreds of thousands was officially mentioned in the Second Sino-Japanese War, although Chiang's estimate included all the battlefronts in China since the beginning of hostilities on July 7, 1937.
On January 11, 1938, a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, Harold Timperley, apparently tried to cable a similar estimate but was censored out by the Japanese authority in Shanghai because in his report it was "not less than 300,000 Chinese civilians" who were slaughtered in cold blood in "Nanking and elsewhere." His message was relayed from Shanghai to Tokyo to be sent out to the Japanese Embassies in Europe and the United States.182
On January 17, 1938, when Japan's Foreign Minister, Hirota Koki, sent a message to his contact in Washington D.C., the cable was intercepted by American intelligence and translated into English. According to the translation, which is now available at the National Archives, Timperley also reported about robbery, rape, and other brutal conduct by the Japanese troops that were going on in the walled city.
Another journalist, Edgar Snow, wrote in 1941 that his source in the Nanking International Relief Committee told him "the Japanese murdered no less than 42,000 people in Nanking alone, a large percentage of them women and children."183
A scene from The Battle of China that depicted atrocities committed by the Japanese troops in Nanking.
"In one of the bloodiest massacres of recorded history," annotated Frank Capra's U.S. war propaganda documentary, The Battle of China, from the Way We Fight series in 1944, "they [Japanese] murdered 40,000 men, women and children."184
In 1947 at the Nanking War Crimes Tribunal, the verdict of Lieutenant General Tani Hisao, the commander of the 6th Division, quoted the figure of more than 300,000 victims.185 Apparently the estimation was made from burial records and eyewitness accounts. It concluded that some 190,000 were illegally executed on a massive scale at various execution sites and 150,000 were individually massacred.
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East estimated in its judgment that "over 200,000" civilians and prisoners of war were murdered during the first six weeks of the Japanese occupation.186 That number was based on burial records submitted by two charitable organizations, the Red Swastika Society and the Chung Shan Tang (Tsung Shan Tong), the research done by Smythe and some estimates given by survivors.
However, the tribunal seems not to have been concerned much about the exact number of victims. In the verdict of General Matsui Iwane, the commander-in-chief of the Central China Area Army, the IMTFE contradictorily indicated that, "In this period of six or seven weeks... upwards of 100,000 people were killed."187
Even years after the two war crimes tribunals announced their estimates, neither of the death tolls took hold as an established figure.
Take, for instance, the Military History Bureau of the Ministry of National Defense of Republic of China (Taiwan) that compiled and published the 100-volume History of the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). In its concise version published in 1971, the researchers claimed, "Their [Japanese] slaughter of more than 100,000 people of Nanking was typically representative of their brutality."188
In 1986, historian Lloyd Eastman at University of Illinois introduced a figure somewhat close to the early estimates reached by the Western missionaries in respected The Cambridge History of China. "During seven weeks of savagery," wrote Eastman, "at least 42,000 Chinese were murdered in cold blood, many of them buried alive or set afire with kerosene."189
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175. Yang Daqing, “Convergence or Divergence? Recent Historical Writings on the Rape of Nanjing,” American Historical Review 104.3 (June 1999): 852.
176. H. J. Timperley, Japanese Terror in China (New York: Modern Age Books, 1938), 51.
177. American Missionary Eyewitnesses to the Nanjing Massacre, 1937-1938, 59.
178. Lewis S. C. Smythe, War Damage in the Nanking Area: December 1937 to March 1938 (Shanghai: Shanghai Mercury Press, 1938), quoted in Minoru Kitamura, “‘Nanking Daigyakusatsu’ Kenkyu Josetsu (ge) [An Introduction to the Research on the “Nanjing Massacre (3)],” Toa 391 (January 2000), 52; Hata, Nanking Jiken [The Nanjing Massacre], 212; Yutaka Yoshida, Tenno no Guntai to Nanking Jiken [The Emperor’s Military and the Nanjing Incident], 162.
179. Documents on the Rape of Nanking, 254.
180. Rabe, 212.
181. “Chiang Urges China to Fight to Bitter End,” Chicago Daily News, 16 December 1937; “‘No Surrender’ Chiang Kai-shek’s Call to the Nation,” the Times (London), 17 December 1937.
182. Japanese Diplomatic Messages, “Red Machine” (1934-1938), No. 1257 and No. 1263, Box 1, Record Group 457, the National Archives at College Park, MD.
183. Edgar Snow, Battle for Asia (New York: Random House, 1941), 57.
184. The Battle of China, dir. Frank Capra and Anatole Litvak, 67 min., Signal Corps, 1944, motion picture film, Record Group 111, National Archives at Collage Park, MD.
185. Shogen: Nanking Daigyakusatsu [Evidence: the Nanjing Massacre], trans. Kagami Mitsuyuki and Himeta Mitsuyoshi (Tokyo:Aoki Shoten, 1984), 134.
186. The Tokyo Judgment: The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (I.M.T.F.E.) 29 April 1946 – 12 November 1948, Volume I, ed. Röling, B. V. A. and C. F. Rüter, (Amsterdam: University Press Amsterdam, 1977), 390.
187. Ibid., 454.
188. History of the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), comp. Hsu Long-hsuen and Chang Ming-kai, trans. Wen Ha-hsiung, revised Kao Cing-chen, Hu Pu-yu, Liu Han-mou, Liu Ih-po and Lu Pao-ching (Taipei: Chung Wu Publishing, 1971), 213.
189. Lloyd Eastman, “Nationalist China During the Sino-Japanese War 1937-1945,” in The Cambridge History of China 13, ed. John K. Fairbank and Denis Twithchett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 552.
Controversy over the Death Toll
Refugees lining up for the registration. The population of the city of Nanking has been pointed to for decades in the emotional polemic.
Although the precise death toll has never been historically established as a definite fact, it is evident that a large number of Chinese people were massacred in merciless fashion in Nanking.
In the ongoing controversy, however, one side of the dispute often calls a "denier" anyone who writes off a certain figure as "inflated."
Conversely if one dismisses a certain estimate as "minimized," the other side of the polemic tends to place the label "masochistic" for Japanese and "hysteric" or a "political agent" for Chinese.
The notion here is that if the figure of 300,000 (or any higher end of the estimates for that matter) does not stand, it is no longer the Nanking Atrocities (or the Nanjing Massacre or the Rape of Nanking).
Some try to refute the figure of 300,000 (or 200,000) in an attempt to prove that the atrocities did not take place. Others try to enshrine the figure of 300,000 (200,000) in an effort to emphasize the scale of the atrocities.
Caught up in the "mathematical game," the two extreme sides tend to use the number of people massacred as a benchmark to measure every criminal act such as abduction, rape, looting, and arson. In their arguments, therefore, the more the dead bodies, the more incendiarism, violations of women, and pillage were committed by the Japanese troops. The higher the death toll is, the worse the atrocities are, and vice versa.
Indeed, the focal point of the recent controversy has always been the final death toll. This tendency, unfortunately, has blinded the general public to the current scholarship and how estimates were arrived at.
Ignoring any logical explanation behind the figure, some take up only the final death toll suggested by a researcher and condemn it as either diminishing or exaggerating the scale of the Nanking Atrocities.
Below are the two typical examples of historical evidence that have been pointed to for decades in the emotional polemic despite the efforts of many historians to explain the rationale for their calculations.
Population of Nanjing
Chinese refugees filmed by an American missionary, John Magee.
The exact population of Nanking when the city fell onto the hands of the Japanese Imperial Army is simply impossible to figure out since no one could possibly record the inflow and outflow of people during wartime.
However, from the day the Japanese troops occupied the city onward, many members of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone repeatedly stated in their official documents, diaries and letters that around 250,000 refugees were living in the camps within the Safety Zone and many fewer people, "probably not more than ten thousands," as reported by one of the members, Miner Searle Bates, were living outside the refugee camps.190
Considering that they were the ones who arranged food and other supplies for the relief of the refugees, probably their calculation of the population was not far off the mark.
Although this number did not include the Chinese troops, which in foreign journalists' estimates amounted to about 50,000,191 the massacre of 300,000 or even 200,000 people simply looks implausible since those missionaries, who incessantly protested against the orgy of murders, looting, rapes and arson by the Japanese troops, did not record any drastic population drops as a result of the atrocities.
Indeed, Lewis Smythe, a sociologist at the University of Nanking, conducted a survey in the spring of 1938 that showed much smaller number of civilian victims, as did other members of the International Committee.
Burial Records
The second question often raised by many is the credibility of burial records of the Chung Shan Tang (Tsung Shan Tong), a 140-year-old charitable organization in Nanjing. Although their reports that recorded the burial of 112,267 bodies was adduced to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, they were actually prepared for the tribunal after the war ended because the original manuscripts were allegedly all lost during the eight years of Japanese occupation.
Of course that does not mean that the Chung Shan Tang doctored their reports. The available Chinese documents of that time showed that the organization started burying the dead bodies scattered over certain parts of the city at the beginning of 1938 at the latest. Forty full-time staff and numerous part-timers buried their countrymen and women inside the city walls until March and worked outside of the walls in April.
It should be noted, however, that none of the other documents written by members of the International Committee or the Japanese authorities in Nanjing mentioned that the Tsun Shan Tang was engaged in burial work, while they recorded that another charitable organization, the Red Swastika Society, buried about 40,000 bodies.
Their burial reports also showed a rather disproportionate number of the bodies buried each month. In the first one hundred days from December to March they recorded 7,549 bodies, about 75 per day. In the last three weeks in April when they went outside the city walls, however, they claimed to have buried an additional 104,718, about 5,000 bodies per day.192
Current Estimates of the Death Toll by Historians and Their Rationale
A village outside Nanking in February 1936. Some historians argue that the victims in the neighboring six counties should also be included in the total death toll of the Nanking Atrocities.
It is safe to say that today the majority of historians estimate the death toll of the Nanking Atrocities in the range between 200,000 and 300,000 as claimed by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East or the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal.
However, what is fundamentally different is their reasoning for the figures and their "definition" of the Nanking Atrocities, namely the duration of the incident, the boundaries of Nanjing area, and in some cases the breakdown of the death toll by soldiers killed in action, prisoners of war and innocent civilians.
For instance, historian Kasahara Tokushi at Tsuru University and Fujiwara Akira, a professor emeritus at Hitotsubashi University, take into account that Japanese soldiers continually committed atrocities throughout the march between Shanghai and Nanjing.
They consider that the entire Nanjing Special Municipality, which consisted of the walled city and its neighboring six counties, should be included when discussing the Nanking Atrocities.193
Kasahara researched the damages and losses in those local areas where the Japanese troops swarmed through during the Battle of Nanking and concluded that a greater number of people were slaughtered in rural areas than inside the walled city. Given the fact that the population of the entire Special Municipality was over one million in early December, Kasahara estimated close to 200,000 people were massacred in total.194
Refugee huts at Tse Hsia Shan, outside Nanking. March 1938.
In an agreement with Kasahara, Fujiwara defined the duration of the Nanking Atrocities "from the commencement of Japanese attack on the Nanjing Municipality in early December 1937 until [late] March 1938 when the Japanese Army officially declared that public security was restored," and concluded "nearly 200,000 or even more soldiers and civilians"195 were massacred.
Many historians such as Yoshida Yutaka at Hitotsubashi University and Joshua Fogel at the University of California, Santa Barbara, embrace Kasahara's research and his conceptualization of the Nanking Atrocities.196
The director of the Memorial Hall for Compatriot Victims of the Japanese Military's Nanjing Massacre, Zhu Chengshan, also agrees with the definition proposed by Kasahara and Fujiwara but has a different opinion as to the number of the victimized Chinese POWs. In his estimate, "not less than 300,000" were massacred in the Nanjing Special Municipality.197
Sun Zhaiwei, a scholar at the Jiangsu Academy of Social Sciences, adopts the death toll of more than 300,000 within and near the city limits, although he leaves some space for discussion, indicating the number could be "somewhat upward or downward."198
In his research Sun calculated that the size of Nanking Defense Army was about 150,000 as opposed to the 50,000 troops previously believed. According to his study, a far greater number of people were living outside the refugee camps than was observed by the missionaries, which makes the death toll of 300,000 within and near the city plausible.199
"The neighboring six counties shouldn't be included in the discussion of the Nanking Atrocities," maintains Hata Ikuhiko, a professor at Nihon University. Hata thinks the "definition" must be in accordance with the one announced in the IMTFE judgment, which states, "This orgy of crime started with the capture of the City on the 13th December 1937 and did not cease until early in February 1938."200
Though admitting that there were wholesale atrocities outside the walled city and elsewhere in China, Hata believes historians should comply with the early definition for the sake of academic discussion.
"Historians should stick to the definition given by the Tokyo War Crimes Trial," says Hata Ikuhiko. Interview by author on February 19, 2000.
"Only God knows the exact figure," says Hata.201 "I don't think the members of the Committee for the Safety Zone statistically calculated the population. And there could have been many people living outside the Safety Zone. After all it was only one-eighth the land of the entire city. So the population could have been higher than 250,000 and could have been lower as well. The thing is, we don't even know what number to base on...."
"I think historians should stick to the definition given by the Tokyo War Crimes Trial. Right now we are arguing on different planes. But if we do agree on the definition, hopefully we could at least have a consensus if it was tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands."
Hata dismisses the burial record of Chung Shan Tang (Tsung Shan Tong) as "unreliable"202 and tentatively estimates the death toll of the massacred at 38,000 through 42,000203 and the total number of deaths including Chinese soldiers killed in action at not more than 100,000.204
Higashinakano Shudo, a professor of intellectual history at Asia University, asserts that the burial record of the Chung Shan Tang was concocted for the tribunal. He also questions the credibility of the record given by the other charitable organization, the Red Swastika Society, asserting that of the recorded 40,000 bodies, only 13,000 to 15,000 were authentic.205
"My research shows that the Red Swastika Society could have possibly buried 15,000-odd bodies. Of course I am aware that there were bodies thrown into the Yangtze River," says Higashinakano. "But even if we believe the figure of 40,000, it does not make much difference. The real question is whether those bodies were civilians or not, whether those people were illegally killed or not."206
Higashinakano argues that the plain-clothes soldiers, Chinese soldiers who shed their uniforms and fled into the refugee camps, were all guerillas and violated the Hague Regulations of 1902. In his view those guerilla suspects were not entitled to be taken as prisoners of war, thus executing them should not be called massacre. Accordingly, he insists there was no systematic illegal mass murder in Nanking.207
Probably Higashinakano's view represents the extreme side of the latest controversy. However, in Japan even some conservative scholars reject his interpretation of the International Law.
"The number could be discussed, but the Massacre must be acknowledged by everyone in the debate before that," says Zhang Lianhong. Interview by author on March 24, 2000.
For instance, historian Nakamura Akira at Dokkyo University, a self-professed "genuine patriot" and a "right-winger," notes that it is a massacre to kill prisoners of war including plain-clothes soldiers without any military trial.208
Nakagaki Hideo, a researcher at Boei Daigaku, or the Defense Academy, also admits that there were mass illegal executions of Chinese POWs.209 Although both Nakamura and Nakagaki uphold far lower death tolls than claimed at the IMTFE, they do not deny the fact that the Nanking Atrocities took place.
A historian at Nanjing Normal University and also the secretary-general of the Research Center of Nanjing Massacre by the Japanese Aggressors, Zhang Lianhong, asserts that "recognition" must come first before "definition."
He thinks historians of both countries including Japanese conservative scholars must reach a full consensus as to such essential factors as the flawed process of distinguishing plain-clothes soldiers from civilians and the illegitimacy of indiscriminately executing prisoners of war before discussing the actual number of victims.
"I don't think the death toll is a key element of the Nanjing Massacre," says Zhang.
"Some scholars say Chinese historians persist in the figure of 300,000 but I think it could be discussed between Japanese researchers and Chinese researchers. We [historians at the Research Center] are willing to talk to even Japan's 'conservative' historians as long as they respect the historical fact that the Nanjing Massacre took place. Then we can discuss the details. I think joint research is the most important step towards a transnational consensus."210
As Zhang articulated, almost all historians note that the exact death toll is not the highest priority in comprehending what actually happened in Nanking. They point out that there were other crimes such as rape, pillage, and arson that are now impossible to quantify.
In the interviews for this online documentary, many researchers said that the issue of the death toll must be discussed in a scholarly fashion. They maintain it should be a topic for academic debates, not for ideologically driven arguments.
190. See for instance, “Nanking International Relief Committee Reports of Activities November 22, 1937 – April 15, 1938,” in American Missionary Eyewitnesses to the Nanking Massacre, 1937-1938, 11; Documents of the Nanking Safety Zone, 84.
191. See for example, Durdin, “The Japanese Atrocities Marked Fall of Nanking After Chinese Command Fled,” the New York Times, 9 January 1938.
192. Hisashi Inoue, “Itai Maisou Kiroku ha Gizou Shiryo de ha Nai [The Burial Records are not fabricated evidence],” in Nanking Daigyakusatsu Hiteiron 13 no Uso [Thirteen lies in the Nanjing Massacre Deniers’ Claims], 120-137.
193. Kasahara, Nanking Jiken [The Nanjing Incident], 214; Fujiwara, Nanking no Nihongun [The Japanese Army in Nanjing], 70.
194. Kasahara, Nanking Jiken [The Nanjing Incident], 228. “jusuman ijo, soremo nijuman chikai ka aruiwa sore ijo.” The Japanese expression “jusuman” means “one hundred and tens of thousands,” which could possibly imply between 120,000 and 180,000. The sentence literally means, “one hundred and tens of thousands, probably the higher end of it, that is, nearly 200,000 or even more.”
195. Fujiwara, Nanking no Nihongun [The Japanese Army in Nanjing], 70-73.
196. Yutaka Yoshida, “Nanking Jiken no Zenyo ga Semaru Rekishi Ninshiki [The Whole Picture of the Nanjing Incident Obliges Us to Recognize the History],” Zenei 695 (January 1998): 60; Joshua A. Fogel, review of the Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, by Iris Chang, Journal of Asian Studies 57.3 (August 1998): 81818-819; Fogel, “Correspondence: How Bad Was the Nanking Massacre?” letters to the editor, the Los Agngeles Times, 15 August 1999.
197. Zhu Chengshan, interview by author, Nanjing, China, 24 March 2000.
198. Sun Zhaiwei, et al., Nanjing Datsusha [The Nanjing Massacre] (Beijing, 1997), 9-10, quoted in Yang Daqing, “Convergence or Divergence? Recent Historical Writings on the Rape of Nanking,” American Historical Review 104.3 (June 1999): 853.
199. Sun Zhaiwei, “Nanking Daigyakusatsu no Kibo wo Ronjiru [Lecture on the Scale of the Nanjing Massacre]” (speech at the Tokyo International Symposium: 60th Anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre, Tokyo, Japan, 13-14 December 1997), in Nanking Jiken wo Do Miruka: Nichi, Chu, Bei Kenkyusha ni Yoru Kensho [How to perceive the Nanjing Massacre: Verifications by Japanese, Chinese and American Researchers], ed. Akira Fujiwara (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1998), 78-81 and 107.
200. The Tokyo Judgment: The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (I.M.T.F.E.) 29 April 1946 – 12 November 1948, Volume I, 454.
201. Ikuhiko Hata, interview by author, Tokyo, Japan, 19 February 2000.
202. Hata, “The Nanking Atrocities: Facts and Fable,” Japan Echo 25.4 (August 1998): available from http://www.japanecho.co.jp/docs/html/250413.html; Internet.
203. Hata, Nanking Jiken [The Nanjing Incident], 184-215.
204. Hata, “Nanking Daigyakusatsu: ‘Rabe Koka’ o Sokutei Suru [The Nanjing Massacre: Examining the ‘Rabe Effect’],” Shokun 30.2 (February 1998): 86.
205. Shudo Higashinakano, “Nanking Gyakusatsu” no Tettei Kensho [A Through Probe of “The Nanjing Massacre”] (Tokyo: Tendensha, 1998), 295-320.
206. Shudo (Osamichi) Higashinakano, Tokyo, Japan, 3 March 2000.
207. Ibid., 191-197.
208. Akira Nakamura, “Nanking Jiken “Nichi Chu Taiwa Ryokou” Watashi ga Nyukoku Kyohi sareta Wake [The Nanjing Incident: Reasons That My Visa Application for A Trip of ‘Dialogue between Japan and China,’ Was Rejected],” Seiron 333 (May 2000): 69-72.
209. Hideo Nakagaki, “Nankin Jiken no Kenshou 2 [Verification of the Nanjing Incident 2],” Gouyu (February 2000): 25-30.
210. Zhang Lianhong, interview by author, Nanjing, China, 24 March 2000.
This article, more than anything focuses on the fact that the controversial death toll has distracted people from the horrible atrocities that took place. I agree completely and as such was hesitant to start an argument about the death toll. But as you all can see it is disputed and there is no agreeable number. The best we can say is 200,000-300,000. Which certainly marks it as one of the worst atrocities the world has ever seen. The thing that strikes me about this was the Japanese individual brutality. The freedom and encouragement the Japanese soldiers were given let them truly show their ugly disgusting brutality. They carried out these atrocities as games and competitions, one of the ugliest things I can imagine.
Why did I say that this number had been possibly inflated? It made have been written carelessly but the point I was trying to make was that the Chinese GOVERNMENT chose the top number (and in that I mean the top number quoted by any credible historian, I'm discounting both extremes of zero and 400,000 because of their lack of acceptance the credible scientific community.) And they chose that top number to quote as an exact number. I have personally seen this number at the memorial in NanJing, and it was actually the least memorable part of the memorial. The stories and images are so haunting that the number is eclipsed.
I said that this number and others are possibly inflated because of the need of the Chinese government to create a culture of victims in order to inspire nationalism. I said this based on an article that I had earlier read, the summary of which follows:
National Insecurities: Humiliation, Salvation, and Chinese Nationalism.
Authors: Callahan, William C.
Explores how humiliation has been an integral part of the construction of nationalism in China. Social theory; Domestic and international political consequences of the deployment of shame and humiliation; National insecurities in China.
The full link is http://www.humiliationstudies.org/document...llahanChina.pdf (http://www.humiliationstudies.org/documents/CallahanChina.pdf)
This article explores the way the government uses humiliation as a means to unite its people by promoting nationalism. I think its a great article and very insightful, and with this in my memory I wrote that the NanJing figures were inflated and that possibly other current figures were inflated by the government in an attempt to control the people or unite them, or instill a certain feeling in them. I was in no way downplaying the atrocities of the NanJing incident, and I think that was obvious.
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