The Rape Of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II [平装]

In December 1937, the Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking. Within weeks, more than 300,000 Chinese civilians were systematically raped, tortured, and murdered--a death toll exceeding that of the atomic blasts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Using extensive interviews with survivors and newly discovered documents, Iris Chang has written what will surely be the definitive history of this horrifying episode. The Rape of Nanking tells the story from three perspectives: of the Japanese soldiers who performed it, of the Chinese civilians who endured it, and of a group of Europeans and Americans who refused to abandon the city and were able to create a safety zone that saved almost 300,000 Chinese. Among these was the Nazi John Rabe, an unlikely hero whom Chang calls the "Oskar Schindler of China" and who worked tirelessly to protect the innocent and publicize the horror. More than just narrating the details of an orgy of violence, The Rape of Nanking analyzes the militaristic culture that fostered in the Japanese soldiers a total disregard for human life. Finally, it tells the appalling story: about how the advent of the Cold War led to a concerted effort on the part of the West and even the Chinese to stifle open discussion of this atrocity. Indeed, Chang characterizes this conspiracy of silence, that persists to this day, as "a second rape." --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Amazon.com Review
China has endured much hardship in its history, as Iris Chang shows in her ably researched The Rape of Nanking, a book that recounts the horrible events in that eastern Chinese city under Japanese occupation in the late 1930s. Nanking, she writes, served as a kind of laboratory in which Japanese soldiers were taught to slaughter unarmed, unresisting civilians, as they would later do throughout Asia. Likening their victims to insects and animals, the Japanese commanders orchestrated a campaign in which several hundred thousand--no one is sure just how many--Chinese soldiers and noncombatants alike were killed. Chang turns up an unlikely hero in German businessman John Rabe, a devoted member of the Nazi party who importuned Adolf Hitler to intervene and stop the slaughter, and who personally saved the lives of countless residents of Nanking. She also suggests that the Japanese government pay reparations and apologize for its army's horrific acts of 60 years ago. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From School Library Journal
YA?The events in this book are horribly off-putting, which, paradoxically, is why they must be remembered. Chang tells of the Sino-Japanese War atrocities perpetrated by the invading Japanese army in Nanking in December 1937, in which roughly 350,000 soldiers and civilians were slaughtered in an eight-week period, many of them having been raped and/or tortured first. Not only are readers given many of the gory details?with pictures?but they are also told of the heroism of some members of a small foreign contingent, particularly of a Nazi businessman who resided in China for 30 years. The story of his bravery lends the ironic touch of someone with evil credentials doing good. Once the author finishes with the atrocities, she proceeds with the equally absorbing and much easier-to-take story of what happened to the Nazi businessman when he returned to Germany and the war ended. This by itself is material for a movie. The author tells why the Japanese government not only allowed the atrocities to occur but also refused, and continues to refuse, to acknowledge that they happened. She is quite evenhanded in reminding readers that every culture has some episode like this in its history; what makes this one important is the number of people killed and tortured, the sadism, and the ongoing Japanese denial of responsibility. Mature readers will look beyond the sensational acts of cruelty to ponder the horror of man's inhumanity to man and the examples of heroism in the midst of savagery.?Judy McAloon, Potomac Library, Prince William County, VA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
When Japan occupied China in 1937, its army subjected NankingAthen China's capitalAto brutalities on a scale matched only by Nazi Germany's treatment of European Jews. Precise figures are unobtainable, but in only a few weeks, the Japanese appear to have killed 300,000 civiliansAmany in ways too unspeakable to describe. However, despite the scale of these atrocities, the event has been virtually unknown to the outside world. This book will go a long way toward correcting that deficiency. Drawing on long-neglected documentation and interviews with Nanking survivors, Chang (Thread of the Silkworm) has written a forceful narrative that not only reconstructs the grisly events in detail but analyzes Japan's reluctance to admit its responsibility. Many library patrons will prefer to listen to Blackstone's unabridged recording, while others may wish to limit their descent into hell to this three-hour abridgment, which, with Barbara Rosenblatt's strong reading, delivers the full message.AKent Rasmussen, Thousand Oaks, CA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews
Billing itself as the first English-language history devoted to the Japanese Army's 1937 massacre in China's capital, this slight account will by no means be the last word. Repeated references to Schindler's List point to the problem with this overdigested version of the past: It reads like a treatment for a probably inevitable cinema version of the hideous incident. Its economical, blandly shocking anecdotes of crimes against humanity and its cardboard heroes suggest scenes ready-made for screenwritten history. Thus, while rigorous in its moral earnestness, the book is inadequate as a history. After a minimal background chapter on Japanese militarism, Chang, a freelance journalist, describes the Japanese assault on Nanking. The specifics are deeply horrific: Over a period of several months Japanese soldiers killed approximately a quarter of a million Chinese, almost all of them noncombatants, including the elderly, women, and children. But the potential ingredients of a skillfully woven narrative are separated here into lifeless clumps of facts--catalogues of atrocities by kind; tiny summaries of topics of significant contextual interest, like foreign intelligence concerning the massacre; and probably gripping oral recollections flattened into clunky prose (``of the hundreds of people killed that day . . . Tang was the only survivor''). Chang tells only as much as one needs to know to indignantly draw the familiar lessons for humanity--``the frightening ease with which the mind can accept genocide, turning us all into passive spectators to the unthinkable.'' What's needed is to vivify such truths with intense historical reality. Chang fails because he rushes to simplify complex events and to universalize what happened at the expense of a careful, comprehensive appreciation of a world violently destroyed. (photos, not seen) (First serial to Newsweek) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review
A gripping account that holds the reader's attention from beginning to end. This meticulously researched book is a moving drama that pays fitting tribute to the Americans and Europeans living in Nanking who risked their lives to rescue the Chinese people from rape and extermination. -- Nien Cheng, author of Life and Death in Shanghai

A powerful, landmark book, riveting in its horror, exposing the mass killing perpetrated by the Japanese army on the people of Nanking in the early years of the Second World War. -- Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer-prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb and A Hole in the World

Anyone interested in the relation between war, self-righteousness, and the human spirit will find THE RAPE OF NANKING of fundamental importance. It is scholarly, an exciting investigation and a work of passion. In places it is almost unbearable to read, but it should be read - only if the past is understood can the future be navigated. -- Ross Terrill, author of Mao, China in Our Time and Madame Mao

In her important new book, The Rape of Nanking, Iris Chang, whose own grandparents were survivors, recounts the grisly massacre with understandable outrage. -- The New York Times Book Review, Orville Schell

Iris Chang's RAPE OF NANKING is an utterly compelling book. The descriptions of the atrocities raise fundamental questions not only about imperial Japanese militarism but the psychology of the torturers, rapists and murderers. Many Japanese have denied that these events ever took place, substituting amnesia for guilt, but Iris Chang's heartbreaking account will make such evasion impossible in the future for all but the most diehard right-wing Japanese extremists. -- Frederic Wakeman, Director of the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley

One of the most important books of the twentieth century. Iris Chang's THE RAPE OF NANKING will endure as a classic among the world's histories of war. -- Nancy Tong, producer and co-director of In the Name of the Emperor

Outstanding, highly readable. Understanding this forgotten history is vital not only to those with an economic stake in the Pacific Rim nations, but to an increasingly multicultural America. -- Dale Maharidge, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of And Their Children After Them and The Coming White Minority --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.