The Nanjing Massacre (南京大屠殺)(二)

In 1997 Iris Chang wrote The Rape of Nanjing: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. Chang in the introduction of her book put the death toll of the Nanjing Massacre at the range from 260,000 to over 350,000. She claimed that because of the magnitude of the Nanjing Massacre, it represented a mass extermination that was comparable to the Nazi atrocity that killed 6 million Jews. Another claim made by Chang was that 20,000 - 80,000 Chinese women were raped. Chang asked why the Nanjing Massacre victims had not been given due justice, asserting that the authorities in Mainland China, Taiwan and the United States were responsible for their silence on the subject. Chang claimed that the passive attitude of the international community in dealing with the Massacre was the "second Japanese rape", bearing in mind that Japan refused to apologize for atrocity.


She further alleged that in Japan, there was "an atmosphere of intimidation [that] stifled open and scholarly discussion of the Rape of Nanjing". Chang also suggested that there was an academic cover-up in Japan about the Nanjing Massacre because some scholars classified victims as "guerrilla soldiers" instead of non-combating civilian. Chang claimed that in Japan serious research on the Massacre were only done by people "outside the traditional academic communities" such as freelance writers, journalists and even a factory worker.


Chang's book attracted attention from some scholars on the subject. Joshua Fogel, for example, wrote a book review in 1998 in response to Chang. While noting that the dual aim "as passionate polemic and dispassionate history" of the book, Fogel pointed out that it was full of misinformation and reckless explanation, telling the massacre "in X-rated detail" about the horror in Nanjing in 1937. (to be continued)


Reference
1. Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. New York: BasicBook, 1997.
2. Fogel, Joshua. Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 57, no. 3 Book Review: "The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II; Japan's War Memories: Amnesia or Concealment?", 1998.
3. Fogel, Joshua ed. The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.