The Rape of Nanking; The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II

New York: Basic Books, 1997. First Edition [stated]. Tenth Printing [stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. xi, [1], 290 pages. Illustrations. Map. Notes. Index. Slight wear to DJ edges. Iris Shun-Ru Chang (March 28, 1968 - November 9, 2004) was a Chinese American journalist, author of historical books and political activist. She is best known for her best-selling 1997 account of the Nanking Massacre, The Rape of Nanking, and in 2003, The Chinese in America: A Narrative History. Chang is the subject of the 2007 biography, Finding Iris Chang, and the 2007 documentary film Iris Chang: The Rape of Nanking starring Olivia Cheng as Iris Chang. The independent 2007 documentary film Nanking was based on her work and dedicated to her memory. Chang grew up hearing stories about the Nanking massacre, from which her maternal grandparents managed to escape. When she tried finding books about the subject in Champaign Public Library, she found there were none. The author discovered the diaries of John Rabe, the German leader of the effort to rescue Chinese civilians. Her book attracted both praises for exposing the details of the atrocity and criticisms because of alleged inaccuracies. After publication of the book, Chang campaigned to persuade the Japanese government to apologize for its troops' wartime conduct and to pay compensation. Chang's visibility as a public figure increased with her final work, The Chinese in America. After her death, she became the subject of tributes from fellow writers. Mo Hayder dedicated a novel to her. Reporter Richard Rongstad eulogized her as "Iris Chang lit a flame and passed it to others and we should not allow that flame to be extinguished." Amazingly, the story of this atrocity one of the worst in world history continues to be denied by the Japanese government. Based on extensive interviews with survivors and newly discovered documents in four different languages (many never before published), Iris Chang, whose own grandparents barely escaped the massacre, has written what will surely be the definitive, English-language history of this horrifying episode one that the Japanese have tried for years to erase from public consciousness. The Rape of Nanking tells the story from three perspectives: that of the Japanese soldiers who performed it; of the Chinese civilians who endured it; and finally 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. It was Chang who discovered the diaries of the German leader of this rescue effort, John Rabe, whom she calls the Oskar Schindler of China. He worked tirelessly to save the innocent from slaughter. This book does more than just narrate details of an orgy of violence; it attempts to analyze the degree to which the Japanese imperial government and its militaristic culture fostered in the Japanese soldier a total disregard for human life. Finally, it tells one more shocking story: Despite the fact that the death toll at Nanking exceeded the immediate deaths from the atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, the Cold War led to a concerted effort on the part of the West and even the Chinese to court the loyalty of Japan and stifle open discussion of this atrocity. Indeed, Chang characterized this conspiracy of silence, which persists to this day, as a second rape. Derived from a Publishers Weekly article: The Japanese sack of the Chinese capital Nanking is surely among the world's worst atrocities. In 1937, Japanese forces captured the city and embarked on an orgy of rape, murder and destruction of property unparalleled in scope anywhere to that date. Estimates of those killed within a few days range upward of 350,000. The author's extensive research lays bare the depravity of Japanese conduct during the war and the heroic resistance of members of the international community in Nanking, who established a safety zone, at great personal risk, to shelter countless thousands of Chinese refugees. One of the unsung heroes of the tragedy is John Rabe, an influential German in the city who tried without avail to stop the massacre. Chang's account also takes Japan to task for failing to acknowledge its role in the bloodbath, noting that many high-level Japanese officials still refuse to admit their country's complicity. Likening the siege of Nanking to the recent genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda, the author reminds us that "civilization itself is tissue-thin." A compelling, agonizing chronicle.