The Nanking Massacre and Iris Chang's Book The Rape of Nanking

[JoeB131]

Oh, so our policy to keep hostile powers and ideologies from taking root in the Caribbean was wrong?! Uh, wow, that's just what the Communists say. What a coincidence.

Uh, guy, our policy starting with the Monroe Doctrine was wrong. It's an imperialist policy. Our policies caused "hostile idealogies" to take root. Have you ever wondered why Havana is still communist even though Russia isn't?

Blah, blah, blah says your brainwashed, illiterate mind. Japan intervened in Manchuria to establish order from warlord chaos and to protect its citizens and subjects there. And, as I've documented for you from several sources, Japan did not start the war in China--the Nationalists started the war by attacking the Japanese just after the Japanese had submitted another peace proposal. Even Chinese generals admitted that their side started the war and that the Japanese did not want war in China.

Again, nobody thinks the Japanese were the good guys in World War II. Not even the Japanese. They like to pretend the whole thing never happened.

Japan shouldn't have been in Manchuria. they shouldn't have been in Korea.

LOL! Ohhhhh! So it was okay for the Soviets to take over part of Mongolia, but not okay for the Japanese to take over part of Manchuria or to want a small buffer zone between Manchuria and China. Got it. Thanks for sharing, Comrade.

Are you like five? When you were caught doing something wrong, did you scream, "But Billy did it, too!"

Maybe you should educate yourself about what Japan did in Manchuria.

War crimes in Manchukuo - Wikipedia

What unbelievably stupid polemic. The Japanese would not have gone into any of those countries if FDR had not imposed draconian sanctions that threatened them with economic collapse. Until FDR, desperate to save the Soviet Union at any cost, provoked Japan to war, the Japanese--even the army's general stuff--had no intention of sending their forces into those nations because they wanted to focus on developing Manchuria and on guarding against a potential Soviet invasion. The comment about Burma is especially dumb because the only reason the Japanese moved into Burma was to cut off the flow of Allied/American weapons going to the Nationalists via Burma.

wow, do you also blame short skirts for rape? I mean, if she wasn't wearing that short skirt, the guy never would have raped her.

Here's how you fix the Draconian sanctions. YOu stop doing what you were doing to get sanctioned. The point is, sanctions meant we weren't going to trade with them. No one else was trading with them at that point, either, mostly because they here allied with Hitler and Hitler was invading their countries.

If FDR was so keen on helping the USSR< why wasn't Japan partitioned the way Germany was after the War? In fact, all Russia got out of her participation in the Pacific War was half of Sakhalin Island.

You do realize that at one point the Japanese actually agreed to Chiang Kaishek's demand that they withdraw all of their troops from China in exchange for a peace deal, right? And guess why Chiang still refused to make peace with the Japanese even after they agreed to this condition? Because FDR's boys in China talked/pressured him into continuing the war.

Again, I beat you over the head with a baseball bat, take your wallet, but offer to give you your credit cards back if you suck my dick.

You really think this is a good offer? Even if the Japanese (notorious for double dealing, sneak attacks and breaking treaties) were really sincere about withdrawing from "China", they still planned to hold on to Manchuria and Taiwan, which were rightfully Chinese territories.

 

[mikegriffith1]

FDR did much more than what you list. Get educated.

Everything he did was within the law and within international norms.

REALLY? Humm, can you cite me an example of a country that imposed on another country the kinds of sanctions that FDR imposed on Japan when the other country was trying to avoid war and agreed to the conditions that the sanctioning country said it wanted? I'll be waiting and will periodically remind you that I'm still waiting for a precedent for/example of what FDR to Japan.

(I suspect this will end up being like your other whacky claims, such as your howler that the Chinese Communists fought the Japanese as much as the Nationalists did.)

Again- I have a degree in history, what do you have....

Uh, then you need to get a refund, because you have made it quite clear in this thread that you no clue what you're talking about when it comes to the Second Sino-Japanese War and Japan's involvement in Manchuria. You are too blinded by your anti-Japanese brainwashing and bigotry to even consider reading scholarly sources that present the facts of the matter.

And I find it very interesting that you, like other Chang defenders, find it necessary to not only reject Dr. Smythe's survey and report but to launch pathetic, dishonest attacks on him.

For those who might not know, Dr. Lewis Smythe was a professor of sociology at Jinling University in Nanking and a member of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone. Not one but an ignorant jerk like JoeB131 would even hint that he was remotely pro-Japanese or that he was trying to minimize what the Japanese army had done. During the massacre, he wrote several letters of protest to the Japanese Embassy regarding the vicious conduct of some Japanese soldiers. He also helped to feed and shelter Chinese residents, and on some occasions he even intervened to prevent Japanese soldiers from abusing Chinese residents.

Dr. Smythe conducted his survey at the request of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone because he and the other committee members wanted to find out how many people had been killed and what damage had been done. Dr. Smythe, being a sociologist, had conducted surveys before. To conduct his Nanking survey, he hired Chinese college students. Dr. Smythe did not just survey Nanking proper but also the surrounding area, and he did his survey a matter of weeks after the massacre. His report on his survey findings, titled War Damage in the Nanking Area, is one of the best (if not the best) and most reliable primary source on the Nanking Massacre.

"So," you might be thinking, "why would anyone reject Dr. Smythe's survey and report?" Because his findings destroy the myth that the Japanese army killed 300,000 people in Nanking. The death numbers he determined are comparable to the death numbers given in two contemporaneous accounts written by Western observers in the city and are not even remotely close to 300,000. Moreover, Dr. Smythe determined that there were no more than 250,000 people in Nanking when the Japanese arrived, and, interestingly enough, that the population began to steadily increase after the massacre, which of course (1) means that 300,000 people could not have been killed, and (2) suggests that the massacre was not massive but limited in nature (otherwise people naturally would have been afraid to go anywhere near Nanking).

As other scholars have noted, to believe that 300,000 people were killed, you would have to believe that Dr. Smythe's survey was off by a staggering 4,400%.

 

[JoeB131]

REALLY? Humm, can you cite me an example of a country that imposed on another country the kinds of sanctions that FDR imposed on Japan when the other country was trying to avoid war and agreed to the conditions that the sanctioning country said it wanted? I'll be waiting and will periodically remind you that I'm still waiting for a precedent for/example of what FDR to Japan.

Japan wasn't trying to avoid war. They were actively trying to conquer Asia.

Which is why we had to put a serious beat-down on the mother fuckers... and the world is better off for it.

Uh, then you need to get a refund, because you have made it quite clear in this thread that you no clue what you're talking about when it comes to the Second Sino-Japanese War and Japan's involvement in Manchuria. You are too blinded by your anti-Japanese brainwashing and bigotry to even consider reading scholarly sources that present the facts of the matter.

No history department ANYWHERE would look at your pro-fascist revisionism with anything but ridicule.

Again- I have a degree in History, what do you have?

And I find it very interesting that you, like other Chang defenders, find it necessary to not only reject Dr. Smythe's survey and report but to launch pathetic, dishonest attacks on him.

For those who might not know, Dr. Lewis Smythe was a professor of sociology at Jinling University in Nanking and a member of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone. Not one but an ignorant jerk like JoeB131 would even hint that he was remotely pro-Japanese or that he was trying to minimize what the Japanese army had done. During the massacre, he wrote several letters of protest to the Japanese Embassy regarding the vicious conduct of some Japanese soldiers. He also helped to feed and shelter Chinese residents, and on some occasions he even intervened to prevent Japanese soldiers from abusing Chinese residents.

And so what? Another white guy telling people of color to not be upset about human rights attrocities.

Do you really think this guy was going to get accurate numbers when the Japs were still occupying the city?

Seriously fuck that guy.

300,000 dead in Nanking. 30 Million dead Chinese in the war of aggression.

The whole region STILL hates Japan, for good reason.

 

[gipper]

REALLY? Humm, can you cite me an example of a country that imposed on another country the kinds of sanctions that FDR imposed on Japan when the other country was trying to avoid war and agreed to the conditions that the sanctioning country said it wanted? I'll be waiting and will periodically remind you that I'm still waiting for a precedent for/example of what FDR to Japan.

Japan wasn't trying to avoid war. They were actively trying to conquer Asia.

Which is why we had to put a serious beat-down on the mother fuckers... and the world is better off for it.

Uh, then you need to get a refund, because you have made it quite clear in this thread that you no clue what you're talking about when it comes to the Second Sino-Japanese War and Japan's involvement in Manchuria. You are too blinded by your anti-Japanese brainwashing and bigotry to even consider reading scholarly sources that present the facts of the matter.

No history department ANYWHERE would look at your pro-fascist revisionism with anything but ridicule.

Again- I have a degree in History, what do you have?

And I find it very interesting that you, like other Chang defenders, find it necessary to not only reject Dr. Smythe's survey and report but to launch pathetic, dishonest attacks on him.

For those who might not know, Dr. Lewis Smythe was a professor of sociology at Jinling University in Nanking and a member of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone. Not one but an ignorant jerk like JoeB131 would even hint that he was remotely pro-Japanese or that he was trying to minimize what the Japanese army had done. During the massacre, he wrote several letters of protest to the Japanese Embassy regarding the vicious conduct of some Japanese soldiers. He also helped to feed and shelter Chinese residents, and on some occasions he even intervened to prevent Japanese soldiers from abusing Chinese residents.

And so what? Another white guy telling people of color to not be upset about human rights attrocities.

Do you really think this guy was going to get accurate numbers when the Japs were still occupying the city?

Seriously fuck that guy.

300,000 dead in Nanking. 30 Million dead Chinese in the war of aggression.

The whole region STILL hates Japan, for good reason.

The truth is not pro fascist revisionism. It’s the truth. Too bad you aren’t informed enough to understand and accept it.

 

[JoeB131]

The truth is not pro fascist revisionism. It’s the truth. Too bad you aren’t informed enough to understand and accept it.

Truth- Japan engaged in a war of aggression against China, and killed millions of Chinese.

Anything other than that is fascist revisionism.

 

[mikegriffith1]

The population evidence provides us with another telling argument against the 300,000-killed myth. Dr. Shudo Higashinakano, a professor of history at Asia University in Tokyo, explains this in his book The Nanking Massacre: Fact vs. Fiction (2005):

The Japanese did not allow ordinary citizens free access to those gates [the gates of the walled city of Nanking] until two and a half months had elapsed. Nevertheless, 20 days before and immediately prior to the fall of Nanking, the city’s population was 200,000, according to Europeans and Americans who were there at the time. Eight days after the fall and on Christmas Eve, it was still 200,000. No one indicated a vast decrease in population due to mass slaughter. Confronted by these facts, how can anyone claim that 300,000 noncombatants were murdered in Nanking? (p. ii) (Dr. Higashinakano’s book is available online at http://www.sdh-fact.com/CL02_1/9_S4.pdf)​

As mentioned in previous replies, Dr. Lewis Smythe, based on his extensive survey conducted weeks after the massacre, said that Nanking’s population was between 200,000 and 250,000 when the Japanese arrived (War Damage in the Nanking Area, December 1937 to March 1938, Nanking International Relief Committee, June 1938, p. 4). As of March 1938, Smythe put the population of Nanking at 221,000 (War Damage in the Nanking Area, p. 8).

As of December 21, eight days after the Japanese had occupied the city, the Nanking International Relief Committee put the city’s population at 200,000, as Dr. Higashinakano points out:

Document No. 10, dated December 18, states, “We 22 Westerners cannot feed 200,000 Chinese civilians….” The Committee appealed to the Japanese military for help.​

Document No. 20, dated December 21, mentions difficulties the Committee had experienced in supplying food and fuel to 200,000 civilians, and adds, “The present situation is automatically and rapidly leading to a serious famine.” (The Nanking Massacre: Fact vs. Fiction, p. 152) (By the way, the Japanese then began to distribute large amounts of food to city residents.)​

We also read the following in Document No. 10, which is a letter written on December 18 by the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone to the Japanese Embassy in Nanking:

Dear Sirs: We are very sorry to trouble you again the sufferings and needs of the 200,000 civilians for whom we are trying to care make it urgent that we try to secure action from your military authorities to stop the present disorder among Japanese soldiers wandering through the Safety Zone. (International Military Tribunal for the Far East: Transcript of Proceedings, August 29, 1946, p. 4516)​

Lily Abegg, a European newspaper correspondent in China, was in Nanking shortly before the Japanese arrived, and she reported that as of November 29 there were, at most, about 150,000 people in the city:

Now there are at most 150,000 people remaining, but the waves of evacuees seem interminable. (The Nanking Massacre: Fact vs. Fiction, p. 30, citing Lily Abegg, “Wie wir aus Nanking flüchteten: Die letzten Tage in der Haupstadt Chinas” in Frankfurter Zeitung, 19 December 1937)​

The chief of the National Police Agency reported that as of November 28 there were “200,000 residents remaining here in Nanking” (The Nanking Massacre: Fact vs. Fiction, p. 151). This was 15 days before the Japanese entered the city.

The obvious and crucial point is this: Since Nanking’s population was 150,000 to 200,000 as of late November, two weeks before the Japanese arrived, and was 200,000 as of December 21, eight days after the city fell, and was 221,000 in March, three months after the city fell, there is no way the Japanese killed 300,000 people in Nanking.

I’ve already made the point that virtually all of the early accounts of the massacre put the death toll in the tens of thousands, not in the hundreds of thousands. One of those early accounts comes from Rev. Miner Searle Bates. Bates was a famous Christian missionary who taught at the University of Nanking. Bates was also an adviser to the Nationalist government’s Ministry of Information. As is well known to scholars, when Bates provided his contribution to Harold Timperly’s book What War Means, he put the death toll at 42,000—12,000 civilians and 30,000 soldiers. Dr. Higashinakano:

Rev. Bates inserted language to the effect that 12,000 civilians and 30,000 soldiers had been killed in Nanking into Chapter 3 of What War Means. The Ministry of Information should have been delighted to disseminate news of a massacre with some 40,000 victims. (The Nanking Massacre: Fact vs. Fiction, p. iv)​

Dr. Smythe stated that the records of burials in and near the city indicated that about 12,000 civilians were killed by violence:

A careful estimate from the burials in the city and in areas adjacent to the wall, indicates 12,000 civilians killed by violence. The tens of thousands of unarmed or disarmed soldiers are not considered in these lists. (War Damage in the Nanking Area, p. 8)​

Dr. Smythe added that about 1,000 of those civilian deaths were collateral fatalities from military operations, i.e., they were killed in crossfire or artillery exchanges between the Chinese and Japanese military forces.

Why do Iris Chang’s apologists ignore all this evidence, and also ignore other evidence that likewise supports the same figures, and instead insist on clinging to Chang’s mythical figure of 300,000 deaths? Why can’t they be satisfied with pointing out that the Japanese army killed about 10,000 civilians in Nanking?

By any measurement, killing 10,000 civilians is a horrific crime that deserves the harshest condemnation and punishment. So why do Chang’s defenders refuse to abandon her discredited 300,000 figure? Here’s one reason: The Nationalists killed at least 400,000 people in the Yellow River Atrocity (aka the Yellow River Flood) in 1938 when they deliberately breached the Yellow River Dam and flooded thousands of square miles in Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu to stop a non-existent Japanese advance. Can you imagine what Chang’s apologists would be saying if the Japanese had done this?

By the way, the Nationalists initially claimed that the Japanese had caused the flood by bombing the dam. However, this lie was soon exposed thoroughly enough that the Nationalists were forced to admit that they were the ones who had breached the dam.

 

[JoeB131]

The population evidence provides us with another telling argument against the 300,000-killed myth. Dr. Shudo Higashinakano, a professor of history at Asia University in Tokyo, explains this in his book The Nanking Massacre: Fact vs. Fiction (2005):

The Japanese did not allow ordinary citizens free access to those gates [the gates of the walled city of Nanking] until two and a half months had elapsed. Nevertheless, 20 days before and immediately prior to the fall of Nanking, the city’s population was 200,000, according to Europeans and Americans who were there at the time.

Well, a whole lot of problem with this SHIT STAIN of an argument. First of all, how did westerners know how many people lived in the area? Did they do a census. We know damned well Peanut and his government weren't capable of doing a census.

Second, as stated many times, people flooded into Nanking from the surrounding countryside because they THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE.

Population of Nanjing in December of 1937 - Wikipedia

An official survey conducted in March 1937 had put the total civilian population of Nanking at 1,019,667.[5] However, most of the city's population, particularly the wealthy and middle class, fled after the Japanese starting bombing it in August. Most of those who stayed behind were the very poor who had nowhere else to go, as well as the officials who had jobs with the city government.[6]

In the first weeks of December, as the Japanese were advancing on the city, rapid population movements took place both into and out of the city. On the one hand, many inhabitants of Nanking attempted to flee to neighboring villages in the last days before the city's fall. On the other hand, refugees were streaming into the city from the rural villages around Nanking which were being burned down by the Chinese Army.[4] Starting on December 7, the Chinese Army launched a scorched earth policy of incinerating houses around Nanking to deprive the oncoming Japanese soldiers of shelter.[7] These chaotic conditions made it difficult to keep track of the city's population.[4]


On the other hand, Tokushi Kasahara asserts that the contemporary figure of 200,000 strongly underestimates Nanking's civilian population at the time of the city's fall. He argues that the contemporary figures probably included only those Chinese who had evaded the Japanese Army during and immediately after the battle and successfully escaped to the safety zone. Kasahara cites a letter that Ma Chaojun, the mayor of Nanking, wrote on November 23 that 500,000 civilians remained in the city and that 200,000 additional refugees from surrounding areas were expected to arrive soon. After that, Nanking was swollen with refugees due to the Chinese Army's incineration of villages just outside the city. Though Kasahara acknowledges that many Chinese people left the city after November 23, he suspects that the influx of new refugees would likely have brought the city's civilian population up to roughly 400,000-500,000 by the time that the Japanese arrived.[4]


Fuck off, you fascist scumwad.

By any measurement, killing 10,000 civilians is a horrific crime that deserves the harshest condemnation and punishment. So why do Chang’s defenders refuse to abandon her discredited 300,000 figure? Here’s one reason: The Nationalists killed at least 400,000 people in the Yellow River Atrocity (aka the Yellow River Flood) in 1938 when they deliberately breached the Yellow River Dam and flooded thousands of square miles in Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu to stop a non-existent Japanese advance. Can you imagine what Chang’s apologists would be saying if the Japanese had done this?

One more time.... You do realize that there's a difference between when people die of your ineptitude rather than deliberate murder, right? It's why Bush didn't get as much blame as he deserved for Katrina or Iraq...

Peanut was incompetent.... It's why people dropped their rifles and joined the Communists. But the Japanese were pure fucking evil.

 

[mikegriffith1]

REALLY? Humm, can you cite me an example of a country that imposed on another country the kinds of sanctions that FDR imposed on Japan when the other country was trying to avoid war and agreed to the conditions that the sanctioning country said it wanted? I'll be waiting and will periodically remind you that I'm still waiting for a precedent for/example of what FDR to Japan.

Japan wasn't trying to avoid war. They were actively trying to conquer Asia.

Nope, JoeB Mao, we have known for some time, following the release of the relevant Japanese archives and other primary sources, that Japan's leaders had no desire to conquer China, must less all of Asia. That is Chinese Communist and FDR-Truman-era propaganda.

Which is why we had to put a serious beat-down on them [low-class profanity deleted] and the world is better off for it.

I bet the tens of millions of Chinese who died at the hands of Mao's henchmen would disagree with you. I bet the tens of millions of Chinese who preferred Japanese rule to Nationalist and Communist rule during the war would disagree with you--I'd bet good money that they would have loved to have had the Japanese back in control as opposed to suffering under Mao's tyrannical and murderous rule. I bet the tens of millions of people in North Korea from 1946 onward would much rather have the Japanese back than to suffer under North Korea's Communist government, one of the most backward and barbaric regimes in world history.

Uh, then you need to get a refund, because you have made it quite clear in this thread that you no clue what you're talking about when it comes to the Second Sino-Japanese War and Japan's involvement in Manchuria. You are too blinded by your anti-Japanese brainwashing and bigotry to even consider reading scholarly sources that present the facts of the matter.

No history department ANYWHERE would look at your pro-fascist revisionism with anything but ridicule.

Any history department would laugh at your description of the scholarship I have cited as "pro-fascist."

This is more of your ignorant clown material. You don’t know what history departments do or do not accept on this issue because you have not seriously studied this issue. The only sources you’ve read are a handful of online articles. The scholars who acknowledge the clear evidence that the Nationalists started the war, that the Japanese did not instigate the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, that the Japanese did not want war with the Nationalists, that the Japanese had no intention of occupying China, and that the Japanese in fact were willing to withdraw from China in exchange for tacit recognition of their state in Manchuria—the list of scholars who acknowledge these facts would fill more lines that a USMB reply page can hold. Here are a few of them:

-- John Toland, a renowned historian whose book on WWII-era Japan, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, won a Pulitzer Prize (let me guess: you’re going to say that all the Pulitzer Prize committee members were “fascists” or “pro-fascist,” right?).

-- Dick Wilson, an Oxford graduate and a professor of history at the University of California. Wilson was the editor of The China Quarterly at one time. His book on the Second Sino-Japanese War, When Tigers Fight: The Story of the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945, is one of the most balanced and objective works on the subject. I’m guessing you’ve never ever heard of the book.

-- James Crowley, a professor of history at Yale University. His 1966 book Japan’s Quest for Autonomy: National Security and Foreign Policy 1930-1938, which I have quoted in replies to you, is considered a “seminal” work on the Sino-Japanese War because, among other things, it refuted the long-held belief that the Japanese caused the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. Even most Western scholars who are harshly critical of Imperial Japan now acknowledge, based on Crowley’s research, that Japan did not instigate the incident.

-- Peter Harmsen, a graduate in history from National Taiwan University and a foreign correspondent in the Far East for two decades. Harmsen is currently the bureau chief for the French News Agency in Taiwan. His 2018 book Storm Clouds Over the Pacific, which I have quoted in replies to you, is another one of the fairest, most objective studies on Japan’s involvement in Manchuria and China.

-- Joshua Fogel, a professor of history at York University in Toronto, Canada. Dr. Fogel has been honored with visiting professorships at the School of Historical Studies of the Institute for Advanced Study (2001-2003) at Princeton, the British Inter-University China Centre, and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. As you might remember, Dr. Fogel has said that accepting the NMT-Iris Chang story of the 100-man killing contest “requires a leap of faith that no balanced historian can make.”

-- Richard Minear, a graduate in history from Harvard University and a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts. If your PRC handlers will ever let you read the other side of the story, you really should start with Dr. Minear’s book Victors' Justice: The Tokyo War Crimes Trial, published by Princeton University Press in 1971 (let me guess: you’re going to say that Princeton University Press is a “fascist” or “pro-fascist” publishing company, right?!).

-- Mark Peattie, a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts and a research fellow at Stanford University. Peattie co-edited the excellent and balanced book The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945, published by Stanford University Press in 2010.

-- Edward Drea, a military historian who specializes in the Imperial Japanese Army. Drea earned in doctorate in Japanese history from the University of Kansas. He co-edited the excellent and balanced book The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945. In 2009, the University of Kansas Press published his superbly fair study of the Japanese army titled Japan’s Imperial Army: Its Rise and Fall, 1853–1945.

-- Hans van de Ven, a professor of modern Chinese history at Cambridge University. He co-edited the excellent and balanced book The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945.

-- Niall Ferguson, “one of Britain’s most renowned historians” and a professor of history at Harvard University and a senior research fellow at Stanford University. Ferguson’s 2006 book The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West includes a balanced, objective treatment of Japan’s involvement in Manchuria and China, as well as of the Pacific War and the factors that led to it.

-- Dayle Smith, a prominent Australian attorney who spent years studying the IMTFE. Smith focused on the IMTFE’s chief judge, William Webb, who was Australian. As part of his research into the IMTFE, Smith studied at the University of Queensland Library where Sir William Webb’s personal papers were lodged, at the Australian War Museum in Canberra, in Japan at the library of the Japan Times, at the Tokyo Diet Library, at the Supreme Court of Japan’s vault in Tokyo that houses many of the defense documents that the IMTFE would not allow into evidence, and at the Imperial War Museum in London. Smith presented a 15,000-word paper on the Tokyo War Crimes Trial to the Law faculty of the University of New England in Australia and made a similar presentation to the Supreme Court in Brisbane. The paper was later included in the book Queensland Judges on the High Court, published by the Supreme Court Library of Queensland in 2003. Smith’s massive study on the IMTFE, titled Judicial Murder? Macarthur And The Tokyo War Crimes Trial, was published in 2013.

-- Harold Vinacke, professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati. His book 1952 book The United States and the Far East 1945-1951 acknowledges that Japan did not intend to conquer Asia in the same way or to the same degree that Nazi Germany intended to conquer Europe and Russia, and that Japanese colonial rule was not always brutal or totalitarian.

-- Edwin P. Hoyt, a renowned scholar on WW II. A graduate of the University of Oregon, Hoyt lectured at the University of Hawaii on the Pacific War. He spoke fluent Japanese and wrote numerous best-selling books on WW II. During the war, Hoyt served as the director of the Domestic Branch of the Office of War Information. His book Japan's War: The Great Pacific Conflict, 1853 to 1952 (McGraw, 1986) provides a fair and balanced analysis of Japan’s motives and actions in China and in the Pacific.

Allow me to throw in three Asian scholars:

-- Minoru Kitamura, a graduate in history from Kyoto University and a professor of humanities at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. He is also a member of the Japan Association for Nanjing Studies and an associate researcher at the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals. His book, co-authored with Chinese scholar Siyun Lin, The Reluctant Combatant: Japan and the Second Sino-Japanese War, published by the University Press of America in 2014, is, in my view, the best available book on the subject.

-- Siyun Lin, a Chinese scholar who graduated from Nanking University. As mentioned, Lin and Kitamura co-authored the book The Reluctant Combatant: Japan and the Second Sino-Japanese War. Lin wrote his own book on the Nanking Massacre: The Battle in Defense of Nanking and the Massacre in Nanking (2011).

-- Radhabinod Pal, the Indian judge on the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) and a member of the UN’s International Law Commission from 1952-1966. Justice Pal’s famous massive dissent to the IMTFE’s kangaroo-court decisions is one of the most methodical destructions of the IMTFE-Chinese Communist version of Japan’s involvement in Manchuria and the Second Sino-Japanese War ever written. Here is Pal’s dissent: http://www.sdh-fact.com/CL02_1/65_S4.pdf.

I notice you ignored my request that you cite a single example of one country imposing the kinds of sanctions that FDR imposed on Japan when the other country would face economic ruin if the sanctions continued and when the other country made repeated peace offers.

Again- I have a degree in History, what do you have?

I have four degrees (a master's degree from CDU, a bachelor's degree from Excelsior College, and two associate degrees from the Community College of the Air Force), plus a graduate certificate in ancient and classical history from American Military University, and an advanced certificate in Civil War studies from Carroll College.

And I find it very interesting that you, like other Chang defenders, find it necessary to not only reject Dr. Smythe's survey and report but to launch pathetic, dishonest attacks on him.

For those who might not know, Dr. Lewis Smythe was a professor of sociology at Jinling University in Nanking and a member of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone. Not one but an ignorant jerk like JoeB131 would even hint that he was remotely pro-Japanese or that he was trying to minimize what the Japanese army had done. During the massacre, he wrote several letters of protest to the Japanese Embassy regarding the vicious conduct of some Japanese soldiers. He also helped to feed and shelter Chinese residents, and on some occasions he even intervened to prevent Japanese soldiers from abusing Chinese residents.

And so what? Another white guy telling people of color to not be upset about human rights attrocities. Do you really think this guy was going to get accurate numbers when the Japs were still occupying the city?

So you're just going to keep repeating this ignorant, evasive response? Yes, I think he got ballpark accurate numbers (1) because his numbers agree with the numbers given by several other contemporaneous Western sources before anyone knew what they were supposed to say, (2) because he was a trained sociologist who knew how to conduct such surveys, (3) because ALL of his assistants were Chinese, (4) because the Japanese never interfered with the survey (they had more important things to do--like getting utilities restored, establishing order, and feeding the residents until normal food supplies could be resumed), and (5) because the Japanese showed no interest in learning of the survey results.

 

[JoeB131]

Nope, JoeB Mao, we have known for some time, following the release of the relevant Japanese archives and other primary sources, that Japan's leaders had no desire to conquer China, must less all of Asia. That is Chinese Communist and FDR-Truman-era propaganda.

I count at least 8 countries they conquered on this map. Do you realize how silly you sound.

I have four degrees (a master's degree from CDU, a bachelor's degree from Excelsior College, and two associate degrees from the Community College of the Air Force), plus a graduate certificate in ancient and classical history from American Military University, and an advanced certificate in Civil War studies from Carroll College.

A Fascist lover like you wouldn't have lasted a week in a military institution.

Here are a few of them:

Oh, look, another list of WHITE GUYS. Including John "I Heart Hitler" Toland.

Allow me to throw in three Asian scholars:

One of them Japanese, another Indian. Only one of them is Chinese.

[QUOTE="mikegriffith1, post: 23748551, member: 40621"]So you're just going to keep repeating this ignorant, evasive response? Yes, I think he got ballpark accurate numbers (1) because his numbers agree with the numbers given by several other contemporaneous Western sources before anyone knew what they were supposed to say, (2) because he was a trained sociologist who knew how to conduct such surveys, (3) because ALL of his assistants were Chinese, (4) because the Japanese never interfered with the survey (they had more important things to do--like getting utilities restored, establishing order, and feeding the residents until normal food supplies could be resumed), and (5) because the Japanese showed no interest in learning of the survey results.[/QUOTE]


THe Japanese didn't give a shit about the Chinese they had just massacred... They knew they did a bad thing and covered it up.

I'm not sure why you feel this need to defend fascist thugs when even the Japanese themselves make no excuses for what they did.

"So Sollly"

List of war apology statements issued by Japan - Wikipedia

September 29, 1972: Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka said to the people of the People's Republic of China: "The Japanese side is keenly conscious of the responsibility for the serious damage that Japan caused in the past to the Chinese people through war, and deeply reproaches itself. Further, the Japanese side reaffirms its position that it intends to realize the normalization of relations between the two countries from the stand of fully understanding 'the three principles for the restoration of relations' put forward by the Government of the People's Republic of China. The Chinese side expresses its welcome for this" (Joint Communique of the Government of Japan and the Government of the People's Republic of China).[8]

• August 23, 1993: Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa said in a speech at the 127th National Diet Session: "After 48 years from then, our nation has become one of nations that enjoy prosperity and peace. We must not forget that it is founded on the ultimate sacrifices in the last war, and a product of the achievements of the people of the previous generations. We would like to take this opportunity to clearly express our remorse for the past and a new determination to the world. Firstly at this occasion, we would like to express our deep remorse and apology for the fact that invasion and colonial rule by our nation in the past brought to bear great sufferings and sorrow upon many people" .[20]
• September 24, 1993: Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa said, at the 128th National Diet Session:. "I used the expression war of aggression and act of aggression to express honestly my recognition which is the same as the one that the act of our nation in the past brought to bear unbearable sufferings and sorrow upon many people, and to express once again deep remorse and apology".[21]
• August 31, 1994: Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama said in a speech: "Japan's actions in a certain period of the past not only claimed numerous victims here in Japan but also left the peoples of neighboring Asia and elsewhere with scars that are painful even today. I am thus taking this opportunity to state my belief, based on my profound remorse for these acts of aggression, colonial rule, and the like caused such unbearable suffering and sorrow for so many people, that Japan's future path should be one of making every effort to build world peace in line with my no-war commitment. It is imperative for us Japanese to look squarely to our history with the peoples of neighboring Asia and elsewhere. Only with solid basis of mutual understanding and confidence that can be built through overcoming the pain on both sides, can we and the peoples of neighboring countries together clear up the future of Asia-Pacific.... On the issue of wartime 'comfort women,' which seriously stained the honor and dignity of many women, I would like to take this opportunity once again to express my profound and sincere remorse and apologies. With regard to this issue as well, I believe that one way of demonstrating such feelings of apologies and remorse is to work to further promote mutual understanding with the countries and areas concerned as well as to face squarely to the past and ensure that it is rightly conveyed to future generations. This initiative, in this sense, has been drawn up consistent with such belief" (Statement by Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama on the "Peace, Friendship, and Exchange Initiative").[22]

 

[mikegriffith1]

James McCallum, an American living in Nanking, wrote in his diary that some people in the city believed the number of persons killed by the Japanese “would approach the 10,000 mark.” This is from the December 29, 1937, entry in McCallum’s diary:

It is absolutely unbelievable, but thousands have been butchered in cold blood how many it is hard to guess, some believe it would approach the 10,000 mark. (International Military Tribunal for the Far East: Transcript of Proceedings, August 29, 1946, p. 4471)​

This is an important and revealing statement for several reasons. One, McCallum is clearly not trying to minimize the crimes that were being committed by some Japanese soldiers (but don’t be shocked if JoeB131 suggests McCallum was “pro-fascist”). Two, McCallum’s use of the words “some believe” suggests that he himself was not certain about the 10,000 number but that he at least thought it was within the realm of possibility. Three, clearly nobody with whom McCallum had spoken believed that more than 10,000 had been killed, or else surely McCallum would have said something like “and others believe that even more than 10,000 have been killed.”

Recall that Dr. Smythe, realizing that his survey included considerable under-reporting, studied the burial records and concluded that about 10,000 civilians were killed in Nanking. His survey found that about 6,700 people had been killed (and 4,200 abducted). He increased the number killed to about 10,000 after studying the burial records, with the caveat that about 1,000 of those deaths were the result of civilians being caught in crossfire during combat.

Earlier I presented some of the considerable evidence that Nanking’s population was only around 200,000 when the Japanese occupied the city. More of this evidence comes from the 1939 book Documents of the Nanking Safety Zone, prepared by Shuhsi Hsu, an adviser to the Nationalist Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and produced under the auspices of the Council of International Affairs in Chunking (which was then the Nationalist capital). Six of the documents mention the city’s population as of December 17 to December 27, and all six put the population at 200,000 (pp. 17-18, 20, 48-49; see also Shigenobu Tomisawa, Using Primary Sources to Clarify the Nanking Incident, p. 24, available at http://www.sdh-fact.com/CL02_1/57_S4.pdf).

Three additional sources support the 200,000 figure: (1) James Espy, vice-consul at the American Embassy, sent a report to the U.S. State Department shortly after the Japanese arrived and stated therein that Nanking’s population was 200,000 (IMTFE transcript, CE 328, p. 4468); (2) John Rabe likewise said the population was 200,000 soon after the city fell (The Good German of Nanking, p. 52); and (3) even Harold Timperly’s overtly anti-Japanese report on the events in Nanking, titled What War Means, put the city’s population at 200,000 as of December 24, nearly two weeks after the Japanese arrived (pp. 22-23).

Historian David Askew, a professor of history at Monash University and Asia Pacific University, has focused on Nanking’s population before and after the massacre. One of his papers, titled “The Nanjing Incident: An Examination of the Civilian Population” is available online (note: “Nanking” is sometimes written as “Nanjing”). This is from Askew’s introduction in the paper:

The conclusion drawn from the various primary sources is that the civilian population of Nanjing was 200,000 in the weeks leading up to the fall of the city; that it remained 200,000 for the first 4 weeks of the occupation; and that it increased to 250,000 by January 10, 1938. This paper will also argue that the closest estimate of the population that can be made is 224,500 as of December 24, 1937, to January 5, 1938. (https://chinajapan.org/articles/13.2/13.2askew2-20.pdf)​

Of course, Chang’s defenders don’t like Askew’s thorough research on Nanking’s population. Obviously, if Nanking’s population was 200,000 when the Japanese took the city on December 13, and was 224,500 between December 24 and January 5, it is impossible to believe that the Japanese killed 300,000 people in Nanking, even if you include the surrounding areas. Moreover, the fact that people began to return to Nanking two weeks after the Japanese occupied the city is devastating to Chang’s 300,000 myth.

 

[JoeB131]

James McCallum, an American living in Nanking, wrote in his diary that some people in the city believed the number of persons killed by the Japanese “would approach the 10,000 mark.” This is from the December 29, 1937, entry in McCallum’s diary:

Wow, you are sputtering.. Some guy looking out his window...

"Gee, that looks bad, but it's not like it's white people or anything."

Earlier I presented some of the considerable evidence that Nanking’s population was only around 200,000 when the Japanese occupied the city.

Population was 1 Million in 1937, and was swollen with refugees from the countryside trying to get away from the war.

Now, while it amusing to watch this Fascist Cock-Sucker make claims that even the Japanese aren't making today, let's look at what REAL historians say about Nanking.

Death toll of the Nanjing Massacre - Wikipedia

After the end of the war between China and Japan in 1945, these estimates were in turn supplanted by the findings of two war crime trials, the International Military Tribunal of the Far East and the Nanking War Crimes Tribunal. In one estimate the Nanking War Crimes Tribunal put the death toll at more than 300,000, though the Tribunal also recorded other estimates including one of 430,000.[3] The International Military Tribunal of the Far East tallied up 155,000 victims of the massacre, though in their verdict against General Iwane Matsui this figure was modified somewhat to "upwards of 100,000 people".[18][22]

In addition, the total civilian population of Nanking in December 1937 and the size of the Chinese garrison defending the city are used as a basis for calculating the death toll, though the matter is complicated due to greatly varying estimates for both of these numbers.[25][35] For instance, Tokushi Kasahara claims that Nanking's population in 1937 included 400,000 to 500,000 civilians and 150,000 soldiers,[36] whereas David Askew believes it was 200,000 to 250,000 civilians and 73,790 to 81,500 soldiers.[37][38]

In his final analysis, Tokushi Kasahara looks at documents and diaries recorded by soldiers of the Japanese Army and concludes that at least 80,000 Chinese soldiers and POWs, or possibly over 100,000, were massacred by the Japanese, which was most of the estimated total force of 150,000 soldiers. Kasahara notes that Smythe's survey proves that a bare minimum of 12,000 ordinary civilians were massacred within Nanking, though other contemporary sources gives figures between 50,000 and 100,000, plus at least another 26,870 outside Nanking. Kasahara generally concludes that the death toll must have been well over 100,000, and possibly around 200,000.[30] His more specific range of figures is roughly 160,000 to 170,000.[39]

 

[mikegriffith1]

James McCallum, an American living in Nanking, wrote in his diary that some people in the city believed the number of persons killed by the Japanese “would approach the 10,000 mark.” This is from the December 29, 1937, entry in McCallum’s diary:
It is absolutely unbelievable, but thousands have been butchered in cold blood how many it is hard to guess, some believe it would approach the 10,000 mark. (International Military Tribunal for the Far East: Transcript of Proceedings, August 29, 1946, p. 4471)

This is an important and revealing statement for several reasons. One, McCallum is clearly not trying to minimize the crimes that were being committed by some Japanese soldiers (but don’t be shocked if JoeB131 suggests McCallum was “pro-fascist”). Two, McCallum’s use of the words “some believe” suggests that he himself was not certain about the 10,000 number but that he at least thought it was within the realm of possibility. Three, clearly nobody with whom McCallum had spoken believed that more than 10,000 had been killed, or else surely McCallum would have said something like “and others believe that even more than 10,000 have been killed.”

Recall that Dr. Smythe, realizing that his survey included considerable under-reporting, studied the burial records and concluded that about 10,000 civilians were killed in Nanking. His survey found that about 6,700 people had been killed (and 4,200 abducted). He increased the number killed to about 10,000 after studying the burial records, with the caveat that about 1,000 of those deaths were the result of civilians being caught in crossfire during combat.

Earlier I presented some of the considerable evidence that Nanking’s population was only around 200,000 when the Japanese occupied the city. More of this evidence comes from the 1939 book Documents of the Nanking Safety Zone, prepared by Shuhsi Hsu, an adviser to the Nationalist Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and produced under the auspices of the Council of International Affairs in Chunking (which was then the Nationalist capital). Six of the documents mention the city’s population as of December 17 to December 27, and all six put the population at 200,000 (pp. 17-18, 20, 48-49; see also Shigenobu Tomisawa, Using Primary Sources to Clarify the Nanking Incident, p. 24, available at http://www.sdh-fact.com/CL02_1/57_S4.pdf).

Three additional sources support the 200,000 figure: (1) James Espy, vice-consul at the American Embassy, sent a report to the U.S. State Department shortly after the Japanese arrived and stated therein that Nanking’s population was 200,000 (IMTFE transcript, CE 328, p. 4468); (2) John Rabe likewise said the population was 200,000 soon after the city fell (The Good German of Nanking, p. 52); and (3) even Harold Timperly’s overtly anti-Japanese report on the events in Nanking, titled What War Means, put the city’s population at 200,000 as of December 24, nearly two weeks after the Japanese arrived (pp. 22-23).

Historian David Askew, a professor of history at Monash University and Asia Pacific University, has focused on Nanking’s population before and after the massacre. One of his papers, titled “The Nanjing Incident: An Examination of the Civilian Population” is available online (note: “Nanking” is sometimes written as “Nanjing”). This is from Askew’s introduction in the paper:

The conclusion drawn from the various primary sources is that the civilian population of Nanjing was 200,000 in the weeks leading up to the fall of the city; that it remained 200,000 for the first 4 weeks of the occupation; and that it increased to 250,000 by January 10, 1938. This paper will also argue that the closest estimate of the population that can be made is 224,500 as of December 24, 1937, to January 5, 1938. (https://chinajapan.org/articles/13.2/13.2askew2-20.pdf)​

Of course, Chang’s defenders don’t like Askew’s thorough research on Nanking’s population. Obviously, if Nanking’s population was 200,000 when the Japanese took the city on December 13, and was 224,500 between December 24 and January 5, it is impossible to believe that the Japanese killed 300,000 people in Nanking, even if you include the surrounding areas. Moreover, the fact that people began to return to Nanking two weeks after the Japanese occupied the city is devastating to Chang’s 300,000 myth.

David Askew discusses the fact that contemporaneous accounts put the civilian death toll at around 10,000, plus around 30,000 Chinese soldiers:

Both Timperley, an advisor to the Chinese Nationalist Government's central propaganda department and the author of the first detailed account of the atrocities committed by the Japanese in Nanjing, and Hsu, "Sometime Adviser to the [Chinese] Ministry of Foreign Affairs," provide a large number of primary documentary sources (such as the letters from the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone to the Imperial Japanese Embassy) that show that (1) the civilian population of Nanjing was 200,000-250,000, (2) the entire population was located in the Safety Zone during the first weeks of the Japanese occupation, and (3) the population increased over the first month of occupation. Moreover, Timperley shows that (4) contemporary Western observers' estimates of' the death toll in and around Nanjing ranged from 10,000 to 40,000, of which 10,000 to 12,000 were civilians. ("The Nanjing Incident: An Examination of the Civilian Population," https://chinajapan.org/articles/13.2/13.2askew2-20.pdf)​

This is interesting because months after the massacre, the Chinese Communists claimed that the Japanese had killed 42,000 people in Nanking, and this figure included both soldiers and civilians (Hata, "The Nanking Atrocities: Fact and Fable," A Japanese Perspective on the Nanjing Massacre - China Politics Links). This, in turn, agrees with the figure that Rev. Bates gave to Timperly soon after the massacre and later to the IMTFE: He said that about 12,000 civilians and 28,000 soldiers were killed (Ibid.).

For those who might be interested, I have uploaded a PDF version of Dr. Ikuhiko Hata's paper titled The Nanking Atrocity: Fact and Fable. Dr. Hata is one of the most respected Japanese scholars on the Nanking Massacre. Before he retired, he was a research associate at Harvard University, a senior fellow at Columbia University, and a visiting scholar at the University of Michigan and Princeton University. Here is the URL: https://miketgriffith.com/files/hata_nanking_atrocity_fact_and_fable.pdf.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Oh, so our policy to keep hostile powers and ideologies from taking root in the Caribbean was wrong?! Uh, wow, that's just what the Communists say. What a coincidence.

Uh, guy, our policy starting with the Monroe Doctrine was wrong. It's an imperialist policy. Our policies caused "hostile idealogies" to take root. Have you ever wondered why Havana is still communist even though Russia isn't?

Ah, I see you're once again repeating Communist propaganda. Only Communists and Far Lefties claim that the Monroe Doctrine was wrong.

Blah, blah, blah says your brainwashed, illiterate mind. Japan intervened in Manchuria to establish order from warlord chaos and to protect its citizens and subjects there. And, as I've documented for you from several sources, Japan did not start the war in China--the Nationalists started the war by attacking the Japanese just after the Japanese had submitted another peace proposal. Even Chinese generals admitted that their side started the war and that the Japanese did not want war in China.

Again, nobody thinks the Japanese were the good guys in World War II. Not even the Japanese. They like to pretend the whole thing never happened.

You have no idea what you're talking about, as usual. Why do you suppose that hundreds of Japanese scholars have written books and articles to counter the Chinese-FDR-Truman version of events?

Japan shouldn't have been in Manchuria. they shouldn't have been in Korea.

Gulp, more ignorant drivel. The Japanese had an internationally recognized treaty right to be in Korea, and even the Lytton Commission did not argue that Japanese citizens in Manchuria had no right to be there--the commission even argued that Japan had a right to station troops in Manchuria to protect its citizens and subjects from the lawlessness caused by frequent battles between Manchurian warlords and the Chinese and by criminal gangs.

LOL! Ohhhhh! So it was okay for the Soviets to take over part of Mongolia, but not okay for the Japanese to take over part of Manchuria or to want a small buffer zone between Manchuria and China. Got it. Thanks for sharing, Comrade.

Are you like five? When you were caught doing something wrong, did you scream, "But Billy did it, too!"

That makes no sense in relation to anything I said. Can you read?

Maybe you should educate yourself about what Japan did in Manchuria.

War crimes in Manchukuo - Wikipedia

LOL! So once again your source for "real scholars" is . . . uh . . . umm . . . Wikipedia?! Really? Seriously? You haven't read a single, solitary book on Japan's involvement in Manchuria, have you?

What unbelievably stupid polemic. The Japanese would not have gone into any of those countries if FDR had not imposed draconian sanctions that threatened them with economic collapse. Until FDR, desperate to save the Soviet Union at any cost, provoked Japan to war, the Japanese--even the army's general stuff--had no intention of sending their forces into those nations because they wanted to focus on developing Manchuria and on guarding against a potential Soviet invasion. The comment about Burma is especially dumb because the only reason the Japanese moved into Burma was to cut off the flow of Allied/American weapons going to the Nationalists via Burma.

wow, do you also blame short skirts for rape? I mean, if she wasn't wearing that short skirt, the guy never would have raped her.

Huh??? Are you in high school or something? Your analogies are ridiculous.

Here's how you fix the Draconian sanctions. YOu stop doing what you were doing to get sanctioned. The point is, sanctions meant we weren't going to trade with them. No one else was trading with them at that point, either, mostly because they here allied with Hitler and Hitler was invading their countries.

Sherlock, how many times do I have to point out to you that the Japanese offered to meet all of the conditions that FDR initially set to get the sanctions lifted? But, when they did so, FDR shifted the goal posts yet again and made demands that no self-respecting nation would have accepted. Please read the preceding two sentences 10 times and then ask your mom to explain them to you.

If FDR was so keen on helping the USSR< why wasn't Japan partitioned the way Germany was after the War? In fact, all Russia got out of her participation in the Pacific War was half of Sakhalin Island.

Whaaaaaattttt?! Really? Are you perhaps talking about another planet named Earth? Down here on Earth, on our planet, thanks to FDR and Truman's bungling (or treason), once the Pacific War was over, the Soviets got to keep their puppet regime in Mongolia--in fact, they were able to gain diplomatic recognition of the regume; the Soviets got to set up pro-Soviet regimes in North Korea and North Vietnam, and when those regimes fought America, the Soviets supplied them with massive amounts of arms and advisers and even fighter pilots; the Soviets got to hand over thousands of tons of weapons and ammo to the Chinese Communists, which they used to defeat the pro-Western Nationalists; the Soviets got to cart off over half a million Japanese POWs and put many of them to work for years as slave laborers (I'm sure that's fine with you, but those soldiers were supposed to surrender to the Nationalists or the Americans); and the Soviets got to perform one of the biggest acts of mass industrial looting in history by hauling off virtually every factory and industrial asset in Manchuria before Truman belatedly demanded that they leave.

You do realize that at one point the Japanese actually agreed to Chiang Kaishek's demand that they withdraw all of their troops from China in exchange for a peace deal, right? And guess why Chiang still refused to make peace with the Japanese even after they agreed to this condition? Because FDR's boys in China talked/pressured him into continuing the war.

Again, I beat you over the head with a baseball bat, take your wallet, but offer to give you your credit cards back if you [more low-class vulgarity deleted].

You really think this is a good offer? Even if the Japanese (notorious for double dealing, sneak attacks and breaking treaties) were really sincere about withdrawing from "China", they still planned to hold on to Manchuria and Taiwan, which were rightfully Chinese territories.

Sigh. . . . Just sigh. . . . I've already documented that your claims here are erroneous. You just don't care about facts. Even the Lytton Commission said that Manchuria deserved to be independent from China. Manchuria was not "Chinese territory." Manchuria and China fought several huge battles precisely because the Manchurians did not want to be ruled by either the Peking government or the Nationalist government. Even when Manchuria's last warlord cut a deal with the Nationalists, he did not cede full sovereignty, maintained his own army, ignored any Nationalists edicts he didn't like, and eventually handed over Chiang Kaishek to the Communists. Taiwan was "Chinese territory"?! Not on this planet. Japan acquired Taiwan by treaty, and Taiwan flourished under Japanese rule.

The population evidence provides us with another telling argument against the 300,000-killed myth. Dr. Shudo Higashinakano, a professor of history at Asia University in Tokyo, explains this in his book The Nanking Massacre: Fact vs. Fiction (2005):

The Japanese did not allow ordinary citizens free access to those gates [the gates of the walled city of Nanking] until two and a half months had elapsed. Nevertheless, 20 days before and immediately prior to the fall of Nanking, the city’s population was 200,000, according to Europeans and Americans who were there at the time.

Well, a whole lot of problem with this [CRAP] STAIN of an argument. First of all, how did westerners know how many people lived in the area? Did they do a census. We know damned well Peanut and his government weren't capable of doing a census.

But Dr. Smythe did conduct a census, a prolonged one, and used only Chinese assistants. The Japanese never interfered with the census and showed no interest in its results. And, gee, golly, golly, isn't it amazing that Dr. Smythe's population figures from the census almost exactly match those of numerous other primacy sources? Just a whopping coincidence, right?

Second, as stated many times, people flooded into Nanking from the surrounding countryside because they THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE.

LOL!!!! And how, how, how in the heck could they have thought it was safe if the Japanese had just killed hundreds of thousand of people and, according to the Iris Chang version, were still committing numerous acts of violence and destruction?

I mean, holy cow, even for you this is howling stupidity.

Population of Nanjing in December of 1937 - Wikipedia [Material from what JoeB131 considers to be "real scholars," i.e., Wikipedia, deleted]

So your answer to all the primary-source evidence and scholarly research that I presented to you on Nanking's population from mid-December to mid-January is to . . . uh . . . umm . . . errr . . . cite another Wikipedia article? THAT's your answer?

Compare that Wikipedia article to these sources:

New Research on the Nanjing Incident | The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus

https://chinajapan.org/articles/13.2/13.2askew2-20.pdf

http://www.sdh-fact.com/CL02_1/57_S4.pdf

Let's review some of the evidence I've presented to you, for which your only answer is to cite a Wikipedia article:

Earlier I presented some of the considerable evidence that Nanking’s population was only around 200,000 when the Japanese occupied the city. More of this evidence comes from the 1939 book Documents of the Nanking Safety Zone, prepared by Shuhsi Hsu, an adviser to the Nationalist Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and produced under the auspices of the Council of International Affairs in Chunking (which was then the Nationalist capital). Six of the documents mention the city’s population as of December 17 to December 27, and all six put the population at 200,000 (pp. 17-18, 20, 48-49; see also Shigenobu Tomisawa, Using Primary Sources to Clarify the Nanking Incident, p. 24, available at http://www.sdh-fact.com/CL02_1/57_S4.pdf)

Three additional sources support the 200,000 figure: (1) James Espy, vice-consul at the American Embassy, sent a report to the U.S. State Department shortly after the Japanese arrived and stated therein that Nanking’s population was 200,000 (IMTFE transcript, CE 328, p. 4468); (2) John Rabe likewise said the population was 200,000 soon after the city fell (The Good German of Nanking, p. 52); and (3) even Harold Timperly’s overtly anti-Japanese report on the events in Nanking, titled What War Means, put the city’s population at 200,000 as of December 24, nearly two weeks after the Japanese captured the city (pp. 22-23).

Historian David Askew, a professor of history at Monash University and Asia Pacific University, has focused on Nanking’s population before and after the massacre. One of his papers, titled “The Nanjing Incident: An Examination of the Civilian Population” is available online (note: “Nanking” is sometimes written as “Nanjing”). This is from Askew’s introduction in the paper:

The conclusion drawn from the various primary sources is that the civilian population of Nanjing was 200,000 in the weeks leading up to the fall of the city; that it remained 200,000 for the first 4 weeks of the occupation; and that it increased to 250,000 by January 10, 1938. This paper will also argue that the closest estimate of the population that can be made is 224,500 as of December 24, 1937, to January 5, 1938. (https://chinajapan.org/articles/13.2/13.2askew2-20.pdf)​

Of course, Chang’s defenders don’t like Askew’s thorough research on Nanking’s population. Obviously, if Nanking’s population was 200,000 when the Japanese took the city on December 13, and was 224,500 between December 24 and January 5, it is impossible to believe that the Japanese killed 300,000 people in Nanking, even if you include the surrounding areas. Moreover, the fact that people began to return to Nanking two weeks after the Japanese occupied the city is devastating to Chang’s 300,000 myth.

As of December 21, eight days after the Japanese had occupied the city, the Nanking International Relief Committee put the city’s population at 200,000, as Dr. Higashinakano points out:

Document No. 10, dated December 18, states, “We 22 Westerners cannot feed 200,000 Chinese civilians….” The Committee appealed to the Japanese military for help.​

Document No. 20, dated December 21, mentions difficulties the Committee had experienced in supplying food and fuel to 200,000 civilians, and adds, “The present situation is automatically and rapidly leading to a serious famine.” (The Nanking Massacre: Fact vs. Fiction, p. 152) (By the way, the Japanese then began to distribute large amounts of food to city residents.)​

We also read the following in Document No. 10, which is a letter written on December 18 by the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone to the Japanese Embassy in Nanking:

Dear Sirs: We are very sorry to trouble you again the sufferings and needs of the 200,000 civilians for whom we are trying to care make it urgent that we try to secure action from your military authorities to stop the present disorder among Japanese soldiers wandering through the Safety Zone. (International Military Tribunal for the Far East: Transcript of Proceedings, August 29, 1946, p. 4516)​

Lily Abegg, a European newspaper correspondent in China, was in Nanking shortly before the Japanese arrived, and she reported that as of November 29 there were, at most, about 150,000 people in the city:

Now there are at most 150,000 people remaining, but the waves of evacuees seem interminable. (The Nanking Massacre: Fact vs. Fiction, p. 30, citing Lily Abegg, “Wie wir aus Nanking flüchteten: Die letzten Tage in der Haupstadt Chinas” in Frankfurter Zeitung, 19 December 1937)

The chief of the National Police Agency reported that as of November 28 there were “200,000 residents remaining here in Nanking” (The Nanking Massacre: Fact vs. Fiction, p. 151). This was 15 days before the Japanese entered the city.

The obvious and crucial point is this: Since Nanking’s population was 150,000 to 200,000 as of late November, two weeks before the Japanese arrived, and was 200,000 as of December 21, eight days after the city fell, and was 221,000 in March, three months after the city fell, there is no way the Japanese killed 300,000 people in Nanking.

By any measurement, killing 10,000 civilians is a horrific crime that deserves the harshest condemnation and punishment. So why do Chang’s defenders refuse to abandon her discredited 300,000 figure? Here’s one reason: The Nationalists killed at least 400,000 people in the Yellow River Atrocity (aka the Yellow River Flood) in 1938 when they deliberately breached the Yellow River Dam and flooded thousands of square miles in Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu to stop a non-existent Japanese advance. Can you imagine what Chang’s apologists would be saying if the Japanese had done this?

One more time.... You do realize that there's a difference between when people die of your ineptitude rather than deliberate murder, right?

Ho! Ho! Ho! Soooo now it's your story that the Nationalists didn't realize that the flood waters from the Yellow River would kill many of the Chinese people in the flooded areas?! Are you really thaaaat stupid? Do you reaaally expect anyone else to buy that absurdity?

And how about the Nationalist massacre at Changsha? In November 1938, Nationalist soldiers, without warning, began burning the city—the Chinese city—of Changsha, 200 miles southwest of the Nationalist stronghold of Wuhan, as part of Chiang Kaishek’s scorched-earth policy to deny the Japanese any spoils when they took the city. “At least 20,000 were buried in mass graves outside the city,” notes Harmsen (locs. 2196-2210).

And shall we talk about the tens of millions of Chinese who were murdered by the Communists once Mao took over China? Why won't you ever talk about that historically brutal crime?

Peanut was incompetent.... It's why people dropped their rifles and joined the Communists. But the Japanese were pure evil.

No, the Japanese were not pure evil; they were not nearly as bad as the Chinese Communists. In many cases, Japanese rule was moderate and beneficial. And the Nationalists had the Communists staggering and on the verge of collapse when Truman and Marshall intervened to save the Communists from defeat, as I've documented from scholarly and government sources.

 

[JoeB131]

David Askew discusses the fact that contemporaneous accounts put the civilian death toll at around 10,000, plus around 30,000 Chinese soldiers:

You know, this whole "Look, they only raped and murdered 42,000 people, not 300,000, that makes it okay somehow" is a solid argument for you.. You keep going with that buddy.

It doesn't make you a fascist cocksucker at all.

Happy Ending!

 

[JoeB131]

And shall we talk about the tens of millions of Chinese who were murdered by the Communists once Mao took over China? Why won't you ever talk about that historically brutal crime?

Because I don't buy into Cold War horseshit propaganda.

No, the Japanese were not pure evil; they were not nearly as bad as the Chinese Communists. In many cases, Japanese rule was moderate and beneficial. And the Nationalists had the Communists staggering and on the verge of collapse when Truman and Marshall intervened to save the Communists from defeat, as I've documented from scholarly and government sources.

Peanut could fuck up a wet dream... He was going down... Truman wisely decided not to prolong the inevitable and stop giving him American money to steal.

The only problem is we didn't hang more of the Jap bastard war criminals, including Hirohito.

 

[Unkotare]

And shall we talk about the tens of millions of Chinese who were murdered by the Communists once Mao took over China? Why won't you ever talk about that historically brutal crime?

Because I don't buy into Cold War horseshit propaganda. .....

You are the furthest thing imaginable from an actual historian; nothing but a brainless, ignorant partisan. The ass-kicking you have suffered on this thread is one of the worst ever seen on this site.

 

[JoeB131]

You are the furthest thing imaginable from an actual historian; nothing but a brainless, ignorant partisan. The ass-kicking you have suffered on this thread is one of the worst ever seen on this site.

Yawn... reality check- China is communist and Mao is considered the way we consider George Washington.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Notice that JoeB131, like other Iris Chang apologists, has to reject every single primary source on Nanking’s population during the time in question, even though all the primary sources agree with the population number that Dr. Lewis Smythe determined when he did his survey weeks after the massacre.

When confronted with the substantial evidence from contemporary primary sources that the population was about 200,000 when the city fell, JoeB131 can only lamely sputter, “First of all, how did westerners know how many people lived in the area? Did they do a census. We know damned well Peanut and his government weren't capable of doing a census.”

Umm, well, those Westerners had lived in the city for a long time, so they knew what the population was before the residents began to flee, and those Westerners saw the huge masses of people leaving and saw the people who were still in the city. Nanking was not a large city geographically speaking, and it had a large wall. Those Westerners did not just stay holed up in their homes; many of them were out and about in the city trying to help people, among other things.

German diplomat John Rabe and American diplomat James Espy (sometimes spelled Epsy) both came to their population numbers by noting that about 800,000 of the city’s one million people had fled (https://chinajapan.org/articles/13.2/13.2askew2-20.pdf). Thus, they based their estimates not just on how many people they saw remaining in the city but on how many people they saw leave the city. By the way, George Fitch, who was another member of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety, also put the city’s December 1937 population at 200,000 and noted that the city’s pre-war population had been one million (Ibid.)

By the way, the Wikipedia article on Nanking’s population, titled “Population of Nanjing in December of 1937,” does not even mention Espy (Population of Nanjing in December of 1937 - Wikipedia). Also, the article’s table in the Primary Sources segment misrepresents Smythe’s findings by putting them at 200,000-250,000, which shows that the authors of the article failed to read Smythe’s report with sufficient care. However, the article does acknowledge that most of the primary sources that it cites originally put Nanking’s population at between 150,000 to 200,000 as of December 1937:

In December, members of the International Committee, including George Ashmore Fitch and its leader John Rabe, estimated the city's civilian population at approximately 200,000.[12] Rabe, however, revised his estimate upwards on January 14 to "250,000 to 300,000 civilians" in a letter to the Japanese embassy. Rabe stated that earlier figures had been "deliberately cautious guesses".[13] However, when another committee member, Lewis Smythe, compiled a population survey of Nanking the same year, he reaffirmed that Nanking's civilian population at the time the city fell was between 200,000 and 250,000.[14]​

By contrast, most Western journalists who were in Nanking in November and December 1937 put forward much lower population numbers of around 150,000.[15] For instance, New York Times reporter F. Tillman Durdin supported the estimate of 150,000.[16] By the time that the Japanese forces occupying Nanking attempted to formally register the city's entire population in late December, 1937, and early January, 1938, 160,000 people were recorded. However, the Japanese often did not count young children and elderly women in their registration.[17]​

If you look at the table that follows these paragraphs, which lists the primary sources and their estimates for Nanking’s December 1937 population, you see that

-- 8 of the 11 primary sources put the population at between 150,000 and 200,000

-- 2 of the 11 primary sources put the population at between 200,000 and 250,000 (although the table misrepresents/exaggerates their estimates)

-- 1 of the 11 primary sources (Rabe) put the population at between 250,000 and 300,000 (although the article admits that originally Rabe gave a lower number)

And, of course, folks like JoeB131 can’t allow themselves to accept Dr. Smythe’s population survey, even though Smythe took nearly four weeks to do the field work for it and used only Chinese assistants, and even though Smythe’s number matches the numbers originally given by every other primary source on Nanking’s population.

For Iris Chang’s 300,000 myth to be even halfway credible, Nanking’s December 1937 population would have needed to be at least 450,000, since nobody but nobody ever claimed that the population was below 150,000 as of February and March 1938, especially given the fact that Smythe determined that the city’s population actually began to gradually increase just a few weeks after the Japanese took the city and had risen to 221,000 as of March.

This brings us to one of JoeB131’s most amazing howlers: his claim that people began to return to Nanking soon after the Japanese took the city because they thought it was safe! No, I’m not exaggerating. Let me quote him:

Second, as stated many times, people flooded into Nanking from the surrounding countryside because they THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE. [original emphasis]​

This, of course, obviously begs the question: How, how, how in the world could anyone have thought it was safe to return to Nanking just weeks after the Japanese had taken the city if the Japanese had just killed, and/or were still in the process of killing, hundreds of thousands of people, and if there were huge piles of dead bodies outside the city, and if much/most of the city had been burned down?

I will conclude by quoting part of Australian historian David Askew’s superb article “The Nanjing Incident: An Examination of the Civilian Population”:

Although the estimates made in the primary sources are given further credence by Smythe's survey and the Japanese registration of the population, the other contemporary sources also need to be examined. They can be divided into three groups: the accounts of the Western journalists in Nanjing; the various letters and diaries of the members of the International Committee; and embassy reports. Although not all are official documents, they provide a valuable complementary source that can be compared with the story that emerges from official documents.​

Most Western journalists believed that the civilian population of Nanjing was considerably smaller than 200,000, setting it at 150,000. One German journalist, Lily Abegg, wrote that it was 150,000 in late November. After the fall of the city, the New York Times stated that the Safety Zone "shelters 150,000.” Arthur Menken wrote that "[m]ore than 100,000 Chinese sought refuge in the zone." Hallett Abend used exactly the same phrase: ''More than 100,000 Chinese sought refuge in the zone.” In an article dated December 18, F. Tillman Durdin speaks of" upward of 100,000 non-combatants" in the Safety Zone and "residents, numbering upward of 50,000, who sought no sanctuary in the zone.” This suggests that, in early to mid-December, Western journalists believed that the entire civilian population of Nanking was about 150,000, with 100,000 within the Zone and a further 50,000 outside it. As noted above, at least one member of the international community in Nanjing also believed that the civilian population was "perhaps 150,000 or more,” and Wilson thought that the population was between 150,000 and 200,000. . . .​

Thus, for instance, one "foreign resident who has spent almost the whole of his life" in China wrote on Christmas eve, 1937, that "we have only enough rice and flour for the 200,000 refugees for another three weeks." In a letter dated December 14, 1937, Wilson stated that the "entire” population of Nanjing, "some 150 or 200 thousand individuals," had "crowded into the zone.” Finally, George Fitch's autobiography also gives the population of Nanjing as 200,000. (https://chinajapan.org/articles/13.2/13.2askew2-20.pdf)​

 

[JoeB131]

Notice that JoeB131, like other Iris Chang apologists, has to reject every single primary source on Nanking’s population during the time in question, even though all the primary sources agree with the population number that Dr. Lewis Smythe determined when he did his survey weeks after the massacre.

When confronted with the substantial evidence from contemporary primary sources that the population was about 200,000 when the city fell, JoeB131 can only lamely sputter, “First of all, how did westerners know how many people lived in the area? Did they do a census. We know damned well Peanut and his government weren't capable of doing a census.”

Umm, well, those Westerners had lived in the city for a long time, so they knew what the population was before the residents began to flee, and those Westerners saw the huge masses of people leaving and saw the people who were still in the city. Nanking was not a large city geographically speaking, and it had a large wall. Those Westerners did not just stay holed up in their homes; many of them were out and about in the city trying to help people, among other things.

I've lived in my town for 14 years. The only reason why I know how many people live here is because they do a census every ten years.

Nanking had a population of 1 million in 1937. It has a population of 6 million today.

This brings us to one of JoeB131’s most amazing howlers: his claim that people began to return to Nanking soon after the Japanese took the city because they thought it was safe! No, I’m not exaggerating. Let me quote him:

Second, as stated many times, people flooded into Nanking from the surrounding countryside because they THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE.

You lying fascist cocksucker... that statement was made to describe why people were flooding INTO the city before the Japs started murdering people.

 

[mikegriffith1]

First of all, how did westerners know how many people lived in the area? Did they do a census. We know damned well Peanut and his government weren't capable of doing a census.

Well, “first of all,” I can’t help but notice that you still have not responded to my request that you cite me an example of a country that imposed on another country the kinds of draconian sanctions that FDR imposed on Japan when the other country was trying to avoid war and agreed to the conditions that the sanctioning country initially said it wanted but the sanctioning country refused to lift the sanctions and instead made more demands. I’m still waiting for you to produce such an example.

Anyway, getting back to your lame rejection of what the primary sources say about Nanking’s population, we both know—we both know full well—that if the primary sources supported your story, you would be pointing out

-- that the primary sources mutually corroborate each other on the 200,000 number

-- that most of the primary sources did not know about the others’ numbers, i.e., they arrived at their numbers independently

-- that one of the primary sources is a population survey done weeks after the massacre, and that the survey was done by a trained sociologist, Dr. Smythe, who had lived in the area for years and who used only Chinese assistants to conduct the survey

-- that Dr. Smythe was horrified by the atrocities he saw and was anxious to document how many people had been killed and how much damage had been done

-- that one of the main rules of historical research is to find and use as many primary sources as possible, for obvious reasons

But you have to reject the primary sources because they blow your story to pieces. Even the bitterest anti-Japanese early sources did not put the death toll anywhere near the ridiculous IMTFE-Iris Chang figure of 300,000.

In fact, Chang suggested that the death toll might have been “well over 350,000”:

Years later experts at the International Military Tribunal of the Far East (IMTFE) estimated that more than 260,000 noncombatants died at the hands of Japanese soldiers at Nanking in late 1937 and early 1938, though some experts have placed the figure at well over 350,000. (The Rape of Nanking, p. 4)​

First off, the name of the IMTFE was not “the International Military Tribunal of the Far East”; it was the “International Military Tribunal for the Far East.”

And, pray tell, who were the “experts” at the bloodthirsty, corrupt, and rigged IMTFE?! The only person who would have qualified as an expert was Dr. Smythe, but the IMTFE refused to call him as a witness and brushed aside his findings. One could credibly accuse the IMTFE of outright judicial murder, and some scholars have made a compelling case for this accusation; see for example, Richard Minear’s book Victors' Justice: The Tokyo War Crimes Trial (Princeton University Press, 1971) and Dayle Smith’s book Judicial Murder? Macarthur and the Tokyo War Crimes Trial (CS IPS, 2013). As bad as the IMTFE was, the Nanking Military Tribunal (NMT) was arguably worse.

On a side note, in re-reading Chang’s book over the last few days, I came across this howler:

I was told in Nanking that the People’s Republic of China rarely permits its scholars to journey to Japan for fear of jeopardizing their physical safety. (p. 12)​

Are you kidding me? In 1997, the year Chang’s book was published, Japan was, as it is today, a vibrant democracy with freedom of speech and tremendous academic freedom and vigorous debate over just about any issue. In contrast, in 1997, Red China (PRC) was, as it is today, a repressive, brutal regime where people who expressed criticism of the government might well disappear in the night or find themselves in jail on phony charges, where Christians faced persecution and hostility from the government, where foreigners entering the country were forced to hand over any foreign newspapers or magazines they were carrying (this even happened during the Olympics in Beijing in 2008). Here is the U.S. State Department’s 1996 report on human rights in China:

1996 Human Rights Report: China

Pro-communist apologists like JoeB131 would do well to read it and then compare it with Japan’s superb human rights record during the same period. They should pay special attention to the sections in the report that deal with “Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment” and “Arbitrary Arrest, Detention, or Exile” and “Arbitrary Interference with Privacy, Family, Home, or Correspondence” and “Freedom of Speech and Press” and “Freedom of Religion.”

The 1997 PRC was not as bad as it was under mass murderer Mao Tse-Tung, but it was still one of the most repressive and brutal regimes on the planet, and still is, in stark contrast to Japan, which has been a pro-Western democracy since the late 1940s (and was a pro-Western, pro-capitalist, pro-private property monarchy with an independent judiciary and an elected legislative assembly even in the years leading up to the Pacific War).