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

[JoeB131]

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.

Japan had been engaged in a war of aggression against China for a decade before FDR imposed sanctions The US also imposed sanctions on Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy for the same reasons.

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

No, the population was closer to 1 million.

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.

Well, the fact he was probably a pro-fascist cocksucker was the reason they didn't call him. The fact is, the findings of the war crimes trials after the war put the Rape of Nanking at 300K, and the bastards responsible were executed. Except for Hirohito and the other royals.. Which is a damned same.

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).

Actually, Japan is not a happy land of Pokemon and Tentacle Porn you paint it to be. Their justice system is still damned oppressive and its kind of a police state. If accused of a crime, you don't get the rights you would enjoy as an American, and their prisons are kind of brutal.

 

[mikegriffith1]

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.

Oh my goodness, I left out Dr. F. C. Jones (Francis C. Jones) from my list! Dr. Jones earned his Ph.D. in history at Harvard and taught history at the University of Bristol in England. He specialized in Asian history and wrote several books on Imperial Japan and China. His two books on Japan’s involvement in China, Japan’s New Order in East Asia 1937-1945 (1954) and Manchuria Since 1931 (1949), both published by Oxford University Press, received wide praise from scholars all over the world—but not from scholars in Red China, of course.

Dr. Jones’ book Japan’s New Order in East Asia lays out in painstaking detail the numerous Chinese provocations and Chinese rejections of Japanese peace offers that led to the Second Sino-Japanese War. Dr. Ralph Braibanti, in his review of Jones’ book in the University of Chicago’s Journal of Politics, said that it was “one of the most significant works on Japan to appear in recent years” and that it “merits careful attention also because of the new documentary sources” that it included (Journal of Politics, February 1955, p. 136).

Dr. Jones’ book Manchuria Since 1931 is a devastating refutation of the Chinese Nationalist-Communist-inspired myths about Japan’s involvement in Manchuria. Dr. Jones pointed out that the Japanese gave the Manchurians more autonomy than they would have been given by the Communists (p. 68). Dr. Jones examined every aspect of Japan’s involvement in Manchuria—legal, military, cultural, and economic. Now, mind you, Jones did not say that the Japanese state in Manchuria was a progressive, tolerant, pluralistic democracy, but he did argue that it was not nearly as repressive or authoritarian as the Chinese claimed it was, and that Japanese economic investment and industrial development greatly improved economic conditions in the state.

Dr. W. S. Toller said the following in the journal International Affairs in his review of Manchuria Since 1931:

More space than is available would be needed to do justice to this valuable work. . . . Dr. Jones describes the evolution of Manchukuo [the Japanese state in Manchuria] during the fifteen years of its existence. . . .​

Dr. Jones’s masterly record is a mine of information. . . . He shows himself entirely judicial and dispassionate; he doubts the truth of the allegation that “the Japanese higher authorities deliberately spread the use of drugs to render the Chinese population more docile” (p. 134), and he gives them credit for the benefits that they conferred on the country by vocational training, by currency reform, and by the development of hydro-electric and thermal power plants. (International Affairs, October 1949, p. 549)​

 

[JoeB131]

Oh my goodness, I left out Dr. F. C. Jones (Francis C. Jones)

More white guys telling people of color they shouldn't be upset about genocide. Wow.

Dr. Jones’ book Japan’s New Order in East Asia lays out in painstaking detail the numerous Chinese provocations and Chinese rejections of Japanese peace offers that led to the Second Sino-Japanese War.

One more time... There is a sea that separates Japan from China. They even call it the "Sea of Japan". When the Japanese crossed that sea and invaded China, they were in the wrong. THis isn't complicated.

Imperialism is wrong, whether it is Japan in China, the US in the Philippines, or Europe in Africa.

Dr. Jones’ book Manchuria Since 1931 is a devastating refutation of the Chinese Nationalist-Communist-inspired myths about Japan’s involvement in Manchuria. Dr. Jones pointed out that the Japanese gave the Manchurians more autonomy than they would have been given by the Communists (p. 68). Dr. Jones examined every aspect of Japan’s involvement in Manchuria—legal, military, cultural, and economic. Now, mind you, Jones did not say that the Japanese state in Manchuria was a progressive, tolerant, pluralistic democracy, but he did argue that it was not nearly as repressive or authoritarian as the Chinese claimed it was, and that Japanese economic investment and industrial development greatly improved economic conditions in the state.

So did he talk about this stuff that the Japs did in Manchuria?

War crimes in Manchukuo - Wikipedia

Human experimentation[edit]
Main article: Unit 731
Special Japanese military units conducted experiments on civilians and POWs in Manchukuo. One of the most infamous was Unit 731. Victims were subjected to vivisection without anesthesia, and were used to test biological weapons, among other experiments.[2]

Between 3,000 and 12,000 men, women, and children died during human experimentation conducted by Unit 731.[3][4]

Chemical and biological weapons[edit]
According to historians Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Seiya Matsuno, Emperor Hirohito authorized the use of chemical weapons in China.[5] Furthermore, "tens of thousands, and perhaps as many 200,000, Chinese died of bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax and other diseases", resulting from the use of biological warfare. Although owing to systematic Japanese destruction of records, there is no record of chemical or biological weapons in Manchukuo itself, these weapons of mass destruction were partly researched, produced, and stockpiled in Manchukuo by the Kwantung Army.

Forced labor[edit]
The Japanese military's use of forced labor also caused many deaths. According to a joint study of historians Zhifen Ju, Mitsuyochi Himeta, Toru Kubo and Mark Peattie, more than 10 million Chinese civilians were mobilized for forced labor in Manchukuo under the supervision of the Kōa-in.[6]

Forced laborers were often assigned work in dangerous conditions without adequate safety precautions. The world's deadliest mine disaster, at Benxihu Colliery, occurred in Manchukuo.

Human rights violations[edit]

• Arrest of civilians without due cause by the local Manchukuo police or Japanese authorities.
• Torture of prisoners in regular penal or military jails.
• Disappearances and Extrajudicial execution of political opponents
• Preferential civil rights for Japanese subjects over other nationalities.
• Forced land appropriations either with or without legal orders in favour of Japanese citizens or private and government companies.
• Use of criminal gangs for robbery and intimidation of political opposition

Drug trafficking[edit]
In 2007, an article by Reiji Yoshida in the Japan Times argued that the Japanese investments in Manchukuo were partly financed by selling drugs. According to the article, a document claimed to have been found by Yoshida directly implicated the Kōa-in in providing funds to drug dealers in China for the benefit of the puppet governments of Manchukuo, Nanjing and Mongolia.[7] This document corroborates evidence analyzed earlier by the Tokyo tribunal which stated that

“ Japan's real purpose in engaging drug traffic was far more sinister than even the debauchery of Chinese people. Japan, having signed and ratified the opium conventions, was bound not to engage in drug traffic, but she found in the alleged but false independence of Manchukuo a convenient opportunity to carry on a worldwide drug traffic and cast the guilt upon that puppet state ... In 1937, it was pointed out in the League of Nations that 90% of all illicit white drugs in the world were of Japanese origin ...[8]

 

[mikegriffith1]

I’ve mentioned Dick Wilson’s excellent book When Tigers Fight: The Story of the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 1982). Wilson was willing to discuss Chinese provocations that led to war:

That sunset [July 25] a Japanese battalion returning from Fengtai to Beijing, under routine arrangements agreed earlier with the Chinese authorities, was it attacked as it passed through the Guang’an gate. Some Chinese felt that this arrival of 300 Japanese troops at the gates of Beijing was an attack, although the “invaders” had previously come and gone as they please, and were technically within their rights by international law.​

The Chinese guard . . . opened the main gate to the Japanese but then immediately closed it behind them, trapping them in the narrow area between the outer and inner gates. The Chinese then fired trench mortars at them and lobbed hand grenades from the walls. (p. 19)​

You rarely read about this and similar incidents in books that portray the Chinese as the poor, weak, innocent victims of Japanese aggression.

Wilson also discusses the conduct of the Japanese army after it took control of Beijing on August 7 and notes that on the whole it was good, with only minor offenses such as petty theft and occasional arrogance occurring:

How did the conquerors behave? A neutral Red Cross worker operating in the area around Beijing immediately after its capture found that the Japanese troops made a good impression. The worst offences were petty theft and occasional meanness.​

Most of them “were very young, obviously fresh from training school, and it was to resent as individuals these hordes of grinning children helping themselves to the benefits of the countryside and only incidentally making life miserable for the Chinese they encountered.”​

This observer drove past the Summer Palace in Beijing, which the Japanese had taken for their headquarters: “We found every brook and pond full of naked little Japs scrubbing themselves and rinsing their underwear. They were delighted to still be alive and many would laugh and wave at the Red Cross trucks as we passed”. . . .​

In the city itself, “the most serious trespasses were in shopping at Chinese stores and paying for their purchases only what fraction of the price they chose to give. Otherwise, as far as could be seen, their amusements were harmless.” (pp. 27-28)​

One wonders if Iris Chang read Wilson’s famous book, since she portrays most Japanese soldiers as rapists and murderers.

Regarding the Japanese government’s intentions in China, Wilson points out what so many other scholars have documented, i.e., that the government, including the Army’s leadership, did not want war in China:

In fact, neither the cabinet nor the War Office really wanted the incident [the Marco Polo Bridge Incident] to escalate into war, and General Sugiyama, the War Minister, was not initially allowed to send reinforcements from Japan. (p. 15)​

 

[JoeB131]

I’ve mentioned Dick Wilson’s excellent book When Tigers Fight: The Story of the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 1982). Wilson was willing to discuss Chinese provocations that led to war:

The Chinese should have just gotten on their knees and promised a "Happy Ending" to the Japs.

One wonders if Iris Chang read Wilson’s famous book, since she portrays most Japanese soldiers as rapists and murderers.

30 Million Chinese died, a third of them civilians... The Japanese were rapists and murderers..

The Greatest sin of the Japanese... they act as bad as white people.

So of course, all the "historians" you drag out are white people from Imperialist countries trying to rationalize imperialism.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Getting back to the comfort women for a moment, as I've said previously, there has been a great deal of exaggeration and fabrication on this issue. Dr. Ikuhiko Hata, one of Japan's leading and most respected historians on Imperial Japan, made some important points about the comfort women in an April 2017 interview:

In 1944, while the war was still raging, twenty Korean comfort women taken prisoner in northern Burma (present-day Myanmar) by the US military were interrogated by American officers. The interrogation records as well as the pictures taken during the interrogation are all public documents. According to the US military’s questioning of these comfort women, they went out shopping with Japanese soldiers, held sporting matches and other athletic events, and had no financial problems whatsoever.

Apart from individual cases where crimes were committed in direct violation of orders from the Japanese military, there was no forced abduction of comfort women. Not only this, but the women who worked in the comfort stations did not live under the cruel conditions connoted by the term “sex slave.”

Let me provide some circumstantial evidence here to explain what I mean. First, advertisements appeared in newspapers in Seoul during the war announcing the “large-scale recruitment of comfort women.” The employers seeking such women were Koreans, not Japanese. The advertisements even listed the monthly salary that would be paid, as well as the “advance money” that women or their families received at the time of recruitment. At a time when the average Japanese soldier made around ten yen per month, the comfort women earned thirty times that: 300 yen in monthly salary.

This all begs the question: if women answered these advertisements and volunteered to work as comfort women, then would there be any need to kidnap them?

Additionally, the order was given by the Japanese military that the comfort women were completely free to quit working in the comfort stations and return to their home countries. There were even some Japanese soldiers who proposed marriage to the comfort women.

There were occasionally unscrupulous brokers, and there were destitute parents who sold their daughters into prostitution. In the Japanese home islands as well as in Korea, the majority of comfort women were professional prostitutes. This is proof that they were not sex slaves.

The South Korean side claims that there were 200,000 comfort women. In fact, though, this number is the result of conflating comfort women with the women’s volunteer corps, comprising females who were mobilized to work in factories in order to alleviate the wartime labor shortage due to the conscription of the men.

This conflation has been spread around as though it were true, when the reality is that the comfort women and the women’s volunteer corps are two entirely separate things. In point of fact, it is believed that there were some 20,000 comfort women, of whom around 20% were Korean.

The first people to take up the comfort women issue, set it aflame, and then fan the flames into a conflagration were Japanese. This happened in 1991. Some shrewd Japanese lawyers formed the nucleus of a Japanese NGO which took the lead in mounting an attack over the comfort women issue. These left-wing Japanese lawyers are the ones who began calling the comfort women “sex slaves,” took their case to the United Nations committees on human rights, and turned the issue into the firestorm we have today.

The Asahi Shimbun [a liberal Japanese newspaper--by the way, there are no such newspapers in Red China] then jumped on the comfort women bandwagon, brazenly debuting Seiji Yoshida (now deceased), who repeatedly lied in saying that he had gone “hunting” for comfort women. The Asahi Shimbun and other outlets thus helped spread the “fake news” that the Japanese lawyers created. This fake news rode a rising tide of global leftism and was thus drummed up into a truly worldwide issue. Forces acting out of anti-establishment motives, along with criminals who enjoy seeing the reactions provoked by their crimes, were the agents who disseminated the comfort women issue abroad.

For many years, the Japanese government was another source of misunderstanding, as it consistently gave the impression that it might at any time admit to having kidnapped women as sex slaves. The Japanese government’s ambiguous pronouncements on the issue only emboldened those who were lying for personal or political gain.

The United States has recently become a key battleground in the history wars. There are comfort women statues going up there, and the major textbook publisher McGraw-Hill has embroiled itself in the comfort women controversy. The McGraw-Hill textbook in question uses extremely harsh language when discussing WWII, such as this passage: “The Japanese army forcibly recruited, conscripted, and dragooned as many as two hundred thousand women age fourteen to twenty to serve in military brothels, called “comfort houses” or “consolation centers.” The army presented the women to the troops as a gift from the emperor…”

Nineteen intellectuals, including myself, publicly called for McGraw-Hill to correct the eight areas of clear factual error in the comfort women section of the textbook, but McGraw-Hill has so far done nothing to amend the false information. (See The Group of 19 Japanese Historians). (200,000 South Korean Wartime Sex Slaves is 'Fake News,' says Historian; An Interview with Dr. Ikuhiko Hata | JAPAN Forward)​

 

[JoeB131]

Getting back to the comfort women for a moment, as I've said previously, there has been a great deal of exaggeration and fabrication on this issue. Dr. Ikuhiko Hata, one of Japan's leading and most respected historians on Imperial Japan, made some important points about the comfort women in an April 2017 interview:

Yes, these women totally wanted to be taken from their home, shipped halfway around Asia, and forced to have sex with dozens of men an evening because who wouldn't.

Now a word from real historians who aren't fascist cocksuckers.

https://www.history.com/news/comfort-women-japan-military-brothels-korea

Lee Ok-seon was running an errand for her parents when it happened: a group of uniformed men burst out of a car, attacked her and dragged her into the vehicle. As they drove away, she had no idea that she would never see her parents again.

She was 14 years old.

That fateful afternoon, Lee’s life in Busan, a town in what is now South Korea, ended for good. The teenager was taken to a so-called “comfort station”—a brothel that serviced Japanese soldiers—in Japanese-occupied China. There, she became one of the tens of thousands of “comfort women” subjected to forced prostitution by the imperial Japanese army between 1932 and 1945.

Though military brothels existed in the Japanese military since 1932, they expanded widely after one of the most infamous incidents in imperial Japan’s attempt to take over the Republic of China and a broad swath of Asia: theRape of Nanking. On December 13, 1937, Japanese troops began a six-week-long massacre that essentially destroyed the Chinese city of Nanking. Along the way, Japanese troops raped between 20,000 and 80,000 Chinese women.

The mass rapes horrified the world, and Emperor Hirohito was concerned with its impact on Japan’s image. As legal historian Carmen M. Agibaynotes, he ordered the military to expand its so-called “comfort stations,” or military brothels, in an effort to prevent further atrocities, reduce sexually transmitted diseases and ensure a steady and isolated group of prostitutes to satisfy Japanese soldiers’ sexual appetites.

Hey, Mikey, want to tell us again what a swell Guy Hirohito was?

“Recruiting” women for the brothels amounted to kidnapping or coercing them. Women were rounded up on the streets of Japanese-occupied territories, convinced to travel to what they thought were nursing units or jobs, or purchased from their parents asindentured servants. These women came from all over southeast Asia, but the majority were Korean or Chinese.

Once they were at the brothels, the women were forced to have sex with their captors under brutal, inhumane conditions. Though each woman’s experience was different, their testimonies share many similarities: repeated rapes thatincreased before battles, agonizing physical pain, pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases and bleak conditions.

“It was not a place for humans,” LeetoldDeutsche Welle in 2013. Like other women, she was threatened and beaten by her captors. “There was no rest,”recalled Maria Rosa Henson, a Filipina woman who was forced into prostitution in 1943. “They had sex with me every minute.”


Hey, Mikey, how about trying to be a decent human being for your New Year's Resolution, you cocksucker.

 

[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:

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."

This is yet another comment that shows you don't know what you're talking about. James McCallum was not "some guy looking out his window." McCallum volunteered to transport wounded people in unmarked make-shift ambulances. Survivors recounted that McCallum used cold towels to keep himself awake while he transported patients, and that when that didn't work he would bite his tongue until it bled.

But you have to fabricate a smear against McCallum because his account puts the civilian death toll at no more than 10,000. And, again, McCallum's account is especially important because he got that number from others, because he believed that number was credible. and because clearly nobody with whom he had spoken believed that more than 10,000 had been killed, or else McCallum surely would have said so.

By the way, in order to make her 300,000-plus death toll tenable, Iris Chang had to claim that Nanking's population was "at least" 500,000, and possibly 630,000, when the Japanese took the city! Anyone who wants to peddle the 300,000 myth must do this (1) because Dr. Smythe determined that the population was 221,000 in March and (2) because the Japanese census registered 160,000 people as of early January. So, in order for the Japanese to have been able to kill 300,000-plus people in Nanking and the surrounding area starting on December 13, there would have had to be at least 500,000 people there.

Even John Rabe's revised population figure of "250,000 to 300,000" destroys Chang's tale. If there were 300,000 people left in Nanking when the Japanese captured the city, the Japanese early-January census would have registered no more than a few thousand people, and Smythe would have found no more than 21,000 people in the city as of March.

This is why Chang and her defenders have no choice but to reject ALL the primary sources on Nanking's population during the time in question.

 

[JoeB131]

By the way, in order to make her 300,000-plus death toll tenable, Iris Chang had to claim that Nanking's population was "at least" 500,000, and possibly 630,000, when the Japanese took the city! Anyone who wants to peddle the 300,000 myth must do this (1) because Dr. Smythe determined that the population was 221,000 in March and (2) because the Japanese census registered 160,000 people as of early January.

Hmmm... let's look at THIS batshittery.

In 1937, the population of Nanking was 1.6 million

After the massacre, the Japanese Census put the population at 160K.

but ,no massacre to see here.

This is why Chang and her defenders have no choice but to reject ALL the primary sources on Nanking's population during the time in question.

Because they are unreliable and defy logic.

The Death Toll: Early Estimates

According to reports from the United Press and Reuters, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek announced as early as December 16, 1937, three days after the city fell, in Hankow, “Chinese army casualties on all fronts exceed 300,000. The loss of civilian life and property is beyond computation.” [181]

This was probably the first time a figure of hundreds of thousands was officially mentioned in the Second Sino-Japanese War, although Chiang’s estimate included all the battlefronts in China since the beginning of hostilities on July 7, 1937.

On January 11, 1938, a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, Harold Timperley, apparently tried to cable a similar estimate but was censored out by the Japanese authority in Shanghai because in his report it was “not less than 300,000 Chinese civilians” who were slaughtered in cold blood in “Nanking and elsewhere.” His message was relayed from Shanghai to Tokyo to be sent out to the Japanese Embassies in Europe and the United States. [182]

In 1947 at the Nanking War Crimes Tribunal, the verdict of Lieutenant General Tani Hisao, the commander of the 6th Division, quoted the figure of more than 300,000 victims. [185] Apparently the estimation was made from burial records and eyewitness accounts. It concluded that some 190,000 were illegally executed on a massive scale at various execution sites and 150,000 were individually massacred.

The International Military Tribunal for the Far East estimated in its judgment that “over 200,000” civilians and prisoners of war were murdered during the first six weeks of the Japanese occupation. [186] That number was based on burial records submitted by two charitable organizations, the Red Swastika Society and the Chung Shan Tang (Tsung Shan Tong), the research done by Smythe and some estimates given by survivors.

 

[mikegriffith1]

There is another piece of evidence that refutes the 500,000-600,000 figure for Nanking’s population in mid-December 1937: there was a population census done in Nanking and the surrounding area in August 1938, at least six months after the massacre, and that census counted the population at 308,000. I quote from Dr. Hata’s book The Nanking Incident: The Structure of a Massacre:

Next, concerning the civilian population of Nanking, a survey carried out by the municipal government of Nanking at the end of the year 1936 recorded a total population of 1,006,968 in 197,496 dwellings. This survey included the eight districts within the city walls as well as three districts outside the city walls, Yanziji, Shangxinhe, and Xiaolingwei. However, a survey of the same area in August 1938 put the population at 308,546, a dramatic drop to only a third of its previous size. (p. 207)​

This destroys the 500,000-600,000 figure and strongly supports the 200,000 figure for mid-December and the 221,000 figure for March. In his survey, Dr. Smythe determined that as of March, Nanking’s population was 221,000. If we assume that the population was 200,000 when the city fell and 221,000 in March, that would mean that about 10,000 people per month returned in January and February. If we assume that about 20,000 people per month returned to the city from April to August, since by April the city had pretty much returned to normal, this would give us around 300,000 people by August, consistent with the August census figure of 308,000.

Obviously, this means that 300,000 people could not have been killed in Nanking after the city fell, even if one wants to make the questionable assumption that the massacre continued for as long as six to eight weeks, as Iris Chang does—unless one is willing to assume, against all the evidence, that the city’s population was at least 500,000 on December 13.

When John Rabe was clearly inflating his earlier population number of 200,000, he put the population at 250,000 to 300,000 as of January 14, one month after the Japanese conquered the city. But even 300,000 as of January 14 destroys Chang’s 300,000-plus death toll myth, for obvious reasons.

We can easily imagine what Chang’s apologists would be saying about the primary sources on Nanking’s population if those sources put the population at 500,000 to 600,000 when they city fell, especially if Dr. Smythe’s survey and the Japanese census supported those numbers. They would point out that the sources mutually corroborate each other, that many of the sources had lived in Nanking for some time, that most of the sources did not know of the others’ numbers, that Dr. Smythe was a trained sociologist who had lived in Nanking for years, that all of Dr. Smythe’s assistants were Chinese, and that the Japanese census was consistent with the 500K-600K number because the Japanese often did not count young children and older women.

But, since the primary sources not only destroy Chang’s population numbers but also refute her death toll numbers, her apologists have no choice but to lamely dismiss all the primary sources as mistaken (and even as dishonest in some cases).

 

[JoeB131]

There is another piece of evidence that refutes the 500,000-600,000 figure for Nanking’s population in mid-December 1937: there was a population census done in Nanking and the surrounding area in August 1938, at least six months after the massacre, and that census counted the population at 308,000. I quote from Dr. Hata’s book The Nanking Incident: The Structure of a Massacre:

Wow- So basic math.

You start with 600 K people. You kill 300K people. You have 300K people left. Did they teach you basic math at the Eva Braun Memorial Home School you went to?

But, since the primary sources not only destroy Chang’s population numbers but also refute her death toll numbers, her apologists have no choice but to lamely dismiss all the primary sources as mistaken (and even as dishonest in some cases).

You keep sucking that Fascist Cock, buddy. Like I said, Stormfront needs a denier of your caliber.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Another fatal flaw in the 300,000-dead story is the burial records, which, even after obvious double-counting and the inclusion of combat deaths, not to mention subsequent outright fabrication, do not support anything close to Iris Chang’s incredible claim of 300,000-plus civilian deaths.

When Smythe and Bates studied the burial records shortly after the massacre, they concluded there had been about 12,000 civilian deaths, with Smythe adding the caveat that about 1,000 of those were people who were killed by crossfire during combat.

In early April, the two organizations that handled the burials—the Red Swastika Society and the Tsun-shan-tang—reported that they buried a combined total of 150,000/155,000 bodies, from both in and outside the city, as of March. Then, months later, the Tsun-shan-tang claimed that during three weeks in April, they buried an additional 105,000 bodies. Nobody denies that the burials from December through April included thousands of soldiers who died in combat, thousands of soldiers who were executed because they had shed their uniforms (under the standard laws of war, the Japanese had the right to execute them), and some non-massacre-related deaths (illness, old age, etc.).

Even taking these numbers at face value, they get you nowhere near 300,00 civilian deaths. 155,000 burials plus the alleged additional 105,000 burials equals 260,000 burials. Assuming that only half of those burials were soldiers killed in combat or executed for being in civilian clothes, that gets you to 130,000 civilian deaths, less than half the number posited by Iris Chang and her defenders.

Furthermore, as we’ve seen, even positing 130,000 civilian deaths is problematic given the population evidence and the death-toll estimates in the primary sources.

Moreover, there is also the fact that the burial evidence is riddled with problems. For example, let’s take a look at the Tsun-shan-tang’s claim that they buried an additional 105,000 bodies in three weeks in April. 105,000 burials in three weeks? This would have required an amazing rate of 5,000 burials per day. One reason this number is extremely doubtful is that during the period from mid-December through March, the Tsun-shan-tang, according to their own report, buried an average of 75 bodies per day. Yet we’re supposed to believe that in a three-week period in April, they buried 666 times more bodies per day than they had buried in the preceding three months, a staggering increase of 6,600 percent.

Significantly, the IMTFE, after studying the Tsun-shan-lang records, concluded that the group buried a total of 112,266 bodies from December 26 to April 20 (IMTFE transcript, August 29, 1946, p. 4537). So even the IMTFE did not buy the organization’s claim that they buried 215,000 bodies from December through April.

Even the figure of 150,000 to 155,000 burials from mid-December to March is problematic. Many scholars have pointed out several problems with the 155,000 figure. Dr. Hata points out that even Yoshiaki Itakura, the highly respected Japanese scholar who exposed Masaaki Tanaka’s tampering with General Matsui’s diary, rejected the 155,000 number as unrealistic and adjusted it down to 39,859:

The number of corpses buried by both of the two private charity groups is often said to have been a total of 155,000. This statistic counts civilians who died during the battle or died of disease, and probably also soldiers who died in combat. Furthermore, doubts have been expressed about the accuracy of the records. Itakura's calculations adjust this statistic to 39,859 corpses, a figure which comes close to the roughly 40,000 corpses estimated by Bates and Smythe of the International Committee. (The Nanking Incident: The Structure of a Massacre, pp. 211-212)​

When you read the IMTFE transcripts, you discover that most of the incidents described in the statements occurred during the first two or three weeks after the Japanese occupied Nanking, and that most of them—not all, but the vast majority—describe a small number of victims—two here, three there, ten here, four there, eight here, six there, etc., etc. If you doubt this, just go read the IMTFE prosecution exhibits.

Another fact you will clearly see in the IMTFE transcripts is that the violent acts were not done as part of any systematic or official command policy of General Matsui, much less of the Japanese government, but were done by some local units and by roaming bands of enlisted personnel. The December 16 protest that the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone sent to the Japanese Embassy in Nanking noted that “most of the trouble has come from wandering groups of three to four soldiers without an officer” (IMTFE transcript, p. 4510, prosecution document 1744, exhibit number 323).

Two weeks later, on December 29, the International Committee reported that the number of cases of violence and crime were declining and that the situation had “much improved”:

We are glad to report that cases are declining and conditions are much improved. (IMTFE transcript, p. 4533)​

On January 2, four days after the December 29 report, the International Committee told the Japanese Embassy that, although there were still some cases of criminal acts, the situation had “improved a great deal”:

We appreciated very much your statement to us on the 29th that wandering Japanese soldiers had been ordered to stay out of the Safety Zone. (IMTFE transcript, p. 4534)​

 

[mikegriffith1]

In my previous reply, I accidentally omitted a key sentence from the final quote and put one word too many in quotes in my introductory paragraph for the quote. The paragraph and the quote should read as follows:

On January 2, four days after the December 29 report, the International Committee told the Japanese Embassy that, although there were still some cases of criminal acts, the situation had improved "a great deal":

We appreciated very much your statement to us on the 29th that wandering Japanese soldiers had been ordered to stay out of the Safety Zone. This has improved the situation a great deal. (IMTFE transcript, p. 4534)​

 

[JoeB131]

In my previous reply, I accidentally omitted a key sentence from the final quote and put one word too many in quotes in my introductory paragraph for the quote. The paragraph and the quote should read as follows:

On January 2, four days after the December 29 report, the International Committee told the Japanese Embassy that, although there were still some cases of criminal acts, the situation had improved "a great deal":

Well, it wasn't like it was white people being killed.

Funny thing about Genocide... no one really cares that much if the victims aren't white. It's why you have a million movies about the Holocaust and few about the Killing Fields or Nanking.

 

[mikegriffith1]

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

LOL! What?! Just what?! Okay, JoeB Mao, you find me a single source, any source, heck even a Communist source, that says that people were flooding INTO the city shortly before the Japanese arrived, much less after the city fell (which, by the way, is what you initially said). You are a total, abject, bizarre clown. Every source we have, at least on this planet, says that huge numbers of people began to flee from Nanking as soon as word reached the city that the Japanese had broken through the Nationalist lines in Guangde and Danyang and were headed toward Nanking. This news triggered a massive exodus from the city, a fact profusely and dramatically documented and described in numerous primary sources.

You made your claim that "people flooded into Nanking from the surrounding countryside because they THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE" (your emphasis) in response to my point that the fact that people began to return to the city soon after it fell indicates that there was no large-scale massacre, since no one in their right mind would go back to a city (1) where a gigantic massacre had just occurred and/or was still occurring and (2) where the enemy that had committed the massacre was now in total control. Nobody was talking about movement to or from the city before it fell.

But, if you want to try to shift the goal posts to avoid admitting an egregious error, you're out of luck, since a massive exodus from the city began as soon as word reached Nanking that the Japanese were en route to the city. Heck, Chiang and his entourage even fled the city when they heard this news. Obviously, any movement to the city before anyone knew the Japanese were en route is irrelevant, and, again, you made your claim in specific response to my point about people returning to the city soon after it fell.

Also, allow me to note 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.

Allow me to also note that you still have not cited a single non-Communist source to back up your fiction that the Chinese Communists fought the Japanase as much as the Nationalists did.

 

[JoeB131]

LOL! What?! Just what?! Okay, JoeB Mao, you find me a single source, any source, heck even a Communist source, that says that people were flooding INTO the city shortly before the Japanese arrived,

I've provided several, you fascist cocksucker.

You made your claim that "people flooded into Nanking from the surrounding countryside because they THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE" (your emphasis) in response to my point that the fact that people began to return to the city soon after it fell indicates that there was no large-scale massacre, since no one in their right mind would go back to a city (1) where a gigantic massacre had just occurred and/or was still occurring and (2) where the enemy that had committed the massacre was now in total control. Nobody was talking about movement to or from the city before it fell.

Uh, guy, the whole country was a slaughterhouse thanks to the Japanese. No place was particularly safe.

30 million Chinese died at the hands of the Japanese.

Also, allow me to note 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.

The Japanese were not trying to avoid war. Avoiding war would be, "Whoops, our bad, we'll stop invading China and withdraw back to Japan."

Obviously, the bastards didn't get a subtle message, so we had to give them this one!

That blowed up Real Good!!!!

Oh, yeah, they got the fucking message!

 

[TheParser]

In my opinion, no one will ever know the true number of people killed at Nanking.

Such an emotional topic brings out the extremes: some swear that X number of people were massacred, and some swear that the number is exaggerated.


All that we really know is that there WERE atrocities in Nanking.

I am glad that the name of Mr. Rabe was mentioned. More people should know about his work to protect the Chinese, even though he was a German whose country was being governed by a very evil man.

 

[mikegriffith1]

LOL! What?! Just what?! Okay, JoeB Mao, you find me a single source, any source, heck even a Communist source, that says that people were flooding INTO the city shortly before the Japanese arrived [because they thought it was safe],

I've provided several, you fascist &$*#$%.

Humm, I looked over your last 10 replies and did not see any such sources. Can you refresh everyone's memory and just cite one of them? And, again, I ask, how could anyone have thought it was safe to return to Nanking if a huge massacre had just occurred or was still occurring and when the enemy who supposedly committed that massacre had gained control of the city?

Actually, you are the fascist. Fascism and communism are simply two names for the same kind of government: totalitarian rule. Both fascism and communism involve total control by the government, a denial of basic rights, control of the press, and rule by one man or by a small group of men. The only real difference between a fascist government and a communist government is that some fascist governments do not implement socialism but allow a level of free enterprise. In fact, Red China's government is now more fascist than communist, since China's ruling elite have largely ditched socialism and embraced a form of free enterprise.

I, on the other hand, reject all forms of totalitarian government, whether they are called fascist or communist. I embrace limited government as expressed in the U.S. Constitution and in the writings of men like Adam Smith, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Taft, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln.

You made your claim that "people flooded into Nanking from the surrounding countryside because they THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE" (your emphasis) in response to my point that the fact that people began to return to the city soon after it fell indicates that there was no large-scale massacre, since no one in their right mind would go back to a city (1) where a gigantic massacre had just occurred and/or was still occurring and (2) where the enemy that had committed the massacre was now in total control. Nobody was talking about movement to or from the city before it fell.

Uh, guy, the whole country was a slaughterhouse thanks to the Japanese. No place was particularly safe.

That's a Communist myth, and it doesn't address my point. I ask you yet again: How in the world could any sane person have believed it was safe to return to Nanking (1) IF the Japanese had just committed, or were in process of committing (per Chang), an enormous massacre, and (2) given the fact that the Japanese controlled the city?

As we both know, here's the rub: We know, as I have pointed out several times, that people did begin to return to Nanking just a few weeks after the city fell, which of course screams against the idea that a gigantic massacre had just occurred, much less that one was still occurring, especially given the fact that the supposed perpetrators of that massacre now controlled the city.

Now, I know that you've read nothing about the Nanking Massacre except for a few online articles (you don't even seem to have read Chang's book), but, just FYI, your fellow Chang apologists either (1) ignore the fact that people began to return soon after the Japanese occupied the city, (2) mention the return only in passing and decline to analyze its implications, or (3) claim that the Japanese tricked those people into returning. Chang takes the third approach but does not try to explain how anyone in the surrounding area (from which she admits the people came) could have believed it was safe to go back to Nanking if a gigantic massacre was occurring and the killers were in control of the city.

30 million Chinese died at the hands of the Japanese.

You've been corrected on this myth before. R. J. Rummel, a professor of political science at Yale University, the University of Indiana, and the University of Hawaii, spent his entire career studying mass killings around the world. He put the number of people killed by the Japanese at slightly below six million--and slightly fewer than the Nationalists killed, and far fewer than the Communists killed. Rummel wrote two books on the subject: Death By Government and Statistics of Democide. The University of Hawaii maintains a website that presents much of Rummel's research--here's the link:

20TH CENTURY DEMOCIDE (Genocide and Mass Murder)

Also, allow me to note 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.

The Japanese were not trying to avoid war. Avoiding war would be, "Whoops, our bad, we'll stop invading China and withdraw back to Japan."

You're just gonna keep repeating these myths, no matter how much evidence you're shown to the contrary, aren't you? Even books that are bitterly critical of the Japanese acknowledge that most of Japan's leaders, including the emperor, did not want war with the U.S. The fact that you can't even acknowledge this profusely documented fact shows that you are not to be taken seriously.

And, uh, again, for about the tenth time now, Japan agreed to everything that FDR initially demanded as conditions for lifting the sanctions. This is a matter of record. I've cited several sources on this fact for you. But, FDR still refused to lift the sanctions, would not even meet with Japan's prime minister to discuss the matter, and then made demands that went far beyond anything he had previously demanded--demands that were both unreasonable and that FDR knew not even the most liberal Japanese leaders would accept. At that point, Japan's leaders realized that FDR was determined to go to war against Japan. If your PRC handlers will ever let you educate yourself on this issue, you might start with John Toland's long analysis of Japan's efforts to get FDR to lift the sanctions in The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire (chapters 3-7).

 

[JoeB131]

Humm, I looked over your last 10 replies and did not see any such sources. Can you refresh everyone's memory and just cite one of them? And, again, I ask, how could anyone have thought it was safe to return to Nanking if a huge massacre had just occurred or was still occurring and when the enemy who supposedly committed that massacre had gained control of the city?

Nope.... I posted them in lots of places, from real historians... not the fascist hacks you cite.

You're just gonna keep repeating these myths, no matter how much evidence you're shown to the contrary, aren't you? Even books that are bitterly critical of the Japanese acknowledge that most of Japan's leaders, including the emperor, did not want war with the U.S. The fact that you can't even acknowledge this profusely documented fact shows that you are not to be taken seriously.

Again, you fascist cocksuker, Japan's Leaders attacked the US. How did they NOT think that wasn't going to lead to war?

And, uh, again, for about the tenth time now, Japan agreed to everything that FDR initially demanded as conditions for lifting the sanctions.

Guy, Agreements don't mean anything. The fact was- Japan was NOT knocking off the invasion, they were escalating it.

This is how sanctions work

You do something I don't like.
I put sanctions on you.
You promise to stop doing it.
I keep the sanctions on until you actually stop doing whatever you were doing to piss me off.

Japan did something we didn't like.
We put sanctions on them.
They promised to stop doing it, but what they were really doing was planning sneak attacks.

Japan was in the wrong. Or their leaders were. Their people paid the price for it.

 

[JoeB131]

That's a Communist myth, and it doesn't address my point. I ask you yet again: How in the world could any sane person have believed it was safe to return to Nanking (1) IF the Japanese had just committed, or were in process of committing (per Chang), an enormous massacre, and (2) given the fact that the Japanese controlled the city?

Because they were pretty much committing them everywhere... that's why... Seriously, are you some kind of special retard who can cut and paste. Maybe we should hook you up with Political Chick if you weren't so racist.

You've been corrected on this myth before. R. J. Rummel,

Another Fascist asshat?

30 million Chinese died in World War II.

Deal with it.

The Japanese were cocksuckers in World War II. They should be happy we didn't do the world a favor and erase them.