Anniversary of the Nanjing massacre
Today marks the 70th anniversary of the infamous rape of Nanjing in China by the armed forces of Japan. I visited Nanjing during a tour of China in 2000 [my account of time in the city here].
For the people of China, the incident is still a raw and and bitter issue. For many in Japan – a country I have also visited – this is something they would rather not think about and about which they are often in denial.
The Wikipedia page on the massacre states:
“The extent of the atrocities is debated between China and Japan, with numbers ranging from some Japanese claims of several hundred] to the Chinese claim of a non-combatant death toll of 300,000. A number of Japanese researchers consider 100,000 – 200,000 to be an approximate value. Other nations usually believe the death toll to be between 150,000 – 300,000.”
By and large, the German people have faced up candidly to the horrors of the Nazi regime. The people of Japan would do well to start looking more honestly at the infamous deeds committed by their military in the run up to and during the Second World War.
December 13th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
Here is a graphic article on the massacre: Nanking Massacre. The author notes that the massacre was part of a wider genocide of 13 million civilians during the Japanese occupation of China.