It was then that my parents, Ken and Luann Douglas, sold their retirement home and moved to Normal, Illinois, to be near Illinois State University because it had one of the best special education programs in the United States. I moved my family
from San Jose, California, to the same community. My parents have spent their retirement years devoted to giving Christopher a chance to develop to his full potential. Melissa Watson has been Christopher's adaptive behavioral analysis therapist since 2007. Melissa has done more to help Christopher develop than any other person. Many other therapists have also worked with Christopher: Hannah Gomez, Monica Bozek, Tricia Ferguson, Susan Konkal, Sarah Conklen, Megan Watson, Grace Watson, Angela Watson, Rachael Wrage, Kristin Hunsburger, Bethany Ingrum, Gavin Meador, many therapists at Easter Seals in Bloomington, Illinois, and many therapists at The Autism Place in Normal, Illinois.
Iris was a hero for telling the story of the people who had suffered so much in Nanking during the winter of 1937 and 1938. She may have been a tragic hero because the same extraordinary motivation and drive that led her to achieve so much by age twenty-nine probably contributed to her breakdown and early death at age thirty-six. Iris influenced hundreds of thousands of people through her writing and on her books tours. I've met only a small fraction of the people she knew, and I'm still learning more about her seven years after her death.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I
N WRITING
The Rape of Nanking
I have incurred many debts. Many organizations and individuals were endlessly supportive of the book from its inception. While it is impossible to acknowledge all the people who shared their time and expertise with me over the years, many deserve special mention here.
My parents, Drs. Shau-Jin Chang and Ying-Ying Chang, were the first ones to tell me about the Rape of Nanking and to emphasize its importance in history. I am deeply moved by the countless hours they have spent reading the manuscript in draft form, translating key documents for me, and offering invaluable advice during lengthy discussions over the phone. They are the kind of parents most authors can only dream of havingâwise, passionate, and inspirational. No one but me can truly understand what they have meant to me during the writing of this book.
My editor, Susan Rabiner, also recognized the historical significance of this book and
encouraged me to write it. Over a period of weeks and months she not only gave this manuscript line-by-line scrutiny but greatly improved it with her brilliant perceptions. This she did for me despite her intense administrative responsibilities as editorial director and the personal pressures she endured shortly before her departure from Basic Books. There are few editors in the publishing world today who possess Susan Rabiner's combination of literary talent, knowledge of the craft of serious nonfiction, and genuine concern for the author. To have worked with her as extensively as I did was not only a joy but a privilege.
The Global Alliance for Preserving the History of World War II in Asia was tremendously supportive as I researched the Rape of Nanking and provided me with photographs, articles, and important contacts throughout the world. Within the Alliance, I am especially indebted to Ignatius and Josephine Ding, David and Cathy Tsang, Gilbert Chang, Eugene Wei, J. J. Cao, and Kuo-hou Chang.
Flesh was given to the text by those who helped translate important documents. To finish a book that exploited primary source material in four different languages (English, Chinese, Japanese, and German) I had to rely heavily on the kindness of friends, colleagues, and even strangers. My friend Barbara Masin, a brilliant high-tech executive fluent in five languages, gave freely of her valuable time to translate numerous German diplomatic reports and diaries into English. Satoko Sugiyama in San Diego volunteered to translate not only Japanese wartime diaries for me but also my correspondence with Shiro Azuma, a former Japanese soldier at Nanking.
The historian Charles Burdick and Martha Begemann of Hamburg helped me find the descendants of John Rabe, the former leader of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone. I am beholden to Ursula Reinhardt, the granddaughter of John Rabe, for giving me detailed descriptions of Rabe's life and copies of his reports and diaries. Many thanks go also to Jeff Heynen of the
Asahi Shimbun
for giving me, out of the kindness of his heart, his excellent translations of Rabe's papers.
Several friends helped make my research trip to the East Coast
a success. Nancy Tong in New York loaned me materials related to her excellent documentary,
In the Name of the Emperor.
Shao Tzuping and his family graciously gave me room, board, and hospitality in Rye, New Yorkâeven loaning me their car to make the commute to the Yale Divinity School Library in New Haven. Shen-Yen Lee (the former publisher of the
Chinese American Forum
), his wife, Winnie C. Lee, and historian Marian Smith selflessly provided me with transportation, housing, and emotional support during my stay in Washington, D.C. At the National Archives, John Taylor steered me to an incredible store of information on the Nanking massacre, helping me locate military and diplomatic reports, intercepts of Japanese Foreign Office communications, OSS records and transcripts, and exhibits of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE). At the Yale Divinity School Library, the archivists Joan Duffy and Martha Smalley were unfailingly kind as they introduced me to missionary diaries and photographs of the massacre.
The Pacific Cultural Foundation paid for my travel to Asia. In Nanking, Sun Zhaiwei, a professor and vice director of the Institute of History at the Jiangsu Academy of Social Sciences, and Duan Yueping, the assistant director of the Memorial Hall of the Victims of the Nanking Massacre by Japanese Invaders, shared with me invaluable Chinese documentation about the Rape of Nanking and gave me a thorough tour of the execution sites in the city. The interpreters Yang Xiaming and Wang Weix-ing worked long hours to help me translate the documents and the transcripts of videotaped interviews with survivors.
In the Republic of China, Lee En-han at the Institute of Modern History arranged for me to stay at the Academia Sinica as I continued my research on the massacre. Caroline Lin, a reporter at the
China Times,
graciously provided me with her contacts and files on the subject. The veterans Lin Baoding, Lin Rongkun, Cheng Junqing, Wang Wanyong, and Liu Yongzhong also gave me unprecedented access to their files.
Several survivors of the Nanking massacre relived the horror of the past to narrate their stories to me. They include Niu Xianming in Los Angeles; Chen Deguai, Hou Zhanqing, Li Xouyin, Liu Fonghua, Niu Yongxing, Pang Kaiming, Tang
Shunsan, and Xia Shuqing in Nanking; and Shang Zhaofu (Jeffrey Shang) and Zhu Chuanyu in the Republic of China.
Most of the surviving American and European eyewitnesses of the massacre and their families were unstintingly generous with their time and information, giving me telephone interviews, photographs, documents, and even films of the massacre. They include Robert and Morton Bates, Tanya Condon, Frank Tillman Durdin, Marion Fitch Exter, Robert Fitch, Marge Garrett, Peter Kröger, Emma Lyon, David Magee, Angie and Harriet Mills, Fred Riggs, Charles Sone, Leland Steward, Edith Fitch Swapp, Marjorie Wilson, and Robert Wilson Jr.
Drs. Rana Mitter and Christian Jessen-Klingenberg of the University of Oxford, Carol Gluck of Columbia University, and William Kirby of Harvard University, took the time to review my book before publication and to enrich it with their important scholarly suggestions.
In San Francisco, several Japanese and Asians met with me to discuss their viewpoints on the Rape of Nanking and Japanese denial of World War II responsibilities. I am grateful for Haru Murakawa's help in organizing this March 30, 1997, workshop, and for Citania Tam's generosity in providing office space for the meeting. Many thanks go to the workshop participants, who include Akira Donuma, Keiko Ito, Kenji Oka, Ching Jeng, Sueko Kawamshi, Connie Yee, Hirokiu Yamaji, Noriko Yamaji, and Yasuhiro Yamaji.
Other people who assisted me in various important ways while I was completing the book include Simon Avenell, Marilyn Bolles, Frank Boring, Mark Cajigao, Julius Chang, Barbara Culliton, Jim Culp, Edward Dodds, Mark Eykholt, David Farnsworth, Robert Friedly, Richard Fumosa, Chris Goff, Paul Golob, Gilbert Hair, Hiro Inokuchi, Ron King, Petrus Liu, David McWhirter, Dale Maharidge, Karen Parker, Axel Schneider, John Sweeney, Shigehisa Terao, Marjorie Traverso, Ao Wang, Gail Winston, Wu Tien-wei, James Yin, and Shi Young.
Finally, I must thank my husband, Dr. Bretton Lee Douglas, who endured, without complaint, story after gruesome story of Japanese atrocities in China. His love, wisdom, and encouragement gave me the strength to finish this book.
NOTES
A Chinese-language edition of this book is available to those interested in obtaining the Chinese character names of people and places mentioned in the text. Write to Commonwealth Publishing Company Ltd., 87 Sung-Chiang Road, 4F, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China, or E-mail the publisher, Charles Kao, at
[email protected].
page
4.
Years later experts at the . . . IMTFE:
“Table: Estimated Number of Victims of Japanese Massacre in Nanking,” document no. 1702, Records of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, court exhibits, 1948, World War II War Crimes Records Collection, box 134, entry 14, record group 238, National Archives.
5.
One historian has estimated:
estimates by Wu Zhikeng, cited in
San Jose Mercury News,
January 3, 1988.
5.
Romans at Carthage:
Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn,
The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990), p. 76.
5.
The monstrosities of Timur Lenk:
Arnold Toynbee, 1947, p. 347, cited in Leo Kuper,
Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981), p. 12.
5.
Indeed, even by the standards of history's most destructive war:
For European numbers, see R. J. Rummel,
China's Bloody Century: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900
(New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1991), p. 138.
6.
It is likely that more people died in Nanking:
Statistics from the Bombing of Dresden come from Louis L. Snyder,
Louis Snyder's Historical Guide to World War II
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982), pp. 198â99.
6.
Indeed, whether we use the most conservative number:
Brigadier Peter Young, ed.,
The World Almanac Book of World War II
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: World Almanac Publications/Prentice-Hall, 1981), p. 330. For numbers on the blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, see Richard Rhodes,
The Making of the Atomic Bomb
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), pp. 734, 740. Rhodes claims that by the end of 1945 some 140,000 people had died in Hiroshima and 70,000 in Nagasaki from the nuclear explosions. The dying continued, and after five years a total of some 200,000 in Hiroshima and 140,000 in Nagasaki had perished from causes related to the bombing. But it is significant to note that even after five years the combined death toll in both cities is still less than the highest casualty estimates for the Rape of Nanking.
6.
An estimated 20, 000â80, 000 Chinese women were raped:
Catherine Rosair, “For One Veteran, Emperor Visit Should Be Atonement,” Reuters, October 15, 1992; George Fitch, “Nanking Outrages,” January 10, 1938, George Fitch Collection, Yale Divinity School Library; Li En-han, a historian in the Republic of China, estimates that 80,000 women were raped or mutilated. (“âThe Great Nanking Massacre' Committed by the Japanese Army as Related to International Law on War Crimes,”
Journal of Studies of Japanese Aggression Against China
[May 1991]: 74).
6.
Many soldiers went beyond rape:
Author's interviews with survivors.
6.
“bestial machinery”:
Christian Kröger, “Days of Fate in Nanking,” unpublished diary in the collection of Peter Kröger; also in the IMTFE judgment, National Archives.
7.
“Nothing the Nazis under Hitler would do”:
Robert Leckie,
Delivered from Evil: The Saga of World War II
(New York: Harper & Row, 1987), p. 303.
10.
During the conference I learned of two novels:
R. C. Binstock,
Tree of Heaven
(New York: Soho Press,1995); Paul West,
Tent of Orange Mist
(New York: Scribners, 1995); James Yin and Shi
Young,
The Rape of Nanking: An Undeniable History in Photographs
(Chicago: Innovative Publishing Group, 1996).
12.
“erecting a cathedral for Hitler in the middle of Berlin”:
Gilbert Hair, telephone interview with the author.
19.
For as far back as anyone could remember:
Tanaka Yuki,
Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II
(Boulder, Co.: Westview, 1996), pp. 206â8. (Although Tanaka is the author's surname, he uses an American-style of presenting his name as Yuki Tanaka for this English-language book.) According to Tanaka, the modern Japanese corrupted the ancient code of
bushido
for their own purposes. The original code dictated that warriors die for just causes, not trivial ones. But during World War II, officers were committing ritual suicide for the most absurd of reasons, such as for stumbling over their words when reciting the code. The concept of loyalty in
bushido
was also replaced by blind obedience, and courage by reckless violence.
20.
It is striking to note:
Meirion Harries and Susie Harries,
Soldiers of the Sun: The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army
(New York: Random House, 1991), p. vii.
21.
“A parallel situation”:
Samuel Eliot Morison,
“Old Bruin”: Commodore Matthew C. Perry 1794â1858
(Boston: AtlanticâLittle, Brown, 1967), p. 319.
22. “As we are not the equals of foreigners,”: Delmer M. Brown,
Nationalism in Japan: An Introductory Historical Analysis
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1955), p. 75. (Italics mine.) (Brown's citation: Satow, trans.,
Japan 1853â1864
, or Genji Yume Monogatari, p. 4).
24.
“destined to expand and govern other nations”:
Taiyo, July 1905, quoted in ibid., p. 144.
24.
Modernization had earned for the country:
Ibid., p. 152.
26.
The population had swollen:
Paul Johnson,
Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties
(New York: Harper-Collins, 1991), p. 189.
26.
“There are only three ways left to Japan”:
W. T. deBary, ed.,
Sources of the Japanese Tradition
(New York, 1958), pp. 796â97, quoted in ibid., p. 189.
27.
Why, the military propagandist Sadao Araki:
Quoted in ibid., p. 189.
27.
Nor were Japan's covetous intentions:
Ibid., p. 393. For more information about the ambitions of some Japanese ultranationalists regarding the United States during that era, see Records of the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, 1882â1954, Office of Naval Intelligence, Intelligence DivisionâNaval Attaché Reports, 1886â1939, box 525, entry 98, record group 38, National Archives. As early as December 1932, a U.S. naval intelligence report noted that best-sellers in Japan tended to be books on warâparticularly on the possibility of American-Japanese war. This report and others analyzed the content of Japanese books, articles, pamphlets, and lectures that dwelled on the topic of a Japanese invasion of the United States. Some of these publications bore titles such as “The Alaska Air Attack,” “The Assault on Hawaii,” and “The California Attack.” Here are a few examples of Japanese propaganda from the early 1930s that made their way into American naval intelligence files (the following names come directly from an English-language report and may be misspelled):
âA lecture by Captain K. Midzuno revealed that the Japanese military not only developed strategies for attacking Pearl Harbor from the air but also foresaw the possibility of American raids on Tokyo.
âIn
Japan in Danger: A Great Naval War in the Pacific Ocean
, Nakadzima Takesi described scenarios of a victorious war waged by the Japanese against the United States through naval battles and air bombardment.
âIn
Increasing Japanese-American Danger
, Vice Admiral Sesa Tanetsugu wrote that he was convinced of the inevitability of Japanese-American conflict.
âIkedzaki Talakta presented in
The Predestined Japanese-American War
a compilation of articles on the subject of the inevitability of a Japanese-American war. A newspaper review lauded this book as “a work of passionate love for the native land” and assured readers that “if Japan draws its sword, the false, haughty America will be powerless” (February 3, 1933, report, p. 260).
27.
“Before a new world appears”:
Delmer Brown,
Nationalism in Japan,
p. 187; see also Okawa Shumei, “Ajia, Yoroppa, Nihon (Asia, Europe, and Japan),” p. 82, translated in “Analyses,”
IPS document no. 64, pp. 3â4 (italics added).
29.
To prepare for the inevitable war with China:
Tessa Morris-Suzuki,
Showa: An Inside History of Hirohito's Japan
(New York: Schocken, 1985), pp. 21â29.
30.
“We appear to be standing in the vanguard of Asia”:
Quoted in Ian Buruma,
The Wages of Guilt
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994), pp. 191â92.
30.
“Why are you crying about one lousy frog?”:
Ibid., p. 172.
30.
“deep ambivalence in Japanese society”
: Letter from Rana Mitter to author, July 17, 1997.
31.
It was reputed that more than one teacher:
Harries and Harries,
Soldiers of the Sun,
p. 41.
31.
A visitor to one of its elementary schools:
Iritani Toshio,
Group Psychology of the Japanese in Wartime
(London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1991), pp. 177, 191.
31.
abuse:
Ibid.
32.
“I do not beat you because I hate you”:
Ibid., p. 189.
32.
The intensity of the training in Japan:
106/5485, February 1928 report, p. 136, Papers of the British War Office in the Public Record Office, Kew, London. An OSS report on Japanese army training summarizes the process of indoctrination: “The smallest infraction or error in regulations brings instant and severe punishment. Act toughâshout, don't talkâscowl, don't look pleasantâbe toughâhave no desiresâforget your family at homeânever show emotionalismâdo everything the hard wayâdon't let yourself be comfortableâtrain and discipline your desires for comfort, food and waterâsuffer pain and hardship in silenceâyou are a son of Heaven”; report no. 8974-B, dissemination no. A-17403, distributed December 28, 1943, Research and Analysis Branch Divisions, Intelligence Reports “Regular” Series, 1941â45, box 621, entry 16, record group 226, National Archives.
32.
“During these impressionable years”:
106/5485, February 1928 report, p. 84, Papers of the British War Office.
33.
That August, while attempting to land thirty-five thousand fresh troops:
David Bergamini,
Japan's Imperial Conspiracy
(New York: Morrow, 1971), p. 11.
33.
In the 1930s Japanese military leaders:
John Toland,
The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire
(New York: Random House), p. 47. “Crush the Chinese in three months and they will sue for peace,” Minister Sugiyama predicted.