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  • Iris Chang committed suicide in 2004 after long tormented and threatened by the Japanese right wings. Obstructed by local influences, the Japanese version of The Rape of Nanking still remains unpublished.

    Amidst conformity and ignorance, Miss Chang fearlessly ferreted out this snippet of lost ... Continue

    Iris Chang committed suicide in 2004 after long tormented and threatened by the Japanese right wings. Obstructed by local influences, the Japanese version of The Rape of Nanking still remains unpublished.

    Amidst conformity and ignorance, Miss Chang fearlessly ferreted out this snippet of lost history which should not be forgotten( to both the Chinese and the Japanese) and recounted it through three perspectives ( from the Chinese, the Japanese, and a group of westerners).

    Furthermore, the writer' attempt to account for the why Japan, which was and is adulated as a highly civilized , cultured country, could precipitate such a calamity is profoundly shocking.

    As those westerners who sacrificed their lives for saving the Chinese civilians in Nanking, Iris Chang can be seen as an equal for her unbending will to speak out the truth, as a moral beacon that dwarfed all the others around.

    Her story should be remembered and read with respect.

    

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• ― worrywalt said on Jun 12, 2008 | Add your feedback

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  • An authentic and horrifying account on the occupation of Nanking. Sometimes it is too disgusting to read.

    

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• ― Christophe0808 said on Sep 23, 2007 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

In December 1937, the Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking. Within weeks, more than 300,000 Chinese civilians were systematically raped, tortured, and murdered--a death toll exceeding that of the atomic blasts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Using extensive interviews with survivors and newly discovered documents, Iris Chang has written what will surely be the definitive history of this horrifying episode. The Rape of Nanking tells the story from three perspectives: of the Japanese soldiers who performed it, of the Chinese civilians who endured it, and of a group of Europeans and Americans who refused to abandon the city and were able to create a safety zone that saved almost 300,000 Chinese. Among these was the Nazi John Rabe, an unlikely hero whom Chang calls the "Oskar Schindler of China" and who worked tirelessly to protect the innocent and publicize the horror. More than just narrating the details of an orgy of violence, The Rape of Nanking analyzes the militaristic culture that fostered in the Japanese soldiers a total disregard for human life. Finally, it tells the appalling story: about how the advent of the Cold War led to a concerted effort on the part of the West and even the Chinese to stifle open discussion of this atrocity. Indeed, Chang characterizes this conspiracy of silence, that persists to this day, as "a second rape."

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