One of the most controversial events of the Pacific War, the Nanking Massacre and the resultant battles regarding its legitimacy in today’s collective memory illustrate the hardships of using memory as a method of understanding and accepting the actions of the past. Daqing Yang accurately states, “historians need to confront the issue of how to evaluate human memory as credible historical evidence, since it has cast a shadow over the debates about World War II in Asia” (Yang, 142). More interestingly in this debate is the role that non-historian accounts play in this ensuing battle of legitimacy versus politicization because as additionally Yang mentions, the onus of producing credible historical accounts “for historical inquiry” falls on the trained historian (Yang, 135). The perspectives offered in Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (1997) and Masaaki’s “What Really Happened in Nanking” (2000) complicate this aforementioned stance, though, because of their widespread influence on society, despite the fact that neither author is an academic historian. Can non-historian works written for personal and subjective reasons serve as an appropriate method of disseminating credible information to the public? By first presenting the various flaws and issues—language differences, biases, lack of complete evidence— that arise with using this form of recounting historical events, this paper argues that these forms of storytelling ought to be considered and compared to the works presented by historians to provide a more accurate historiographical retelling of these incidents. As a result, we are able to look at the validity of memory as historical evidence in light of the controversy surrounding th...
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...ok at the qualitative data and create a different narrative for this incident.
Though neither account is perfect, Chang and Masaaki provide readers with a great perspective into the different beliefs surrounding the Rape of Nanking. When compared to one another and other historical accounts, they allow for readers to get a better sense of the complicated history of the Pacific War. The use of images, the impact language has on interpretation, and the overall influence of politics on events like this complicate the understanding of memory and its role in providing valid historical evidence. As this paper argues, though, while non-historical works cannot be taken at face value or as representative of what society as a whole believes, they do supplement historical accounts and provide more information that assists with evaluating the collective memory of today.
Kelman, Herbert C., Hamilton, V. Lee. “The My Lai Massacre: A Military Crime of Obedience”. Writing & Reading for ACP Composition. Ed. Thomas E. Leahey and Christine R. Farris. New York: Pearson Custom Publishing, 2009. 266-277. Print.
When most American people think of Germany, they think of sports cars made for the autobahn, sauerkraut, Adolf Hitler, and the Holocaust. Compared to Germany, when most American people think of Japan they think of sushi, Godzilla movies, Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. World War II was such a significant event in history that almost 70 years after it came to an end, today’s younger generations often associate former Axis controlled countries with the war. People around the world are filled with disgust and immense hate when they hear the name Hitler, mainly because of his leadership under the Holocaust; which was the discriminatory mass genocide of 11-17 million people, the vast majority of which were European Jews. Hirohito, former Emperor of Japan, should strike a similar bell with people when they hear his name because Japan carried out genocide on Chinese civilians and soldiers in World War II. Japan’s attack on the Chinese city of Nanking, was one of the most atrocious events in history. This event has been named both the Nanking Massacre and the Rape of Nanking. The torturous, violent techniques used by the Japanese army upon Chinese civilians and soldiers including dehumanizing them, addicting them to drugs, and other perverse and violent acts, are some of the most grosteque methods ever recorded that could only be thought of by sadistic Japanese soldiers. The events committed by the Japanese army in Nanking, are equally as disgusting as the acts that Nazi Germany committed and should become a major topic involved with World War II in the future, despite the lack of light shed on it in the past for various reasons.
O’Brien, Tim. How to Tell a True War Story. Literature and Ourselves. Sixth Edition. Eds.
Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried has readers and critics alike scratching their heads with wonder about the meaning of “story-truth” and “happening-truth.” Although, he served in the Vietnam War from 1968 until 1970, he fabricates the events of the war throughout The Things They Carried. At the same time, he insists that the truth lies at the heart of the emotion in the story, an idea that many readers question. Furthermore, it is pointless for the reader to attempt to sort through the stories and differentiate between the “story-truth” and “happening-truth,” because it is nearly impossible. This tactic is one of O’Brien’s more ingenious writing methods. He does not want the reader to know the difference between the two because in his opinion that fact is irrelevant. O’Brien obviously thinks outside the box and has everyone questioning reality. However, this fact is truly ironic, because the point is not to care what type of “truth” it is, but to instead feel the raw beauty of the emotion and to accept it as the truth. While trying to define “story-truth” and “happening-truth,” a couple chapters in particular focus on the idea of truth, “How to Tell a True War Story,” “The Man I Killed” and “Good Form.” O’Brien believes that the most important thing for a reader is to experience the emotion of the story, be it “story-truth” or “happening-truth,” as long as the real emotion is conveyed and understood by the reader, then it is as true as it could possibly be.
Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. New York, New York:
The study of past events have been a common practice of mankind since the verbal telling of stories by our ancestors. William Cronon, in his article “Why the Past Matters,” asserts that the remembrance of the past “keeps us in place.” Our individual memories and experiences shape how we act in our daily lives. In addition to influencing us at an individual level, our collective history binds us together as a society. Without knowing where we have been or what we have experienced, it is nearly impossible to judge progress or know which courses of action to pursue. The goal of the historian is to analyze and explain past events, of which they rarely have firsthand memory of, and apply the gained knowledge to make connections with current and future events.
Ida Fink’s work, “The Table”, is an example of how old or disturbing memories may not contain the factual details required for legal documentation. The purpose of her writing is to show us that people remember traumatic events not through images, sounds, and details, but through feelings and emotions. To break that down into two parts, Fink uses vague characters to speak aloud about their experiences to prove their inconsistencies, while using their actions and manners to show their emotions as they dig through their memories in search of answers in order to show that though their spoken stories may differ, they each feel the same pain and fear.
The three narratives “Home Soil” by Irene Zabytko, “Song of Napalm” by Bruce Weigl, and “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen all have the same feelings of war and memory, although not everyone experiences the same war. Zabytko, Weigl, and Owen used shifting beats, dramatic descriptions, and intense, painful images, to convince us that the horror of war far outweighs the devoted awareness of those who fantasize war and the memories that support it.
War does leave people with all kinds of trauma as illustrated in the Bao Ninh’s short story “A Marker on the Side of the Boat” and Nicola Zavaglia’s documentary film Barbed Wire and Mandolins. When comparing the effectiveness of conveying the trauma of war towards the audiences, however, the short story “A Marker on the Side of the Boat” is more effective due to its well-developed plot and the emotional responses from the readers arising from the story.
In “How to Tell a True War Story” by Tim O’Brien, Orwell’s ideas are questioned and the competition between the truth and the underlying meaning of a story is discussed. O’Brien’s story depicts that the truth isn’t always a simple concept; and that not every piece of literature or story told can follow Orwell’s list of rules (Orwell 285). The story is told through an unnamed narrator as he re-encounters memories from his past as a soldier in the Vietnam War. With his recollection of past encounters, the narrator also offers us segments of didactic explanation about what a “true war story” is and the power it has on the human body (O’Brien 65). O’Brien uses fictional literature and the narration of past experiences to raise a question; to what extent should the lack of precision, under all circumstances, be allowed? In reality, no story is ever really truthful, and even if it is, we have no proof of it. The reader never feels secure in what they are being told. The reliability of the source, the author, and the narrator are always being questioned, but the importance of a story isn’t about the truth or the accuracy in which it is told, but about the “sunlight” it carries (O’Brien 81).
Nanking suffered a severe tragedy in six weeks that its memories fail to erase. The tragedy consisting of rape, murder, and looting will never disappear from the city or its inhabitants. Thanks to John Rabe and several others, thousands of Chinese were able to survive. The history of the massacre was slowly dying, but because of books and museums, the history lives onward. The Japanese have not repaired Nanjing or educated their own country about their own mistakes. The Japanese still refuse to believe that the massacre even occurred even though there are pictures of the event and vital proof. The Japanese have surely left a blood stain in the history of this world.
Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. New York, NY: Basic, 1997. Print.
History is a story told over time. It is a way of recreating the past so it can be studied in the present and re-interpreted for future generations. Since humans are the sole beneficiaries of history, it is important for us to know what the purpose of history is and how historians include their own perspective concerning historical events. The purpose and perspective of history is vital in order for individuals to realise how it would be almost impossible for us to live out our lives effectively if we had no knowledge of the past. Also, in order to gain a sound knowledge of the past, we have to understand the political, social and cultural aspects of the times we are studying.
Being a forty-three year old author writing about war decades after his experiences, it is of little concern to O’Brien whether he tells tales solely in line with the facts. He does not want the reader to care whether the stories he weaves actually happened, for he is only writing to “try to save lives with [his] stories” (232). His stories may be made up and his stories just might be complete lies, but the truth is irrelevant. More importantly, his stories save lives. They save his own, they save yours, and they save society’s.