Summary: The Rape Of Nanking

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Griffen Lloyd 9/9/15 World War II The Rape of Nanking: Summary/Analysis The story begins in December, 1937, where the Japanese entered the Chinese city of Nanking to be greeted by a docile city. However, under the ploy that there was the desertion of civilian men, women, children, and military personnel, the Japanese used this excuse to blatantly murder the population of Nanking. While it is unclear how many people were killed, estimates range from 150,000 - 300,000 casualties. Iris Chang upholds the 300,000 estimate. There was literal rape, estimates are around 20,000 women were raped by Chinese military personnel during their occupation. The downward spiral of murders began with prisoners, and ended with women and children. Iris Chang’s book takes liberties, to say the least. Whether that be upholding conspiracy theories as truth or generalizing extremist, minority stances on the issue. However, her vivid and graphic descriptions of the text do do their purpose. The purpose is to protect the memory of the atrocity, and to assert it as a point of shame for Japanese past, but the focus on shock value and gore forces the reader to ignore context. Therefore providing a not totally honest account of what really happened in December of 1937. …show more content…

Chang relates this ambiguity to a political conspiracy. Researching the incident “can be life-threatening,” she claims, and “. . . the Japanese as a nation are still trying to bury the victims of Nanking - not under the soil, as in 1937, but into historical oblivion” (p. 220). This assertion is false. A simple Google search can show that Japanese textbooks acknowledge that 150,000 civilians and soldiers were murdered by the Japanese

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