The Rape Of Nanking

The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II

The book that I chose to read was The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II by Iris Chang. This book describes the mass murder and large scale depravity by the Japanese army during World War II in China. The Rape of Nanking describes the events that occurred before, during and after the invasion and desecration of the Chinese people and their city.

Iris Chang was born in Princeton, New Jersey on March 28, 1968. The Chang family then moved to Champagne-Urbana, Illinois due to her mother and father accepting professor positions at the University of Illinois(Becker). This was the university where Iris first studied computer science and then journalism. She then obtained a master's degree in writing from The Johns Hopkins University and became a full time writer(Jiang).

At the age of twenty-five, Iris wrote her first book while still at Johns Hopkins entitled, The Thread of the Silkworm. This book conveys the life and career of Tsien Hsue-Shen and his contributions to the modern space age and nuclear missiles. Inspired by the stories that were told to her by her parents and grandparents of the atrocities of the Chinese holocaust, Iris Chang went to the university library to find out more information but was unable to find anything, leaving her to wonder if the stories were true(Jiang).

Iris married her husband Brett Douglas in Illinois. They then moved to the South Bay area in California. In December 1994, while in Cupertino, California, Iris happened upon an event marking the fifty-seventh anniversary of the Nanking Massacre. Black and white photos showing the gruesome reality of the carnage in Nanking decades ago were on exhibit. These photos immediately set Iris on a long path of searching for the truth(Jiang 5). Iris spent the next two years meticulously tracking down any and all information relating to the incident which included a trip to Nanking. In 1997, Iris Chang released The Rape of Nanking which quickly became a success and remained a New York Times bestseller for many months.

The following summary is the product of what Iris's research produced; The population in Nanking in the mid 1930s was well over one million, mainly because many refugees were fleeing from the Japanese army that had invaded China in 1931. Japan had entered China and other parts of Asia before World War II began, and didn't stop their campaign until the U.