This painting memorializes the victims of a massacre during World War II that the world had forgotten for decades. The Nanking (Nanjing) Massacre, or also known as the Rape of Nanking, occurred over a period of six weeks when the Japanese Imperial Army captured Nanking. The International Military Tribunal of the Far East (IMTFE) estimated that more than 260,000 civilians died at the hands of Japanese soldiers at Nanking in late 1937 (Chang, 4). However, some Japanese scholars argue that this statistic is exaggerated and that the events that took place at Nanking were fabricated. The truth of the Nanking Massacre became a battle between memories, as much of the evidence lies in the memories of the people who were involved.
Iris Chang, an American journalist, provided a voice for the victims of the massacre when she wrote The Rape of Nanking – The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. Although she did not experience the tragedy herself, she listened to her parents’ stories, and wrote a book to expose the brutal way that Japanese soldiers murdered Chinese people. To prove that the massacre occurred, she incorporates the experiences of people who were present at the massacre. She included Azumo Shiro, the first Japanese veteran to admit to his crimes in Nanking. She also discussed John Magee, an Episcopalian minister, who wrote in a letter that “The raping of the women has been beyond description or imagination” and “There were dead bodies in every street alley in the city” (Chang, 202).
Iris Chang was not alone in her desire to start a global discussion about the massacre. In the Name of the Emperor is a documentary that not only uses the accounts of multiple Japanese soldiers, but also shows diary entries, video recordings, and pictures from multiple perspectives. The soldiers in the video recall killing old men and children, and having sex with “comfort women” (these were women who were forced to have sex with Japanese soldiers). A former “comfort woman” in the video recalled having sex with 50 men per day.
Tanaka Masaaki responded to Chang and the growing global discussion of the Nanking Massacre by publishing his book, What Really Happened in Nanking – The Refutation of a Common Myth, in English. Masaaki denies the existence of a massacre at Nanking by saying that few citizens were killed. He claims that a major battle was fought at Nanking, but nothing like the descriptions of horror that Chang relates. His main argument focuses on the fact that he was a World War II veteran, and he remembers no massacre. Tanaka Masaaki describes his experience inspecting the city of Nanking in 1938. He noted that “merchants were prospering, and the city was safe enough for women to venture out alone at night” (Masaaki, 4).
It seems that the only people who claim the the massacre was fabricated are a few Japanese scholars. Masaaki’s argument is not very strong because he relies heavily on his personal experience, and does not provide an extensive list of other people’s opinions and experiences. Just because he himself did not see a massacre does not mean that it did not happen. He also ignores hard evidence, like archaeological evidence. He denies that there was large-scale torture and killing, but archaeological evidence shows that “thick iron nails were hammered into some of the skulls by Japanese torturers, and a six-year-old child’s skeleton shows bayonet scars” (CNN). Below is a picture of a mass grave that is exposed at the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum.
After watching the documentary and reading the two excerpts from the books of Chang and Masaaki, I was frightened. How could the world ignore the fact that thousands of people went through such traumatic experiences? I certainly agree with Professor Richard Chu (Rochester Institute of Technology) in that the importance of the massacre was “not so much how many Chinese were killed, but the manner, how Chinese were killed” (In the Name of the Emperor). I realized how political history is when reading about how the People’s public of China and Republic of China ignored the massacre as they competed for political recognition from Japan, and how the United States also ignored it as the government wanted good relations with Japan because of the threat of communism from the Soviet Union and China (Chang, 11).
As I thought about how little of history we know and remember, I looked at the little boy who cries and sits on top of the pile of bodies in Li’s The Great Nanjing Massacre (shown above as the first picture). This painting does not only memorialize the massacre and brutality of the event, but it also shows that as long as there are survivors, there is memory and hope. Even though it took decades for people to notice the survivors and ask questions about the event, when questions were raised, people answered.
Sources:
Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking – The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II.pdf
Tanaka Masaaki, What Really Happened in Nanking – The Refutation of a Common Myth.pdf
http://travel.cnn.com/house-horror-visit-nanjing-massacre-memorial-museum-921921/
Both of the images you utilized in your post were powerful. The first one really caught me off guard and illustrates the atrocities that took place in Nanking. The way in which the artist depicted it makes it seem like the bodies are never ending. The picture says it was painted in 1992, do you know if the painter witnessed the events or is that just reproduced from images he saw?