The articles and video provided to us discussed the Japanese assault on Nanjing. During the late 1930’s, Japan started to invade China, they had set their sights on Nanjing. Nanjing was the capital of China until the government moved the capital more inland from the Japanese. When the Japanese reached Nanjing there appears to be two different views as how they conquered the city. To certain members of the military including Tanaka Masaaki, a Japanese soldier; the Japanese committed no war crimes. The other view, according to Takashi YOSHIDA was that “no Japanese wartime atrocity against China is more widely known than the Nanjing Massacre.” (1)
one or more may not be real… but do you know which one?
Like any argument there are facts presented by both sides, however it appears that the facts have become distorted in several ways. Masaaki stated that a lot of the pictures used to support the “rape of Nanjing” as it was also referred to were propaganda attempts. He and other deniers believed that other nations took pictures of content, misunderstood the pictures, or even altered the photo to match their agenda. He went as far to explain his experiences while there. He said while there he did not see anything that resembles a massacre. Although he makes points that seem plausible there is always two sides to a story.
The other side is a video with damning evidence. The evidence includes Japanese soldiers who committed the atrocities admitting that what they had done was wrong and confirmed that the actions did take place. Secondly was photo evidence, photo evidence is probably the most damning evidence there is. Unfortunately today people are so proficient in video editing it is becoming harder and harder to believe what you see.
I think for this topic I will ponder evidence and the use of evidence. Obviously other sources have confirmed reports of the massacre to include the US military who wrote their Chemical Warfare book from Unit 731. There are several forms of evidence, pictures, recordings, statements, journals, interviews, and documents. Pictures according to Masaaki can be altered and thus the integrity can be skewed. Recordings to can be altered and interviews have proven sometimes not to be reliable because people think something is one way but it is actually the other as well as pushing their personal agenda across. Journals too can be exaggerated or reflect ones agenda, in this case people believe the death tolls of Nanjing are exaggerated while others think they are higher than the estimations.
Either way I believe it is getting harder and harder to believe what we see, like Thomas, seeing isn’t always believing. Yes I did make a bible reference… why? Because I went to Catholic school and thats all I remember. Getting back on track, I think its not only the sources that can be skewed. The reader or person making a decision can be skewed. For example, say a reader like me reads the first article, if I did not know much of the Nanjing massacre it could be believable, I spent 30 minutes trying to see if that photo was altered like he said but to no avail. If the reader stops there than they are likely to believe that point of view.
Now if that same person was to watch the film we watched next they would have heard both sides of the story. Although each author has their own agenda the principle message is still the same, were the acts actually committed. To make matters worse I believe there are people out there that deny it for two other reasons. Reasons one, Masaaki may have not seen anything, if he had a desk job or was not there and only speculating to answer what he thinks he saw then he would whole heartedly believe that to be true. The other reason for denial is that they do not want to admit to their mistake and want to justify their actions. Like a politician, whenever they are slightly correct they will justify it till the end.
In conclusion I believe that evidence is becoming increasingly harder to believe. Especially today, evidence is being skewed to reflect individuals personal agenda. I think as time continues things will be harder and harder to believe if not coming from a primary source and even then we don’t know. Some of history is not known, and as a a result it is left to historians interpretation and as a result some form of bias is injected in that interpretation.
I really liked the sources/pictures you used to back up your argument. They definitely proved your point that it is becoming harder and harder to believe in “evidence” that is presented to the public.
When reading about the Nanking massacre and the photographs that consisted or did not consist of evidence I was reminded of the the argument that the photos from Apollo 11 are fake. While most American’s don’t buy the conspiracy theory that the moon landing was faked, there are still arguments concerning the shadows in photographs and the movement of the astronauts in videos. While very different in scope, this case appears similar. Often historians are looking at the same piece of evidence, but they draw drastically different conclusions. This is the case of the Nanking massacre.
This is a great post, t brings to light a lot of the questions that i myself had while reading these sources. How can you tell what to believe and what not to believe. I loved your pictures that you used (haha) they really illustrated the point that you were trying to make well.
I like how you play off both sides of the argument in your post. If I had only read Chang’s article and watched the video, I would have an unfair bias on the subject, but since Professor Gitre also included a dissenting article, it gave me a much rounder understanding of the incident which took place at Nanking. It’s hard to say what really happened at Nanking, and who’s argument is more credible, since there is not as much evidence at hand to work with. This is simply because I was not there to witness the events firsthand. So Chang could be right, Masaaki could be right, or neither could be right and we’ll have to wait for another person to research and report on it.