World War II included many terrible atrocities, such as the Holocaust and the atomic bombs dropped in Japan. However, these events have been highlighted throughout history so that we can learn from them and make sure that they do not happen again. This is not the case, however, with the Nanking Massacre; an event that many history books and classes gloss over. In Japan, there is a large section of the population that denies the event happened at all. The atrocities that occurred during this event cannot be reversed, thus they should not be forgotten in order for them to never happen again.
In Iris Chang’s book The Rape of Nanking– The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, she discusses the massacre that the Japanese inflicted on the Chinese during their occupation and how Japan has tried to erase it from its history. She uses what she believes to be irrefutable evidence for the massacre—photos taken during the event, depicting terrible human rights violations of an unimaginable extent. However, even evidence such of this meets harsh criticism from deniers– a perfect example of this comes in Tanaka Masaaki’s article, “What Really Happened in Nanking—The Refutation of a Common Myth.” Tanaka accuses Chang of manufacturing the “incident” at Nanking into a massacre. He accuses her of faking photographs and politicizing the event. A large faction of the Japanese public continues to deny the extent of the event, while others deny that it happened at all.
“What keeps certain events in history and assigns the rest to oblivion?” (Chang, p. 200) This question hangs over the research into the Nanking Massacre. What is it about the Nanking Massacre that leaves it out of books and glossed over, while the Germans have laws that enforce teaching about the Holocaust? And more generally, what else in history is important but left out for political reasons? In Takashi Yoshida’s article “The Nanjing Massacre. Changing Contours of History and Memory in Japan, China, and the U.S,” he discusses the politicization of this event and how that affects its representation in Japanese society. In some regards, the battle between the two sides has become less about the Nanking Massacre and more about fighting against the other side. It seems that the politicization of this event has helped to render it a “forgotten Holocaust.”
I like your point about the Holocaust being more well known, at least in the West, than the Nanjing Massacre. I wonder if in East Asia the significance of the Rape of Nanjing equals that of the Holocaust in the West?