When thinking about massacres that occurred during the Second World War, most people immediately think of the Holocaust as the most evil act committed by the Axis powers. However, in 1937, the Japanese army committed one of the greatest atrocities the world had ever seen in an event that would come to be known as the Rape of Nanking. After the Japanese had taken control of Nanking, the former capital of China, they spent the next six weeks, slaughtering innocent civilians as well as raping women and looting nearly everything. It is estimated that between 40,000 and 300,000 Chinese in total were killed during the entire event.
Why, then, is the Rape of Nanking such an unknown event to many people worldwide? The answer is simple. The truth was hidden from the public for many years by the Japanese government. After the massacre had taken place, the Japanese had taken records of the event and hid them from public view. After the Japanese surrender to the Allied powers in 1945, the government of Japan destroyed a large number of the military records pertaining to the Rape of Nanking. There are some Japanese citizens, though they are few in numbers, who do not even assert that the incident happened. Rather than call it the “Rape of Nanking” or the “Nanking Massacre,” many Japanese citizens today refer to the event as the “Nanking Incident,” thus showing their lack of desire to face the face of how atrocious the incident was.
There are some people, such as Tanaka Masaaki who to continue to discredit and disprove the fact that the Rape of Nanking actually happened. Though he has no evidence to prove that these events did not occur, he continues to argue that the photographs taken during the Rape of Nanking are fake and that the atrocities did not occur. However, people such as he are dangerous to society, in my opinion. In the wise words of George Santayana, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Pictured here is a Japanese soldier executing a Chinese civilian during the Rape of Nanking
