March 15, 1998
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, S.W.
Washington, D.C.
Iris Chang AFP
On behalf of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, it is a great pleasure for me to welcome all of you to the Museum for this special scholarly presentation. The United States Holocaust Memorial Council established the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies to promote the growth of the field of Holocaust studies, including the dissemination of scholarly output in the field, and to ensure the ongoing training of future generations of young scholars specializing in the Holocaust.
Planned activities of the Center include research and publication projects, conference activity, the development of fellowship and visiting scholar opportunities, and a dense network of cooperative programs with universities in the United States and abroad. The purpose of all activities will be to expand our knowledge of what transpired in Europe during the Holocaust, to achieve a more profound appreciation of the fate of the victims-Jewish victims and all other groups who were victims of genocide and related crimes against humanity-and a deeper understanding of how and why such a monumental tragedy occurred and, unfortunately, why such crimes continue to occur today in some parts of the world.
First, of course, one must be aware of what happened. The person I have the privilege of introducing to you has the distinction of bringing to light a crime that occurred not in Europe, but on the other side of the globe, in China, in 1937, several years before the outbreak of war in Europe, and before the full fury of the Holocaust was unleashed by the Nazis. She has made millions of people aware of a crime that claimed some 300,000 civilian victims in a period of weeks. She has presented us with a subject that will now be subjected to further research, hopefully with the continued involvement of our speaker, to achieve a better understanding of that tragedy, out of respect for its victims and in the hope of preventing repetitions.
Iris Chang is an accomplished journalist and author. She is a journalism graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana and the author of several books. She received graduate fellowships from the Johns Hopkins University and awards for her work from the National Science Foundation, the Pacific Cultural Foundation, and the Harry Truman Library. She is the recipient of the John T. And Catherine D. MacArthur Foundation’s Award for Peace and International Cooperation. Ms. Chang’s book The Rape of Nanking-The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II is currently in its 17th printing, which is testimony to the chord she has struck. It is rare that one can introduce a speaker who has opened the door on a new field of research. Having done so, Iris Chang provides a memorial to the victims of the Nanking massacre, with which the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum respectfully identifies itself, and deepens our understanding of history and ourselves. Ms. Chang is making two important presentations at the Museum, on "The Rape of Nanking" and on "The Historiography of the Rape of Nanking," explaining why we know so little about it. Her work of memory and research and the work of this Museum and its scholarly Center are very closely related, and that is as it should be.
Paul Shapiro, Director
March, 1998
Good afternoon and welcome to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. I’m Lydia Perry, Acting Director of Public Programs. The Museum is pleased to present today’s program with Iris Chang and her book, The Rape of Nanking, The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. The program is cosponsored with the Education and Science Society and the Chinese American Forum. We are grateful to both organizations for their collaboration. I would like to thank in particular Shawai Chan and Lung Ching Chow (phonetic spellings).
After formal remarks Ms. Chang will answer questions from the audience. So everyone can hear, please use the microphones that we have in the aisles.
Please keep your questions brief and in the form of a question. She will then sign books, which will be available for sale in classroom B, just up the stairs. As you see, we have a large audience and time will not allow for much discussion there at the signing.
Ms. Chang will be speaking here again on Tuesday, from 12:30 to 2:00, a Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies event. You may call 488-6162 for a reservation.
Iris Chang received her bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Illinois, Urbana in 1988 and received her master’s degree in writing from the Writing Seminars Graduate Program at the Johns Hopkins University in 1991.
She is also the author of Thread of the Silk Worm and has written for the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Associated Press. She is the recipient of a John T. And Catherine D. McArthur Foundation Award, as well as grants from the National Science Foundation and the Harry Truman Library.
The Rape of Nanking has been on the New York Times best seller list for two months and on the best seller lists of the San Francisco Chronicle, the Wall Street Journal, the L.A. Times, the Washington Post and U.S.A. Today.
Before Ms. Chang, we will have a few words from Lung Ching Chow, Vice President of the co-sponsoring organization, Education and Science Society; Lung Ching.
Good afternoon. It heartens me to see a full audience here today. I am Lung Ching Chow. On behalf of the American -- Chinese American Forum and Education Science Society who have helped sponsor this program today, I welcome you.
We are here today to learn a significant event in World War II. A story of war-time atrocity, committed by the Imperial Japanese Army in 1937 in Nanking, China.
We are here also today, sixty years later, to acknowledge a truth, which has been long overlooked by the world, existing only in the memory of Chinese and oversea Chinese communities. We welcome Ms. Chang as historian and author of the book, The Rape of Nanking, Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. The book has reviewed a previously neglected story of brutality and deep violation of human dignity, a shock to our historical consciousness. The excavation of the truth forces us to recognize the holocaust of Chinese when we are still remembering the horror stories of the holocaust of European Jews.
We thank Ms. Chang for her meticulous research analysis in her writing the book, The Rape of Nanking. We also thank the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum for its sponsorship of this program. Both Ms. Chang and the Museum have provided the three hundred thousand victims and their families a forum, a court of justice, to tell their stories too long ignored. It is only through this recognition of this truth and the rememberings of the victim, we have a responsibility as a citizen of the world to remember, to learn from the true history, and to never to allow such things happen again. Thank you.
Greetings. It is a great honor to be here and I want to thank all of you for coming to the Holocaust Museum this afternoon to learn about a very ugly part of World War II history that some of you may be hearing about for the first time.
We all know about the horrors committed by Nazi Germany during the Jewish Holocaust and we all know about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and how its aftermath launched a dangerous new nuclear age. These events have seared our collective awareness and form the scar tissue that we now recognize as world history.
But unfortunately, as Americans, we are by and large blissfully ignorant of the wounds left by the Japanese during the Pacific holocaust of World War II and by this I mean the atrocities committed by the Japanese against the Chinese, the Southeast Asians, the Koreans, the Filipinos and even our own American citizens.
Few Americans know that the Japanese invasion of China launched an 8-year war, which ultimately killed more than 19 million Chinese people. Few Americans also know that the Japanese lured, purchased, or kidnapped, hundreds of thousands of Asian women for sexual slavery for their Imperial Army -- women who were subjected to some of the most horrifying experiences inflicted on military prostitutes in history.
What I’m going to do this afternoon is use The Rape of Nanking, the subject of my new book, as just one example to illustrate what the Japanese did in many of the regions that they conquered.
Sixty years ago, in December 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army invaded the city of Nanking, then the capital of China, and within weeks the Japanese not only looted and burned the defenseless city, but systematically raped, murdered and tortured more than 300,000 Chinese civilians.
Three hundred thousand people might not seem like a huge number until you add some visual data to the statistic. One historian has estimated that if the dead from Nanking were to link hands, they would stretch from Nanking to the city of Hangchow, spanning a distance of some 200 miles. Their blood would weigh 1,200 tons and their bodies would fill 2,500 railroad cars stacked on top of each other. These bodies would reach the height of a 74-story building.
Also, 300,000 people might not seem like a huge number, until you place this in the context of World War II history. More people died in Nanking than from the atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. In fact the death toll of Nanking exceeds the total civilian casualty count of several European countries combined for all of World War II. So, in other words, if you add up the World War II civilian casualties for three countries -- England, France and Belgium -- for the entire war, that would still be less than the number of people who died in Nanking, just one Chinese city, in a matter of 6 to 8 weeks. But, unfortunately, numbers do not tell the full story. There was a degree of torture and suffering in Nanking that almost defies human comprehension.
An American missionary who was there said it was hell on earth. Women were nailed to walls or impaled after being raped, or nailed to boards and run over by army tanks. Men were hanged by their tongues on iron hooks, or buried waist down in the soil so that they could be torn apart by German Shepherd dogs. Even small children were not spared: babies were tossed in the air and bayoneted on the way down, or thrown into vats of boiling water. The orgy of violence was so brutal in Nanking that even the Nazis in the city were shocked.
This was not, as some Japanese may claim today, a massacre that was perpetrated in the heat of battle against Chinese guerrilla fighters or secret Chinese gangs, as one Japanese official put it. This was a cold, systematic massacre, perpetrated against innocent Chinese civilians and unarmed POWs after the city had fallen to the Japanese. A massacre that came as a directive from some of the highest levels of Japanese power.
The military had issued a kill-all-captives order at the time and the Japanese soldiers carried out this order, even though most of the Chinese POWs had thrown away their arms and surrendered and posed absolutely no threat to the Japanese. In their zeal to find Chinese soldiers, the Japanese Imperial Army killed rickshaw pullers, police officers, laborers and other men whom they merely suspected were soldiers. And during the first few days of the massacre, the Japanese machine-gunned tens of thousands of Chinese men, buried them alive, used them for decapitation contests or bayonet practice, or sprayed them with gasoline and set them on fire. Some of these executions were efficient, but there were Chinese men who died under the most slow, sadistic and excruciatingly painful circumstances. They were skinned alive, crucified, pricked to death by needles and even cannibalized.
The slaughter was so systematic that even Japanese reporters on the scene were horrified. Here are some excerpts from their dispatches to show how their shock spilled into print. Emie Masatocki, a Japanese military correspondent, wrote:
On Hsiakwan wharves, there was the dark silhouette of a mountain made of dead bodies. About 50 to 100 people were toiling there, dragging bodies from the mountain of corpses and throwing them into the Yangtze River. The bodies dripped blood, some of them still alive and moaning weakly, their limbs twitching. The laborers were busy working in total silence, as in a pantomime. In the dark, one could barely see the opposite bank of the river. On the pier was a field of glistening mud under the moon’s dim light. Wow! That’s all blood!
After a while, the coolies had done their job of dragging corpses and the soldiers lined them up along the river. Rat-a-tat machine-gun fire could be heard. The coolies fell backward into the river and were swallowed by the raging currents. The pantomime was over.
A Japanese officer at the scene estimated that 20,000 persons had been executed.
Yukio Omata, another correspondent, wrote the following:
Those in the first row were beheaded. Those in the second row were forced to dump the severed bodies into the river before they themselves were beheaded. The killing went on nonstop from morning until night, but they were only able to kill 2,000 persons in this way. The next day, tired of killing in this fashion, they set up machine guns. Two of them raked a cross-fire at the lined-up prisoners, rat-a-tat-tat. Triggers were pulled. The prisoners fled into the water, but no one was able to make it to the other shore.
Kawano Hiroki, a Japanese photojournalist, wrote:
Before the “Ceremony of Entering the City,” I saw 50 to 100 bodies drifting down the Yangtze River. Did they die in battle, or were they killed after being taken prisoner? Or were they slaughtered civilians?
I remember there was a pond just outside of Nanking. It looked like a sea of blood -- with splendid colors. If only I had color film … what a shocking shot that would have been.
Now, after killing most of the men in the city in this manner, the Japanese then turned their attention on the Chinese women. And the rape of Nanking is, without a doubt, the worst mass rape of World War II history and probably the second worse mass rape of world history. The Japanese Imperial Army raped great-grandmothers over the age of 80, children under the age of 8, they sliced open little girls who were simply not built for rape and even gang-raped pregnant women before tearing fetuses from their bellies. One man who saw the mutilated remains of many of these raped victims was John Rabe, a German national and Siemens company executive.
Rabe was one of the organizers of the Nanking Safety Zone Committee, a group of some 20 western foreigners who designated a 2.5 square mile area, within the city, as neutral territory off limits to the Japanese. This safety zone would eventually harbor 300,000 Chinese refugees and protect them from being massacred by the Japanese. Ironically enough, Rabe was not only the head of the Zone Committee, but also the head of the local Nazi party in Nanking, which has earned him the title of being “the Oskar Schindler of China.”
Let me read to you about what Rabe wrote about the Japanese treatment of Chinese people in his report to Adolf Hitler:
Groups of 3-10 marauding soldiers would begin by traveling through the city and robbing whatever there was to steal. They would continue by raping the women and girls and killing anything and anyone that offered any resistance, attempted to run away from them, or simply happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. There were girls under the age of 8 and women over the age of 70 who were raped and then, in the most brutal way possible, knocked down and beat up. We found corpses of women on beer glasses and others who had been lanced by bamboo shoots. I saw the victims with my own eyes -- I talked with some of them right before their deaths and had their bodies brought to the morgue at the Kulo hospital, so that I could be personally convinced that all of these reports had touched upon the truth.
Now, I won’t burden you with any more of the gruesome details of the mass rape, but I must point out that the Japanese army officials in Nanking not only sanctioned this mass rape, but encouraged it. There is plenty of evidence to show that the Japanese officers told soldiers that it was perfectly acceptable to rape as long as they disposed of the evidence afterwards, which meant, of course, disposing of the actual rape victims afterwards. The Japanese officers also joined in with the rape with the Japanese soldiers and even one of the top commanders, Ohta Hisao, single-handedly violated more than 20 women in the city.
All in all, the Japanese raped more than 20,000 women and girls in Nanking and some estimate that the figure could be as high as 80,000. But the full effects of the rape can not be measured on a tally sheet of statistics.
Can you imagine the agony of the woman who survived weeks of gang rape by the Japanese soldiers, only to find herself pregnant afterwards, or of the woman who faced the choice of murdering her own child, or rearing a half-Japanese child she could never love? No doubt many Chinese women simply could not make that choice and for months after the great rape a German diplomat noted that uncounted numbers of women were taking their own lives by flinging themselves into the Yangtze River.
Now, ironically, the rape of Nanking did more than destroy the lives of individual women in Nanking. It also resulted in the creation of a giant underground system of military prostitution, which trapped hundreds of thousand of Asian women into sexual slavery to the Japanese army. It is believed that the Japanese rape of women in Nanking had caused such a public outcry among western nations at the time, that the Japanese government tried to control the libido of the army by starting their own prostitution ring. And, so, an estimated 200,000 women, most of them Korean, but many also from other Asian countries, were forced to serve in what the Japanese government called “facilities of sexual comfort” to stop troops from raping women in regions they controlled in China.
The Japanese established their first comfort station in the Nanking region, close to Shanghai, shortly after the Nanking massacre in 1938. Decades later the Japanese tried to insist that these brothels were run by private entrepreneurs and not the wartime government. But, a Japanese professor by the name of Dr. Yoshiaki Yoshimi discovered concrete evidence in a Japanese government archives that the system was indeed authorized by officials of the Japanese high command. Now, many of these comfort women, some of them still teenagers or children when captured, were raped by as many as 20, 30 or 50 men a night, every night, for years during the war. Untold numbers of these women, whom the Japanese called “public toilets,” took their own lives when they heard their destiny, and countless others died from disease or murder.
The treatment of these comfort women is another untold horror that could fill volumes, even libraries, of atrocity books. Some women were raped by red hot iron rods so that the Japanese could sterilize them from venereal diseases. Some were hacked to small pieces, or rolled over nail-studded boards when they protested their treatment, their remains given to other comfort women to eat, as a warning to those who dared defy the Japanese Imperial Army.
The Japanese committed so many atrocities like this, in Nanking and elsewhere, that it is impossible to mention them all in a single speech. I only have time to mention a few of the worst crimes against humanity. I can’t even go into all the looting and arson and property destruction that was practiced systematically by the Japanese army in Nanking. But, just so you know, they burned down at least a third of the city, under the direction of Japanese officers, and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. In the business districts of Nanking, Japanese soldiers loaded loot from department stores and companies into their army trucks before setting the buildings on fire. And often before they torched these buildings, they would force nearby civilians into these buildings, tear down the fire escapes and then set the structures on fire. The panicked civilians trapped inside would climb to the rooftops before jumping off to their deaths. Japanese soldiers were even seen laughing hysterically and taking photographs.
You should also know the Joseph Mengele-like medical experimentation that the Japanese practiced on the Nanking civilians after the massacre and elsewhere in China, such as in the notorious Unit 731 medical laboratory in Manchuria. In Nanking, the Japanese operated a secret medical lab, called Ei 1644, in which they fed or injected human guinea pigs with cyanide, snake poison, germs and lethal gasses. They killed about 10 people weekly in this manner and then incinerated the bodies. But in Unit 731 in Manchuria, they killed even more people, performing horrendous experiments and even vivisection without anesthesia on Chinese and American prisoners.
All of these stories, of course, beg the question of why this happened in the first place. The true reasons behind the rape of Nanking remain one of the great mysteries of world history. We will never know exactly what transpired behind the scenes, but scholars have, over the years, come up with various theories. And they have speculated that the Japanese, frustrated by Chinese resistance, wanted to make an example of the capital of China.
One problem was that many of the top Japanese officials seriously believed that they could conquer all of China within three months of invasion. But, when the battle of Shanghai alone lasted that long, it destroyed Japanese dreams of an easy victory. And the Japanese conquered Shanghai, finally, only after a protracted battle in the winter of 1937. And it was said that the Japanese army lusted for revenge as it marched from Shanghai to Nanking.
Still, it is difficult to fathom exactly why the Japanese were so brutal in Nanking as to completely disregard the value of human life. And I can only offer several theories as to why it happened. One possible reason is rooted in the soldier’s early boyhood training, which inculcated him for violence. Let us place this boyhood in the context of the times. In the 1920s and early 1930s, Japanese society was reeling from severe economic depression and political instability. When ultranationalist fanatics urged expansionism into China and even world domination to cure Japanese economic woes, people were willing to listen. And under their influence, Japan became an intensely militaristic culture. In school, Japanese teachers instilled in young boys hatred and contempt for Chinese people, to prepare them psychologically for a future invasion of the mainland.
One historian wrote how a Japanese schoolboy in the 1930s burst into tears when he was ordered to dissect a frog. His teacher slapped him and yelled “why are you crying about one lousy frog, when you grow up, you’ll have to kill 100, 200 Chinks.”
A second reason may lie in the dehumanizing training that the Japanese soldiers were forced to undergo. The atmosphere of violence, the pressure to conform to authority, only intensified if the Japanese schoolboy decided to become a soldier. Vicious hazing in the Japanese army usually squelched from these boys any residual spirit of individualism.
Japanese officers and older soldiers slapped new recruits for almost no reason at all, beat them severely with heavy wooden rods, or forced them to perform humiliating tasks such as washing the underwear of superiors.
In such a brutal climate it is easy to see how months of pent-up frustration, within the Japanese soldier, could have exploded into uncontrollable violence in Nanking. The Japanese soldier, after all, had endured in silence whatever his superior had chosen to deal out to him. And now the Chinese had to take whatever he chose to deal out to them. This training included killing exercises employed by the Japanese army to desensitize soldiers to acts of torture. The following story, which was written by a former recruit, is typical of the training that they receive and I will read it:
One day Second Lieutenant Ono said to us, “You have never killed anyone yet. So, today we shall have some killing practice. You must not consider the Chinese as a human being, but only as something of rather less value than a dog or cat. Be brave. Now, those who wish to volunteer for killing practice, step forward.
No one moved. The lieutenant lost his temper.
“You cowards,” he shouted. “Not one of you is fit to call himself a Japanese soldier. So, no one will volunteer? Well, then I’ll order you.” And he began to call out names. Otani -- Furukawa -- Ueno -- Tajima! (My God, me too!)
I raised my bayoneted gun with trembling hands, and -- directed by the lieutenant’s almost hysterical cursing -- I walked slowly toward the terror-stricken Chinese standing beside the pit -- the grave he helped to dig. In my heart, I begged his pardon, and -- with my eyes shut and the lieutenant’s curses in my ears, I plunged the bayonet into the petrified Chinese. When I opened my eyes again, he had slumped down into the pit. “Murderer! Criminal!” I called myself.
Now, aside from these killing contests and killing exercises, we must also factor in the role of religion. One former Japanese soldier said he had been reared to believe that the Japanese emperor was the natural holy ruler of the world. And that the Japanese was racially superior to the rest of the world and that it was the divine destiny of Japan to control Asia. And so, when a local Christian priest asked him, who is greater, God or the emperor of Japan, he had no doubt that “the emperor” was the correct answer.
The religious component is important, because it was exploited by the Japanese army to cheapen all human life, not just Chinese life. One Japanese soldier told me that it was easy for him and his comrades to take Chinese lives, because they didn’t even value their own lives. Next to the emperor, he told me, all human life was meaningless. He was taught that loyalty was as heavy as a mountain and that his own life was as light as a feather. And that the greatest honor for a Japanese soldier in war was to come home dead.
Now, what I find chilling about the rape of Nanking is that many of the perpetrators were not, by nature, psychopaths or diabolical serial killer types. They were ordinary men who were handed rifles and bayonets and put under the extraordinary stresses and circumstances of war. And many of them became model citizens once they returned to Japan, citizens respected by their neighbors, who would find it today next to impossible to believe they had once been ruthless murderers, torturers or rapists.
I make this point because I believe that the Japanese are not uniquely capable of these kinds of atrocities. I think all people are capable of them if put under the right social and cultural circumstances. What is unique about Japan is that it is one of the few countries from World War II that has evaded punishment for its crimes.
The Rape of Nanking is really the story of two rapes. The first rape happened 60 years ago. The second rape is ongoing and it is the rape of history and justice. To this very day, the Japanese take no responsibility for these atrocities, even though the wartime government gave the order to commit them. And there are politicians in Japan who have gone on the record to deny that any of these atrocities happened at all.
But, I want to stress here, there is no lack of evidence on the Nanking massacre, or other Japanese atrocities of World War II. There are literally hundreds of survivors still alive in Nanking today who can testify about the massacre there. And in the course of my research alone, I found thousands upon thousands of unpublished primary-source documentations on the rape of Nanking: diaries, eyewitness reports, letters, government dispatches. They were generated contemporaneously with the event in four different languages: English, German, Chinese and Japanese. Also, the New York Times, the Chicago Daily News, the Associated Press, Readers Digest, Life magazine, all devoted considerable space at the time to news coverage of the massacre and newsreel footage of the horror still exists.
But to a shocking degree the Japanese have escaped the moral and financial responsibility that their counterparts in Germany had to face over and over again. The Germans, for example, have paid the equivalent of 60 billion U.S. dollars to their victims. And they will continue to pay several more billion by the year 2005. The Japanese, in contrast, have paid almost nothing. And certainly not one penny in reparations to the victims of Nanking. The Germans have made profuse apologies to their victims. But the Japanese, on the other hand, have yet to deliver one sincere apology to the survivors of the Nanking massacre or their families. In fact, several Japanese officials have openly proclaimed that the massacre never happened at all, or dismiss it as a minor incident, much overblown.
Even more disturbing is the discrepancy in public education in both countries on the event. The Germans are required by law to teach the history of the Jewish Holocaust in their schools. And even with this law, we still have a problem with neo-Nazism and people in Germany denying that the Holocaust ever happened. But the Japanese, far from mandating the study of its World War II aggression, have openly impeded efforts of textbook authors to do so and have even censored details of the Nanking atrocities and other wartime crimes from their school textbooks.
What I find the most outrageous of all is the fact that the Japanese continue to worship their class A war criminals in the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo. These criminals were men who carried the Japanese master race militarism to the point where it resulted in the Japanese soldiers seeing the lives and sensibilities of other races as having no greater consequence than the suffering of insects. And the worship of these men is not only morally reprehensible, but the source of a tremendous anguish to victims of the Japanese throughout Asia. And I think it is behavior that would never be tolerated if its parallel was practiced in Europe. The Japanese worship of these criminals is considered by many to be the moral and political equivalent of moving statues of Hitler and his cronies into the biggest cathedral of Berlin and worshipping them as gods.
Now, I find all of this sickening of course, but it might not be too late to seek justice for some of the surviving victims. Last year, Congressman William Lipinski, a Democrat from Illinois, introduced a bill denouncing the Japanese for their crimes, and demanded in the bill both a formal apology and reparations for the victims. The rape of Nanking is only one event in a long list of atrocities mentioned in the bill. And other victims mentioned in the bill include those who were subjected to the Bataan death march, the Korean comfort women, the subjects of the diabolic medical experiments inflicted on live American and Chinese prisoners by Japanese doctors in the notorious Unit 731 laboratory in Manchuria.
I urge any American with a conscience to help turn this bill into law. If passed, this bill will not only help Asians who endured outrages, such as the rape of Nanking, but American veterans who survived conditions in Japan far worse than even those in Nazi camps. One in twenty-five Americans died in Nazi captivity. One in three died under Japanese captivity.
In the end, I believe the truth will prevail. The truth is indestructible and the truth recognizes no national boundaries or political allegiances. If there is just one thing that you take home from my discussion here this afternoon, it is that we, as human beings, have a moral responsibility to seek out the truth, to force countries like Japan to face up to their past and to try to prevent atrocities like the rape of Nanking from ever happening again. Thank you, so much.
Audience Member
Ms. Chang, I want to congratulate you for the honesty of your research. I have followed the rape of Nanking and the sinking of the Panai (phonetic spelling) for sixty years. I wrote a college essay on it at that time. After graduating college I was two years with the United States Army in China and with G three work. I was in Nanking on the day of the surrender, 1945. I was the first American to be in Chi Ling (phonetic spelling) College after the occupation. I’ve had dozens and dozens of people told me these stories and missionaries, people of China. And, so, I’ve waited all these years for somebody to tell the story. Thank you.
Iris Chang
Thank you. I’m honored that you took the time to come here this afternoon, all of you.
Audience Member
First of all, I want to thank you for your research and memory of the tragic victims of Nanking. I was a child born in Shanghai and as a child during the Japanese occupation, I can tell you later on, after the war, I never heard a thing about the rape of Nanking. It was hidden and my question, you mentioned during the 1937, that the western powers were in uproar, it was written in New York Post -- New York Times, et cetera. Why wasn’t there a bigger outcry? We know the League of Nations was very weak. But, my question, why wasn’t it? Was it because it was Asia, a yellow country, the time of racism, et cetera, because there didn’t seem to be any uproar and I lived in China quite some time after the war and never heard about it. And I thank you.
Iris Chang
Thank you. I think that may have played, certainly, a role in the neglect of this episode in world history. We have to keep in mind that after 1949, neither the People’s Republic of China, nor the Republic of China in Taiwan really wanted to push the issue, because ironically, they were now pitted against each other and needed Japan for economic and political support. So, I think that, cold war politics, was the major culprit.
Also, in the United States, the U.S. then sought to empower Japan, because it needed a stable base to counter the forces of Communism in Asia. And so, the entire royal family in Japan was not prosecuted. And, in fact, the entire war-time bureaucracy of Japan, virtually remained in tact after the war too. So, this contributed to, I think, censorship of materials and suppression of the truth in Japan. But, I think it’s a disgrace that this episode of history has been neglected for so long. And I think that we, as Americans, tend to have a Euro-centric view of history, but I think that that is changing now. I am deeply touched and moved by the response that this book has received and I think that many more books of this nature will be written soon.
Any other questions?
Audience Member
Hi, Ms. Chang. I just want to thank you for writing this book. I think your scholarship helps us younger Chinese/Americans make that link to what happened over there to what’s happening now and to understand our parents. I have two quick questions.
How hopeful do you -- are you in seeing the Japanese government one day acknowledging what they did in Nanking and all over Asia?
And secondly, who, or what organization will spearhead this effort to demand the Japanese government to acknowledge their doings? That is, do you see any Chinese group, or Chinese American group --
Iris Chang
Uh-huh.
Audience Member
-- to undertake this effort?
Iris Chang
I think if pressure is brought to bear in Japan it will have to come from overseas Chinese people. Also, from Americans who -- who may support the Lipinski bill. Also, victims of the Nanking massacre and other atrocities, who are now starting to, I think, file class A action lawsuits against the Japanese from American courts. This is all happening now, so I hear.
I -- I don’t know -- I’m not too optimistic that the Japanese government will, on its own initiate, come forward to pay reparations to make these apologies. There is a vocal minority of Japanese nationals who are risking their lives even to pressure the government to do so. Their -- they include the supporters of Anaga Supero (phonetic spelling), who is a textbook author and historian, who has battled the ministry of education for three decades to try to stop them from censoring textbooks on World War II atrocities. And so, I think it would take those kinds of Japanese nationals, people with that kind of courage to -- to -- to bring about change. What’s very unfortunate is, I think, that by and large, the Japanese public remains ignorant of the -- of the role that the Japanese Imperial -- Imperial Army played in Asia. And I think -- I remember reading that Japanese school children, when they were taught in the 90s that the U.S. had been at war with Japan, the first question they had was, which side won.
And I had the opportunity to talk to a Japanese psychology professor at a university about this, when he was visiting San Francisco. And he said that same question, which side one, had been posed to him by Japanese college students. So, it’s -- it’s appalling, I think, how they’ve neglected this, in the teaching of -- of history. And I hope that will change.
Audience Member
I was aware of the rape in Nanking. And there was another massacre that occurred in Manila in March, 1945, under Mafahito Homa (phonetic spelling) and I was wondering if you had some comments on that massacre and if there’s been anything written about that. That also involved --
Iris Chang
You’re talking about the rape of Manila?
Audience Member
Yes.
Iris Chang
Yes.
Audience Member
That involved, I think, several hundred thousand Filipinos also being butchered. I was wondering if you could make any comments and also if there are any reference works on that.
Iris Chang
I think it’s a very important subject. I don’t think there’s been a very popular book about the rape of Manila in English. Actually, I felt so strongly about it that every time Filipino authors came to listen to me speak, I say, you should write a book on the subject. Because, I, personally, would like to see the story come out and some people have suggested that I write it. But, I really think that it’s best left up to a Filipino American author. Another untold horror story that -- that really needs to be brought to light.
Audience Member
You make the -- you make the important observation that textbooks are so critical in helping young people learn about the world that they live in. If you could bring together textbook publishers from China, Japan and the United States, as well as high school students from those countries, what recommendation, specifically, would you make to them about how they render this story?
Iris Chang
Well, I think certainly they should mention the statistics. I mean, we should understand the scale of the massacre, that more than three hundred thousand people were killed. Because, in Japan today, textbooks -- some now do mention the massacre, but sometimes they -- they obscure the numbers. They’ll say, well, only fifty thousand to a hundred thousand, which is incorrect.
So, I think too, that there has to be some information in those books that reveal not only the scale, but the means of torture. And what’s -- what’s interesting, actually what has happened in the last few years, is that San Francisco has mandated the inclusion of the history of the rape of Nanking and other wartime atrocities in their -- in their school curricula and that’s what the school board has done. And we hope that this will happen throughout the country. So, thank you.
Dan Shapiro
I was -- my name is Dan Shapiro. I was a year behind you at University High School in Champaign.
Iris Chang
Oh, hi.
Dan Shapiro
I just wanted to say hi and you’ve made your old classmate --
Iris Chang
Great to see you.
Dan Shapiro
-- very proud. Also, the question was, if there are any plans to translate the book into Japanese and if and when it is, if you anticipate any problems getting it distributed widely in Japan?
Iris Chang
The book has, actually not been translated into Japanese, even though numerous Japanese scholars, in both this country and Japan, have contacted me, hoping to do so. And the main reason why it hasn’t happened is because no Japanese publisher has yet stepped forward to purchase the translation rights for the book. And this didn’t surprise me. David Caplan, who wrote a ground breaking book on the Aucusa (phonetic spelling), was actually black listed by all major Japanese publishers as well. And it took a very small, left wing, radical house in Japan to publish his book in Japanese and it became an instant best seller. So, maybe this is what’s going to have to happen here.
One thing that is actually quite alarming is that the Rabe diaries, which -- which actually I had found by tracking down the descendants, have been translated now into Japanese. And I have been told by numerous Japanese scholars that this -- that there has been some tampering within the diaries, that the Japanese -- that when you compare the Japanese language edition of the Rabe diaries whit the actual original German text, that not only did the publisher delete some phrases, but they also inserted phrases that weren’t there. The person who made this observation is actually being -- is facing a defamation lawsuit from another scholar, because the scholar who discovered the discrepancy had criticized a Japanese revisionist historian, for his assertion that no gas chambers were used to destroy the Jews in Europe, that there were no gas chambers at all in Europe. And after writing a critical article, he faced, you know, a giant law suit. And so, we have to look at how, I think, not just -- we have to look, not just at the black-listing of certain books by publishing houses, but also the use of intimidation by -- by the legal system in Japan to suppress critics of -- of the right wing. Thank you.
Audience Member
First of all, let me as a fellow alumni to congratulate you. I took my --
Iris Chang
This is quite a reunion.
Audience Member
I took my Ph.D. before probably you were born. My question is this: I understand, you know, a week’s time, the Vatican is going to issue a report on its role in the holocaust in Europe. My question is: What is the role of ministry, western ministry in China at that time to help, or if, you know, the Chinese people being massacred?
Iris Chang
Western missionaries, you said?
Audience Member
Uh-huh.
Iris Chang
Well, the thing is, I think that the efforts of the international safety zone committee in Nanking is one example of the heroism that we saw among American missionaries who were in the committee, as well as other nationals. That’s -- that’s a field, I think, that is a subject has to be left up to other scholars, but I think that there is a tremendous story that’s just waiting to be told.
Audience Member
Thank you.
Iris Chang
Thank you.
Bob Carola
My name is Bob Carola (phonetic spelling). My father actually fought in the Pacific during World War II. He’s also -- was also a high school history teacher. So, I think I grew up hearing about Nanking as well as other stories from the war, but also have realized that I probably take for granted how much my generation is probably is unaware of the history in both hemispheres. The question I have is, in any of your research, did you encounter any accounts of Nanking women who did raise half Japanese children, and if so, what might have happened to them?
Iris Chang
Okay. I’m glad you asked the question, because, I, myself, was looking for examples of heroism among Japanese soldiers who may have been killed in trying to save Chinese lives, or trying to stop the slaughter, but I could not find one. Maybe I just didn’t look hard enough and maybe these stories will emerge. But, I -- I personally did not come across this. It’s very difficult to find Japanese veterans willing to step forward and discuss what they did during World War II. In fact, Shira Azuma (phonetic spelling), the first Japanese veteran to public apologize for his role during the rape of Nanking, received so many death threats, he had to go into hiding. And he’s surrounded himself with an arsenal of weapons in his home right now. So, as you could imagine, there’s not a huge database of stories to tap into.
And secondly, I too was looking for some story of a Japanese -- of a Chinese woman who had been raped by Japanese soldiers, who may have given birth to a half-Japanese child and who had reared him. There must be many of these women. Unfortunately, when I contacted the officials at the Nanking Massacre Museum to find these women, they said, we don’t know of any such women. And we -- we have never in the history of -- of the museum, ever had a woman step forward to say that her son or daughter was the result of rape. I don’t know if that’s true, it may very well be true. I suggested, maybe, running advertisements in the Nanking papers, but they discouraged me from doing that. So, I would -- I would very much like to know the answer to that question. Thank you.
Audience Member
Iris, thank you very much for your great humanity work on your -- this book. My question is that and also thank you very much for bringing up the Korean comfort women. It’s been widely known in Korea, but it’s -- it’s a -- well, even though a lot of woman dying, they come up from the class and they made public, but those women died. It’s -- thank you so much for bringing it up here too. And my -- I have two questions that, in the individual level, I’ve come up with a lot of Japanese friends that -- who come here for studying or for some work and always there’s a question what -- what they have thought about, whether they have an opinion about it. And the other question is, our country like to pay for everything. And those are already passed and I don’t have anything to do with. And so, they even raise question that -- or maybe -- the Korean people and Chinese people are so soft and they don’t have any justice to fight against it. And why don’t you fight at that time and to just bring those things at this now and you even ask more money for those things we did. And that’s my question. And do you agree with those -- the opinion, or even the second one is that it, as an individual level, what -- what can I do -- I mean, for those, you know, bring up this question. I want to make friends, but it’s very difficulty to that level --
Iris Chang
Right.
Audience Member
-- you know -- that I can even challenge them, even, maybe, you know, becoming -- is friends with.
Iris Chang
Exactly. Yeah. I’m glad you brought up this point. It is often very hard to find those in Japan who -- who are willing to work with peace activists in this country to bring these issues to the forefront. But, they are out there and maybe afterwards I can direct you. I could maybe help give you some names of people you can contact.
There is an organization in -- in these country called the Global Alliance for Preserving the History of World War II in Asia. They’ve got chapters, I think, in -- definitely in Washington DC there are representatives of people from that organization here this afternoon and also there are people all over the world who are working together.
And I -- it’s -- it’s very sad to see how some people react to this issue in Japan. But, there are those in Japan who, as I said before, are actually risking their lives to make sure that -- that the comfort women get some form of publicity or justice.
Angie Hall
My name is Angie Hall. I’m doing a Jewish studies. While I was doing this field, I realized -- I came across some holocaust experience. I noticed that there are some Japanese who were in Eastern Europe and they rescued some Jewish people. And so -- so they were seen by, even the whole world, as a rescuer, to save these Jewish people from holocaust. And then there is another small Jewish community in Shanghai.
Iris Chang
Uh-huh.
Angie Hall
Okay. I’m kind of confused by this Jewish -- no, Japanese psychology at that period. On the one hand they are rescuers, on the other hand, they are killers. So, I wanted to know if you could offer an explanation. I mean, through --
Iris Chang
Oh, I --
Angie Hall
-- your research experience. And also, if you have already come across some of the Jewish witnesses in America who used to be in China and how is your experience?
Iris Chang
Well, I think that in the history of every war you’re going to find some courageous individuals who are going to stand against the mob and the grain of society to do what they believe is -- is right. They’re usually in the minority. That this kind of tendency recognizes of course, no race, no national -- nationality and no religion. And that’s why we do see heroism often among Japanese people, Japanese nationalist, Nazis even and, you know, during World War II. And the second question you had was, you had -- oh, you had, about the Jewish community in Shanghai. Actually, I’ve -- I believe that there may soon be a move about Shanghai made from -- a film director who grew up in that community, a Mike Medavoi (phonetic spelling), I think, is planning to put out an epic film starring Kevin Costner. So, I mean, I’ve -- I’ve heard -- I’ve heard -- I’ve actually -- you know -- I’m certainly aware of this community and, you know, and I think that soon we may be learning more about this when that film comes out. Yes.
Audience Member
We have this impressive museum here to remember the holocaust and your presence here suggests that we have to think of it in worldwide, global terms. The Chinese have also created their own museum in Nanking to commemorate, to remember the Rape of Nanking. And I wonder if you’ve seen this and if not, why not? And if you have, whether, at what point in your research you may have seen it and whether it had any impact upon your own thinking of the -- of the Rape of Nanking and historical memory?
Iris Chang
I did see the Rape of Nanking Museum in Nanjing. And I think it’s -- it’s wonderful that the government there has taken the effort to preserve the archival materials and -- on the subject and that they have made some effort to -- to create a monument for it. There’s even some talk, actually, amount wealthy Beverly Hills Chinese of creating a Pacific Holocaust Museum in Los Angeles.
So, for all of you who may visit Nanking the future, I recommend that you do visit the memorial hall for the victims of the Japanese in Nanking. It’s -- it’s open to the public.
Audience Member
Iris, I would just like ask you, why does the Chinese government in Beijing remain silent now, when they don’t need the Japanese money, if they’re so -- so kind of wealthy, who -- why do the Chinese government keep quiet now?
Iris Chang
It’s often very difficult for me to understand what the motives are of all the Chinese officials. I think the situation is changing for the better. A few years ago, I think they were very cautions about scholars who came to Nanking to do research, because the -- the Tiananmen Square massacre created an atmosphere of paranoia in China. But now, you know, I mean, they’ve had that Nanking Massacre Museum for the last ten years and they -- and I’ve -- and they permitted a demonstration of more than a hundred thousand people in -- in Nanking to commemorate the -- the deaths of the -- of -- you know -- the victims in Nanking. So, I --- I -- only time can tell. I mean, I know that they are concerned, of course, about jeopardizing their trade relations with Japan and they do have literally billions of dollars of Japanese investments in China and that’s certainly a consideration. But, we may soon see, for all we know, some action taken by the PRC. But, it’s very hard to find out what their motives are. Yes.
Audience Member
Thank you, Iris, for including and addressing comfort women issues in your lecture.
Iris Chang
Thank you.
Audience Member
Since there was a question from the floor concerning comfort women, If I may, I want to answer about -- to the question. There is a strong organization in support of our mission, your mission and my mission, for the address of violation against humanity, during World War II by Japanese. I am president of Washington Coalition for Comfort Women Issues, here in Washington D.C. and I want to make a brief announcement -- announcement that there are going to be exhibit, two weeks, exhibit at U.S. Congress at Cannon House Office Building from June the 1st through June 13th, two weeks, concerning, highlighting comfort women issues and I want to extend invitations to all, including you, Iris. Thank you, very much.
Iris Chang
Thank you. Yes.
Leah Silverstein
My name is Leah Silverstein. I first heard about the rape of Nanking from my Chinese friends, Paul and Ann Ho (phonetic spelling) and then I saw your book and I browsed through it. And I said to myself, how good it is that people stand up and talk about these things, because usually people don’t want to hear about atrocities. As a holocaust survivor of the Jewish Holocaust in Europe, I know, personally, how hard it is to talk about these things. And that’s why it’s extremely important that the whole civilized world stands up and fights against every holocaust that happened and we hope that it will never happen again.
When I was listening to you, I could identify with certain very important points that you make. Namely, how come that civilized people do such things. And then they return to normal life, as if nothing has happened. The same thing happened to us -- I mean, we also saw the Germans, the killing squads, who were going around and were -- killing was normal. And then they returned to their normal life and they got away with it. So, again, I thank you very much for writing the book, for standing up and for talking and for your excellent presentation.
Iris Chang
Thank you, so much. I agree, remembrance is our only hope. Hello.
Audience Member
Hi. I do have a short question and then I do want, if you could recognize, there’s -- there’s a witness in this audience and his name is Gregory Rodriguez, Gregory. His father was captured by the Japanese -- by the Japanese during the war and sent to Manchuria and he can tell you the story better than I do. But, anyway, he is -- his father is a witness, is with him and we have somebody here showing that unit seven thirty-one did experiment with Americans. That’s a big question. And I do have a question for you, which is, I talked a lot of reporters, Japanese reporters. Their first question is, why should Japan apologize for their atrocity, while the United States, they apologize for the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombing?
Iris Chang
This question -- this subject has come up several times. And it’s a -- its a very controversial one, of course. But, these are two separate issues, of course. But, I would say that -- that you really have to -- the important thing here is -- is to look at -- look at the legacy of violence that was left behind by the rape of -- we -- we don’t want things like the Hiroshima/ Nagasaki and the rape of Nanking ever happening again. And I think that education is the only way to -- to approach this. But, as for, like, whether, you know, whether it was necessary, or right, to drop the atomic bombs, again, this is a subject that is very controversial and is going to be the subject of much debate in the future. And I think it deserves so, because it’s very frightening when we consider, that fundamentally, as people, we have -- we have not really changed that much from the days of the Jewish Holocaust or the Rape of Nanking. But yet, we possess now this frightening technology to annihilate the entire species, with -- with nuclear weapons. And so, I think that the more discussion that we have on these kinds of issues, the better. Thank you, so much.
Audience Member
I do want to say, thanks to the Holocaust Museum to held the conference. I really appreciate them.
Audience Member
Yes. We know there is a number of Chinese people attend this afternoon lecture. So, I think all our Chinese people will appreciate your good job. And even though my home town is Shanghai, near to the Nanking, about three or four hours of driving, I’m not very clear -- we now clear -- not very clear for the Nanking massacres.
So, after reading your books, we feel justice on this order existed. So, I think over one point two billion Chinese people will appreciate your great job. And I don’t know -- (applause) thank you. I don’t know the embassy of People’s Republic of China has a representative here or not.
Iris Chang
Actually, a representative from the PRC Embassy did come to my -- my appearance at Borders, this afternoon, actually. There was a television program called, Writers Block and he came and he made a statement as well. So --.
Audience Member
Okay, good. I think that they should arrange some -- you know -- kind of jobs to report this lecture happened in the United States, capital city, Washington D.C., to report on TV tonight, this is their job, right. So, you’ll see. American people attend this lecture. So, why we Chinese don’t want to pay any attention about it. Right. So, I don’t think they know that or not. As a Chinese, I very appreciate your great job. I regret, I didn’t do this job. My major, my master degree, major in mass communication, but you did that. Thank you, very much.
Iris Chang
Thank you, so much.
Audience Member
I wish you have a great -- great future. Thank you.
Min Pan
My name is Min Pan (phonetic spelling). I read -- I read your book and I always think Chinese need to speak out and you are the one right now. I’m so glad that you are the voice of our Chinese. And when I was little and I always heard my parents talk about Japanese -- Japanese in China, the crucial, the criminal action, killing and I -- I come from Canton and when we in the elementary school every year, bring some witness to talk about their experience. The story of the Japanese in Red China, we all tears and crying. And that’s true, the stories were true. And to answer the gentleman, the question before and he asked my Japanese to stand forward to prove and the truth with Nanking massacre. And I just know that read the newspaper, Chinese newspaper last week, there’s a Japanese soldier, now he’s eighty-two years old. And he’s very poor live in a small village far away from the Tokyo, he went to Nanking for twice to donate his diary to the government on Nanking. And what the trouble is, Japanese is -- have lawsuit against him. He’s old and poor --
Iris Chang
Yeah. This is Shira Azuma, the one I was mentioning earlier. I mean, he’s facing a liable lawsuit. After he published his diary, from the rape of Nanking, he -- the diary describes how his superior officer stuffed a Chinese man into a mail sack in Nanking and then set it on fire, I guess, riddled it with bullets, then stuffed a hand grenade into the bag, before blowing -- you know -- blowing it up and throwing the remains in the river. This -- he -- the -- the -- you know -- the soldier, the one who documented this, is now being sued for liable by the superior officer. And I -- all I can think of is, if this story is indeed true, then that superior officer, himself, can be liable in a court of international law. Because, there is no statute of limitations on murder. So, again, it’s another example of the use of the legal system to intimidate those who dare speak out against the government, or against the Japanese right wing. Yes.
Audience Member
That’s the story I want to tell. Thank you.
Iris Chang
Thank you.
Audience Member
I have a question about something you have in your book. You devote a lot of time and effort to writing of the activities of the twenty some odd Europeans and Americans in the International Safety Committee and their efforts at -- at saving human lives. I never quite understood why the Japanese allowed that International Safety Zone to continue. What benefit was it for them?
Iris Chang
You know, I wondered myself why they weren’t all killed. I actually -- they themselves wrote in their diaries. You know, it’s a miracle that we’re all alive. I -- remember the Japanese government never officially recognized the zone committee. I mean -- the missionaries, the westerners asked for recognition, but they -- they were flatly refused to -- to cooperate. But, I think that the Japanese were somewhat more careful in their dealings with the Westerners in Nanking, because they had already bombed the USS Penai (phonetic spelling), which was an American gun boat near Nanking at the time. And that caused a lot of bad press for the Japanese. I mean, they killed several people, because of this attack. I mean, I think it was the first American aircraft to be bombed by foreign air craft, ever. I mean, the sinking of the Penai and most people don’t know about it. But, this was world -- of course, world news at the time. And the -- I just think that the Japanese did not want to create another international incident, by killing the -- by the killing the missionaries. Still, that doesn’t mean that they didn’t rough up those missionaries from time to time, or, you know, slap them around, or -- you know -- they pushed one of them down a flight of stairs. And some of them never recovered, psychologically or physically from the wounds that they inflected, that the endured in Nanking. So, it’s really a miracle. Because, even if they told all the soldiers, you know, do not touch those -- those safety zone members, somebody could have been caught in the cross fire, easily. So -- but, it’s unfortunate when we consider that one of the few western woman in the zone committee eventually committed suicide, because she could not live with what she saw in Nanking.
Audience Member
One more quick question, are you surprised the reaction to your book?
Iris Chang
Yes. It -- think I have to be honest with you, I was surprised. I knew that this was an important subject and so, that’s why I wrote it. And I believed in it so passionately that, you know, I would have self published the book if necessary, if no major American publisher took this project on. Of course, that wasn’t necessary. But, being that I had published a book already, I mean, Thread of the Silk Worm, which was put out by Basic Books of Harper Collins, a book that received very good reviews, but, I mean, mediocre sales. I really expected the second book to get the same kind of treatment. There are plenty of excellent books written every year that get rave reviews and they just kind of languish in the bookstores. And I thought, you know, if it just ends up in the libraries, it would have been worth it. I mean, I saw myself as a mid-list author for, you know, for many years. I didn’t really think that this would -- if anyone told me that this book would hit the New York Times best seller list and stay there for two months before publication, I would have thought they were crazy. I would’ve never believed it. Thank you.
Audience Member
Yeah. I like to follow up of your comment, dealing with the second rape of Nanking. I think that for us as Americans, I mean, we have to try to make our people to know about what happened and I think it’s what you said about the Lipinski bill, even we should try to get it passed, if not this session, but the next session and also that, I think the effort of the San Francisco School Board, is changing the history, putting the history --
Iris Chang
Uh-huh.
Audience Member
-- on Asian history. I know the Global Alliance people are trying to carry that out in other part of California. I think we all, we take a look at where we are going -- textbook on Asia, have very little to say about what happened in China --
Iris Chang
Uh-huh.
Audience Member
-- and in the Pacific. So, I think it’s those and also that I’m glad to learn that a group of people in Los Angeles thinking about a Holocaust Museum for the Pacific. I believe, my dream is that, to build the museum here in Washington D.C. I’d eventually talk with you about it and work get on.
Iris Chang
Okay.
Audience Member
First, I’d like to appreciate your effort to begin to bring this terrible story to Western audience. I’m a Chinese. I left China for already fifteen years, but I believe Chinese will never forget this Nanking massacre and the crimes committed by the Japanese Imperial Army not just in Nanking, but in other places in China and Asia. I think you must have visited Nanking, the very place that that massacre happened. Tell me, what -- what do you think about awareness of the Chinese people, average Chinese people, about this Nanking massacre, and -- and compare to what you describe as the second rape of Nanking, that the unawareness in -- in -- in the world, outside China?
Iris Chang
Well, I would think -- I think that most people in Nanking know about the massacre, they may not know the details, but they know that some -- certainly something horrible happened in the city. And I would -- I would pretty much -- I think that in China, that -- I mean, they certainly understand the ravages that -- that the Japanese inflicted upon China. I mean, when -- there was a book that was published in -- in China on the Nanking massacre and it became an instant best seller. It was, people certainly want you to read more about it. So, I’m confident that over time I think more people worldwide are going to learn about this massacre. I know that in the United States alone, just -- and this book has only been out for a few months.
Audience Member
Yeah.
Iris Chang
Several universities, such as Stanford University, has already mandated the inclusion of this book in some of their curriculum, such as, like, psychology, graduate courses, and I’ve just -- judging from the e-mails that I’ve been receiving, I think that the -- when the paperback comes out and it will come out in the fall, it will be released by Viking Penguin, that numerous colleges and universities will adopt this for history courses. And -- and for holocaust studies. So, I -- I think the situation will change.
Audience Member
I believe that your book is the first one written in English, other than Chinese. You mentioned in China, there is only one --
Iris Chang
No, there are several actually. There are several books there.
Audience Member
Thanks. Congratulations.
Ja Men Wong
My name is Ja Men Wong and I’m from China. I and three of my friends come from University of Virginia, have driven two hours to hear your lecture.
Iris Chang
I’m really touched. Thank you.
Ja Men Wong
And also, I -- I invite a journalist from our university paper. We -- they send a journalist and your lecture will be reported now in our university paper. One point I want to make here is, that I guess a gentleman raised a question, why the Chinese government has remained silent in pursuing an official apology from the Japanese.
I believe none of the Chinese, or the Chinese government have forgotten this Holocaust. It can not be forgotten at all. But, the thing is, it is not the right time for the Chinese to pursue it completely. Simply because China has, still need to wait. I believe the economical ties, or the economic relations with the Japanese is equally important somehow to the relations of China to the United States politically and economically. So, what I can encourage my here, American friends, that if you can work with the Chinese, and bring the Chinese to be more stronger and somehow -- anyway, I believe there is a day, that is not too far from today, the justice can be seen and can be heard. The voices of justice can be heard widely.
Iris Chang
Well, I thing the VRC government had better hurry, because most of the survivors are now in their eighties or nineties. And once they pass away, there won’t be any voices from the massacre left, except what -- from what is documented.
So, while there may -- while some of these survivors may never see a cent in reparations, the important thing is to make sure, at least, the truth of the massacre be known. And that is the best -- the best hope for the future.
Audience Member
I guess your work must give them the opportunity to consider this and I hope this can be happening.
Iris Chang
Let’s hope so. Thank you.
Lydia Perry
The questions could go on for some time, I’m sure. Thank you all for coming. I’ll remind you, Iris will be signing books upstairs in classroom B, across from the tile wall, right now. Thank you.
