Iris Chang - The Rape of Nanking

Wilson, Elizabeth

Wilson, Marjorie

Wilson, Robert

Women: comfort women; and modernization. See also Prostitution; Rape

World at Arms, A (Weinberg)

World War I

Wuhu

Wulong Mountain

Wu Tienwei

Xenophobia

Xiaomenkou

Xing, Frank

Xinhua Yuebao (journal)

Yalta Conference

Yanagawa Heisuke, General

Yangtze (Yangzi) River; and acts of suicide; and agriculture; evacuation via

Yasuhimo, Nakasone

Yasukuni Shrine

Ying, James

YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association)

Yokoto

Yoshima Yoshiaki

Young, Shi

Yuan Shikai

Yugoslavia

Yuhuatai. See also Rain Flower Terrace

Zaimoku

Zhuizi

Copyright © 1997 by Iris Chang Copyright for new Epilogue © 2011 by Brett Douglas

First published in 1997 in the United States by Basic Books,

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

First published in 1998 as a paperback by Penguin Books

This edition published in 2011 by Basic Books

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chang, Iris.

The rape of Nanking : the forgotten holocaust of World War II / Iris Chang.

p. cm.

Includes index.

eISBN : 978-0-465-02825-2

1. Nanking Massacre, Nan-ching shih, China, 1937. 2. Nan-ching shih (China)—History. I. Title.

DS796.N2C44 1997

951.04’2—DC21 97-24137

eISBN : 978-0-465-02825-2

From W. H. Auden, Collected Shorter Poems , 1930–1944 (London: Faber and Faber, 1950), “In Time of War,” XVI, pp. 279–80.

Taisa Isamo, Asaka’s staff officer for intelligence, later confessed to friends that on his own initiative he had forged the order. Another Japanese officer, Tanaka Ryukichi, said that in April 1938, Chou, then the head of the 74th wing of the Japanese army, told him an interesting tale. Chou told him that when his troops landed at Hangchow (or Hangzhou) Bay and pushed inland, nearly 300,000 Chinese troops were cut off from retreat, so they threw away their weapons and surrendered to the Japanese. “To arrange for so many prisoners, to feed them, was a huge problem,” Chou reportedly said.

As the story goes, Chou seized upon a quick-fix solution to eliminate the food problem: “I immediately issued orders to all troops: ‘We must entirely massacre these prisoners!’ Using the name of the military commander, I sent these orders by telegram. The wording of the order was to annihilate.”

We will never know if this story is true, but it must be noted that even if Chou had indeed forged the kill order on his own, this does not absolve Prince Asaka of responsibility for the massacre. Asaka could have issued an order to cancel the massacre once it started and court-martialed his intelligence officer.

Not all of the survivors from the Rape of Nanking, however, suffered tragic fates. Sometimes I encountered numerous surprise endings, like the conclusion of the life of commander Tang Sheng-chih. Despite his fiasco at Nanking, Tang went on to enjoy a charmed existence in China. Things were rough for him at first, because the Nanking debacle left him in foul odor with the Nationalist party and forced him to return to his home province of Hunan without an official job. But after the Communists came to power, the new leadership embraced Tang—even though he had been a high-ranking military official in the enemy camp. Swiftly Tang rose to prominence, serving as lieutenant governor of Hunan and a member of the National People’s Congress, the National Defense Committee, the Chinese National Party Revolutionary Committee and number of other organizations. Only after serving a long prestigious career in politics did he finally die on April 6, 1970—a revered official in his eighties.