One of the greatest atrocities in history was the rape of Nanking. Most humans are capable of great evil and this is one horrific example. Several hundred thousand were raped, murdered and tossed into the Yangtze River. There were so many bodies, the water turned red. Others were buried alive after digging their own graves.
For her book, Iris Chang went to China and interviewed the few hundred survivors still living to document the horrible crimes the Japanese committed. She talked to one man who, as a child, watched his mother and little brothers being murdered.
Another witness tells Chang how she found her dead grandparents, mother and little sisters naked and raped.
There is a scene showing Chang transcribing taped interviews, and it is mentioned that she had nightmares from this project. Chang said someone had to listen, to record and validate the experience of the survivors and make it public.
Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking was published November 1997 and became a bestseller while Japan tried to discredit the book. Iris Chang committed suicide on November 10, 2004. She was 36 and left behind a husband and two-year-old child.
Then in 2011, The Flowers of War was released, a movie that focuses on the rape of Nanking, starring Christian Bale.
Roger Ebert wrote in his movie review, “The Rape of Nanking (1937-38), one of the most horrifying atrocities in history, during which the Imperial Japanese Army invaded the Chinese capital city and slaughtered an estimated 300,000 civilians, usually raping the women first. It is one thing for civilians to die in the course of a war, and another for them to be hunted down and wiped out on a personal basis for the crime of their race. … “The Flowers of War” is in many ways a good film, as we expect from Zhang Yimou (a Chinese director who has won more than 58 international awards that included two at the Cannes Film Festival and one at the Sundance Film Festival.)”
What bothered me about Ebert’s review is the ignorance of his conclusion.
Ebert wrote, “Now let me ask you: Can you think of any reason the character John Miller is needed to tell his story? Was any consideration given to the possibility of a Chinese priest? Would that be asking for too much?”
Yes, it would be asking too much because if the priest had been Chinese, he would have been shot down the moment the Japanese troops came into the church and the young girls would have been raped and murdered followed by the rape and murder of the prostitutes once they were discovered. Then the church probably would have been destroyed. Without an American as the Christian priest, there would have been no story to tell.
My wife and I enjoyed this movie, felt it was well done and highly recommend it.
Is there a reason why the Western media continues to avoid and even ignore what happened in Nanking while continuing to remind the world of the so-called massacre of a few hundred students in Tiananmen Square in 1989 that did not happen? The protests in Tiananmen Square did take place but there is no evidence of students being killed, as the Western media continues to remind us.
Return to The Rape of Nanking – Part 1 and/or discover more about The Tiananmen Square Hoax
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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Iris died? I must have missed that news 9 years ago.
Flowers of War, great movie. What the critic should have asked is why an AMERICAN priest? Why not british? Why not spanish? Why not french? How about german to go along with the whole thought that the german NAZI members were their saviors like Mr Rabe? I think the film was trying to give credit to all those unsung heroes as most of the safety zone members were made up of american businessmen and industrialists.
Amusing film portraying Americans as drunks that only care about getting the job done and collecting their money. Although, I’m sure that’s a lot better of an image than what they could have gone for. In today’s china, I believe without any background checks there are probably some people here teaching at primary schools that according to US laws shouldn’t be within 500 yards of such a place.
What really perplexed me was why only 1 chinese soldier chose to stay behind? Amazing with all the rubble he could have easily built up a fortress to run from building to building taking pot shots and create the deception that the chinese army is still there hiding amongst the rubble. I thought the chinese way of military was using deception tactics to overcome a larger force just as we deceived the germans into believing we were attacking north of Normandy.
What really amazes me at the moment is the fact that the western media seems to ignore the heat of war nearly igniting this side of the world, yet focusing on a gun ban over a primary school shooting, which would never have happened had they pushed the topic years ago after Columbine or the dozen others that took place following Columbine. Our problem with innocents being gunned down in gang wars would probably be partially solved too.
Iris took her own life. She may have been Manic Depressive.
As for gun control in the US. Never happen and wouldn’t work even if the second amendment was overturned. Too many Americans love their fire arms probably as much as they love booze, and Prohibition didn’t stop people from drinking any more than marijuana laws stop people from growing their own and/or buying it from some drug dealer that pays no tax on his or her illegal earnings.
I would not want to be a cop in America given the job to go door to door demanding that we turn over all of our weapons.
That would be the easiest way to start a rebellion. I read that in New York state alone, civilians own about one million semi-automatic military assault rifles. For the entire US, the number may be more than 300 million.
Harsh gun control laws only means criminals will buy more of their weapons on the black market. After all, the private sector in the United States manufacturers more fire arms that are sold to civilians and dictators around the world than any other country.
In the US, its mom, apple pie, the flag, football, baseball, basketball, beer and fire arms—lots of weapons. I have a few and plan to buy more. I collect fire arms and knives like some people collect stamps/coins.
That Republican senator that said we should hire armed guards for our school was probably right. In fact, we should do all we can to turn our schools into bullet proof fortresses. Think of all the construction jobs that would fill. There are about 100,000 public school (not counting colleges) in the US and another 33,000 private schools. Lots of construction work. That would put a lot of unemployed Americans to work.