But, Chang writes: "I would have to conclude that Japan's behavior during World War II was less a product of dangerous people than of a dangerous government, in a vulnerable culture, in dangerous times, able to sell dangerous rationalizations to those whose human instincts told them otherwise. The Rape of Nanking should be perceived as a cautionary tale -- an illustration of how easily human beings can be encouraged to allow their teenagers to be molded into efficient killing machines able to suppress their better natures" (Chang 244). Chang does not believe that the Japanese are uniquely prone to racism, but she does believe that the Japanese government has not been held accountable for its actions. In an interview about her book, Chang stated that because of the Cold War, even the American government had been complicit in the mass forgetting of the Rape of Nanking: "During the war, Japanese doctors performed live medical experiments and even vivisection on American and Chinese POWs, but after 1945 the United States government not only failed...
The American government also exempted the Japanese royal family from war crimes trials, permitted Emperor Hirohito to stay on the throne and even encouraged many officials of the Japanese wartime government to return to power" ("An interview with Iris Chang," Penguin Reading Guide, 2011).Of course it is possible to argue that the Rape of Nanking was merely one incident, and not comparable to the Holocaust in its systematic destruction of human life. But it is still important to learn the lessons of the massacre for all armies, given that it illustrates how quickly the values of empathy and humanity can be conditioned out of soldiers during times of war.
Specifically, in the decades following the conclusion of World War II, the new German nation that eventually emerged from the physical devastation of the country and, more importantly, from the moral bankruptcy of having embraced, supported, and made possible the implementation of Hitler's racial hatred and the murderous atrocities it inspired. Naturally, certain Germans never accepted responsibility for the Jewish Holocaust, even denying that it ever occurred. However, the official
Rape Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust WWII Iris Chang. The Rape of Nanking The Rape of Nanking, according to Chinese-American author Iris Chang, is one of the forgotten atrocities committed during World War II. Chang was the child of parents who had survived the Cultural Revolution in China before immigrating to America and the siege of the Japanese Army during the 1930s was an important part of their cultural history (Chang 7-8).
Over 1,000 Chinese witnesses came forth to testify in the trials which lasted until February of 1947 after the Chinese government posted notices in Nanking regarding the need for credible witnesses, (Chang 1997:170). Unlike the Nuremburg Trials, however, much of the case against the Japanese fell apart thanks to faulty prosecution and a lack of true concern for justice in the region. The events which conspired in Nanking during the
These include claims for Japanese revisionists that "… critics have stretched tales of Japanese brutality as means of putting political pressure on Japan and winning compensation." There has in fact been a revisionist interpretation of the events at Nanking since the 1900s, with the intention of either ignoring or invalidating the resurgence of interest in the horrific facts of rape, torture and wanton slaughter attributed to the Japanese forces. For
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