In early January I went to Nanjing (Nanking) where a piece of history sticks in the Chinese psyche like a burr under a saddle. During the Japanese War, which many other people call World War II, Nanjing was the capital of China or at least of the part run by the Nationalists.
World War II started early for China and Japan. By 1937 they had been at it for more than a year and a lot of China particularly along the coast was occupied by the Japanese. By the 13th of December, 1937, the Japanese marched about 200 kilometers inland from Shanghai and took Nanjing.
There, depending on who you talk to, the Japanese army went nuts. they attacked US and British representatives, but paramount for the Chinese, they killed 300,000 people, many if not most civilians in a brutal wave of horror that lasted until mid-January 1938. Iris Chang, an American writer of Chinese descent, wrote “The Rape of Nanking” which popularized the tragedy for a while, but the Chinese never forgot.
Ask a Chinese about either Nanjing or the Japanese and you’ll see that they neither forgot nor forgave. Young people, old people, students or shopkeepers, they all know. One returned overseas Chinese guy I know startled me when he said that if the Japanese don’t acknowledge and apologize for their transgressions in Nanjing, there would be war.
The problem seems to be that Japan has always had a problem coming to terms with the Second World War and their part in it. And the Chinese quickly contrast Japanese post-war behavior with that of Germany where the latter owned up to it’s deeds and took steps toward atonement. Japan, from schoolbooks to politicians kind of ducks and weaves………… alluding to transgressions maybe, but either couching them in ambiguous language or discounting them as minor side effects of noble actions.
A substantial museum in Nanjing, built on a mass grave site of perhaps 10,000 victims of the 1937 events, recounts what apparently happened and is marked by what seems like a court-like presentation of evidence as proof. Eye witness accounts, survivor accounts, contemporaneous newspapers accounts by Chinese and Japanese alike make a compelling case.
Outside the museum in Nanjing there are several statues and these are accompanied by footprints of survivors cast in bronze along a pathway……….
Inside the museum are many artifacts and documents, including the records of a substantial western community of Europeans and Americans who witnessed what happened, tried unsuccessfully for the most part to intervene and successfully maintained a small enclave or safety zone that saved some lives. Ironically, one of the leaders of the efforts was a German who represented Hitler’s goverment in China at the time, so swastikas are among the artifacts and documents too, including on a set of “red cross” flags.
Part of the museum reveals human remains……….
And part has the tables and artifacts used at the Japanese surrender to the Chinese in 1945, appropriately staged at Nanjing.
Japanese scientists and troops conducted some gruesome experiements with chemical and biological agents using Chinese and some western POWs as test subjects. This is the depiction of uncovering the remains of some of those victims and the precautions necessary to protect researchers from still-active chemical or biological agents.
A great hall near the museum entrance is lined with stone and the names of victims. Here on a wide black backdrop, photos of victims in a slowly paced slideshow fill the laureled oval, one after another.
Nanjing is a pretty city, surrounded by a mostly still intact wall on the banks of the Yangtze River. A tributary runs through the city creating opportunities for picturesque bridges and banks.
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