Customer Reviews

Eyewitnesses to Massacre: American Missionaries Bear Witness to Japanese Atrocities in Nanjing (An East Gate Book)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

You can tell the quality of this book's account just by looking through the first few pages of the book, its specific and detailed style should establish the credentials within minutes. By clicking on the book icon, you can even read the first few pages (including TOC), of the book in PDF format.

However, agreeing with the reader below, the denial of Japanese even to this day that the massacre even existed is baffling. Should I have follow the line of thinking Mr. or Mrs. Hiromi's line of thinking, then yes, the nukes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were botched experiments of Japan military weapon program formed with the Nazi's before its fall. Oh yeah, by the way, that was the testimony of seven Japan's highest ranking officers' last words before they were hung by the Aggressors' kangaroo court. As Mr./Mrs. Hiromi seem to think there is more than the obvious, he also wrote disagreements in "The Good Man of Nanking : The Diaries of John Rabe" review. Mr./Mrs. Hiromi got me thinking, did WWII actually took place, I don't think America military actually defeated Japan and occupied it after 1945.

Goodness gracious, I didn't believe such people like Hiromi existed in present history! How many true accounts do you need before acknowledging Japan committed some of the most heinous war crime against humanity in the annals of modern history? Mr. Laurence Rees stated in "Horror in the East" that Germany has by far done a far better job making actual restitution to the crimes it committed in WWII, than Japan who continues to deny its existence. So it is an eye opener to confirm the reason behind this phenomenon. The reason being people in Japan such as Hiromi himself.

I have great Japanese friends and even shared tables with them over dinner; though I must admit that this part of their history always confounded and disturbed me. Also, I am not sure if the book in this review and many books on this subject appearing on Ebay (including Iris Chang's "the Rape of Nankin") really offers an explanation why the atrocity happened in China; save for one book I came across in my study of this subject - Lauence Ree's "Horror in the East." The foreward by Professor Akira Iriye (himself born and raised in Japan) of Harvard is well worth the price of the book. In it, very historic documentation of the initiation of Japanese imperialism dating back to the failure of the Meiji constitution became the leading cause of what contributed to the formation of the attitude of racial superiority, not unlike those of the Nazi's. Racial superiiority formed the backbone of the determination of the Japanese imperialist army to stamp out the so called "sub-humans" in China and other South East Asia countries. Rees even examined the vast difference in the treatment of POW in WWI and WWII by the Japanese, and how their genocidal attitude differs from that of the Nazi's.

But back to Hiromi...this Hiromi is one sick puppy who needs some serious help like reality check. Has he read Honda Katsuichi's The Nanjing Massacre: A Japanese Journalist Confronts Japan's National Shame? In the mean time, Hiromi, your brazen-face tempts me to hurt you badly...you are one sick puppy hoss! For one thing, you are rating the book five stars just because you think you can prove it that it all falsfied facts. Fair dude is trying to tell everyone that Hiromi is one sick puppy and that Japan is disgracing itself by indulging in propagandist such as those like Hiromi. To all my Japanese friends, please at least read the first few pages of the book, as it will tell you in no uncertain terms that YES, IT EXISTED AND IT WAS MURDER, RAPE, AND GENOCIDE OF EPIC PROPORTION!!! And if you do doubt, go walk around in Nanjing, and ask how the REAL the locals feel about the Nanjin Massacre because it ain't pretty! One last thing, if Hiromi denied that the Japanese imperialist army ever massacred innocent civilians that included woman and children in Never Never Land than lend him your audience, but folks, this is Nanjing we are talking about. It is a city that still exists to this present day, it ain't anything unverfiable archaeologically.

I have this too to say to Hiromi; Please come to japanese occupied countries in Asia starting from Nanjing, for your information there are people that survived the massacre, they succeed to live to tell the story despite the brutal occupation. Best experience is from first hand. After you had done China, come to the rest of South-East Asia. Singapore, Malaysia and so on... ask someone who is in their 60s or 70s about the japanese occupation and how they live through it. I do not think you will find anything positive about the war or the occupation from them.

The truth is best heard from the people still alive. But I urge you to leave to discover the world and learn the truth while these people are still alive.From where I am, in Singapore, most of the killings are done in the East of the country in a beach call Changi, it is also where the airport is. Please visit when you have the time.

There is also a documentry, "John Rabe: The Unlikely Hero Of Nanking" that has some japanese soldiers that recounts the history of what they actually did. They were still smiling.

The japanese, in my opinion, had never been considered a part of Asia after the World War II.

this is by far the most valueless collection of junk jokes. nanjing massacre was done by Chinese? Cool. And of course we know Japne Imperila Army NUKE two cities in Japan. They are a great nation like to experiment the most advanced weapons on their own. Japanese guys, please keep doing this and we will appreciate you NUKE yourself.

This book is a bandle of the most precious records written by the people who were present during the period of the capture and the occupation of Nanking, December 1937 to 1938. By reading this book along with other contemporary records like "The Documents of the Nanking Safety Zone" and "Diaries of John Rabe", you will get a clearer picture of the series of events happened in Nanking at the time in question.
One crucial question should be asked here: Did they really see the so-called "The Rape of Nanking / The Nanking Massacre"?
The clear answer everyone can get from this book is, NO.
In the perfect matter of fact, NO ONE EVER SAW "MASSACRE" AT ALL!!

As Rev. John G. Magee crucially testified in Tokyo Trial, actual "killings" those foreigners saw were only two cases: (1) "Legitimate execution" of an illegal Chinese combatant by the Japanese Army witnessed and acknowledged by Kroeger and Hatz of International Committee of Nanking Safety Zone (Documents of Nanking Safety Zone case No.185) and (2) A Chinese who "when challenged foolishly [started] to run" and got shot by a Japanese soldier. (P.171 of this book; John Gee Magee's diary, Sun. Dec 19)
One salient fact is that both "killings" were acknowledged by those foreigners as legitimate action of the Japanese Army, not "murders". (On top of that, honest Magee even told us in his diary abovementioned that the second one was not actually seen.)

If you are familiar with The Documents, you also well know that, in fact, the murder cases actually reported were only 26 cases of 53 victims which include abovementioned legitimate execution and only 7cases of 8 victims which they know the names of the victims.
In any case, it is clear that everything except the case no.185 was hearsay and the Committee openly admitted in the Documents that those reports were even second-hand hearsay which they never bothered to check upon.

As for the looting, raping and burning, the International Committee members say that they saw some "soldiers" committing those crimes, but their real nationality is always obscure.

Following are some evidences that suggest those soldiers the foreigners mentioned were, in fact, the Chinese.

On 12 Dec 1937, the night before the city was captured, the tens of thousands of retreating Chinese soldiers who disguised themselves as civilians poured into the Safety Zone in which the Nationalist Army had its headquarters, arsenal, antiaircraft batteries and everything. (The Documents, Rabe's diary, and in this book, p. 253: Diaries of L.S.C. Smythe, etc..)
And the Committee let it happen. They even protected them, insisting that they were civilians, from being captured by the Japanese Army who naturally had to exercise mopping-up operation from 14th to 16th Dec.
Anyway, as the Committee thanked Japanese Army in the letter on 14 Dec 1937, the Japanese Army did spare the refugees in the Safety Zone and soon after the mopping-up operation, in which 6,500 of hostile Chinese deserters were captured, the peace was restored.

The civilian population in Nanking was 200,000 before Japanese Army came (Wang Kopang, the chief of police, 28 Nov 1937, Rabe's Diary), almost all of which was gathered in the safety Zone, and it swelled to 250,000 because Japanese Army allowed tens of thousands of those Chinese soldiers in Safety Zone to remain as civilians like other genuine refugees. (The Documents, 14 Jan 1938.)

Meanwhile, some of those civilian-disguised Chinese soldiers were still armed and hostile working as propaganda agents.
The New York Times of 4 Jan 1938 reported that a deserted Chinese Army colonel and six of his subordinate officers were captured while being harboured in a Nanking University building by the American missionaries. They confessed in front of those Americans that they committed looting and raping and then blamed the Japanese soldiers for the crimes. (See related accounts on: p.p.272, 285 by Smythe.)

McCallum, who worked in missionary hospital, wrote on 9 Jan 1938: "Some of the Chinese are even ready to prove that the looting, raping and burning was done by the Chinese and not the Japanese. I feel sometimes that we have been dealing with maniacs and idiots......" (p.238)
Indeed, after the prolonged war finally ended in 1945, those genuine Chinese civilians of Nanking told exactly the same to the Nanking city court when they were questioned about Japanese Army's "atrocities".

What the Americans really saw was, in fact, kind and humane nature of the Japanese soldiers and the Chinese Army's rather cruel scorched earth policy which burned vast area of the outside of the city to make many of their own country men and women and their family homeless, and then, alas, strong-mind of the ordinary Chinese people who sold the loot to the naïve Japanese soldiers.

On top of that, this book provides the readers with a salient counter-evidence to the Rape of Nanking theory.
Following is the excerpt from Appendix B: Report of the Nanking International Relief Committee: (p.426)
"[.........] $2,540 was used to COMPLETE the necessary burial enterprises undertaken by the Red Swastika Society, which covered over 40,000 bodies otherwise uncared for. During some 40 working days, this employed nearly 170 men. On this and a number of other work relief jobs, forty cents per day of actual work was taken as the standard wage."

The prosecutors of the Tokyo Trial said that there was another group in Nanking called the Advance Benevolence Society and they buried staggering over 100,000 dead bodies just in one month with only one truck and only 12 members which is so obviously suspicious. And this was one of the main "evidences" of the massacre.
However, the abovementioned passage from the Documents of the Nanking Relief Committee makes the Advance Benevolence Society's involvement in the burial work very questionable.
In fact, there was no single person who mentioned about the Advance Benevolence Society in any contemporary documents until the Tokyo Trial.

Furthermore, I must remind the readers now that the Chinese Army did not take the war-dead of their side as usual (and the number is said to be around 30,000, according to a Chinese document, and there were also thousands of legitimate executions of illegal Chinese soldiers who were hiding in the Safety Zone as well), so, it was Japanese Army who took care of them by hiring the Chinese workers to bury them properly and held a Buddhist ceremony for them afterwards.

Considering all of these points, albeit its clear anti-Japanese sentiment on the whole, this book I think is actually the best counter-evidence of the so-called Rape of Nanking.
I just wonder why those decent scholars cannot see this plain fact if they are not propagandists.