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The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II Paperback – November 1, 1998

by Iris Chang (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 3,460 ratings
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In December 1937, the Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking. Within weeks, more than 300,000 Chinese civilians were systematically raped, tortured, and murdered—a death toll exceeding that of the atomic blasts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Using extensive interviews with survivors and newly discovered documents, Iris Chang has written what will surely be the definitive history of this horrifying episode. The Rape of Nanking tells the story from three perspectives: of the Japanese soldiers who performed it, of the Chinese civilians who endured it, and of a group of Europeans and Americans who refused to abandon the city and were able to create a safety zone that saved almost 300,000 Chinese. Among these was the Nazi John Rabe, an unlikely hero whom Chang calls the "Oskar Schindler of China" and who worked tirelessly to protect the innocent and publicize the horror. More than just narrating the details of an orgy of violence, The Rape of Nanking analyzes the militaristic culture that fostered in the Japanese soldiers a total disregard for human life. Finally, it tells the appalling story: about how the advent of the Cold War led to a concerted effort on the part of the West and even the Chinese to stifle open discussion of this atrocity. Indeed, Chang characterizes this conspiracy of silence, that persists to this day, as "a second rape."
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    290 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Penguin Books
  4. Publication date
    November 1, 1998
  5. Reading age
    18 years and up
  6. Dimensions
    5.3 x 0.7 x 8 inches
  7. ISBN-10
    0140277447
  8. ISBN-13
    978-0140277449
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"The first comprehensive examination of the destruction of this Chinese imperial city...Ms. Chang, whose grandparents narrowly escaped the carnage, has skillfully excavated from oblivion the terrible events that took place." —The Wall Street Journal



"A powerful new work of history and moral inquiry. Chang takes great care to establish an accurate accounting of the dimensions of the violence." —Chicago Tribune



"Chang reminds us that however blinding the atrocities in Nanking may be, they are not forgettable—at least not without peril to civilization itself." —The Detroit News



"A story that Chang recovers with raw urgency...an important step towards recognition of this tragedy." —San Francisco Bay Guardian

About the Author

Iris Chang’s numerous honors include the John T. and Catherine D. MacArthur Foundation’s Program on Peace and International Cooperation Award. Her work has appeared in many publications, including the New York Times, Newsweek, and the Los Angeles Times. She is also the author of the bestselling The Rape of Nanking, available from Penguin.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Books (November 1, 1998)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 290 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0140277447
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0140277449
  • Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.2 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.3 x 0.7 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 3,460 ratings

About the author

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Iris Chang

Iris Chang

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Iris Chang lived and worked in California. She was a journalism graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana and worked briefly as a reporter in Chicago before winning a graduate fellowship to the writing seminars program at The Johns Hopkins University. Her first book, Thread of the Silkworm (the story of Tsien Hsue-shen, father of the People's Republic of China's missile program) received world-wide critical acclaim. She is the recipient of the John T. and Catherine D. MacArthur Foundation's Program on Peace and International Cooperation award, as well as major grants from the National Science Foundation, the Pacific Cultural Foundation, and the Harry Truman Library. She passed away in 2004.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
3,460 global ratings
A Must Read For Those Intereseted In WWII In The Pacific
5 Stars
A Must Read For Those Intereseted In WWII In The Pacific
After reading this book, the reader will understand why so many WWII vets who served in the Pacific campaigns told me, "We were fighting a war of extermination." which was because the Japanese soldier of the Imperial Army had been raised to believe in their Emperor as a living God among the most civilized people on earth (according to their own lights from 1939 -- 1945). The Japanese soldier believed that death in battle meant that their soul would return to Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo where the people would come and worship them for eternity. Whereas surrender was the greatest mortal sin a soldier could commit; therefore, to surrender meant total ostracism while still alive and eternal damnation after death. Japanese soldiers were even trained to "pretend to surrender" so they could carry some kind of hidden weapon and get close to Allied soldiers so the Japanese soldier could (for instance) commit suicide by pulling the pin on a hand grenade while taking a few enemy soldiers with him. This is why the Allied soldiers learned not to take any prisoners -- it was that kind of war.Being a Vietnam vet I know a little something about war and it was only after I became one that the WWII vets shared their experiences with me -- this was because they knew I could not judge them. Terrible things happen in war which is why it puzzles me when movie critics gush over anti-war movies -- has anyone ever seen a pro-war movie? [This doesn't count the films made about WWII which we had to fight.]Also, I've been to Yasukuni Shrine, on my way to SE Asia I spent four months as a military policeman in Japan which enabled me to make a few Japanese friends who took me to the shrine. At first I was hesitant about going but I reasoned that I could acknowledge the private Japanese soldier who was probably little different from me. Though I'm glad that I didn't then know that the Japanese still believe that the war criminals hung by the Allies after the war crimes trials are present in spirit at the shrine -- and that the souls of these war criminals are honored there.The Japanese even recently put up a statue to honor their Kamikaze pilots, these were men who were sent out in airplanes with a bomb, just enough petrol to get them to allied fleets and then commit suicide by crashing their planes into allied ships.
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Top reviews from the United States

Charles Domanski
5.0 out of 5 stars The most evil people on earth.
Reviewed in the United States on March 29, 2024
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It is definitely one of the most accurate books about the Japanese and the Chinese. In world War two. Most people have never heard about what the Japanese did to over 300,000 Chinese citizens and some of China's military men and women. This book will make you sick. It just might turn you to vehemently hate the Japanese. Some people in Japan still refuse to admit what they did to the Chinese. There were quit a few people who were there and managed to keep away from the Japanese military officers.
The people who gave first hand accounts were some Chinese, some Europeans and even a few Americans. No body can say they are all lying. The truth hurts.
7 people found this helpful
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Karen Roberts
4.0 out of 5 stars "It reminded me of a picnic of devils."
Reviewed in the United States on March 30, 2013
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I use a Kindle reader for iPad. When you finish a book, Amazon always pops in asking for a review. I had to ignore this for this book, because I wasn't ready to write yet, needing time to process what I had just read!

Having taken several days to process, I can say I am certainly glad I read this book. Having read extensively about the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust and other 20th century atrocities, I was shocked at having never heard of this massacre.

It was a hard book to read. Hard, because of the content, and hard because it exploded my preconceptions of the Japanese as being always gentle, kind people. I have always harbored guilt for the internment of the Japanese on American soil. I still feel some shame, having many colleagues of Japanese ancestry whose families were uprooted from there homes and sent away. But this book put that period into more of a context to perhaps understand what a previous generation did, since these crimes were front page news in 1937-1938.

I will not do an extensive review of the content, since others have summarized this very well. But, it is the story about the Japanese Imperial Army taking the Capitol of China, which was then called Nanking (now Nanjing), at the end of 1937, as part of the Sino-Japanese war. They were brutal to the Chinese civilians, slaughtering hundreds of thousands in cruel ways, including beheading, using humans for sword practice spearing infants and adults, and raping tens of thousands of Chinese women. Remember I said civilians, non-combatants. They took few, if any POWs, executing Chinese soldiers, and any male they thought could be a soldier, post haste on entering the city. The Yangtze River was clogged with dead bodies, and blood ran in the streets, as they couldn't bury them as fast as they killed them.

I know, having read some of the writings from the Japanese, that there are deniers among many of that people. I also know that some historians take issue with some of her history telling and facts. Having read extensively about the Armenian Massacre in Turkey that began in April 1915, and killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions of the Armenian people, I know there are many who deny this mostly unknown holocaust as well. I am convinced the Turkish government and the Japanese government just want to deny their horrendous behavior, avoid the shame, and the paying of any reparations. Shame on them!

I am in the medical field, and we have peer review for any medical work which is published, so I understand the need to criticize some facts that may not be correct or strictly confirmed by historical records. But even if some of this is wrong, it would be hard to convince me this never happened. They can argue about the numbers of dead and raped, but this massacre happened.

I am thankful that Iris Chang wrote this history/remembrance. I am saddened that she took her own life after writing it, and before she could finish her book on the Bataan Death March, which would have expanded my knowledge of another atrocity. I would highly recommend picking up this book. As has been said, we should not ignore where we came from, and we do so at our own peril!

The subject quote above is from George Fitch's diary, a member of the International Committee for the Protection Zone, created by expatriots to try and save as many Chinese as they could! They thus bore witness to the slaughter!
I would give this 4.5 stars.
26 people found this helpful
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Scott Hedegard
5.0 out of 5 stars Sad, gruesome book of one of modern history's worst genocides
Reviewed in the United States on February 12, 2016
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This book was the effort from Chinese/American author Iris Chang to raise awareness of the horrifying events of December, 1937, when Nanking, then the capital of China was, along with Manchuria at large and nearby Shanghai attacked by Japanese forces who would carry out one of humanity's most brutal, sick and inexcusable acts the world ever knew. Already blazing a trail of murder by the thousands of Chinese civilians and anybody suspected of being a Chinese soldier, they took this to psychotic levels in Nanking.
The details of the seven weeks of torture, mass killings and rapes are so putrid it is not advisable to discuss them here. While the Holocaust of Jews in Germany outnumbered the dead in Nanking, where most estimates hover around 350,000 deaths, most of them civilians - women, men, children, infants - it didn't matter to the Japanese, what made the Rape of Nanking stand out was the speed in which the atrocities occurred, in just over a one month period before a full military occupation took hold and residents were allowed to return home but forced to obey the Japanese unless they wanted to be killed for even the slightest implication of an insult or unwillingness to do what they were told.
Chang argues that while the U.S. especially demanded rightfully so severe reparations from Nazi Germany, and dutifully executed most of the high ranking officials and many many underlings, with Mao Tse Tung's takeover of China in 1946 and Chiang Kai-Shek's exile to Taiwan which meant communism China style, the U.S., while trying and executing some Japanese officials, including some for the equally brutal Bataan march, they feared communism and pumped billions into the Japanese economy and ignored for the most part the horrifying deeds their Army committed so America could have an "ally" near Russia and China. Thus, Japan skated, and systematically excluded the rape of Nanking, Bataan and other atrocities from schools and universities. Those who did dare to demand Japan admit responsibility, many Japanese scholars and journalists, were faced with death threats, protests, and vile denials in the right wing media.
Her efforts were not in vain, as the book was a best seller and Japanese officials even as late as 1998 were forced to come clean after a fashion and at least one offered a formal apology to the citizens of Nanking and China.
Tragically, because she suffered from bi polar disorder, and a severe case of it, coupled with the stress of promoting her book, making speeches all over and sadly becoming more paranoid as the disease progressed, Iris Chang suffered a nervous breakdown and committed suicide in 2004. While she was not a direct victim of the Rape, her parents and grandparents told her many stories of what happened, and combined with the very thorough research she compiled, it is quite possible the very horror of the event could have contributed to her mental illness. She would not be alone, as thousands of victims who did live suffered severe health problems after being maimed, burned and otherwise tortured. One woman who worked at a university in Nanking during this holocaust was so effected by the brutality, gore and misery that she too succumbed to her own suicide.
We can't fairly hold the Japanese collectively responsible as most are long gone. But to shove this terror under the proverbial rug only allows a population or armed forces of any nation the potential given the effectiveness of the nationwide propaganda and sense of nationalism to be just as bad. Witness Kosovo - the U.S. was involved as much to cover up Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky as any sense of duty, and the ethnic cleansing that took place was an equal horror. Tanzania, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot, attacking Iraq for 9-11 when it was totally innocent - hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis died for war profiteering and a not so subtle Islamic genocide because George W. Bush wanted it. We are no better than any other nation when it comes to the ability and willingness to use propaganda, controlled media and lies to commit terrible crimes for money and power.
Chang valiantly tried to warn all of us that as the saying goes, those who ignore and obfuscate or destroy history are condemned to repeat it, and we do so over and over and over. This book is must reading, along with "Tears in the Darkness", a great book about the Bataan march of 1942, to remind all of us that as a species, we do not have to act like the tyrants leaders worldwide demand us to do.
58 people found this helpful
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KLB
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book
Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2024
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This is a sad, hard book to read. Hard in the sense of the topic and it’s details. Sad to think humans are that sick, sadistic, evil monsters. Yes I understand war is hell.

This to me (and I speak for myself) goes way beyond what I thought (or choose to think) humans would even be capable of or consider doing. Boy was I wrong. Between this and the Holocaust in Europe heart wrenching. I am not even sure that is the right word.

It is a well written book. I would still recommend it.
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Chris
5.0 out of 5 stars Good book
Reviewed in Canada on March 15, 2024
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Good read
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Emil
5.0 out of 5 stars Capa um pouco danificada nos cantos, porém nada muito visível ou que venha a atrapalhar a leitura
Reviewed in Brazil on December 13, 2021
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A capa chegou um pouco danificada nos cantos por conta da fricção com a caixa, nada que muito visível ou que vá atrapalhar a leitura. Fora isso, chegou dentro do prazo e pelo que já li parece ser excelente!
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Tim
5.0 out of 5 stars very good knowledge what humans can do to each other
Reviewed in Germany on April 16, 2024
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if I had to chose one of the most important books for me, I'd choose this one. shows you how far humans go in torturing and treating others as low-life-animals.
how men can lose all compassion and empathy for others and go the complete other route towards evil
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Massimiliano Pallotta
5.0 out of 5 stars Il 1900... il secolo dei genocidi: Il massacro di Nanchino.
Reviewed in Italy on October 17, 2019
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Arrivato in anticipo e immediatamente aggredito dalla lettura. Libro eccellente per capire le responsabilità di tutti in quell'ennesimo orrendo episodio di violenza perpetrata da militari in guerra. Andrebbe letto tenendo conto di quanto riferito in "Shooting up", altro interessantissimo libro per confermare le responsabilità delle "linee di comando" delle alte gerarchie militari di tutti i paesi del mondo.

L'unico appunto riguarda il libro in sé che mostra segni inequivocabili di uso, nonostante sia venduto come nuovo. (i segni d'usura riguardano l'uso di evidenziatore giallo su diverse pagine del libro: 1 a pag.64, 2 a pag.131, 1 a pag.133... per ora...)
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Massimiliano Pallotta
5.0 out of 5 stars Il 1900... il secolo dei genocidi: Il massacro di Nanchino.
Reviewed in Italy on October 17, 2019
Arrivato in anticipo e immediatamente aggredito dalla lettura. Libro eccellente per capire le responsabilità di tutti in quell'ennesimo orrendo episodio di violenza perpetrata da militari in guerra. Andrebbe letto tenendo conto di quanto riferito in "Shooting up", altro interessantissimo libro per confermare le responsabilità delle "linee di comando" delle alte gerarchie militari di tutti i paesi del mondo.

L'unico appunto riguarda il libro in sé che mostra segni inequivocabili di uso, nonostante sia venduto come nuovo. (i segni d'usura riguardano l'uso di evidenziatore giallo su diverse pagine del libro: 1 a pag.64, 2 a pag.131, 1 a pag.133... per ora...)
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Manjunath
5.0 out of 5 stars Book about forgotten holocaust
Reviewed in India on July 18, 2019
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This is a well researched and beautifully written book about "The forgotten holocaust" (Nanking Massacre). The massacre of Nanking is one of the forgotten chapters of the 2nd world war.

Reading this book is a gut wrenching experience. It is full of anecdotes of atrocities committed against helpless Chinese men and women. The book describes the mass murder and rape of Chinese citizens in the hands of marauding Japanese army during the occupation of Nanking in 1937. Though the estimates vary, the general consensus is that, between 300,000 to 400,000 Chinese were mercilessly murdered by the invading Japanese army. An estimated 20,000 to 80,000 Chinese women were raped, mutilated and murdered. They did not spare even babies. Many a men were burnt alive. German Shepherd dogs were let loose on men, who were buried up to their waist. The dogs ripped apart these helpless men.

During the 6 weeks of this horror, many foreigners stationed in Nanking risked their own life and heroically faced the Japanese soldiers. They tried saving as many Chinese citizens as possible. Notable among them were Rabe (A Nazi German), Wilson (an American physicist) and Vautrin (an American missionary). Stories of these brave foreigners who stood for the helpless Chinese, restores your faith in humanity.
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