Rape of Nanking
The crimson stained ground in the background becomes the frame behind the Japanese flag. Bloody bodies lay in the background while a Japanese soldier with intense eyes cautiously stands with a bayonet. Just by looking at the cover of The Rape of Nankingą one realizes that this is no ordinary history book. The author, Iris Chang, writes the history of the Japanese invasion of Nanking by telling the story through the viewpoint from three different perspectives: the foreigners, the soldiers, and the Chinese inhabitants. Through the graphic descriptions and heart-wrenching stories of the massacres the book, published by Penguin Books, in 1997, tell the sad story of the systematic slaughter of hundred of thousands of Chinese. This book argues that under Japanese rule, regular civilian Chinese were the persecuted savagely. Iris Chang is trying to expose the second Holocaust of World War II through this novel. The Rape of Nankingą begins by illustrating how the Japanese came into power in China and the savagery of their actions. In December of 1937 the Japanese army swept into Nanking and left a trail of carnage surreal in its horror. The death toll was staggering, far exceeding that of the American raids on Tokyo (an estimated 80,000
It is believed that between 20,000-80,000 Chinese women were raped; fathers were forced to rape their daughters, and sons were forced to rape their mothers. The novel also contains a collection of photographs and newspaper articles that corroborate the novels historical authenticity. If not just for the numbers of dead, the Rape of Nanking should be remembered for the cruel manner in which most of its victims net their end. Some victims were buried alive; others were buried up to their waists and then torn to pieces by German Shepherds. Their blood would weigh twelve hundred tons, and their bodies would fill twenty-five hundred railroad cars. Another photograph shows a Japanese man using a Chinese man for target practice. -120,000) and even the combined death toll of the two atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the end of 1945. Stacked on top of each other, these bodies would reach the height of a seventy-four-story building. The author conveyed the events as impartially as possible, which is a really commendable thing. I think the ways that the Japanese tortured the Chinese is absolutely disturbing and abhorring. Chang lets the facts speak for themselves and let's the readers draw their own horrified conclusions. The author writes the novel from three different perspectives as mentioned before, as a result the events are presented in an unbiased way. After I had read this book I was appalled at how ruthless someone can be. One very explicit fact that Chang voices is that If the dead from Nanking were to link hands, they would stretch from Nanking to the city of Hangchow, spanning a distance of some two hundred miles.
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