Chinese historians: "Beijing never compensated Nanking's rape victims"!

It came as a shock for all journalists and audience to
hear that the Chinese government never offered
compensations to the victims of the Rape of Nanking in
1937 killed by the then called Japanese Imperial Army.

This is the statement made by Dr. Joseph Wong of the
Toronto (Canada) Association for Learning & Preserving
the History of WW2 in Asia during Monday's
presentation of a controversial documentary movie
about Iris Chang's book at the Foreign Correspondents'
club of Japan.

If this is a correct statement, it is never too late
to heal the unfortunate destiny of victimized families
and it will certainly cause a lot of uproar debates,
arguments and condemnations.

Extract of the book :
The Rape of Nanking, Iris Chang *
Published by Penguin Books, 1998
ISBN 0140277447, 9780140277449

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".


John Rabe

A film on the Nanking massacre got an award. The
Sino-German co-production “John Rabe,” which won best
film at the German Film Awards ceremony in Berlin last
week, is based on the true story of a German
businessman (sometimes referred to as “China’s Oskar
Schindler”) who aided Chinese refugees fleeing the
Japanese during the Nanking massacre in 1937.

In his diary kept during the aggression to the city
and its occupation by the Imperial Japanese Army, the
leader of the Safety Zone, John Rabe, wrote many
comments about Japanese atrocities. Quotes from John
E. Woods' book (1998). "The Good man of Nanking, the
Diaries of John Rabe." page 77:

On the 17th December: « Two Japanese soldiers have
climbed over the garden wall and are about to break
into our house. When I appear they give the excuse
that they saw two Chinese soldiers climb over the
wall. When I show them my party badge, they return
the same way. In one of the houses in the narrow
street behind my garden wall, a woman was raped, and
then wounded in the neck with a bayonet. I managed to
get an ambulance so we can take her to Kulou Hospital.
(...) Last night up to 1,000 women and girls are said
to have been raped, about 100 girls at Ginling College
Girls alone. You hear nothing but rape. If husbands
or brothers intervene, they're shot. What you hear
and see on all sides is the brutality and bestiality
of the Japanese soldiers.»

*Iris Shun-Ru Chang 張純如


Author photograph by Jimmy Estimada, 2003

(March 28, 1968 – November 9, 2004) Iris Chang was an
American historian and journalist. She was best known
for her best-selling 1997 account of the Nanking
Massacre, The Rape of Nanking. She committed suicide
on November 9, 2004.

Prisoner of her sources...?