The Rape of Nanking

A few months ago, I started reading The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang. I got through about 1/3 of it in the first week, then it just sat next to my alarm clock for a long time as I forgot it was there. Well, a couple nights ago I finally decided to finish the book, and I thought I would write some thoughts about it in my blog.

First of all, the event itself is not very well known, despite being comparable to a lot of other human disasters, such as the Holocaust. When you learn about WWII during high school, the Rape of Nanking is usually either discussed only in passing reference, or not mentioned at all. The reasons for this obscurity in our view of history were discussed in the book, and in short, it was mainly a matter of world politics and economics in the time following World War II.

Since I know nobody is actually gonna read this book themselves after reading my blog, the summary of what happened is as follows. During World War II, Japan invaded China, and part of this invasion involved taking the city of Nanking. Throughout history, Nanking was probably the Chinese city that was richest in tradition, also serving as the capital for many years. You might consider it the "New York City" of China.

Anyways, as the Japanese army did to a lot of other nations it invaded at the time, they arrived at Nanking and performed pretty much every atrocity you could imagine against the people there. The soldiers killed whoever they felt like killing, raped whoever they felt like raping, plundered all the stores, and destroyed a lot of valuable national treasures in the process. Nothing was sacred, as evidenced by the fact that girls as young as 8 and women as old as 70 were all raped, and Japanese newspapers routinely reported contests between soldiers about who killed more Chinese people, as if they were scores of last night's sporting events.

The book also includes some pretty graphic pictures, such as Japanese soldiers posing in front of a pile of human skulls, using live bodies for bayonet practice, and dead naked bodies of raped women, some mutilated. It's some of the most disturbing stuff I've ever seen.

When the war finally ended and the dust settled, Nanking was left with a few hundred thousand people dead and a city in complete ruins. It has recovered and rebuilt somewhat since then, but most likely the city and its people will never be the same.

After reading the book, the first inclination I had was to hate Japanese people. Hate them for the brutality of everything they did, and hate them for covering it up afterwards. But given more time to think about it, I'd have to say that if this was my only reaction after reading the book, I would be taking a step backwards, not forwards. As we were always told in school, the whole point of studying history is to learn lessons from it and prevent future mistakes. And of course the Rape of Nanking is no exception.

Not to let the Japanese off the hook, but the Chinese army was not without responsibility in this tragedy. By the historical accounts described in this book, it was clear that had the Chinese leadership been less cowardly and selfish in their actions, much of these events would have turned out much differently.

After 9/11, the popular mantra for this country was "United We Stand". Meanwhile, most of us either forget or ignore the phrase that follows, "Divided We Fall". The significance of this is well illustrated by the fact that more American lives were lost in the Civil War than in all of its other major wars combined.

As for China, if you've studied any amount of its history, you would know that it is a history filled with struggles stemming from the nation's failure to stand united. Even today, there are two countries that continue to bicker about who is the real China - one being the "Republic of China" (located in Taiwan), the other being the "People's Republic of China" (controlling the Mainland). This is a fact that makes me both very sad and very angry at the same time.

Anyways, the fact that a country as huge as China fell so easily and decisively to a small island nation like Japan shows how much internal division can hurt and weaken a country. Even as its major strongholds were falling during the war, the Chinese army still far outnumbered the Japanese at Nanking. But for some reason, they barely put up a fight when the time came to defend their people. As most of the Chinese soldiers ran away or simply surrendered to the invading army, they left themselves and their defenseless civilians open to all of the massacre that followed. In the face of this cowardly display, it's almost hard for one to fault the Japanese for their delusions that the Chinese people were inferior human beings, and that killing them would be akin to crushing a bug or trapping a rat. Almost, but not quite.

Recognizing all that happened at Nanking was also an important reminder to me of the extent of extreme cruelty that human beings are capable of. Unfortunately, things that we consider to be "inhumane" are in fact a very real part of human nature. The Rape of Nanking was an example of one race perpetrating terrible things against another; yet these same kinds of terrible things have happened and continue to happen in this world between those of the same race. Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong starved and abused their own people under their respective post-WWII reigns of the Soviet Union and Communist China. Until recently, Saddam Hussein and his sons routinely tortured the Iraqi people for many years. And right now, unspeakable violence still goes on in God-knows-how-many-places around the world, from Liberia to North Korea to the ghettos in Chicago.

As much as I hate to borrow the cheesy words from the annoying, played-out song, "where is the love"? Where is the respect for human life? I'd like to believe that society and human civilization has progressed to the point where we are beyond the capability for these kinds of things. Unfortunately, I don't think we'll ever be immune to that kind of ugliness.

For most of us, we're not in a position to change the world and save the millions of suffering lives. But I guess at the very least, reading this book reminds me that I need to resist the inertia to stay ignorant and pretend like nothing bad ever happens in this world. As much as I disagree with some of the things President Bush has done during his term, I have to say that one thing I do respect about him is that I think he honestly cares about the injustices in this world, and feels for the people who are being persecuted. Speaking out and acting against Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-il may not have been the most popular and easy thing to do, but it shows that he isn't prone to ignore the evil things that go on. At least he isn't spending his time in the White House messing around with some intern.

Once in a while, I need to be reminded that there are much more important things to be concerned about in the big picture of life, than what I encounter daily in this bubble that is my own world. After seeing how bad life can really get, anything in my own life that I consider to be a major problem barely seems significant at all. Maybe in a twisted way, I'm just making myself feel good by comparing my life to such an extremely bad situation, I don't know. I definitely do think that it was a worthwhile experience to read this book, though. And if anyone happens to be interested, I'd highly recommend that they give it at least a quick read or a skim.

*****

Dang, that ended up sounding too much like an 8th grade book report. I guess you can take the nerd out of school, but you can't take the school out of the nerd. (The nerd being me).

This California governor's recall election is definitely gonna be something to watch. It just keeps getting more and more ridiculous and entertaining for me. At first I thought the political analysts were out of their minds when they were talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger as a serious contender. But now I look at the other candidates coming out, like Larry Flynt, Gary Coleman, and some 22-year old porn star, and I'm convinced that the entire state of California is filled with wackos, who are all headed towards eventual self-destruction. The stupidest thing is that since he declared himself available as a candidate, Arnold hasn't even talked about any of his policies or running platforms, but he's already leading in the polls. It's pretty absurd any way you look at it.

Maybe it's a sign I'm getting old, but I think I'm actually becoming a fan of Sheryl Crow. I always thought of her music as being very lame, but I like her voice a lot. All day at work yesterday I had that "Steve McQueen" song stuck in my head. It didn't help that I was in a meeting where radar was a recurring subject. Like Steve... McQueen... underneath your radar screen.... and you'll never catch me tonight wooo-wooo.... hahaha

My condolences go out to all my friends on Xanga. I notice it's been down for a while now. I don't think their servers would crash for this long, it's probably some virus, like that worm that was going around. Or maybe just some hackers doing some old-fashioned Distributed Denial of Service. I always wondered why people would go through the trouble of programming viruses, it just seemed really stupid and annoying. But then I think about all the times someone sent me a file called "funny.exe" that would lock up my keyboard and make me type something like "I AM RETARDED" no matter what buttons I pushed. After being tricked, the first thing I would do was look down my buddy list and see who I could pass the fun on to. I guess that's the mentality that makes things like viruses exist, and I'm sad to say that I'm guilty of it myself.

Mussina was pulled after 8 innings of shutout ball with a 6-0 lead. I was pissed. This kind of thing has happened way too much to my team this season. >:-O In other news, Matt Mantei is a stud.