The rape of Nanking

Description:

China has endured much hardship in its history, as Iris Chang shows in her ably researched The Rape of Nanking, a book that recounts the horrible events in that eastern Chinese city under Japanese occupation in the late 1930s. Nanking, she writes, served as a kind of laboratory in which Japanese soldiers were taught to slaughter unarmed, unresisting civilians, as they would later do throughout Asia. Likening their victims to insects and animals, the Japanese commanders orchestrated a campaign in which several hundred thousand--no one is sure just how many--Chinese soldiers and noncombatants alike were killed. Chang turns up an unlikely hero in German businessman John Rabe, a devoted member of the Nazi party who importuned Adolf Hitler to intervene and stop the slaughter, and who personally saved the lives of countless residents of Nanking. She also suggests that the Japanese government pay reparations and apologize for its army's horrific acts of 60 years ago.

subjects: Nanking Massacre, Nanjing, Jiangsu Sheng, China, 1937,  History,  Nanking Massacre, Nan-ching shih, China, 1937,  Nonfiction,  WAR CRIMES,  Oorlogsmisdaden,  Massamoorden,  MASSACRES,  CHINA,  RAPE,  JAPAN,  TORTURE AND OTHER CRUEL TREATMENT,  Warfare,  Nanking Massacre (Jiangsu Sheng, China : 1937) fast (OCoLC)fst01032604,  History, 20th Century,  Massaker,  Nanking,  New York Times reviewed,  China, history, 1937-1949,  Nanjing (jiangsu sheng, china),  Sino-japanese war, 1937-1945,  World war, 1939-1945, china,  Atrocities,  Histoire,  Chinese language edition

Places: Nanjing (Jiangsu Sheng, China),  Nan-ching shih (China)

Times: 20th century