CORRESPONDENCE: HOW BAD WAS THE NANKING MASSACRE?

To the Editor:

I was extremely dismayed to read Harriet Mills’ review of “The Good Man of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe” (Book Review, July 24). I have always respected Mills’ work, especially her early essays on Lu Xun. Her review is unfortunately full of misinformation. To call the Nanking Massacre “the worst single city massacre in human history,” as she does in her first sentence, can only be based on extraordinarily inflated death totals, “more than 300,000,” according to Mills. Most serious scholars of this subject as well as foreign journalists in the city at the time would scarcely admit that Nanking’s population was that high by the time the Japanese army arrived there. After weeks and weeks of indiscriminate aerial bombings, thousands took to the roads or sought to escape with the KMT army as it pusillanimously abandoned its capital. If indeed there were as many as 250,000 in the international safety zone, then there is something dreadfully wrong with these numbers. The most careful analysis I have seen of all the many extant documents, the research of Kasahara Tokushi, estimates between 100,000 and 200,000 Chinese casualties, with the numbers increasing as one moves from the walled city of Nanking to the suburbs. Even Rabe himself estimated the total at about 50,000, though he could not possibly have seen the entirety of it.

In her second paragraph, Mills claims that “the Japanese were never forced by the Allies to admit their guilt and for decades denied there had been a massacre.” Has she forgotten the Tokyo War Crimes Trial which, for all of its faults, claimed that 200,000 Chinese had been killed by the Japanese and had a number of Japanese executed? No, for several paragraphs later she mentions this famous trial. I’m not sure who “the Japanese” here refers to. There certainly are some Japanese who make this insane argument, but they are far from the mainstream, and none of them are serious historians of China or Japan. One would certainly never claim that “the Americans” or “the British” deny the existence of Auschwitz because of a few fringe elements, like David Irving and others. And who are those Japanese “forced by passionate patriots into silence”? No scholar I know in Japan who researches this topic has ever been silenced. Nay, who are those who have “even disappeared”? Either Mills knows something no one else in the world knows or she is relaying disinformation. Similarly, her notion that Japanese school texts until recently have omitted or lied about the Nanking Massacre is ridiculous, inasmuch as all Japanese high school and middle school texts discuss it, with death figures in the 200,000 range in most of them. Several even mention the official Chinese figure of 300,000. This is what gives the right-wing deniers such apoplexy.

Her lavish praise for Iris Chang’s recent bestseller, “The Rape of Nanking,” also reveals a frustrating lack of information. Chang draws extremely tenuous conclusions on the basis of often flimsy evidence and then hides behind an outraged victim’s moralisms. Praised by journalists, the book has been roundly criticized by historians who have investigated the topic, especially those fundamentally sympathetic to her project of bringing the Nanking Massacre to the attention of concerned people everywhere.

Later in the review, Mills mentions that “Rabe used his privileged status as a Nazi and thus a Japanese ally to lead the zone committee” in defense of the Chinese. The Nazis and the Japanese were not war allies until roughly three years after this massacre. Had they been allies, would the Japanese troops have gotten away with their wanton destruction of German property and homes, which Mills reports? It would also have been nice to see a somewhat more critical perspective taken toward Rabe, who is treated as much as a Buddha by book reviewers as apparently he was at the time by the Chinese of Nanjing and as he saw himself.

Joshua A. Fogel

Santa Barbara

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Harriet Mills replies:

Joshua Fogel reminds us that the tragedy of Nanking still touches a raw nerve, even among those who try to come to terms with its horrors.

First, he regards the 300,000 casualty figure as “extraordinarily inflated,” even though it has been accepted by two of the earliest and most respected writers on the incident, Hora Tomio and Honda Katsuichi, as well as by the Nanking War Crimes Trials.

Respectable scholars, he says, would scarely admit Nanking had a population as large as 300,000 on the eve of the attack. However, a report from a Chinese military official in Nanking to the national military council on Nov. 23, 1937, almost three weeks before the invasion, puts the population at “about 500,000.” Others hold that, given the tide of refugees, wounded and military reinforcements flowing into the city, a population of 600,000 seems reasonable, making 300,000 casualties all the more possible.

Second, with regard to contrition, the Allied victory in Europe in 1945 pushed the Germans to undertake an unprecedented deep and painful national soul-searching to rethink their values and beliefs. Sadly Japan, perhaps because of its isolation, seems to have lagged behind.

Although many came to feel the necessity for reform in Japan, others saw themselves as the victims of Allied raids, the atomic bomb and even the occupation and rallied to old symbols and codes. The split continues today. Disputes over perceived insults to the emperor, country, national honor and martyrs have sometimes turned violent: In 1989, the mayor of Nagasaki was shot in the back by a right-wing extremist for suggesting that the emperor might bear some responsibility for the war.

The tension between those who accept the massacre and those who deny it is reflected in the national textbooks. It is true textbooks now mention the massacre, but their language betrays them. Christopher Barnhard, a linguistics professor at Tiekyo University in Tokyo, in an analysis this year of wartime atrocities in 88 middle and senior high school texts, discovered “a clear pattern of the textbooks consistently siding with the position of the wartime Japanese government even to the extent of uncritically repeating wartime language or wartime propaganda.”

Third, Iris Chang has performed a remarkable service in bringing the story of the Nanking massacre--its background and aftermath--out of the shadows after more than 60 years. Her book, “The Rape of Nanking,” has interested and educated an audience that most academics only dream of. Perhaps, therefore, the time has come to thank authors, such as Chang, who address subjects that academics do not consider. These so-called non-academic books have the potential of opening up new worlds to us and through the vigorous debate, which they are bound to spark, can lead us closer to the truth.

Fourth, Fogel faults me for referring to the Germans and Japanese as allies during the 1937 invasion. Presumably he is discounting the German-Japanese Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936 as a mere statement of political alignment lacking the military and political protocols (and thereby the force) of the full-blown anti-Soviet Italian-German-Japanese Tripartite Treaty that came some three years later. For Fogel, “ally” may require the possibility of joint military undertakings, but the dictionaries do not. As a German citizen, John Rabe was formally--if not at heart--an ally of Japan. He saw and used the advantages of what he referred to as “our Pact.”

In addition, Fogel finds my treatment of Rabe hagiographic. Anyone who reads the “Diaries” soon encounters Rabe’s pathetically naive trust in Hitler and his regime. After all, Rabe was a pre-World War I Hamburg burgher who had spent the entire 1908-1938 period in China except for a brief visit home in 1919-20. His was the nostalgic patriotism of many long-term expatriates. After the humiliation of defeat in World War I and the ensuing economic chaos, he thrilled to his country’s apparent resurgence under the Fuhrer. His professional and private identities were very much tied to his German-ness. When deeply disturbed by his government’s treatment of a German Jewish diplomat, which he could not fathom, he fell back on the surety of “my country right or wrong,” confident there must be some rational explanation--a confidence that crumbled into disillusionment after his final return.

But most important, I’d like to remind Fogel that other scholars in both China and Japan are moving beyond the minutiae of statistics, contrition and personality to try to reach a consensus that would have been impossible only a few years ago. Daqing Yang, writing in the June edition of American Historical Review, cites significant convergence on the following facts: Massive and varied atrocities were carried out by the Japanese at Nanking. Mass executions of Chinese POWs were executed under Japanese military orders and were not the random acts of renegade Japanese soldiers. The Western-organized safety zone did play an important role in saving lives.

Let us follow this lead. The material is disturbing enough without introducing new tensions. Let us share our findings and insights. In the process we might find more answers and perhaps come closer to the truth.