Not For Children

Please if you have a weak stomach, are under 16, or are really sensitive please don't read this okay? Believe me this is not something you really want to read and I don't blame you if you don't. Thanks




I am currently in a WWII history class at school. And I know that there are many many atrocities that happened then (e.g. Nazis) so really another post like this might happen in the future but still... Right now we are reading a book called The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang. It is all about what the Japanese did to the Chinese and more specifically what the Japanese did to the Chinese capital of Nanking in 1937, before WWII had technically started. It is really heavy reading, believe me. It really is amazing though because very few people know about what happened in Nanking in the late 30's. It is rarely taught in schools in the US and in fact I know that when I had Global History in tenth grade we very quickly went over this but we did not really get into the details, we were more focused on the whole Chang Kai-Shek (sp?) issue. Still that is apparently rare for my school to have taught me that.

Anyways for those of you who haven't been taught about this here we go... The Japanese wanted more territory than they had so they decided to start taking over China. Many different battles happened and eventually the Japanese made it to the capital of Nanking. (That is the really short version, I am not a history major) Once there the army did terrible, terrible things. We are talking about things that were worse than some of what the Nazis did. They killed over 300,000 people in Nanking (about half the population at the time). Well I say killed but really they murdered them. They would torture the people that they captured. They buried some in dirt and then ran over them with tanks, they would decapitate them, they mowed them down with machine guns, they had killing contests, they burned people alive, and they tortured relentlessly. That was mostly for men. And for women? Rape. They raped any and all women that they found. From 8 years old to 80 years old if you were a woman you were raped. Many were killed after the rape or they killed themselves. Many women were gang raped Rape occurred at any time and in any place some were raped in the middle of the street in broad daylight. Some were raped using foreign objects such as bottles or bamboo. It was terrible. There was some hope for those in Nanking in the International Safety Zone. There some foreigners helped out the Chinese and did all they could. In fact there were Nazis that helped out the Chinese citizens and tried to get the Japanese to stop the horrors. Unfortunately the horrors continued. I am not done with the book yet but still it is very difficult reading. The worst part is that very few people know about these atrocities. In fact the Japanese government today denies that it happened and very few Japanese people know about it. This is in sharp contrast with the Germans where if you do anything that could be considered Nazi-esque you can be put into jail for up to a year. In fact many Nazi leaders were either punished or are in hiding in fear for their freedom/lives. The Japanese that committed the Nanking atrocities? Very, very few of them have been punished for what they did. They are not in hiding either, they are free to go about their daily business.

I am sorry to put all of this on you but I had to do something. This type of thing is just wrong. If you want to know more, I suggest The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang or really any of the books on it. All we can do about this kind of thing is to learn from it and prevent it from happening again. Again I am sorry and hopefully the next post I put up is a bit more optimistic then my last couple have been. I also will put something about knitting in my next post. Sorry but this one just cannot have that in it. Thanks for listening and please think about what I put up here today, thank you.

Chemmy