2007-12-13, the memorial day for the horrible Nanking Massacre, 300.000 victims

[PLR02]

Today is December, 13th, seventy years ago, there was a horror in our city, Nanking, which was described as a attractive, cosmopolitan city until the occupation of Japanese army.

More than three hundred thousand Chinese people were slaughtered during just six weeks!

Just one month after the occupation of Japanese army, there were about twenty thousand raping or gang-raping.

Nanking was really a living hell!!!

I am a Chinese college student, if you want to know more about Nanking Masscre, you can go to english.nj1937.org/english/default.asp.

Bye, now.

[PLR02]

My classmates named Tianchen, whose net name is 罐罐fire, asked me to strength this topic.
then I will write and make more things about The Nanking Massacre.
To be honest, many Chinese hate Japan, because Japanese government makes negative reflection to this.
You should know, that three hundred thousand means what......
You should know, that twenty thousand means what......
"If I were a superman, I would burn the Japanese devils off to give Chinese in the Nanking a safety!"
"But I were not......"
That two sentences is I heard that one witness foreigner said in the documentary "Nanking"......
Every time I thought of the Nanking Massacre, I really felt heavy enmity towards Japan......
You all know that the relation between China and Japan is not very good, even in a low atmosphere time, the factor of history is a very important aspect.
Then Japan has modify their schoolbook, none masscre, none invasion, they think......
What we Chinese would feel in our heart.......

[PLR02]

“Nanking” is a swift, incisive documentary about one of the lesser-known horrors of the 20th century: the 1937 Japanese invasion of the Chinese city now called Nanjing, where more than 200,000 civilians and prisoners of war were slaughtered in a matter of weeks. The capital of the Republic of China at the start of World War II and the headquarters of the Chiang Kai-shek government, this attractive, cosmopolitan city of parks and thoroughfares was largely destroyed in what is known as the rape of Nanking.

Though some Japanese scholars dispute the statistics determined after the war by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, it is widely agreed that during the occupation in 1937 and 1938, more than 20,000 rapes were also committed by the rampaging Japanese Army. In its concentrated savagery, the catastrophe was comparable to the even more numerous mass murders in Rwanda in 1994.
The film, directed by Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman, has the format of a mixed-media theater piece. Interwoven with rare, vintage news clips of the city’s bombing, invasion and occupation are readings by actors from journals and letters kept by the few Westerners who remained in the city during the siege. Additional grisly firsthand recollections by now elderly Chinese survivors and Japanese soldiers tell a story that has become painfully familiar in the age of information overload: a collective fever of blood lust can lead to a kind of mass insanity in which the rules of civilized behavior are suspended.

“Nanking” suggests that in a world grown jaded by images of violence, written testimony read aloud still carries a weight that the most horrifying images cannot exert. Shown sparingly in the film, the pictures of the dead and seriously injured may sear your mind, but the act of recalling the unspeakable and giving it voice creates a deeper reality.

[PLR02]

Many of the dozen witnesses are heroic men and women from Europe and the United States who remained in the city and saved thousands of lives by setting up a two-square-mile safety zone for the many thousands of civilians unable to evacuate.

Woody Harrelson reads the words of Bob Wilson, who was born in China, the son of an American missionary. He was the only surgeon to remain in Nanjing after the Japanese began bombing the city.

Mariel Hemingway speaks for Minnie Vautrin, a Christian missionary and chairwoman of the education department at Ginling College, who saved countless women from rape by hiding them from the marauding soldiers.

Jürgen Prochnow is John Rabe, an imperious German businessman and Nazi Party member, who used his status to try to halt the violence; when Mr. Rabe, who harbored 650 Chinese civilians on his estate, eventually returned to Germany, he was ordered never to speak of what he had seen.

Hugo Armstrong is John Magee, an Episcopal minister and amateur filmmaker who set up a hospital for wounded solders. “Nanking” includes excerpts from grainy 16-millimeter film he shot of the grotesquely disfigured patients. His film was smuggled out of the country at considerable peril and only discovered in Germany in the 1980s.

[Boke]

The nanking massacre was truly a terrible thing but what I think that the way that China, Koreas, and Japan are unable to forgive each other for past events is sad and scary, and it often reminds me of the saying "those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it"

The problem isn't only japan, I believe its most of the east asian counties change history to make their current governments look good.

PLR02, in China how much do you learn about Mao's Great Leap Forward or The Cultural Revolution? What about the Tiananem Square Massacre??
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[Ralf]

Boke is right. If peoples have a score to settle with each other, hatred is passed on from one generation to the next. And that's completely mad. I don't want to take revenge for something that happened to my grandfather (who I vaguely remember) for the same reasons that I don't feel obliged to take revenge on somebody for an injustice that has befallen any random fellow countryman.

Get over it, or start another war.
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[PLR02]

Mao, the chairman of the people's republic of China, really make a fault that provoked a revolution like that. And Chinese history has acknowledge the fault.
As to the matter of Tiananmen, you really know the fact? If one government's safety were threatened, what it would do?
But I have learned of it in class, it was a cruel fact...
But you know the Soviet Russia? What happened when the society changes occured? One of the most powerful country became a country that its economy fell down and people's life level changed a lot!!!

[PLR02]

Sorry, that, I write wrong.
----------Mao was the chairman of China during that time.------------He made a fault, but not provoked.--------The true thing was that his fault was manipulate by the Gong of Four and Lin Biao who was believed in deeply by Chairman Mao. Then the revolution you mentioned occured. That was really a catastrophic matter for China that made Chinese development almost one place for ten years.----------Tiananmen, we don't deny, it was a cruel thing... ------------But the ESSENTIAL MATTER IS NOT THE THINGS AS YOU THOUGHT OF!!!------------

[PLR02]

Sorry, that was Gang of Four, but not Gong of Four.
And you two can reply to the things I wrote, to be honest, I feel very happy. And the history may be hard to say. But one thing is true.

[PLR02]

That the invasion is true, and the Nanking Massacre is true, in the real history.

[PLR02]

I think you must know Zhou Enlai, the Premier of the People's Republic of China those time.
He was really a good premier, he protected many people from the persecution of Gang of Four.
He put forward the Four Cardinal Principles.
China didn't receive the money as atonement from Japan, for Zhou thought that we needed is just know the fault, that was just enough.
He excepted that China and Japan would be a good partner from then on, and so were All Chinese.....
But now, you see?
That is China is willing to forgive Japan, if Japan really acknowledge its faults, if it were really another Germany...
But now, you see?
There is a new film played in Japan, they say:
The people died in Nanking were zero!?
The matter of raping and gang-raping were none!?
The Nanking Massacre was the biggest lie in 20 century!?
......
In fact the content of the film are the candy that Japanese woman giving Chinese kids, and a love story between a Japanese solider and a Chinese girl...
I know that these Japanese woman, when they arrived at Nanking, they really see the innumerable bodies flowing on the water...
As to the love story, I think it's an interesting thing.
I have seen a film that a love story like that------But at last, the Chinese Girl was shot by the Japanese military officer for his uncle's big pressure, and in fact the girl had been caught by Japanese army, and the officer wanted to save her for she was his classmates once and he really loved her, but the pressure of his uncle was not continued. Then at last, if he didn't shot her, she would be raped by the beast-like Japanese solders!!!...

[PLR02]

Then, you see the fact yourself.
I will leave here for almost one week, for I have some difficult things to solved.
So, sorry that I can't reply you during the coming week.
If having time, I really want to talk with you about more.
Then at last, I want to know that, what would you feel if someone killed your friends and seemed not to acknowledge his fault though you wanna to forgive him???????..........
Maybe this words is not proper, but the victims in Nanking were 19+15=34(0,000), in fact.
And it's not the problem that whether we don't forgive Japan, but the problem if Japan really want to acknowledge its fault...
Also Recommend you watching the film 'Nanking'. It was really not Chinese words, but American words.
And recently EU has make a bill that demand Japan to apology for the Matter of Comfort Women to China and other Asia countries.
.......
In history, Forgetting means Betraying...
Bye-bye.
If some words harm you, I am very sorry.
Sorry. Then bye. See you one week later.

[NinaZara]

I asked one old Japanese lady about this. She said that Japanese do not want to be reminded of the past. And if it is possible they do not want to tell the young ones of anything bad in the past.

In fact if you live with the Japanese for a long time you will notice that they don't like to speak of the truth if it hurts, or if it is something embarassing. It 's the culture. Plus, the bad ones were the army and the government not civilians. But at least the tension created not so long ago regarding this matter now opened the eye of some younger generations. Now, some of them know the truth.

I understand your feelings PLR02, because when I was in my freshman year, I was shocked, my jaw dropped because my friends did not know that Japanese army invaded my country and killed my ancestors before. But I don't see blaming them would bring any solution either.
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Okotteru Papa mo suki dakedo, nikoniko yasashii Papa ha mo~tto suki!

[edwin]

[PLR02]

Hi, I am back. But a little busy.
First I am amazed that more than 2 ones having come here.
Secondly I don't know what to say.
Thirdly I will reply you next time when I have enough time.
Bye-bye.