The Rape Of Nanking And The Art

Although Iris Chang’s book provides meaningful details and thoughtful interviews about the Nanking massacre, many argue that her book is seriously flawed. Donald Zagoria asserted, “Chang’s account, based on extensive interviews with survivors and newly discovered documents, is utterly compelling yet, at the same time, in places unbearable to read” (Zagoria 163). The novel is full of good intentions from Chang, but is also full of misinformation and harebrained explanations. Joshua Fogel suggested, “The book begins to fall apart when she tries to explain why such a horror took place. Part of the problem is her lack of training as a historian and part is the book’s dual

Throughout time, history has been recorded from the perspective of the victors. It is this bias within the archives that shape the views and motives of the groups involved. As a result of this influence the general way of thinking, and recollection of historical events has been altered to a certain degree to conform to the conqueror’s ideals. Society turns a blind eye to the horrors of the past, preferring to plead ignorance than to face the reality of the cruelty humans are capable of. There are parts in history that conversely cannot be ignored, such as the genocide in Rwanda, 9-11, Terror in Paris and the most historical, the holocaust in World War II, where the true extent of human vindictiveness came to light. In spite

Mrs. Wen, in her testimony of the Japanese atrocities at Nanking in 1937, she writes “ Japanese troops arrived, all of them armed with guns, knives, force me to take off my pants, I would be killed if I didn’t, I personally watched as the Japanese troops massacred many people” (Doc A). In stating this, the author means that the Japanese soldiers went through every house and shooting every civilian they could and raping women without hesitation. Mr. Taketa, in his testimony about life in Japan before the atomic bomb was dropped, he claims that “the Japanese people were forced to endure poverty and suffering” (Doc D). The author means that Japan’s government starve their people to death and let them suffer, as part of their culture. Furthermore, the Japanese were known by their way of killing their prisoners. These brutalities by the Japanese soldiers were considered inhumane. Thus, President Truman should have dropped the atomic bombs on Japan because the cruel actions of the Japanese needed to be stopped, and save innocent

This event displayed that each gruesome mass killing, “does not highlight, but instead blurs the distinctions between us” (Yew). Japanese troops were trained to believe the Chinese were inferior to them, therefore they must be killed. Similarly, the Nazis were trained to believe the Jews were inferior. The Nanking Massacre also showed how no

The future of genocidal intervention must allow us to move beyond a definition affixed to body counts, and particularly when we don’t gender those victims. By gendering the way violence impacts both men and women, we can both detect genocidal acts earlier as well as paying attention to the act of rape as genocidal in and of itself. While those who committed these acts certainly are evil, to understand the gendered logic (if it can be called such) of violence is conducted provides us better perspective in identifying it within conflicts, and understand which populations are at risk and in what ways.

World War II was a devastating war, whether you were directly in the war zone, or away from the battlefield, you were impacted greatly. Flyboys is a book written by James Bradley, in this book Bradley tells stories of World War II using first-hand accounts. In chapter five, Bradley discusses “The Rape of China” which was a battle that took place in 1937 during the beginning of World War II. In this battle, the Japanese fight the Chinese and destroy China. Both Japan and China had very different moral beliefs on fighting in the war. China believed that the soldiers needed to “be courteous,” and to also be “neither selfish nor unjust” to civilians (Bradley 54). Meanwhile, the Japanese had totally opposite policies known as the “Three Alls” meaning

The Rape of Nanking, by Iris Chang, describes the Japanese atrocities that took place in Nanking, China during World War II. Throughout their takeover and occupation of Nanking, the Japanese soldiers were exceedingly cruel to the Chinese people. According to Chang’s account and analysis of the events that transpired, Japanese attitudes towards gender played a key role in the soldiers’ violent, cold-blooded actions, and Chinese attitudes towards gender kept the victims silent.

Prisoners of war had an especially rough life during and after their time imprisoned. Hillenbrand writes that during that time, corporal punishment was very common for Japanese soldiers. Because of this, she explains, beatings were “inescapable.” The frustrations held by the Japanese soldiers would then be transferred to their prisoners, which Hillenbrand says is called “transfer of oppression by Japanese historians. Hillenbrand also makes the claim that some guards, “intoxicated by absolute power and indoctrinated in racism and disgust for POWs,” became sadists - people who derive pleasure, especially sexual gratification, from inflicting pain or humiliation on others. Hillenbrand states POWs were beaten, starved, isolated, humiliated, and murdered. The sadism found in Japanese soldiers left POWs with a lifetime of nightmares and terror, if they somehow managed to

The book Fly Boys written by James Bradley gives us many different stories and viewpoints during WWII. During this time Japan was in the dark compared to china or the U.S. They didn't like outside influences and thought the gaizin were ruining their religious beliefs, but the Japanese reacted to this in a bad way. The Japanese army was at war with china and would not only captured chinese soldiers but would also take the women from china. They would rape the women and spread disease from soldier to soldier. The reason for the spread of disease is that “ 1 women for every 35 soldiers,”(Bradley 61) and they viewed the women as military supplies. They kept the women for months on end and would only give them one day off to be checked by doctors.

“Ethnic and cultural distinctions [resulted] in the formation of ‘in-group’ and ‘out-group’ thinking” during the Asian War time, creating increased tension and indifference between China and Japan in a time of war (Burgess). The Japanese Soldiers became the overpowering force in the war between the two societies, and when they were able to overtake Nanking, they thought the elimination of this ethnic group would protect their in-group. The “[p]erpetrators of genocide [felt] completely justified in their actions, and [drew] on local cultural or political values to curry favor” (Burgess). With tensions already at a high, the “Japanese Military condoned the murder of hundreds of thousands of Chinese Civilians” (Nanjing). The Japanese cultural values taught soldiers the notion that the only people in their Universe of Obligation were themselves and their government body, and that questioning either would lead to physical

During the Rwandan genocide, some rapes occurred recurrently throughout a timespan. “Sexual enslavements occurred when a woman was detained, typically in the house of an Interhamwe, and subjected to repeated sexual assaults over a period of days,” (Mullins 727). These kinds of rapes belong in their own category because of the added element of confinement and intent to continually rape and therefore, harm. An Interhamwe soldier named Rafiki, personally sought out one Tutsi woman whom he had

In just six short weeks, the Chinese city of Nanjing was devastated with the brutal murdering of civilians ranging somewhere between 40,000 to 300,000 deaths, along with 20,000 to 80,000 of the cities woman being raped. These horrific statistics came to fruition after the Imperial Japanese Army forces abruptly entered the Chinese city of Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China at the time, on December 13, 1937. It is often debated as to how serious the massacre really was as both the death and rape tolls seems to have such large ranges. Although many may argue that the Rape of Nanjing was Japans attempt at world domination, others often disagree, proclaiming that the genocide was simply exaggerated and possibly even fabricated entirely. In many instances this “fabrication” was believed to be an attempt at political propaganda, but there are various supporting facts that prove otherwise. The massacre was in fact a real,

Many atrocities were committed in and around the city; most of them were against civilians. The Japanese soldiers thought that killing these innocent people were fun and games. They invented new ways to brutally murder these people. Some of these violent acts included stabbing, shooting, burning, gutting, digging out heart, decapitation, drowning, castration, and sometimes punching or stabbing objects into the female

During world war two, countries on both sides committed war crimes that shocked both the people involved, and the globe. From 1937 through to 1945, the Japanese justified their treatment of the Australian prisoners of war at the Burma railway with three things. The Japanese believed that their bushido code allowed them to treat the Australian this way, their ethics was one of complete brutality and hardship, and the Japanese soldiers were being fed false propaganda that showed a dehumanized view of the Australians. These three statements demonstrate that the Japanese atrocities committed at Burma, were, in the eyes of the Japanese, fair and just.

This paper is a review of the book Japan’s Comfort Women-Sexual slavery and prostitution during WWII and the US occupation by Yuki Tanaka. This book was published in 2002 by Routledge. The book deals with the thousands of Japanese, Korean, Chinese and other Asian and European women who were victims of organized sexual violence and prostitution by means of “comfort stations” setup by the Japanese military during World War II.