One of the greatest atrocities of world history
is the Rape of Nanking
All human beings are capable of committing these kinds of atrocities
not just the Japanese or the Germans
I think all human beings have this capacity for great evil
if put under the right social and political circumstances
The Rape of Nanking was something that
always could happen
and it did happen
and we have to learn from history
if we want to make sure it doesn't happen again
Iris Chang - The Rape of Nanking
And now a news update
Early this morning
the body of writer and human rights activistIris Chang
was discovered in her parked car
off the interstate highway
near San Jose California
The 36-year-old author
was best known for her book The Rape of Nanking
which described the mass slaughter of
Chinese civilians by the Japanese Imperial Army in 1937
The internationally - acclaimed best seller
was the first major work in Englishabout the massacre
Chang who had been sufferingfrom depression
died of a gunshot wound
the victim of an apparent suicide
I grew up hearing stories about
Japan invading China and Chinese people
being massacred by Japanese soldiers in Nanking
but I didn't know all the details
I had just finished writing my first book
and Nanking was one of the topics I was considering for the next
Then some friends of mine told me
about this conference on the Rape of Nanking
that was being put together by a group of Chinese activists
So I drove up from Santa Barbarawhere I was living at the time
to Cupertino
to see what I could find out
At that time
I really didn't know if there was enough for
a book there
But Japan's post-war prosperity ended
with the Great Depression
Unemployment soared
millions were thrust into poverty
Japan!s military leaders believed
expansion into China
with its vast resources
was the solution to the country's problems
The economic crisis
gave them the opportunity they had beenwaiting for
In 1931 they struck
Japanese troops seized control of Manchuria
a huge area of northwest China
Over the next few years
they marched east
then south
conquering provinces one by one
China was in no position to put up much resistance
The nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek
was embroiled in a vicious civil war with Mao Zedong's communists
and was preoccupied with its own survival
But by 1936
with the survival of the country itself at stake
the two sides formed an uneasy alliance
to confront the Japanese invaders
Full-scale war was inevitable
It came in the summer of 1937
A minor clash near Beijing was trumped up by the Japanese
It was the excuse they'd been looking for
They captured Beijing and in August
attacked Shanghai
In November
after a fierce three-month battle
the city fell
The Japanese army then
marched on the capital city of Nanking
laying waste to everything in its path
As refugees and retreating Chinese soldiers streamed towards Nanking
Japanese bombers terrorized the inhabitants of the city
with daily air raids
By December 12th
Japanese troops were massed outsidethe walled city of Nanking
The next day
they entered the city and began
raping and murdering its citizens
in an orgy of violence that has few parallels in modern history
My parents
were the ones who told me aboutthe Nanking massacre
when I was a little girl growing up
in a Midwestern college town
My parents are science professors
and they're very talkative
and always told me what it was like
for them to grow up during the war in China
Their parents
my grandparents
barely escaped with their lives
When the Japanese invaded Shanghai
my father's father was the mayor ofone of the suburbs there
He quickly sent his family
away to safety
but it was his duty to stay behindto help defend the city
So he cannot go
and it is my mother who has to bring
all four children to safety
There's no water
there's no food
and the train was loaded
The Battle of Shanghai lasted three months
That was very hard for my mother
She was very worried
The city was cut off
For three months
there was no news
between my mother and my father
My mother's father
worked for the Nationalist Government in Nanking
and had already sent his family
to a safer area
Then in the middle of November '37
Chiang Kai-shek decided to
move the government headquarters inland
My grandfather and other officials
were ordered to evacuate immediately
with or without their families
My mother was visiting her mother
so he sent a message to my mother in the village
to ask her to come to WuHuinstead to Nanking
This is about four days
because the ship going to leave
he went to the dock at WuHu everyday
to check the arrival of my motherwith her one-year-old
and there's no sight of her
Finally he was left with this choice
of either leaving the area taking that last ship from Nanking
and perhaps
never seeing his family again
or waiting
and perhaps never seeing her anyway
and then run the risk of
being massacred by the Japanese
It was a horrible choice that no man should ever make
And finally as he was about to leave
because the ship really was on its way
out of the region
he cried out her name
and just screamed it to the heavens
Yipei Yipei
That's my mother's name
and there's a miracle
On the corner of the Yangtze River
the last sampan come towards the WuHu
and there's my mother sticking her head
and saying "I'm here"
My mother was on the boat!
Some of the stories
war stories
were filtered down to me
when I was a little girl growing upin Champagne-Urbana
my mother and father said that
the Rape of Nanking had been so intense
thousands upon thousands of peoplewere killed
and the bodies that had been throwninto the Yangtze River
during the carnage literally made the water turn red
When I was a little girl
I had nightmares sometimes
The stories were very
very disturbing
I remember there was one I had over and over
where I was in a white dress
being chased by a Japanese soldier
And I remember as a child
wanting to learn more about this
and after going to my local school libraries
public libraries
I couldn't find a word about this matter in English
So the matter really
remained a mystery to me
for years
When I saw the photographs at Cupertino
it was like finally coming face-to-face
with the horrors my parents had told me about
And if anything it was worse than they had said
There was this one picture of a man
who just been decapitated
and his head
was still sitting on his neck
Basically in a single blinding moment
I saw the fragility of human life
and that's when I knew I had to write this book
It was like I had no choice
I also felt that had il been bron in
another era
in another country
in another time
I could have easily been one of those corpses
one of those anonymous corpses in a photograph
And the idea that perhaps half a century later
no one would care
and that the perpetrators
might even say that it never happened at all
that was just horrifying for me
Yeah this is where it started
right in that room behind me
I saw this young girl
with a ponytail
slender quite tall
for a Chinese-American
Excuse me
I was looking at those pictures
They're devastating
I would really like to borrow themto make some copies
I said "What are you gonna do with it?"
Oh just for my records
I said for what?
I'm a professional writer
I said "Yeah right "
Because she looks so young
I thought she was a high school kidwriting a book report
I said this is the kind of subject you don't even want to touch
She was intense
she was focused
she was driven
and she was a go-getter
and I knew that the first moment I saw her
She looked at me in the eyes and says
'I'm gonna get it done "
and without saying it I know that was a promise
So the next morning
we came back
we started to go through things we wanted to do
and how we're going to support it
She said "1 need your help"
I don't know anybody in Nanking
but I figure that's where I'm gonna go
So I need you to help me to find leads
Really? Your family is from that area?
Like Humphrey Bogart said
'It's the beginning of a good friendship
a beautiful friendship "
Having the people in Cupertino behind me
was a huge break
but at the same timeI also felt very overwhelmed
because I had a lot of people counting on me
So one of the first things I did
was call Susan Rabiner my editor
I had worked with her on my first book
Thread of the Silkworm
And she said"l'm wondering if Basic would agree
if I paid for it to do a book
that's very important to my community"
I said "We don't work that way
We're not going take money from you
Either we're going to believe in the book and publish it
or we're not going to publish it
So tell me more about the topic "
And she described the story ofthe Rape of Nanking
I was fascinated
My entire career in publishing had been related
to doing serious non-fiction books by academics
Here was an enormous topic ofgreat importance
and yet not one academic it appeared had written about it
I think there's a big question to be asked and answered
why did it need a child of the community to tell this story?
And second why had it disappearedfrom the history books?
She talked to people in the United States
who had there in Nanking at that time
She spent a lot of time in the National Archives
in Washington DC
and also a lot of the people in Nanking were missionaries
who were from Yale
and their records were in the Yale archives
The first question we were asking is
what happened?
Because the Japanese claimed one thing
the Chinese claimed something else
So by then we knew we wanted to tell the story
Rashomon style three different ways
The first way would be from the perspective of the attackers
the Japanese
as they remembered the incident
The second time would be
from the perspective from the victims
the Chinese as they remembered the incident
But the critical factor was
were there independent people there
who could either verify the Japanese side or the Chinese side
So very early on
we were focused on the independents
When I started researching
I was so surprised to find out that
the Rape of Nanking was front-page news
at the time
Western journalists were actually living in the city
when the Japanese invaded
They saw what happened with their own eyes
and their reports about the massacre
were sent around the world
About 20 other Westerners who were in Nanking as well
businessmen missionaries diplomatsand doctors
and many of them wrote detailed diaries
documenting the atrocities
John McGee an American missionary
even filmed the victims
when I saw his footage
I couldn't believe how brutal the Japanese soldiers had been
Dr Robert Wilson
worked day and night treatinghorrifying wounds
Minnie Vautrin
turned her women's college intoa refugee camp
German businessman John Rabe
hid hundreds of people in his own house
He was one of the foreigners
who stayed in the city to create a
2 5 square-mile area
they called the Safety Zone
they protected hundreds of thousands of Chinese
from slaughter during the worst of this massacre
When I read the diaries
I realized there was
a whole other side to the story that nobody new about
These people were as courageous as you'll ever find
They weren't larger-than-life characters
they were just ordinary peoplescholars and missionaries
who found themselves in an extraordinary situation
they were all heroes
You could have written a book
about any one of them
Minnie Vautrin was a missionary
who grew up in Secor Illinois
In 1937 she was the head of Jinling Woman's College in Nanking
When Nanking fell to the Japanese
Vautrin turned the campus into a refugee camp
Thousands of Chinese woman and children poured into the zone
with only their clothes on their backs
Soldiers would break into the camps
at night and kidnap a few women
before Vautrin and the other missionaries
could stop them
Vautrin managed to rescue a few girls
from the clutches of soldiers
and ordered the Japanese out of the zone
But these men were not accustomed to dealing
with strong women like Minnie Vautrin
and slapped her around or threatened her
with their bloodied swords bayonets and guns
Minnie Vautrin was a strong woman and a hero
but in the end
she found it impossible to sustain
the mental torture of living in this hell
that was Nanking
shortly after the massacre
she suffered a nervous breakdown
and had to return to the United States
She never recovered
Vautrin one day
stopped up the cracks of the house
turned on the gas
and committed suicide
Minnie's testimony really
made a profound impression on Iris
and the fact after
having lived through this
and actually playing such a significant role in saving
so many of the Chinese in Nanking
she was so tormented that
she committed suicide later
that was something that
it didn't let go of Iris' mind
From 8:30 this morning until 8:00 this evening
I stood at the front gate while the refugees poured in
I'veI've heard scores of heart-breaking stories
of girls who were taken
from their homes last night
Tonight a truck passed in
which there were eight or ten girls
and as they passed they called out
'Jiu Ming! Jiu Ming!"Save our lives
Oh God!
Control the beastliness of the soldiers in Nanking tonight
and comfort the heartbroken mothers and fathers
whose innocent sons have been shot today
And guardguard the young menand girls through the long
agonizing hours of this night
How ashamed the women of Japan would be
if they knew these tales of horror
she said "l read the diary I was crying
I was broke down right there "
she's crying and really told me
'If I finish the Rape of Nanking
I'm going to publish this diary
But she didn't have any chance
I'll dedicate my life
to get your stories told
I'll give voice to the voiceless
silenced for too long
Crying out for justice
silenced for too long
Trust me with your pain
I'll take it as my own
I'll fight to get the truth told
my weapon is my word
She flew into Hong Kong
she was gonna take a train up to Nanking
she was going to get to sort of bea tourist for a few days
It was like a steam locomotive
there wasn't air conditioning in the cart
it was very very crowded
she got sick on that train ride
she was sick her whole time
she was in China after that
I went to China in the summer of 1995
and I interviewed about a dozen survivors
There are still several hundred people
in China who remember the atrocities vividly
who lived through them
This is why I wanted to write the book so quickly
and get it done - I really felt an urgency here
I was afraid that if I waited too long
that all the voices from the Rape of Nanking
would be extinguished forever from old age
Taxi
She has already been to China in '93
to do research on Thread of the Silkworm
so she was comfortable getting around in China
Thank you
The Global Alliance
hooked her up with the right people in China
so she talked to them a lot over the phone
by e-mail and regular mail in advance
She got everything well
well lined up before she went
She just went straight to the people
she wanted to talk to
she didn't really try to make a big deal
about the fact that
she was there digging up information
I think she was definitely under the radar
the whole time she was there
My friend Professor Sun Zhai Wei
called me saying that
a writer in America wanted to come here
to write a book about the Nanjing Massacre
I had my doubts in the beginning
because she was too young
But having worked together for a while
I found that she was very good very professional
She looked like a university student when she first came
l asked her
"Why did you think to write such a book?"
And she replied
"The Nazis massacring the Jews
was something the whole worldwas familiar with
But in America in the West
the history of Japanese soldiers massacring Nanjing civilians
this was something that very few people knew about
She said "Being a Chinese descendent
I have a responsibility to write this book "
When I heard this speech of hers
I was incredibly touched
The three of us split up our work
Teacher Duan was responsible
for contacting the survivors
and to accompany Miss Changto go and meet them
This job would be done in the daytime
Professor Yang was Iris Chang's translator
During the interview with the survivors
Professor Yang was the translator
As for me
I would be in the library in the Archival Files Library
collecting together facts and figures
It was in 1995 that
I first met Iris Chang
when she came to my house to interview me
my home was still
in the same house where the massacre happened
She asked about the massacre first
She asked how my family died
how I lost my relatives
There were 9 of us in the family
and four people from the neighbouring home
A total of 13 people all hiding
I told her that 20 to 30 Japanese soldiers
lifted up their guns
and there was a white flag with a red spot on it
It's an old house
a house of the past
These were all demolished
all demolished
This was my home
When they came in they shot
and killed my father
My mother was holding a child
They grabbed the child
and smashed the baby to death
They ripped off my mother's clothing
Then the Japanese
rushed into our bedroom
My grandma and grandpa were sitting onthe edge
of the bed protecting us we were four girls
lying on the bed
There was a quilt covering us
My grandpa and grandma would not move away
and so one was killed on this side
the other was killed on that side
Then I cried out loud
And I was stabbed three times
A stab here
a stab here and one at the back
Then I lost consciousness
In the evening of December 12th
the Chinese army that was guarding the gate
received orders to retreat
And so under the night's disguise
they retreated towards XiaGuan
The Japanese army did not know Chinese troops had retreated
So from about 100 meters from here
initiated their first attacks
By December 13th 3 a m in the morning
the Japanese army had seized the gate
Chiang Kai-shek had abandoned his capital
Government officials and the entire Chinese Air Force
had been ordered to leave
The remaining Chinese defenderswith no air support
and poor communications
were trapped on southern bank river inside the city walls
They had no choice but to surrender
The Japanese sent troops into the city
to search and arrest the unarmed Chinese soldiers
Some Chinese soldiers had nowhere to retreat to
stripped off their uniforms and put on civilian clothing
They then hid in the safety zone
The city is strangely silent
Three dangers are past
that of looting Chinese soldiers
bombing from aeroplanes
and shelling from big guns
But the fourth is still before us
our fate at the hands of a victorious army
People did not know what to expect
They found out soon enough
From the moment they entered the city
Japanese troops engaged in a campaign of murder
rape looting and arson that was so barbaric
A British reporter actually compared them
to Attila and the Huns
During the first few days
the Japanese army killed tens of thousands of
defenceless Chinese prisoners of war
It's hard to believe it was all done out
in the open
in full view without shame
I think they were actually trying to kill
almost any man of military age in the city
it wasn't just soldiers
There were a lot of people who were
rickshaw pullers police officers
coolies who looked like soldiers but they weren't
They slaughtered males in the city indiscriminately
They killed tens of thousands of men in the city
during those first few days
Even the Japanese reporters
were shocked by the brutal behaviour of their soldiers
On December 13th I saw a mass killing of POWs
The prisoners were lined up atop the wall
Then Japanese soldiers stabbed
them in the chest and abdomen
One by one the prisoners fell downto the outside of the wall
Blood splattered everywhere
The chilling atmosphere made one's hair stand on end
and limbs tremble with fear "
Literally we are a research teamconsisting of scholars
lawyers journalists
and labourers like myself
and our activity focuses on the Nanjing massacre
We started in 1988
and interviewed about 200 veterans
Words cannot describe the feeling
of climbing up the mountain of
dead bodies and stabbing them "
There were elderly and even children
We killed every one of them "
This is an except from General Nakajima Kesago's diary
dated December 13th 1937
To comply with the policy of not keeping prisoners
we decided to dispose of them all
but it's very difficult to find ditches huge enough
to dispose of 7 000 or 8 000 people "
The first mass execution was conducted
in the Chinese Navy facility on the Yangtze River
This was like an experiment for the coming mass executions
They concluded that the execution was successful
which resulted in an even bigger scale ofmass execution on the 17th
killing over 10 000 people
They shot dead bodies with heavy machine guns
over and over again
Then they poured gasoline over them and set the fire
Jiandong Gate 10 000 killed
Swallow cliff 50 000
Straw Gorge 57 000
Coal Harbour 3 000
Torpedo Barracks 9 000
Jang-shung Warf 10 000
She was in the dark imagine how the victim will feel
and just try to internalise the stories
she heard each day
During the night she was actually sitting in a room
surrounded by the pictures she couldn't see
the maps on the wall
and try to imagine she was there
It could be said that at that time
Nanjing was in a cloud of darkness
Japanese soldiers did whatever they wished within Nanjing
They killed citizens at will
raped women as they pleased
When the Japanese came
I was only nine years old
I looked quite pretty then
They would take away 3 or 4 kids at one time
young girls
The Japanese would take them into the hayshed
and for a long time they would not come out
Then we'd hear little girls screaming and crying
But we didn't understand what was happening
They would rape 3 or 4 of them at a time
and then more Japanese cameand they would rape more
What they did to the women
was far worse than what they did to the men
They raped an estimated 20 000 to 80 000 Chinese women
That was the single
greatest mass rape of world history
up to that moment
They would rape great grandmothers over the ages of 80
young children under the ages of eight
They often turned rape into sport
Of course soldier did more thanjust rape women
They violated them with rods bayonets twigs
golf sticks even fire crackers
We always killed burned raped gang raped and looted
Senior soldiers were holding the arms and legs of a woman
trying to see how deep her vagina was
One of them pushed a pole into her vagina
trying to see how deep it would go
The woman cried and struggled
but soldiers were holding her down
She was helpless
After the pole reached to the end
the soldier put cotton
into her vagina
poured in gasoline and set it on fire to burn her to death
This was commonly done by soldiers
this was a method employed by those who killed women?
One survivor told me that
he saw a soldier pry open the legs of a little girl
of about nine or ten in the street
and violated her in front of crowds of pedestrians
before splitting her head in two with a sword
After I woke up
I crawled over my grandparents' bodies
and slowly made it outside
When I saw my sister
she no longer had any clothes on
They were all torn off
no pantsno clothes
My second eldest sister laid on the bedwith no clothes on either
Outside the room I saw my dead mother
with no clothes on
Another one of my little sisters was also dead in the courtyard
Our four neighbours were all dead as well
Finally when I came to
all Japanese had left
There are about 20 of them?
Yes 20
And uh I found my older sisterlying on the table
How old was she?
Uh about 15 years old
without any clothes on and with blood beside her
Had she been raped?
Yes And another sister was
uh lying dead on the bed
also without any clothes on
How old was she?
And uh 14 years old Both of them were dead
A few foreigners came to my house
to take pictures
They took many many pictures
it was the American Magee who took pictures
At that time in year 1937 I was in so much sorrow
and from then on my tears would not dry
from then on my tears would not stop
My two elder sisters were raped by them
they were tortured to death
At that time I was in such grief so much sorrow
After the Japanese arm invaded Nanjing
They forced approximately 20 000 Chinese women
into acts of sexual violence
After sexual diseasse proliferatedwithin the Japanese army
the Japanese government decided toestablish "comfort centers"
Of these some were seized by force
some were deceived and tricked
The youngest were only 14 or 15 years old
According to the testimonies of these women they had to
in one day
service at least four to six
Japanese soldiers
The prettier ones
would sometimes have to serve 10 to 20 Japanese soldiers
I found an old woman named Lei Gui Ying
who was tricked into a Japanese army's comfort centre
There was a Japanese woman
thought I was going to look after her baby
One time the Japanese came looking for comfort women
but there were no women around
I was about 15 or 16 years old then
so the Japanese woman made me take their place
She couldn't find anyone so she grabbed me
They pinned me down on the bedforced me to sleep with them
I resisted but it was useless I was small
I couldn't fight them off
In that Japanese place I was ravaged
That was the situation
She could get extremely involved
she could visualize things very well
It was so much about others
about wanting to put herself inother people's shoes
and really understand situations and people
intellectually and also on an emotional level
Before it was all just inanimate informationin a book
but the moment she heard the survivors retell itit came alive
And the impression it left on her was profound
her feelings became
very heavy and sombre
Those survivors
every time we interviewed them they suffered again
and us listeners our hearts were saddened too
Iris Chang's heart was incredibly saddened
I could tell
Her expression was very sombre
she became very emotional
I felt like a time traveller at times
because here would be somebody who had fought off
three men who tried to rape herand I saw pictures of her
slashed up with bayonet wounds
somebody who at that time
was only 19 years old
And when I actually met this woman 60 years later
when I actually met this feisty old woman
who was telling me exactly
what I had read just a few weeks earlier
in an archives
It was just terribly moving for me
because I suddenly felt that
this is not something that just affected people60 years ago
the massacre affects people todaystill?
In 1937
the Japanese Imperial Army invaded China
I was nine years old
I had 3 older sisters
and 3 younger brothers
My youngest brother was only a year old
Our whole family lived inside a wooden boat
so we could hide from the turmoil of war
But before we could reach the countryside
the boat sank
My father brought us to the marshes to hide
My father took my sisters to hide
in one place
while my mother took me
and my brothers to hide somewhere else
My baby brother started to cry
Why did he cry
He needed to get milk from my morn