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Reflections on the Rape of Nanking

Broadcast Date: Dec. 12, 1997

In December 1937, the Imperial Japanese Army marched into the Chinese capital of Nanking and began a six-week campaign of murder, rape, looting and arson that has gone down as one of the most savage war crimes in history. Sixty years later, some Chinese historians, both young and old, worry that this dark chapter of history may one day be forgotten. In this 1997 report, Winnie Hwo explains the history behind the Nanking massacre and explores the importance of speaking for the estimated 300,000 people silenced during the brutal Japanese invasion.

Reflections on the Rape of Nanking

• Nanking officially became "Nanjing" in 1979, after a change in the system used to Romanize Mandarin words. The previous standard, known as the Wade-Giles system, translated a certain Mandarin character in a "k." The Pinyin system, which replaced Wade-Giles in 1979, turns that character into a "j," among other changes. This affected not only Nanking but the capital Peking, which became Beijing.

• Iris Chang, author of the hugely influential 1997 book The Rape of Nanking committed suicide on Nov. 9, 2004 during a bout of clinical depression. The 36-year-old had experienced a nervous breakdown in August 2004 and spent several days in a psychiatric hospital. In 2005, the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall in Nanjing added a wing dedicated to her memory. A statue of Chang was unveiled there in 2007.

• In 1937, some foreign residents of Nanking stayed in the city in advance of the Japanese attack and established the "Nanking Safety Zone," a 3.8-square-kilometre demilitarized zone to shelter Chinese civilians. Led by German businessman and Nazi party member John Rabe, the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone saved approximately 250,000 lives.

• In 1938, John Rabe returned to Germany and wrote to Adolf Hitler, urging Hitler to use his influence to prevent further Japanese atrocities. Rabe was arrested and detained by the Gestapo, but was eventually released and told not to publicly discuss the events of Nanking. After the war, he lived in relative poverty, but received monthly parcels of money and food from the grateful Chinese government.

• Another famous saviour in Nanking was an American missionary named Wilhelmina (Minnie) Vautrin. She ignored the U.S. embassy's order to evacuate the city before the Japanese invasion, staying to shelter as many as 10,000 women on the grounds of a women's college designed to hold 300. She came to be known as the "Goddess of Nanking" and "The Goddess of Mercy" in Nanking. Haunted by memories of the events in Nanking and plagued by guilt for not saving more lives, Vautrin committed suicide in 1940.

• In this clip, Iris Chang refers to Li Xiuying, a pregnant Chinese woman who fought off three Japanese soldiers with a bayonet during the Rape of Nanking. Li survived the massacre in Nanking and in 1999, successfully sued the Japanese author and publisher of the book A Big Doubt About the Rape of Nanking, which questioned whether Li was a victim of the events at Nanking. She died in Nanjing in 2005 at the age of 86.

• Some Japanese historians and politicians dispute modern death toll estimates from the Rape of Nanking and others argue that the massacre never occurred. In 2005, Japanese university professor Higashinakao Shudo published a book called The Nanking Massacre: Fact Versus Fiction, in which he calls the Rape of Nanking a "myth" and "war propaganda" propagated by "faked photographs and hugely exaggerated accounts."

• One denialist argument states that the population of Nanking was just 200,000 in 1937, so the typically stated death toll of 300,000 is impossible. But Chinese figures put the pre-war population of Nanking at between 535,000 and 635,000.

• There are some debates over exactly how many people were killed at Nanking, although 300,000 is the most commonly accepted number. Iris Chang's book The Rape of Nanking and many other sources — including the The Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall in Nanjing — support that figure.

Reflections on the Rape of Nanking

Medium: Television

Program: Broadcast 1

Broadcast Date: Dec. 12, 1997

Guest(s): Iris Chang, Randy Enomoto, Thekla Lit

Reporter: Winnie Hwo

Duration: 6:41

Last updated:
May 8, 2009