The Rape of Nanking

“If one event can be held up as an example of the unmitigated evil lying just below the surface of unbridled military adventurism, that moment is the Rape of Nanking.” 

This spirit of “military adventurism” the author describes is found in virtually all invading armies throughout history, albeit to wildly varying degrees. It’s what unites armies as diverse as the heroic Allied forces to the barbaric Huns of the 5th century. In the author’s telling, massacres like the Rape of Nanking are the logical conclusion of this military spirit when it is pushed to its furthest extreme.

“Germany is today a better place because Jews have not allowed that country to forget what it did during World War II. The American South is a better place for its acknowledgement of the evil of slavery and the one hundred years of Jim Crowism that followed emancipation. Japanese culture will not move forward until it too admits not only to the world but to itself how improper were its actions during World War II.” 

One of the book’s strongest themes is that attitudes among the Japanese with respect to wartime atrocities differ immensely from those of the Germans following World War II. A proper reckoning of the Nanking massacre and other war crimes would provide healing for the few remaining survivors and the much larger number of their descendants; it would also give the Japanese an opportunity to progress as a culture and mend relations with its neighbors in Asia. That said, the recent reemergence of Nazis in Germany and white supremacists in the United States may suggest these nations are not the best models for making honest assessments of one’s past.

“As the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel warned years ago, to forget a holocaust is to kill twice.” 

This quote from Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel reflects his belief that the consequences of forgetting a tragedy go beyond the danger of repeating the sins of history.