The Rape Of Nanking Illustrates Japanese Carnage in China in 1930s and 1940s with 400 Photographs

Breaks Historical Ground in Calculating Nearly 370,000 Deaths

Desmond Tutu Urges Readers, Never Forget Potential for Evil

Chicago -- For the first time, a newly released book presents conclusive evidence that no fewer than 369,366 Chinese men, women and children were killed by invading Japanese troops in Nanking and its vicinity during the 1937-38 massacre.

The Nanking Massacre began on December 13, 1937 when the Japanese Imperial Army captured Nanking (Nanjing), which was then China's capital. Japanese soldiers ransacked city streets, randomly killing Chinese men, women and children. Within hours, the streets and alleys of Nanking were littered with the bodies of civilians and prisoners of war. The slaughter continued for several months. As many as 80,000 women of all ages were raped by Japanese invasion troops.

The expanded second edition of The Rape of Nanking: An Undeniable History in Photographs, released on the 60th anniversary of the Japanese attack, breaks historical ground in two critical areas:

• For more than 50 years, the number of persons killed in Nanking has been controversial. To prove for the first time that the number was no less than 369,366, the authors Shi Young and James Yin, two Chinese researchers now living in the United States, included Nanking census data from before and after the massacre, and the records of burial societies and Japanese officers, to calculate their numbers.

• In addition, the authors offer new evidence on the person held responsible for the massacre. After years of painstaking research, the authors argue that General Iwane Matsui, who led the invasion force and who had been called the "Butcher of Nanking," was inappropriately identified as the man behind the slaughter. The authors argue that Matsui was relieved of his command after less than three days in Nanking. The real criminal, according to facts collected by the authors, was Prince Asaka, Emperor Hirohito's uncle.

Desmond M. Tutu, Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town and 1984 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, who now heads South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, urges readers to never forget man's capacity for evil. In the book's foreword, Tutu writes: "To sweep under the carpet the atrocities which occurred in Nanking in 1937 and 1938 and turn a blind eye to the truth is at best a gross disservice to future generations and at worst ... criminally negligent and irresponsible. . . . It is necessary to know the truth of what happened in Nanking in order that the perpetrators might accept their wrongdoing and seek reconciliation."

The Nanking Massacre, following hard on the capture of Shanghai, was the first bloodbath in Japan's occupation of China and the first mass slaughter of World War II, during which an estimated 30 million Chinese were killed. Unfortunately, this violent history of Japanese militarism in China and elsewhere has been systematically denied or distorted by the Japanese government. Only since the first publication of this book in 1996 has the historical controversy been widely reported in the West.

Author Young argues, "We cannot allow ourselves to forget the atrocities committed in Nanking in 1937 and 1938. Japan's behavior as an imperial power from 1933 to 1945 may be well documented, but the heinous events in Nanking are little more than a footnote to the Western world.

"Thousands of women -- both old and young -- were raped by Japanese soldiers," Young continues. "Many cases of abnormal and sadistic behavior in connection with these rapes were reported. Often, women were killed after the act and their bodies were mutilated."

For six weeks, from mid December 1937 to late January 1938, the rapes continued. The murder of Chinese males was conducted under the apparent sanction of Japan's high command. Hundreds of thousands of civilians and disarmed ex-soldiers were arrayed in formation, their hands bound behind their backs, and marched outside the city wall. There, they were beheaded or buried alive, bayoneted, raked with machine-gun fire, or doused with gasoline and burned.

"It is time to set the historical record in a form that cannot be denied," says book co-author James Yin. "Japan's 14-year war against the Chinese people destroyed countless families and turned my homeland into a graveyard."

In comparison, during the 1930s and 1940s, six million European Jews died in Nazi extermination camps. There are thousands of books, museum exhibitions and documentary and feature films about the Holocaust, because of the determination of the surviving Jewish community to never let the world forget.

The Rape of Nanking includes more than 400 photographs, many taken as souvenirs by Japanese soldiers. The soldiers sent their film to be developed in Chinese shops, where technicians made and kept duplicate sets of the prints.

Other photos are stills from movies made by an American missionary, Rev. John G. Magee, who was given permission by the Japanese to roam the city and film what he saw. Magee later became chaplain of Yale University and deposited his film in its library.

Among the material added for this new edition of The Rape of Nanking are extensive excerpts from the diaries of two Americans -- the surgeon Robert O. Wilson and the educator Minnie Vautrin -- who lived through the slaughter and tried to protect the civilian population, as well as the diaries of 20 Japanese soldiers who participated in the massacre

The authors wrote The Rape of Nanking "to honor history and to answer any attempt to deny or change it." Published in Chicago by Innovative Publishing Group and distributed nationally by Triumph Books, the book is dedicated to the memory of the nearly 370,000 people who were killed in the Nanking massacre.