Their claim is that deserting soldiers and stragglers can have no complaints. They assert that those events do not constitute a massacre. Its advocates are routinely referred to as historical deniers, but they do not deny the facts stated above. The second is the “no massacre” interpretation. It relies on the impressive array of readily available primary sources to conclude that the massacre was largely one of stragglers and deserters, numbering at a mere fraction of the current Chinese claim of 300,000. The first is the middle-of-the-road interpretation. There are three common interpretations of the massacre. China’s President Xi Jinping addresses his domestic audience at the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Wall.To date they have identified 10,664 victims. This range of figures conforms with Chinese efforts to put names to numbers. A footnote suggests that the total number of civilian casualties could be as high as 12,000. A further 850 civilian deaths had occurred as a result of military action, predominantly shelling and bombing. The Smythe report, released in June 1938, found that around 2,400 had been killed due to soldier violence and 4,200 taken away and as yet not returned.
The present generation of historians could not have asked for more. Smythe, an American sociologist who had served on the committee. A sociological study was conducted in the immediate aftermath of the massacre by Lewis S. The diary of John Rabe, the head of the international committee, has been published. Primary source documents regarding the numbers of the civilian population exist. The massacre was a remarkably well-documented event. Nanjing Memorial Hall Primary Source Documentation Has the West acquired a newfound regard for the humanity of Chinese from the pre-WWII era, or is some other force at play? The Nanjing Massacre, while contemporaneously reported in the Western press, was considered far less newsworthy than the Japanese attack against the USS Panay, an American gunboat evacuating foreigners from Nanjing prior to the arrival of the Japanese military. The pseudo-science of eugenics deemed them inherently inferior beings. To what do we attribute this level of concern for the fate of pre-World War II Chinese on the part of the West? It certainly wasn’t evident at the time of the events in Nanjing.Įxclusion Acts denied Chinese nationals the opportunity to immigrate. Administrators of Facebook pages carrying articles perceived to be offensive by a reader are apt to receive complaints of “hate speech.” Consequently, a Western historian attempting to inject some rationality into the debate is likely to be subjected to all manner of emotively charged insults and accusations of rightwing affiliations. The Chinese claim of 300,000 deaths at Nanjing is defended by most Westerners more passionately than a sow defending her bear cubs. Unfortunately, for those of the Western variety, that option is fraught with peril. With emotions perennially high, there is little chance of the controversy being resolved by the historians of those two nations.Ī logical way forward is for third party historians to step into the breach. The principle stumbling block has been Chinese insistence on an unsupportable claim of 300,000 victims.
The Nanjing Massacre has been an issue of contention between China and Japan for decades.
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