Rape of History

Rape of History

Rape of History

The atrocities committed in Nanjing during the Japanese occupation of that city in 1938
are among the most horrific committed in the recorded history of mankind.   That is, if they occurred.   There is a certain amount of dispute over the facts involved.   While most agree that the Nanjing Massacre occurred, there is enough confusion surrounding this event due to the natural chaos of war and the relative lack of photographic and video evidence that historians such as Tanaka Masaaki deny that it happened.   While Tanaka and those like him have their reasons to put forth such ideas, this does not mean they are correct.
The physical evidence proving the occurrence of the Nanjing Massacre, though somewhat scant, does exist, and has been verified by various experts.   There are photographs of beheadings performed on Chinese prisoners of war by Japanese officers, prisoners being buried alive, the Yangtze river choked with bodies of dead Chinese civilians, and other horrific images.   There is also video evidence recorded by Westerners who happened to be in Nanjing at the time.   In addition to the physical evidence there are also numerous eyewitness accounts as well as those of the survivors of attacks and rape by Japanese soldiers.
Tanaka Masaaki, in his book “What Really Happened in Nanking”, maintains that there was no massacre, and that all of the evidence collected about the events in Nanjing is fake.   If Tanaka could prove that the photographs taken in Nanjing are fake, this would be a heavy blow against the established view of events during the Nanjing Massacre, but his contentions of the photographs showing things or people other than what is claimed seem to be untrue.   For the photograph of the Japanese officer decapitating a Chinese prisoner, he claims that “The fakery is easy to detect if you look at the shadow cast by the man at the center brandishing a Japanese sword, and that cast by the soldier to his right.   They are facing in...