I'm beginning to read this book.
I've just read the Introduction, and I don't know what to feel.
It's painful.
And, i recall reading parts of Iris Chang (the author's) suicide notes from wikipedi.com - how she says that she thinks the CIA are following her. Considering how political this event is - Japan's denial of the event...
And, if we think for a minute - why has this massacre been so silent? Why do i not even know of this massacre? I believe that many westerners don't know about this massacre. I wonder if the Chinese curriculum teach this. More importantly, and sadly (and this is the political part), the Japanese curriculum does not include it.
They, unlike the germans, do not apologize for their actions (ruthless and brutal - much worse than gas chambers). They do not even ACKNOWLEDGE it. They DENY it.
And, this angers me.
It make me ask - why do we only learn about the Holocaust? Why do we not learn about the 20-40 million Russians that died, or the 13-20million Chinese that die during the WW2? Why do we only look at the jewish people that died?
Is it because it's European? And, being in a "European colony" that is what we learn about?
Unfortunately, yet seemingly so true, it seems that everything is so political.
I am grateful for Iris Chang, for her realization, her courage and her passion to bring the victims of the Rape of Nanking to shine a bit of light. If only any of these killings, and their sheer brutality, their humiliation and horrific-ness were brought to light as much as the holocaust, it would help the victims, who many of which are here no more, and bring their silenced suffering out of the closet. But even then, will the political world acknowledge it? Will the Japanese be willing to admit their doings to trying to erase their terrifying and horrible acts? Will they be willing to be shamed and apologize?
Perhaps it will take the falling of the sky for that to happen.
Damn, it's sad that Iris is gone.
I wish she were here to continue to advocacy of the silenced Chinese.
And, it makes it so damn emotional that these are my people. This is a part of my history.
An untold history, the forgotten and silenced history.
I hope that it will not be for me.
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I don't know what sort of history programme your school had, but I do know that we studied the Rape of Nanking in addition to the Holocaust. Then again, we didn't cover the Opium wars in all their stupified glory ("Ok, you don't want opium? *DIEDIEDIE*" and we will take your land and Christianise you). In Austria, the history cirriculum blames Germany almost entirely for nazism, the US history cirriculum glosses over the massacres of the native Americans and the internment of the Japanese-Americans during WW2. In the final examination, war is ugly, on all sides. "Good" and "evil" are relative based on your point of view.
To bring this conversation up-to-the-minute, the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, is often painted as the modern-day caricature of Hitler. Yes, he often puts his foot in his mouth. But, US Vice President just admitted to approving waterboarding and extraordinary rendition in the so-called War on Terror.
The point is there is fault on both sides and our history books will never be broad enough to cover every side of every issue. The best way to learn is to study both sides. For the second world war, this would mean, reading the British, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, German, etc. histories of the period and, one can safely conclude, that those statements common to all are true, whereas statements that are not in all are suspect, to one degree or another.
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