Curator Statement: Nanjing Massacre

The Imperial Japanese Army murdered thousand of innocent, defenseless people in the
city of Nanking and over a period of six weeks in the 1930s. The actions they caused on these
people were unbelievable. Learning about how powerful the Japanese actions were, we realized
they created a form of genocide, gendercide.
Choices were made by the Japanese of how to handle this situation in Nanking. A big
choice was militarism and uniting their government under the strength of nationalism. Small
choices that led to this pride and nationalism was the hatred of the Chinese people, which is why
they showed no mercy for these citizens as they were treated brutally.
In remembrance to the people who died in the city, components in this memorial are
shown. The bars represent the Japanese army isolating the city with the blob in the middle. The
blob shows unity of the people of Nanking, but also unorganized by the chaos after their army
left to be defenseless. The color white of the structure shows the innocence and purity of the
victims. Water streaming out and over the figures represents the drowning of the Chinese people.
The structure visually is to show how not just Chinese people were affected, anyone
could be affected by this event such as the soldiers who fought for them. Other memorials show
human like figures where they look almost perfectly structured, which is not the what is shown
here. The chunk of stone is to show how it can refer to anyone in this event that was affected not
knowing the race or gender of that individual.
The Japanese Army were targeting a race of people, but this genocide was fuel from their
pride and nationalism. The hatred of these people led to the inhuman massacre upon them. The
main objective demonstrates how hatred can impact people and how dangerous it can be.

Part 4 (30 points)

Curator Statement
Content: This is a 1-2 page statement that will accompany your memorial. It must be
written for the memorial viewer who knows little to nothing about your genocide case
study/theme. You are expected to include:
a.
Historical context
b. What can we learn about choices big and small from this memorial?
c.
Why did you, as the memorial designers, make the visual choices that you did?
d. What do the memorials components represent?
Mechanics:
a.
The statement is written in MLA manuscript form with no errors.
b. The statement is between 1-2 pages in manuscript form.
c.
The statement meets the standards of written English.
d. No grammatical, spelling, or punctuation errors
e. All paragraphs include introductory and concluding sentences, explanations,
and details
The statement is turned in on time. (Beginning of class on April 30).