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Yaqi Yu Ms. Caruso ENGL 1102-077 15 February 2012 Remembering the Nanking Massacre: A Forgotten Holocaust In spite of Japans historical amnesia and its culture of denial, history will not let them forget (Chang, 2). In November 1937, after Japans successful invasion of Shanghai, they launched a massive attack on Nanking, which was the capital of the Republic of China. When Nanking fell quickly to the Japanese, they began a holocaust in the city. Fortunately, some foreigners witnessed the massacre and wrote down what they saw at the time, and some Chinese victims survived as eyewitnesses. Furthermore, there are thousands of books have been written, numerous documents and photos have been kept by the survivors in the twenty-first century. However, Japan still hold on to their denial of Nanking Massacre and try to whitewash the dark aspects of its wartime past in the present day. The best kept secret about World War II is the truth about the Japanese atrocities (Sledge, 297). Even though the Nanking Massacre was one of the painful histories of World War II, the history cannot be easily erased from the memories of the victims, and it is important to remember the history. The decade of the thirties maybe was the hardest time for China. Japan started its military domination of Asia in Manchuria in 1931. Four years later, Japan occupied many parts of the Shanghai region; after Shanghai fell, in 1937, Japan moved toward Nanking. Japan started its cruel atrocities in this city until the end of World War II in 1945. They captured Chinese civilians and disarmed soldiers as live targets for bayonet or sword

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practice, and for massacre by live burial, raping, burning. For example, the Japanese soldiers rounded up a large crowd of Chinese civilians and put them into a large pit. Then, they began killing the civilians in wholesale machine-gunning and serial decapitations. The Japanese even turned murder into killing contests, which were to see who could kill one hundred men first. They not only raped countless women but also tortured and mutilated them. So, the Nanking Massacre is also called the Rape of Nanking.

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Works Cited Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. New York, NY: Basic, 1997. Print. Sledge, Eugene B. The Old Breed and the Costs of War. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1998. Print.