Nanjing Massacre Research Guide: Articles from the Library

This article identifies problems with representing Chinese victimization during World War II as a 'Holocaust' or 'Forgotten Holocaust'.

This manuscript investigates the facts of publication of the images of the Nanking Atrocity (December 1937-January 1938) in LIFE and LOOK magazines, two widely read United States publications, as well as the Nanking atrocity film clips that circulated to millions more in American and Canadian newsreels some years later. The publishers of these images were continuing the art of manipulation of public opinion through multimodal visual media, aiming them especially at the less educated mass public.

As new powers in Asia, the United States and Japan disagreed about the status of China; each had an interest in expanding trade and investment opportunities there (as did Britain, France, and other European powers). The United States supported Chinese independence, but throughout the early decades of the twentieth century, China found itself torn by revolution, xenophobia, and factionalism—circumstances that seemingly invited foreign intervention.

The aim of this paper is to identify and analyze various factors contributing to the occurrence of the atrocities in Nanking. In short, this paper is traced to the characteristics, goals, and aspirations of the war. It represents a brief history of the background of the atrocities of Nanking. It also represents the issue of why the Japanese army behaved with such apparent barbarism in seizing places such as Nanking.

Just as there were war crimes trials at Nuremberg concerning the actions of German leaders during World War II, so were the actions of the leaders of Japan put before a judicial forum in a separate set of trials between May 1946 and November 1948.

The atrocities committed by the Japanese Army against citizens of Nanking China in 1937 are discussed. Iris Chang recently published a book on the subject, "The Rape of Nanking," to draw attention to this massacre.

Li reviews several books, including "The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II" by Iris Chang, "Rape of Nanking: An Undeniable History in Photographs" by James Yin and Shi Young and "Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932-45, and the American Cover-up" by Sheldon Harris.

Iris Chang, a journalist whose best-selling book, ''The Rape of Nanking,'' a chronicle of the atrocities committed in that city by occupying Japanese forces, helped break a six-decade-long international silence on the subject, committed suicide on Tuesday near Los Gatos, Calif.

How John Rabe helped Chinese survive Japan's horrific World War II invasion and became "the living Buddha of Nanking"

A recently unearthed diary of a German businessman reveals an unlikely rescuer of thousands of Chinese when the invading Japanese Army overrran the Nationalist Chinese capital of Nanking in Dec 1937, embarking on a two-month rampage of looting, rape and killing. Jon Rabe, a German businessman living in China who was the leader of the local Nazi organization, recorded in his 1,200-page diary an account of the atrocities and his attempts to shelter 650 Chinese.

A secondary source about missionary and educator in China for twenty-eight years, Minnie Vautrin is celebrated for her courageous attempts to protect and care for her women students, as well as many Chinese refugees, between 1937 and 1938, during the Japanese invasion of Nanjing (also called Nanking), a historical event known variously as the Nanjing Massacre and the Rape of Nanjing.

Contains some primary source information and secondary information about Wilhelmina “Minnie” Vautrin (1886–1941) and her role in Nanking.