Lin, Ming
Lin, Ming
12/12/2004
Justice: A-Bomb vs. Nanjing Massacre
Next year, many people will commemorate the 60th year of the A-Bomb dropping
in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan (A-Bomb is for atomic bomb, but the word is only
used for this bombing.), but I like to ask how many people know and remember that
Nanjing Massacre (the Forgotten Holocaust)? Japanese emphasize that they were victims
of the bombing (a stone tablet at UN headquarters), but have any Japanese seriously
asked for an apology to satisfy themselves are senseless from the history perspectives and
to pay a penny for their war reparations to China. The point is: "What can we learn from
the past?" Japanese people have to understand and to learn what World War II was, what
cause was and what they did. Many Japanese believe Buddhism, so they should know
Karma. Do they think A-Bomb is punitive justice? My personal opinion, A-Bomb is
justice for the Japanese war crime and real Chinese victims.
To the best of my knowledge, the Japanese
government has never apologized for its dastardly
act (for example, Japanese military during its 14year aggression against China such as Nanjing
Massacre and starting the conflict in the Pacific
such as attacking on Pearl Harbor), but it has been repeatedly ignoring the main part of
history, even denying the fact that Japan did launch a war, did commit war crimes, and
did surrender the war. For example, the textbook controversy (white washed the books to
distort the historical facts), government paid homage to the war criminals as national
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heroes (class-A, suicide bombers, murderers and rapist). According to news in 1996,
“Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto Monday visited a controversial shrine to the nation's
war dead, including executed war criminals, breaking a decade-long taboo on Japanese
leaders visiting the site.” I think these are not just and fair because most Japanese people
do not introspect.
I want to compare the deaths in the atomic blasts with under the Japanese guns,
gas, bombs, biological weapon, fire, water and swords. They are similar: mass killing of
civilians, during the war, and
deepest painful symbol. The
big differences are that
Nanjing Massacre was the
beginning of the Japanese
aggressive wars but ABombing was to end the evil
war; Also, the Massacre was
after China’s capital fall but Hiroshima and Nagasaki were no surrendered bases of
industry and military; Nanjing Massacre was by bestial Japanese soldiers face to face
killing but A-Bombing was by the brave American Air Force from the sky.
According to these facts, I agree that the A-Bomb is necessary in the war because
it saved more people than Japanese killed Allied people and their people. Japan and
Japanese citizens, mostly soldiers, carried out terror during WW II. China and Allies lost
millions of lives by such causes as massacres (using bombs, biological and chemical
weapon, fire, water, swords and bayonets), slave labor, beating and rape, torture, sex
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slaves; Allied POWs (prisoner of war) died by the Japanese around 20 times higher than
in Nazi camps.
People are forgetful. Now, most people in the world, including many young
Chinese forget Japanese killed millions of Chinese in the past. They do know the ABomb only, but they do not know the cause for this bombing such as many massacres in
China and other countries. Like any Chinese of my generation, I had heard that when
Japanese Imperialism invaded China, they would take Chinese babies and throw them up
in the air and catch them on their bayonets and other similar stories in my childhood.
Most Chinese people know these facts because they and their parents or grandparents had
real personal experiences by the war. For example, my parents were in Wuhan, after it
fall, they moved to Chongqin with their families. They could get peace and safe place
there, because the Japanese bombed the city during five years. After I came to the USA, I
heard this was mere propaganda by China’s government, so I felt upset. This was not
mere propaganda that the Japanese were truly brutish. I learned more about the "Death
March" at Bataan, and medical experiments they did on people such as Unit 731: Japan's
Secret Biological Weapon in China. Until now, there are a lot of Japanese biological and
chemical weapon hidden in China somewhere because every year Chinese can discover
some of them underground. I found many people didn't know about what they did to the
Chinese and other Asians. In the occupied territories, the death rate for the nationals
totaled some 100,000 a month --- through forced labor, starvation, and outright murder.
That's 100,000 Asians dying, every month, for three or more years.
Many people pointed out similarities between the shock of December 7, 1941,
Pearl Harbor and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, New York City: both events
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were complete surprises; both events cost many lives; and fanaticism and suicide tactics.
According to the History Channel ,
There were thousands of Kamikazes
(most are Japanese suicide bombers)
who flew to their deaths attacking the
Americans Navy during WW II which
are hundreds times more than the
terrorists attacking NYC. When the
A Japanese Zero Fighter Plane to hit a US warship.
Allies focused their efforts on Japan,
Japan still fought fanatically, despite
being badly hurt by bombing and blockade. The Japanese believed the Emperor to be a
god, so they wanted to fight to the death for him and refused to surrender and they trained
women and children in defense of the homeland. For example, in many small islands,
Japanese fought to the last man and suicide. That means Allies and Japan could lose a
hundred times more people than the war in Iraq or the A-Bomb’s result. The dropping of
the atomic bombs changed all that. This was the end of the Japanese military era, so it
could not stay in power, and peace in the Pacific could be guaranteed in the future.
Therefore, I agree that the A-Bomb is necessary and just for Japanese war crimes.
The Nanjing Massacre came into focus again but it was not by Chinese. It was by
an interview with a Japanese: Ishihara, the most popular contemporary writer (co-author
of "The Japan that Can Say No"), was published in Playboy Magazine and he declared
that it never occurred, and that "it is a story made up by the Chinese, ... it is a lie"; "the
Nanjing Massacre never occurred." He is a big liar as Iraq’s propagandist, and showing
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that Japan never faced the real fact. Some things were much seriously, such as textbooks
and the Japanese prime ministers brazenly visited to the shrine, the symbol of Japan’s
aggressive history, was a provocation against generally acknowledged truth and justice,
as well as contempt for the people of the victimized countries, and had aroused painful
memories.
In WW II, there was no Nanjing Massacre in the public Japanese awareness.
When Chinese people were brutally killed by the Japanese military after the fall of
Nanjing, Japanese celebrated the capture of Nanjing. Their
newspapers praised the Japanese military for fighting
bravely in China and they were thinking the soldiers
fighting for the "liberation of Asia from the Western
invasion." The fact is that China now estimates that
Japanese soldiers raped
girls.
300,000 people were killed during the following three
months. An estimated 20,000 women were raped by the
Japanese soldiers during the six weeks of the Nanjing Massacre, most were brutally killed
afterwards. According to The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War
II wrote by Iris Chang (the prominent Chinese American author and journalist and died
last month.)
The Japanese occupation of Nanjing, the capital of China, led to one of the
greatest horrors of the century. This eyewitness report was filed by a New York Times
reporter on Dec. 17, 1937: “Through wholesale atrocities and vandalism at Nanjing the
Japanese Army has thrown away a rare opportunity to gain the respect and confidence of
the Chinese inhabitants and of foreign opinion there.... The killing of civilians was
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widespread. Foreigners who traveled widely through the city Wednesday found civilian
dead on every street. Some of the victims were aged men, women and children.”
Japanese soldiers killed people for fun, because they did not follow any law and
humanity. They killed 50,000 surrendered
Chinese soldiers.
The Japanese soldiers even raped girls
less than seven years old, women over seventy
years old, pregnant women, and nuns. Rampant
raping took place in the streets or at religious
Japanese soldiers killed surrendered
Chinese soldiers
worshiping places during the day. Many women
were gang raped. Some Japanese even forced
fathers to rape their daughters, sons to rape their mothers, etc. Those who resisted were
killed immediately. Therefore, many Chinese
said: “Japanese soldiers are beasts”. They
were worse than beasts because the beasts kill
victims for food only.
Dramatic reports by American
journalists of Japanese brutality against Chinese
Japanese soldiers killed
Chinese children
civilians helped turn American public opinion against Japan and, in part, led to a series of
events which culminated in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Aggressive wars launched by Japan against China and other Asian countries have
caused unprecedented calamities. The Chinese people were the biggest victims of that
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aggressive war: according to http://www.bjreview.com.cn, “Incomplete statistics show
that as many as 35 million Chinese were killed and wounded by Japanese troops.
Japanese aggressors brought to the tune of direct losses worth US$100 billion and
indirect losses worth US$500 billion to China.” That hurt the Chinese a lot and broke the
development of China for long time.
The Chinese governments forgave the Japanese and Japan’s war crimes and
waived war reparations, but I think that forgiving is not forgetting. When people forget
the tragedy, they will repeat it again, so remembering is to avoid repeating. We call for
peace, so we must stop the war. I think the best way to stop the war that is not when it
happen, it is before it starts. To learn from the past and to change people’s thoughts or
minds can do so. “Taking history as a mirror and looking forward to the future” is still a
motto for the development of peaceful road in the world.
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Works Cited
Chang, Iris. The rape of Nanking : the forgotten holocaust of World War II New
York : BasicBooks, c1997.
Dower, John W. Embracing defeat : Japan in the wake of World War II New
York : W.W. Norton & Co., c1999.
Dunnahoo, Terry. Pearl Harbor : America enters the war New York: F. Watts,
c1991.
Feis, Herbert. The atomic bomb and the end of World War II. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1966.
“Japanese Imperialism and the Massacre in Nanjing" Vancouver, Canada
February 1996 < http://museums.cnd.org/njmassacre/ >
“Nanjing Massacre” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Boston, MA Dec. 2004
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre
“No Surrender: German and Japanese Kamikazes” Time Machine History
Channel. AETN, Dec. 2004
Ren, Min. “Koizumi’s Visit to Yasukuni Shrine: A Provocative Act Against Justice”
Beijing Review 2001 http://www.bjreview.com.cn/2001/200135/GlobalObserver200135%28A%29.htm
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