Summary: The Rape Of Nanking

The Rape of Nanking is a book that has detailed accounts of the horrific events of 1937 in Nanking after the Japanese invaded and slaughtered, raped, mutilated, and tortured Chinese people for six-to-eight weeks. Iris Chang refers to the Rape of Nanking by calling it the ‘forgotten Holocaust’ and draws a connection to the World War II victims. The Rape of Nanking isn’t discussed very much due to the survivors who feel greatly humiliated by the event and the Japanese try to hide this part of history. The Japanese government firmly denies this incident ever happened and claim it was propaganda created by the Chinese to create ‘anti-Japanese’. The first chapter explains how the Japanese build their aggression against humanity over time. …show more content…
“Old age was no concern to the Japanese. Matrons, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers endured sexual assaults…Many women in their eighties were raped to death and at least one woman in the age group was shot and killed because she refused a Japanese soldier’s advances. …Little girls were raped so brutally that some could not walk for weeks afterwards. Many required surgery; others died. Chinese witnesses saw Japanese rape girls under ten years of age in the streets and then slash them in half by the sword. In some cases, the Japanese sliced open the vaginas of preteen girls in order to ravish them more effectively. Even advanced stages of pregnancy did not render women immune to assault. The Japanese violated many who were about to go into labor, were in labor, or had given birth a few days earlier…Still more gruesome was the treatment allotted to some of the unborn children of these women. After gang rape, Japanese soldiers sometimes slashed open the bellies of pregnant women and ripped out the fetuses for amusement. The rape of women frequently accompanied the slaughter of entire families.” (Chang. p91) The women didn’t always get caught and would fight in any way they could. Some of them hid from the Japanese “…in fuel stacks, under piles of grass or straw, in pig pens, on boats.” (Chang. p 96) Some women in the countryside hid in “…covered holes in the earth” or “feigned death” in trenches. (Chang. p 96) In order to avoid Japanese inspection and getting raped, women would either disguise themselves as old and diseased or shave their heads then dress as men. Some would even feign sickness or use their quickness to escape Japanese soldier’s pursuit. (Chang. p 96) “But not all the victims were women. Chinese men were often sodomized or forced to perform a variety of repulsive

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