IRIS CHANG
The Rape of Nanking
54’30’’ – script


00:00:16:28 One of the greatest atrocities of world history
00:00:20:10 is the Rape of Nanking.
00:00:23:01 All human beings
00:00:24:15 are capable of committing these kinds of atrocities -
00:00:27:09 not just the Japanese or the Germans.
00:00:30:13 I think all human beings have this capacity for great evil
00:00:34:00 if put under the right social and political circumstances.
00:00:38:04 The Rape of Nanking was something | that always could happen,
00:00:41:00 and it did happen,
00:00:42:11 and we have to learn from history
00:00:44:07 if we want to make sure it doesn't happen again.
00:01:45:09 And now a news update.
00:01:46:22 Early this morning the body of writer and
ASTON LOS ALTOS, CALIFORNIA. NOVEMBER 9 2004
00:01:48:26 human rights activist Iris Chang
00:01:51:03 was discovered in her parked car off the
00:01:53:19 interstate highway near San Jose, California.
00:01:56:13 The 36-year-old author was best known for her book,
00:01:59:18 The Rape of Nanking,
00:02:01:19 which described the mass slaughter of Chinese civilians
00:02:04:16 by the Japanese Imperial Army in 1937.
00:02:07:21 The internationally acclaimed best seller was
00:02:10:01 the first major work in English about the massacre.
00:02:13:14 Chang, who had been suffering from depression,
00:02:15:29 died of a gunshot wound,
00:02:17:14 the victim of an apparent suicide.
ASTON IRIS CHANG 1968-2004
00:02:52:06 I grew up hearing stories about Japan invading China
00:02:55:17 and Chinese people being massacred by
00:02:57:25 Japanese soldiers in Nanking,
00:03:00:15 but I didn't know all the details.
00:03:03:04 Japan's post-war prosperity ended
with the Great Depression.
Unemployment soared,
millions were thrust into poverty.
Japan's military leaders believed expansion into China,
with its vast resources, was the | solution to the country's problems.
The economic crisis gave them | the opportunity they had been waiting for.
In 1931 they struck.
Japanese troops seized control of Manchuria,
a huge area of northwest China.
Over the next few years they marched east, then south,
conquering provinces one by one.
00:03:50:00 Full-scale war was inevitable.
It came in the summer of 1937.
A minor clash near Beijing was | trumped up by the Japanese.
It was the excuse they'd been looking for.
They captured Beijing and, in August, attacked Shanghai.
In November, after a fierce three-month battle, the city fell.
The Japanese army then marched | on the capital city of Nanking,
laying waste to everything in its path.
00:04:32:00 By December 12th
Japanese troops were massed | outside the walled city of Nanking.
The next day, they entered the city and | began raping and murdering its citizens
in an orgy of violence that | has few parallels in modern history.
My parents were the ones who told me | about the Nanking Massacre
when I was a little girl growing up | in a Midwestern college town.
ASTON IRIS CHANG
My parents are science professors | and they're very talkative,
and always told me what it was like for them | to grow up during the war in China.
00:05:13:00 Thousands upon thousands | of people were killed
and the bodies that had been thrown | into the Yangtze River
during the carnage literally made the water turn red.
When I was a little girl I had nightmares sometimes.
The stories were very, very disturbing.
I remember there was one I had over and over
where I was in a white dress, | being chased by a Japanese soldier.
And I remember as a child | wanting to learn more about this,
and after going to my local school libraries, | public libraries,
I couldn't find a word about this matter in English.
So the matter really remained a mystery to me for years.
00:06:33:00 There was this one picture of a man | who had just been decapitated.
His head was still sitting on his neck.
Basically, in a single blinding moment
I saw the fragility of human life...
and that's when I knew I had to write this book.
It was like I had no choice.
I also felt that had I been born in another era,
in another country, in another time,
I could have easily been one of those corpses,
one of those anonymous corpses in a photograph.
And the idea that perhaps half a century later | no one would care and that the perpetrators
might even say that it never happened at all; | that was just horrifying for me.
00:07:56:00 So one of the first things I did | was call Susan Rabiner, my editor.
I had worked with her on my first book, | Thread of the Silkworm.
00:08:07:00 I was fascinated.
Here was an enormous topic of great importance
and yet not one academic, it appeared, | had written about it.
I think there's a big question to be asked and answered
ASTON SUSAN RABINER – IRIS’ EDITOR AND FRIEND
Why had it disappeared | from the history books?
00:08:25:00 She talked to people in the United States
who had been there in Nanking at that time.
She spent a lot of time in the National Archives | in Washington DC,
ASTON BRETT DOUGLAS – IRIS’ WIDOWER
and also a lot of the people in Nanking were missionaries
who had been - who were from Yale,
and their records were in the Yale archives.
00:08:43:00 When I started researching
I was surprised to find out that the Rape of Nanking
was front-page news at the time.
Western journalists were actually living in the city | when the Japanese invaded.
They saw what happened with their own eyes
and their reports about the massacre | were sent around the world.
About 20 other Westerners stayed in Nanking as well,
businessmen, missionaries, diplomats, and doctors,
and many of them wrote detailed diaries | documenting the atrocities.
John McGee, an American missionary,
even filmed the victims; and when I saw his footage
I couldn't believe how brutal | the Japanese soldiers had been.
Dr. Robert Wilson worked day and night | treating horrifying wounds.
Then there was Minnie Vautrin.
She turned her women's college into a refugee camp.
And German businessman, John Rabe,
hid hundreds of people in his own house.
He was one of the foreigners who stayed in the city
to create a 2 and a half square-mile area,
which they called the Safety Zone.
And they protected hundreds of thousands of Chinese
from slaughter during the worst of this massacre.
00:10:07:00 Wilhelmina Vautrin, or Minnie Vautrin | as her friends called her,
was a missionary who grew up in Secor, Illinois.
And in 1937, she was the head of | Jinling Woman's College in Nanking.
When Nanking fell to the Japanese, | Vautrin turned the campus into a refugee camp.
Thousands of Chinese women and children poured | into the zone with only their clothes on their backs.
Soldiers would break into the camps | at night and kidnap a few women
before Vautrin and the other missionaries could stop them.
Vautrin managed to rescue a few girls | from the clutches of soldiers
and ordered the Japanese out of the zone.
But these men were not accustomed to dealing with | strong women like Minnie Vautrin
and slapped her around or threatened her with | their bloodied swords, bayonets, and guns.
Minnie Vautrin was a strong woman and a hero, | but in the end,
she found it impossible to sustain | the mental torture of living in
this hell that was Nanking; because shortly after the | massacre, she suffered a nervous breakdown
and had to return to the United States. She never recovered.
Vautrin one day stopped up the cracks of the house, | turned on the gas, and committed suicide.
ASTON EXCERPT FROM MINNIE VAUTRIN DIARY
00:11:39:00 From 8:30 this morning until 8:00 this evening I stood at | the front gate while the refugees poured in.
I've ... I've heard scores of heart-breaking stories of | girls who were taken from their homes last night.
Tonight a truck passed in which there were | eight or ten girls
and as they passed they called out, | "Jiu Ming! Jiu Ming!... Save our lives!"
Oh, God, control the beastliness of | the soldiers in Nanking tonight
and comfort the heartbroken mothers and fathers | whose innocent sons have been shot today.
And guard... guard the young men and girls | through the long, agonizing hours of this night.
How ashamed the women of Japan would be | if they knew these tales of horror.
00:12:44:00 I'll dedicate my life
to get your stories told,
I'll give voice to the voiceless,
silenced for too long...
Crying out for justice,
silenced for too long... | Trust me with your pain,
I'll take it as my own.
I'll fight to get the truth told,
my weapon is my word.
00:13:27:00 There are still several hundred people in China
who remember the atrocities vividly, | who lived through them.
This is why I wanted to write the book so quickly | and get it done.
I really felt an urgency here. I was afraid | that if I waited too long
that all the voices from the Rape of Nanking
would be extinguished forever from old age.
ASTON PROF. WANG WEI XING – HISTORIAN, JIANGSU ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
00:13:51:00 I asked her, "Why did you think to write such a book?"
And she replied, "The Nazis massacring the Jews was
something the whole world was familiar with.
But in America, in the West, | the history of Japanese soldiers
massacring Nanjing civilians, this historical fact
was something that very few people knew about."
She said, "Being a Chinese descendent,
I have a responsibility to write this book."
When I heard this speech of hers
I was incredibly touched.
ASTON XIA SHU QIN – SURVIVOR. BORN 1929.
00:14:24:00 It was in 1995
that I first met Iris Chang.
When she came to my house to interview me.
It was the same house
where the massacre happened.
00:14:40:00 When they came in they shot and killed my father.
My mother was holding a child.
They grabbed the child
and smashed the baby to death.
They ripped off my mother's clothing...
Then the Japanese rushed into our bedroom.
My grandma and grandpa were sitting on the edge
of the bed protecting us.
We were 4 girls lying on the bed.
There was a quilt covering us.
My grandpa and grandma would not move away,
and so one was killed on this side,
the other was killed on that side.
Then I cried out loud,
and I was stabbed three times.
A stab here, a stab here, and one at the back.
Then I lost consciousness.
ASTON EXCERPT FROM MINNIE VAUTRIN’S DIARY
00:15:24:00 The city is strangely silent.
Three dangers are past -
that of looting Chinese soldiers,
bombing from aeroplanes, and shelling from big guns.
But the fourth is still before us -
our fate at the hands of a victorious army.
People do not know what to expect.
They found out soon enough.
From the moment they entered the city,
Japanese troops engaged in a campaign of | murder, rape, looting and arson
that was so barbaric a British reporter actually | compared them to Attila and the Huns.
During the first few days,
the Japanese army killed tens of thousands of | defenceless Chinese prisoners of war.
It's hard to believe it was all done out in the open, | in full view, without shame.
I think they were actually trying to kill almost any | man of military age in the city, it wasn't just soldiers.
00:16:44:00 They killed tens of thousands of men in the city | during those first few days.
And even the Japanese reporters were shocked | by the brutal behaviour of their soldiers.
ASTON EXCERPT FROM MAINICHI SHIMBUN NEWSPAPER BY JIRO SUZUKI
On December 13th, I saw a mass killing of POWs.
The prisoners were lined up atop the wall.
Then Japanese soldiers stabbed them | in the chest and abdomen.
One by one, the prisoners fell down | to the outside of the wall.
Blood splattered everywhere.
The chilling atmosphere made one's hair stand on end | and limbs tremble with fear.'
ASTON JAPANESE SOLDIER’S DIARY. YAMADA REGIMENT, NANKING
00:17:45:00 "Words cannot describe the feeling of
ASTON READ BY ONO KENJI, JAPANESE RESEARCHER, NANJING MASSACRE
climbing up the mountain of dead bodies
and stabbing them.
There were elderly and even children.
We killed every one of them."
This is an excerpt from General Nakajima Kesago's | diary dated December 13th, 1937:
'To comply with the policy of not keeping prisoners,
we decided to dispose of them all but | it's very difficult to find ditches
huge enough to dispose of 7,000 or 8,000 people.'
00:18:39:00 They shot dead bodies with heavy machine guns
over and over again.
Then they poured gasoline over them
and set the fire.
Jiandong Gate, 10,000 killed;
Swallow cliff, 50,000;
Straw Gorge, 57,000;
Coal Harbour, 3,000;
Torpedo Barracks, 9,000;
Jang-shung Warf, 10,000...
ASTON EXCERPT FROM CHINESE FILM ‘BLACK SUN’
ASTON EXCERPT FROM CHINESE FILM ‘BLACK SUN’
ASTON LEI GUI YING. SURVIVOR. BORN IN 1928
00:20:57:00 When the Japanese came, I was only 9 years old.
They would take away 3 or 4 kids at one time,
young girls, take them into the hayshed,
and for a long time they didn't come out.
Then we'd hear little girls screaming and crying.
They kept crying and crying,
but we didn't understand what was happening.
They would rape 3 or 4 of them at a time,
and then more Japanese came,
and they would rape more.
00:21:37:00 What they did to the women was far worse | than what they did to the men.
They raped an estimated 20,000 to 80,000 Chinese women.
That was the single greatest mass rape | of world history up to that moment.
They would, they would rape great grandmothers | over the ages of 80,
young children under the ages of 8. | They often turned rape into sport.
Of course soldier did more than just rape women.
They violated them with rods,
bayonets, twigs, golf sticks, even fire crackers.
ASTON KANEKO YASUJI. PRIVATE 1940-1945. JAPANESE ARMY
00:22:19:00 We always killed, burned,
raped, gang raped and looted.
Senior soldiers were holding
the arms and legs of a woman,
trying to see how deep her vagina was.
One of them pushed a pole into her vagina,
trying to see how deep it would go.
The woman cried and struggled, but the soldier
was holding her down; she was helpless.
After the pole reached the end,
the soldier put cotton into her vagina,
poured in gasoline,
and set it on fire to burn her to death.
This was commonly done by soldiers.
This was a method employed by those
who killed women.
00:23:15:00 One survivor told me that he saw a soldier | pry open the legs of a little girl,
of about nine or ten, in the street
and violate her in front of crowds of pedestrians
before splitting her head in two with a sword.
ASTON XIA SHU QIN
00:23:45:00 After I woke up
I crawled over my grandparents' bodies
and slowly made it outside.
When I saw my sister,
she no longer had any clothes on.
They were all torn off, no pants... no clothes.
My second eldest sister lay on the bed | with no clothes on either.
Outside the room I saw my dead mother
with no clothes on.
Another one of my little sisters
was also dead in the courtyard.
Our four neighbours were all dead as well.
ASTON PROF YANG XIA MING. IRIS’ TRANSLATOR. NANJING
00:24:15:00 Finally, when I came to,
all Japanese had left.
There are about 20 of them?
Yes, 20.
And, uh, I found my
older sister lying on the table.
How old was she?
About 15 years old
without any clothes on
and with blood beside her.
Had she been raped?
Yes. And another sister was lying dead on the bed,
also without any clothes on.
How old was she?
And, uh, 14 years old. Both of them were dead.
00:25:08:00 A few foreigners came to my house
ASTON MASSACRE VICTIMS AT XIA SHU QIN’S HOME FILMED BY JOHN MAGEE
to take pictures.
They took many, many pictures -
it was the American McGee who took pictures.
At that time in 1937,
I was in so much sorrow
and from then on my tears would not dry.
From then on my tears would not stop.
My two elder sisters were raped by them,
they were tortured to death.
At that time I was in such grief,
so much sorrow.
00:25:50:00 After the Japanese army invaded Nanjing,
they forced approximately 20,000
Chinese women into acts of sexual violence.
After sexual diseases
ASTON PROF. JING SHENG HONG. HISTORIAN, NANJING. NORMAL UNIVERSITY
proliferated within the Japanese army,
the Japanese government in Nanjing decided
to establish "comfort centres".
Of these women,
some were seized by force,
some were deceived and tricked.
The youngest were only 14 or 15.
According to the testimonies of these women, they had to,
in one day, service at least 4 to 6 Japanese soldiers.
The prettier ones would sometimes
have to serve 10 to 20 Japanese soldiers.
I found an old woman named Lei Gui Ying,
who was tricked into a Japanese army's comfort centre.
Afterwards, she lost her capability to conceive.
00:26:43:00 There was a Japanese woman -
I thought I was going to look after her baby.
One time, the Japanese soldiers came looking for women
but there were no women available.
I was about 15 or 16 years old then,
ASTON LEI GUI YING
the Japanese woman dragged me to the soldiers
because she couldn't find anyone else.
They pinned me down on the bed,
forced me to sleep with them. I resisted,
but it was useless.
I was small, I couldn't fight them off.
In that Japanese place, I was ravaged.
That was the situation.
00:27:33:00 I felt like a time traveller at times because
here would be somebody who had fought off,
let's say, three men who tried to rape her
and I saw pictures of her, you know, | slashed up with bayonet wounds,
and somebody who at that time was only 19 years old.
And, when I actually met this woman
ASTON IRIS CHANG’S HOME VIDEO 1995
60 years later,
I found her, you know, this feisty old woman,
somebody who was telling me exactly what I had just | read a few weeks earlier in the archives.
It was... it was just terribly moving for me because
I suddenly felt that this is not something that | just affected people 60 years ago,
the massacre affects people today... still.
00:28:16:00 She immersed herself in this history,
as if she was part of it.
She used her feelings
to experience it and then write this book.
Her book was not written with a pen.
It was written with her heart.
00:28:35:00 When she was in the book mode,
she would just stay focussed on something forever.
I mean, she would just get up at 12 noon, | work till 3 or 4 in the morning,
and start the whole thing over the next day.
ASTON IRIS CHANG’S FAMILY
In the beginning, she really was very happy | to get the story out.
ASTON QIN JIE. SURVIVOR. BORN IN 1925
00:28:59:00 We arrived at East Gate Riverside Bridge,
which had been destroyed by the bombing.
It was wintertime, and the water was shallow.
How were we going to cross the river?
This was the only way to get to Shang Xin River
and we had to cross the river.
Then we saw a huge number of bodies in the river
forming a path to cross the river.
We believed the Japanese Imperial Army
had forced the Chinese people
to make this path
Wooden boards were laid on top of the corpses
my grandmother and I walked across the wood planks
Seeing heads and feet on both sides underneath,
heads and feet...
and that's how we crossed the river.
00:30:54:00 I remember sometimes
just having a physical reaction to the
to the atrocities that were on my word processor.
I remember on various occasions I started, | you know, trembling convulsively
and not being able to stop.
And then it would take some time before I stopped shaking.
And also I noticed tremendous hair loss at the time,
you know, like just patches of hair disappearing.
00:31:27:00 One day I remember vividly,
she called, she seems very dark, in the mood.
I can see she's very unhappy and depressed...| Sad.
ASTON SHAU JIN-CHANG. YING-YING CHANG.
Sad. I said, "Are you sure you | really want to continue to write this book?"
because as a mother, I always worry about her health.
And she said, "Yes, I have to. | Even that bad, I have to continue."
She said, "Look, those survivors, | no one seems to pay attention to them.
I'm the one who has to make this atrocity | known to the world.
And thinking about what they go through,
what I'm going through is nothing, you know.
So I have to finish it."
01:32:10:00 What was really chilling for me
was to discover that many of these atrocities | were committed not by people who
were diabolical, serial types by nature, | but by people who were very ordinary citizens.
I still have a problem thinking about it
and talking about it sometimes. | The scars for me run pretty deep
because it's really shaken my fundamental belief | that humans are basically good at heart.
I mean, I can never entirely believe that again.
00:32:47:00 Back then, for the first three months,
after joining the Japanese army,
we were slapped when we woke up,
slapped until we went to bed,
slapped when we got up late,
ASTON KANEKO YASUJI. PRIVATE 1940-1945. JAPANESE IMPERIAL ARMY.
slapped if we didn't eat our meals properly,
slapped when our behaviours were not acceptable,
and slapped when our buttons were off.
Thus we were trained to acquire the spirit of soldiers.
That was how we were trained.
00:33:12:00 They were treated like dirt, they were the lowest of the low,
and suddenly, here they are in the capital of China
where they are more powerful than | the Lords of Creation in that city.
It's easy to see how all those months, or a lifetime perhaps,
of pent-up frustration could explode | in uncontrollable violence in Nanking.
00:33:33:00 When we entered a village,
senior soldiers would tie the farmers
who remained in the village and blindfolded them.
We lined up about ten metres away
facing one of the farmers.
"No. 1 charge!"
The first one charged and stabbed the farmer.
Only this much went in.
The Chinese opened his eyes wide and spit.
The senior soldier said, "Try again". The soldier tried again.
However, killing a person is not easy.
Then the senior soldier said,
"Watch me closely. I'll show you."
The senior soldier charged and | turned the bayonet by ninety degrees,
so the blade was thin enough to go through the ribs.
He taught us this trick and we tried with easy success.
This was how we got trained to kill men.
01:34:57:00 The Japanese were certainly
inculcated for violence once they entered the army
and they were taught to believe that | the Chinese were subhuman.
In fact, when you look at some of the
the diaries of Japanese soldiers at the time
you'll see that they refer to the Chinese as,
you know, as ants, or as something of | less value than pigs, or sheep.
01:35:24:00 We did what we did for the Emperor, | Japan, and the Japanese people.
Therefore we thought what we were doing was good.
01:35:33:00 It was easy for the Japanese soldier to take Chinese life
because he didn't even value his own life.
Next to the emperor, all human life | was considered meaningless.
01:35:45:00 People are always arguing about the numbers of dead.
They say it's 140,000, 300,000
but that's not even the point | because what we do know for sure
is many more would have died | if that small group of Westerners
had not stayed behind and set up | that 2 and a half square-mile
safe haven in the middle of Nanking.
I realized this was a story with heroes as well as villains.
The most fascinating of all, I think, was John Rabe.
He was the head of the Safety Zone Committee.
He was a German businessman and, ironically,
a Nazi... a Nazi humanitarian.
00:36:24:00 He would go throughout the city | wearing his swastika armband
and the Japanese actually respected | the Germans more than the Americans
because they had a relationship with Germany at the time.
And often he would drive through the city | or walk through the city
and he would try to stop atrocities that were in progress.
He gave refuge to over 600 Chinese in his own house
and for days would go sleepless, | ever vigilant of the constant threat
of marauding Japanese soldiers looking for women.
00:37:00:00 I tracked down the descedents of John Rabe in Germany | and learned that he had kept a 2,000-page
diary of the massacre;
a diary, which on various occasions,
the family had actually considered tossing out, | because the contents were too painful for them to read.
00:37:20:00 In December of 1937,
Japanese troops invaded the city of Nanking, China.
Now after 60 years, the story of what took place there has
been written about in a new book called | The Rape of Nanking.
It was written by Iris Chang and | we're pleased to have her here
on this broadcast this evening.
Thank you.
00:37:41:00 What happened when Iris' book came out
was that so many other families like mine, | who had basically been suffering
in silence like my father had, alone and isolated,
ASTON HELEN ZIA. AMERICAN AUTHOR/ACTIVIST
saw that here was this book that declared how
many hundreds of thousands of people had experienced it.
It lent a humanity to what they had suffered.
ASTON SUSAN RABINER
00:38:04:00 A typical book tour lasts two weeks -
a great book tour lasts two months -
she did a book tour for over a year.
It was unheard of.
We kept extending it and extending it and extending it.
That's how long the interest sustained itself.
There's a much more important story here than just
the horrible ways in which people were massacred.
00:38:18:00 As you point out,
there were more people killed in Nanking than | in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined,
and yet we have amnesia about...
about Nanking. Why?
Well, I think the Cold War is the main reason why we have
this worldwide amnesia on the subject.
After 1949, neither the People's Republic of China | nor the Republic of China in Taiwan
wanted to push the Japanese for reparations or an apology
because both of them, ironically, now needed | Japan as an ally against each other,
and they needed Japan's economic and political support.
00:38:54:00 She received some very ugly hate mail.
She was concerned about safety, | but she certainly wasn't going to stop.
00:39:05:00 And yet there are people in Japan -
prominent businessmen, politicians, academics -
so not just the lunatic fringe who say | that the whole thing is a lie,
that the massacre never happened. It's incredible.
ASTON KASE HIDEAKI. JAPANESE POLITICAL COMMENTATOR
00:39:23:00 Nanjing... no ma'am,
we did not commit any massacre there in 1937.
None?
That was fabricated, a complete fabrication, | by the Chinese.
You don't think eyewitness testimonies,
Japanese soldiers' diaries and film footage | and... international...
Oh, those film footage were
made up by the Nationalist | Chinese Propaganda Ministry.
00:40:08:00 Unfortunately, a mountain of | evidence on the Nanking Massacre,
including thousands of archival materials | in four different languages,
as well as photographic and motion picture evidence and
widespread news coverage, has not deterred
these Japanese extremists from | dismissing it all as propaganda or forgeries.
00:40:32:00 We may have killed a – a few thousand,
but certainly not in the order of 100,000, | 200,000 or 300,000.
00:40:43:00 We screamed, "Don't stab my mother!"
the Japanese soldier stabbed her and
my little brother fell to the ground.
"Waaahhh!"
The soldier with his bayonet
ASTON CHANG ZHI QIANG. SURVIVOR. BORN IN 1927
stabbed him in the buttocks
and flung him far away. I saw him tossed really far
and then drop to the ground with a thud.
My baby brother was crying loudly.
I ran over and threw myself on him
and said, "Don't cry, I'll protect you."
My older sister threw herself against the Jap crying,
"Don't stab my mom,"
but he stabbed my sister too.
The soldier started to stab my little brothers.
Every one - one after another, was stabbed to death by him.
I screamed and cried out loudly,
"Don't stab my mama! Don't stab my mama!"
I screamed for my brothers to leave, but they couldn't.
In the end, I fainted.
I went to the pile of corpses. There was blood everywhere.
I stepped over the dead corpses
and I saw both sides were full of dead bodies.
I walked toward the sound of crying,
my baby brother was crawling forward.
I lifted him up and I saw blood on his body
dripping to the ground, turning into ice,
because that day was especially cold.
I carefully brought him to mama's side.
When my mama saw my brother she struggled
to tear open her clothes so she could nurse my brother.
My brother crawled to mama and suckled hungrily.
My little brother was just a baby, he only knew to feed.
While he was nursing, when mama breathed
her wounds bubbled with blood. When I saw that it made me very sad.
So then I shook with all my might, crying, | "Mama, wake up, wake up."
I shook her, but she wouldn't wake up anymore.
00:42:52:00 I looked into the survivors' eyes and I heard their stories.
For people to say they've made it all up, | that's just unbelievable.
The Japanese should listen to their own soldiers
and they should look into the eyes | of the survivors themselves...
because this mindset is exactly what led to | the massacre in the first place.
00:43:35:00 In recent years, a multiethnic, grassroots movement
has emerged internationally
to combat these efforts to rewrite history,
a movement that includes not only | the Chinese, the Koreans, the Filipinos,
leading members of the Jewish community, | but also many Japanese-Americans,
Japanese-Canadians and Japanese nationals;
who recognize that human rights issues | transcend those of nationality and ethnicity.
ASTON MEMORIAL HALL FOR THE VICTIMS OF THE NANJING MASSACRE
00:44:17:00 It’s only common sense to offer apologies and reparations
directly to those who suffered a great loss.
ASTON YAMAUCHI SAYOKO. SOCIETY SUPPORTING SHIRO. AZUMA’S NANKING LAWSUIT
But at the same time it is also important for
Japanese to do so because then we would have
an opportunity to truly learn and understand our own history.
Having a good understanding of our own past
would give us better direction on how | we should live in the future.
History teaches us lessons.
00:45:23:00 Research for my fourth book started with an | oral history project on Bataan POWs.
It was an American veteran who wrote | and asked me to tell their stories.
The same day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour,
they also attacked the Philippines, and about 10,000 U.S.
and 70,000 Filipino soldiers were forced to surrender,
and that led to what became known | as the Bataan Death March.
00:45:55:00 When we do these interviews | and talk to these veterans,
it’s difficult. It’s difficult to hear their stories,
ASTON IAN SMITH. BATAAN COMMEMORATIVE. RESEARCH PROJECT
and to read the accounts of what these men | went through and what they experienced.
You walk away with these thoughts sort of burdening you.
I could only imagine that after 11 months of | again dealing with this topic
and hearing these stories over and over
that that must have been a tremendous weight,
a tremendous emotional burden.
00:46:30:00 You know, I lie awake at night with
the voices of the Bataan survivors going
round and round in my head...
just like Nanking.
The voices are different,
the details are different,
the language is different, but
the story is the same.
But these men,
just like the people in Nanking poured their hearts out to me,
somebody had to listen,
to record and validate their experience by making it public.
I couldn't turn away, just like I couldn't turn away before.
... And I also think it's important to remember these stories,
to remind us that no matter how civilized we think we are,
it doesn't take much for us to get to the point where | we can massacre each other without a second thought.
And in the end, I'm...
I'm left with one question -
when will the madness end?
00:47:53:00 And, sometimes she didn't tell us as much,
she just keep to herself, working all the time.
00:48:00:00 We noticed that she is very exhausted
and that's how I feel her health go down.
And she couldn't eat very well either.
She didn't have much appetite
and couldn't sleep well and, | of course, we are very concerned.
00:48:16:00 She had a baby, you know,
she already had a fourth book to write,
and all the other things, you know.
And somehow it just was too much for her.
00:48:32:00 She was going on a research tour
and she was getting ready for that.
She wasn't sleeping during the day. | She was up all day, and she was up all night,
and she was up all day, and she was up all night,
so she was probably up for 3 or 4 days straight | before she went on the trip.
00:48:58:00 She physically broke down in August when during the trip
she was interviewing survivors of the Bataan Death March.
It's only three months, so it happened very fast.
Yes, we really had a lot of questions we couldn't answer.
00:49:33:00 She was very sad and very frightened.
She was,
I felt, cognisant…
very cognisant of losing the person she once was.
And that Iris Chang was gone | and would never come... No medicine,
no therapy was ever gonna bring it back. And she knew it.
00:50:42:00 After she died, it seems part of me die too.
But I try to think more positively now because,
she died so young, I think what we can do is to continue
ASTON NANJING MEMORIAL HALL
her unfinished work and her dream.
00:51:04:00 You are going to find that we live | in a world in which international law
has much less to do with actual justice than | international politics and money;
a world in which those who have power often | believe that they are above the truth.
My greatest hope is that a few of you in this | auditorium today will actually serve as
crusaders for truth, beauty and justice in the future.
People like that are needed to create | a better world for the next generation
of humankind on this planet
and to ensure the survival of our civilization.
Please believe in the power of one:
one person can make an enormous difference in this world,
one person, actually just one idea, | can start a war or end one.
You as one individual can change millions of lives, | so think big.
Do not limit your vision and do not ever | compromise your dreams or ideals.
00:52:11:00 I gave voice to the voiceless,
now I'm silencing my own.
What I've left behind,
remember.
In you my spirit lives on.
Find my light, pass it on.
Find my light, pass it on.
Just a little child,
they took it all away, your blood,
your life, your trust, your faith.
You died reborn in pain.
Red as the river, looming large at the gate.
Darkness in your heart, drowning in hate.
I'll dedicate my life to get your stories told.
I'll give voice to the voiceless,
silenced for too long.
Crying out for justice,
silenced far too long. | Trust me with your pain,
I'll take it as my own.
I'll fight to get the truth told.
My weapon is my word.
One more time remember,
the horror, the pain. | They raped you of your pride,
robbed you of your dignity, | speak of how they stole your peace, | screaming to cease.
I'll give voice to the voiceless,
silenced far too long.
Crying out for justice,
silenced far too long. | Trust me with your pain,
I'll take it as my own.
I'll fight to get the truth told,
my weapon is my word.
It's done,
the page is filled with blood and tears,
not in vain, the world will finally hear...
I gave voice to the voiceless,
now I'm silencing my own.
What I've left behind,
remember.
In you my spirit lives on.
Find my light, pass it on.
Find my light, pass it on.



END