Andrew Lloyd points out that Iris Chang has died, sadly, apparently by her own hand. Arafat's death is a blessing to the world, but she will be sorely missed.

Iris Chang was a terrible historian and a nasty person.

Sad news.

eli - can you wait until after the funeral before taking potshots at Ms. Chang?

I can see why her subject matter would depress her.

I've only just this week become aware of the truly horrible things the Imperial Japanese gov't did in China. Things that far exceed Mengele and the Nazis in both scope and cruelty.

This came from reading a novel called "Slatewiper" by Lewis Perdue, which has many historical references to the Chinese and Korean holocausts perpetrated by the Japanese.

Most chilling is how in the novel, and in real life, Japanese nationalism, race identity and emporer worship is growing in Japan.

Do a Google on "Unit 731". See for yourself.

Jeff, before you get all depressed, you should know that there were a lot of things at the end of WWII which were written into "fact" despite being invention. Chang's book in particular, "The Rape of Nanking", is historical fiction at its worst, based on second hand sources, faulty accounts, and a highly politicized methodology. Be very wary of Chinese nationalist propaganda, that's all I'll say...

eli,

I'm not "depressed" about it. Are you of Japanese extraction by chance? Sounds like you have an emotional attachment to this issue.

A number of Japanese phsyicians and medical assistants of that time have confessed to things like live vivisection without the benefit of anesthesia on both Korean and Chinese prisoners. Not to mention biological warfare, hypothermia, frostbite, and weapons testing on living people.

I suppose you would say Nuremburg was a "doctored up" affair as well.

No I'm not Japanese. But why would you believe someone of Chinese extraction over someone of Japanese extraction anyway? Are you biased? Facts should stand on their own merit.

I'm not saying that atrocities never occured, but the issue has been clouded by politics and if you think telling the truth is in the best interest of the Chinese, you're kidding yourself. Research into German atrocities during WWII has adhered to standard methodologies and has set a high standard for historical authenticity. Research into Japanese atrocities doesn't come anywhere close...

A good example of this is the "beheading contest" It was invented by an Australian newspaper as a ruse to sell papers and increase war ferver, then took on a life of its own. The problem is that the people mentioned in the article were never in China and the supposed act is physically impossible (you cannot kill hundreds of people with a stamped-steel WWII-era Japanese sword).

China has a fetish for its national mythology, and the kind of "history" coming out of that country reflects it. It so happens that there is complicity within the Chinese-American community, because people love being victims. This is Iris Chang's legacy.

I am very sorry to hear of Ms. Chang's death. It took a great deal of courage for her, especially as an Asian herself, and as a woman with origins in one of the most sexist cultures on Earth, to break the code of intimidation, silence and historical revisionism that surrounds the Japanese in Manchuria. She was an Eastward-looking Solzhenitsyn . She will be sorely missed.

Eli's point would seem to be: sure, it's true a few hundred thousand innocents were brutally raped, tortured, and murdered, but, hey, not every horror reported actually occured, at least not in the way in which it was said to have. And there have been exaggerations, here and there, by people who may not be fully objective because (for example) all eight of their great-grandparents were hacked to death by cowardly samurai wannabes.

Oh, good point.

Sure Carl, and I'm sure you're competent enough in history to make such a statement. Ask yourself why the Chinese are still so upset about Nanking when their suppression of Tibet, Manchuria and even Tienanmen Square has gone unanswered for. The answer should be obvious. During WWII the Chinese were in the middle of a vicious civil war and committed atrocities *against themselves* that dwarf anything the Japanese did. I'm not excusing the Japanese for the things they *did* do, but Iris Chang was a propagandist, plain and simple.

A tu-quoque response of pointing to Tibet, etc. hardly addresses the main point of whether what Ms. Chang reported happened in Nanking was accurate or not.

The whole "well, you know, some bad things happened, but it wasn't *really* as bad as the historical accounts of those who were there made it out to be" approach sounds awfully familiar: The Techniques of Holocaust Denial http://www.nizkor.org/features/techniques-of-denial/

I also find it amusing that a fellow who uses a faked email address believes he (she?) has the credibility to question Carl's competency.

Responding to a tu-quoque with an ad hominem and then a straw man? Nice one.

Here's the deal with Chang: she only worked from secondary sources, primarily from the proceedings of the Tokyo War Crimes trial and a couple other books. The testimony given at the IMTFE was riddled with factual inaccuracies, but the US was so eager to get done with it and begin the reconstruction that they didn't press the issue too hard.

The death count in Nanking which emerged from the IMTFE was based on a *single man's* testimony. There were other witnesses--including Westerners, Japanese and even the grave diggers--but their testimony doesn't support Chang's thesis. Official censuses of Nanking taken before the war show a population of 200,000, yet the Chinese government is now saying that 500,000 people were killed there. Something stinks with Nanking research, and it's not so-called "deniers", though if you look you'll see that I never denied there were atrocities, I'm only saying the actual extent of atrocities has been distorted post facto by Chinese nationalists.

Chang ignored ALL evidence that didn't agree with the IMTFE findings. What she did is the equivalent of saying that the Nazis killed *60* Million Jews, or how death counts in Palestinian refugee camps has been systematically inflated, or the way Michael Moore and others keep inflating the Iraqi civilian death count. The Japanese should be held accountable for what they did, but the political aspect of this has caused people to lose track of objectivity. Sometimes propaganda merges itself into the historical record, and that's what has happened in this case.

For those relating what happened in Asia to that which happened in Europe, keep in mind that the cultural circumstances were completely different and that the IMTFE was prosecuted much differently than the Nuremberg trials. There is no direct comparison between the Japanese invasion of China and the persecution of the Jews; a better comparison would be between Japanese colonialism in Asia and European colonialism in Africa.

Eli, you are a secondary source. Either post links to primary sources that support what you're claiming, or go away.

"(you cannot kill hundreds of people with a stamped-steel WWII-era Japanese sword)"

As a collector of Japanese swords for over ten years, with a library of books about them that cost nearly $10,000 and several serious blades including a signed Rai Kunitoshi katana...I can say with complete confidence that you are utterly wrong on this point. Besides, nearly a million Japanese soldiers carried real, traditionally-made blades, including practically 100% of the officers.

I might also add, as someone who has lived in Japan, the last twenty years have led from a flat denial of the Rape of Nanking to quibbling over the sordid details. Sound familiar?

Eli, may I recommend to you that you find and read a copy of Yuki Tanaka's "Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II". See, it details the whole long, sordid list of Japanese Imperial atrocities: from the massacre and mutilation of injured prisoners to institutionalized cannabalism, institutionalized rape and enslavement of female prisoners of war (Asian AND European) and conquered people, biological warfare experimentation on prisoners of war and Chinese peasants, slaughter of European neutrals, deliberate murder of POW's, vivisection of POW's and conquered people, the Rapes of Nanking, et cetera ad very much nauseum.

Seeing as how Dr. Tanaka is a real honest-to-the-Emperor JAPANESE, both by race and by nationality, maybe you'll believe HIM when he states that not only are you totally WRONG on the issue of Japanese war crimes, but that things were WORSE than anyone ever reported.

Toren: Wow.

Eli is full of crap.

All you have to do is open Chang's book and look at the photographs of the beheadings. Does he think that those are fake? Or alternatively, see "Rape of Nanking: An Undeniable History in Photographs," by James Yin, Shi Young, and Ron Dorfman. The photos are there.

As Iris Chang pointed out when she first wrote her book, she expected to have a hard time finding evidence of the massacres. But she found far more than she ever thought existed. The reason is that the Japanese soldiers were actually proud of what they did in Nanking and took a LOT of personal photographs. A surprising number of these survived and she used them for her book and they were used in the photographic collection as well.