Booknotes

Ms. IRIS CHANG (Author, "The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten
Holocaust of World War II"): Well, it goes back a long way. I mean,
I learned about this event when I was a little child, but I really
didn't think about writing the book until I finished my first one,
"Thread of the Silkworm," and after I had attended a conference in
California that was devoted to preserving the history of this event.

LAMB: What was the rape of Nanking?

Ms. CHANG: The rape of Nanking is one of the greatest atrocities of
world history. In December of 1937, the Japanese swept into the
capital of China, which was then Nanking, and within six to eight
weeks they butchered, raped and tortured hundreds of thousands of
Chinese civilians. Three hundred thousand people ultimately died
during this massacre and they raped an estimated two--let's see,
20,000 to 80,000 women during this period.

LAMB: Why is there such a discrepancy between 20,000 and 80,000?

Ms. CHANG: It's often very difficult to ascertain the exact number
and many women were reluctant to come out with these--these facts at
the time.

LAMB: I'm looking at page 59 and there's a gentleman here by the name
of Nakatomi Hakuto.

Ms. CHANG: Mm-hmm.

LAMB: Who--who was he or who is he?

Ms. CHANG: Well, he's--he was a doctor. He's a doctor now, but back
in 1937, he was one of the soldiers who committed atrocities in
Nanking.

LAMB: And there is a--I'm gonna read something here in just a moment,
but have you met him?

Ms. CHANG: No. No. I mean, this--this is taken from--from an
article, but the story was just so compelling that I had to put it in
my book.

LAMB: Before I read this, tell me what the story is.

Ms. CHANG: Well, he was in--are we talking about the story in the
article itself?

LAMB: Well, the story about him. I mean, now he has a shrine in a
doctor's office.

Ms. CHANG: Well, you see, he's a doctor now and he feels so terrible
about what he did, so he has put up pictures of the--I guess, some of
the atrocities in h--the waiting room of--of his clinic, and--so
patients of his can see what he did in Nanking.

LAMB: Let me read just a little bit from what you've got in your
book. `"I remember being driven in a truck along a path that had been
cleared through piles of thousands and thousands of slaughtered
bodies. Wild dogs were gnawing at the dead flesh as we stopped and
pulled a group of Chinese prisoners out of the back. Then the
Japanese officer proposed a test of my courage. He unsheathed his
sword, spat on it, and with a sudden mighty swing, he brought it down
on the neck of a Chinese boy cowering before us. The head was cut
clean off and tumbled away on the group as the body slumped forward,
blood spurting in two great, gushing fountains from the neck. The
officer suggested I take the head home as a souvenir. I remember
smiling proudly as I took his sword and began killing people."'

Why'd you--you know, you--obviously this b--bothered you. Why did you
put this in then?

Ms. CHANG: I wanted to show the people that the Japanese soldiers
were inculcated to commit violence. This is not a story that was an
isolated incident. I mean, it--this was happening throughout Nanking.
And th--they--they massacred people on--all the way up to the capital
and they even held killing contests in order to--to desensitize the
Japanese soldiers from--from feeling reluctant in committing these
atrocities.

LAMB: You got a picture here of corpses along the Yangtze River.
Right here, the big one. Where--where did you find this picture?

Ms. CHANG: This picture--that one came from--that's Moriarty--yeah,
that's a Japanese correspondent who took that picture. That was
reprinted in several other publications. So it's--it's really--I'm
telling you, that's not the most gruesome picture there. You may not
wanna show the audience some of the others that are in my book.

LAMB: Well, actually, I think we--we do wanna show the pictures so
that they can see the--I mean, not that picture, on the other side.
If we can pick it up from the other side--that picture right there.
What's this?

Ms. CHANG: The one on the left?

LAMB: Right here.

Ms. CHANG: Oh, right. That's a--a number of heads that have just
been put out--you know, they--they--this was a typical scene in
Nanking, beheadings. Then sometimes they would put heads up on posts,
like that picture underneath, so that the people could understand what
it would be like if they continued to resist Japan.

LAMB: And where was this done?

Ms. CHANG: This was--this was done in Nanking but also throughout--I
mean, throughout China, actually.

LAMB: What was the history of why the Japanese were in China in 1937
in Nanking?

Ms. CHANG: Well, in 1937, the Japanese found an opportunity to
provoke a war with China and it's called the Marco Polo Bridge
incident. And we probably don't have too much detail to go into
th--we don't have too much time to go into that, but it escalated into
a full-scale war and the Japanese invaded Shanghai in--in the fall of
1937. And the--the--they had originally thought that the war would
take place only--only three months. They thought that they could
conquer China in a matter of months. But when one battle alone in one
Chinese city, Shanghai, dragged on for that long, the Japanese were
anxious to, I think, make an example of the city. They were--they
were furious and frustrated, and that was the mood that the--the
soldiers were in as they marched from Shanghai to Nanking.

LAMB: Where is Nanking in China?

Ms. CHANG: Nanking is situated in a bend of the Yangtze River. It
is--maybe we can show a map right now.

LAMB: I'll find it. Go ahead.

Ms. CHANG: It's--it's only a few miles away, really...

LAMB: This just shows the massacre location.

Ms. CHANG: That's right. Sha--Shanghai would be on the coast of
China and this--and Nanking's further inland, and the city is right in
the c--in--like, situated right at a bend of where the--the river
courses, you know, f--to--to the north and then turns to flow towards
the coast. So when the Japanese swept towards Nanking, they had--all
they had to do was encircle it from three other loc--three other
directions because the s--the river itself formed a natural barrier.

LAMB: Have you been to the--Nanking?

Ms. CHANG: Absolutely.

LAMB: How many times?

Ms. CHANG: Actually, in the summer of 1995, I was there for--you
know, for several weeks, actually, just one time.

LAMB: And what's your personal connection to Nanking?

Ms. CHANG: Well, my--my father was born in that area and my family,
actually--my--my grandparents used to live in Nanking, and they were
almost separated forever shortly before the--the massacre itself.

LAMB: And when did you first--can you remember the first time you
ever heard about the rape of Nanking?

Ms. CHANG: Yes. I was a little girl. I don't remember exactly how
old I was, but I must have been in grade school at the time. And my
parents were professors at the University of Illinois at Urbana, were
telling me about the (Chinese spoken), which is Chinese for `the
Nanking massacre.' And they said that the killing had been so intense
in Nanking that the river--the Nanjing River literally red--ran red
with blood for days, and they said that people were being hacked to
pieces. And at the time, this was--this was very hard for me to--to
visualize and I--I really wanted to learn more about it. So I went to
the local libraries to see if I could find anything about it and there
wasn't a single book in English on it. I couldn't find anything.

LAMB: So what'd you do next?

Ms. CHANG: Well, I think as a child I probably just forgot about it
and I didn't really think about it for another 20 years. The rape of
Nanking didn't intrude on my life until--until I was married and I was
living in Santa Barbara, and a filmmaker friend of mine told me
that--that he had two friends who--who had heard that--that people
were--had--had been filming a documentary on the rape of Nanking but
that they had problems securing funding, I think, for distribution
because of Japanese influence in this country, and that's what piqued
my interest again.

And I located the filmmakers and--and talked to them, and one of them,
Nancy Tong, who p--produced the documentary "In the Name of the
Emperor," told me that there was considerable Chinese activism on this
event and that, if I was interested, I should contact, you know, this
particular organization which is called the Alliance for the
Preservation of the Truth of World War II. And as it turns out, this
particular organization was hosting a conference on the rape of
Nanking in December 1994.

So since I was in Santa Barbara and the conference was to be held in
Cupertino, I just drove up and attended the--the event. Now what I
wasn't prepared for was the fact that they had put poster-sized
pictures of some of these atrocities and I was seeing these pictures
for the very first time. And I--I was--I--I remember I felt sick to
my stomach and, I mean, I really--I--I thought at one point that I
would have to go home because I was just so ill, you know. I--and I
resolved to do something. You know, I--I thought this was so bad, and
yet, no one had still written a book about it. So I figured that it
was time to--you know, to take initiative.

LAMB: Who is this woman up here?

Ms. CHANG: Lei Sho Ying.

LAMB: Lei Sho Ying?

Ms. CHANG: Mm-hmm.

LAMB: Is she alive?

Ms. CHANG: Yes, she is.

LAMB: And what's the story?

Ms. CHANG: Well, back in--in 1937, she was a teen-age wife of a
technician who had fled from the city of Nanking on top of a train and
she was left behind in the city. And she ended up fighting off three
soldiers who tried to rape her. They stabbed her more than 30 times.

LAMB: Where does she live now?

Ms. CHANG: She lives in Nanking.

LAMB: Did you talk to her?

Ms. CHANG: Yes, I did.

LAMB: How long?

Ms. CHANG: I spoke to her for several hours. And I felt like a time
traveler because I saw this picture of her, you know, when she was
still a teen-ager and--and t--when I met her face-to-face she was
almost 80 years old.

LAMB: What's she look like now?

Ms. CHANG: Well, she's still a very--she's a very feisty woman.
She's very strong, one of the strongest women I've ever met.
She's--she's--well, she's--she has so many wrinkles now that they've
covered up the scars. But when she was younger, the scars on her face
were horrible.

LAMB: A--again, she was stabbed 37 times with bayonets.

Ms. CHANG: That's correct.

LAMB: Can you remember anything else about the story? Where was she
at the time she was stabbed?

Ms. CHANG: She was hiding in the International Safety Zone, which
was a neutral zone organized by the foreigners of Nanking to protect
them from the Japanese, and we'll probably talk more about that later.
But at the time, a soldier had his eye on her. When--when he went
down into--into the basement where she was hiding and sh--he tried to
rape her, but she resolved to fight to the death to prevent from being
raped. So luckily, she was bigger than he was so that when he
lunged--I guess when he came for her, she--she, like, ripped his
bayonet from its sheath and--and she--she threw, I guess, her--her
back against the wall and she just started grappling with him. And
she ended up using him as a human shield against the two other
soldiers who were trying to stab her and protect, you know, hi--him,
but she was using him as a s--as a shield to prevent from getting
slashed up.

LAMB: How did she survive?

Ms. CHANG: Well, she survived just barely. The--one bayonet stabbed
her right in--in the stomach and she eventually lost her baby, but
she--she fainted and she was almost buried alive by her family, who
didn't realize that she was still alive. But someone noticed the
bu--bubbles of blood frothing from her mouth and they rushed her to
the hospital, where sh--the American doctor Robert Wilson saved her
life.

LAMB: Now--she's now 80-something years old. When you talked to her,
how did--how many times did somebody ask her about this over the
years?

Ms. CHANG: Oh, I think--I think other reporters had talked with her.
I'm not really sure.

LAMB: You talk about your dad being born near there. What about your
grandparents?

Ms. CHANG: Well, my mother's parents were in Nanking in 1937. My--I
mean, my f--my grandfather actually was--was in the city as the
Japanese were bombing it and--and there's just an incredible story of
how--how they were s--almost separated forever during the chaos that
followed the--the mass evacuations.

LAMB: What happened after that? I mean, I--I know this--I--I read
the story, but tell us more about it.

Ms. CHANG: Uh-huh. OK. You see, when--when the fighting in--in
Shanghai escalated, it--it just became clear to my grandfather that
his wife, who was then a young woman in her 20s, wasn't really safe.
He didn't want her to be in the city where the Japanese were
bombarding hospitals and--and schools. And so he sent her to her home
village, which was near the city of Yi Shing. And--and when he--he
went back to visit her in the village, but then when he journeyed back
to Nanking, he didn't realize that the entire capital was moving
inland and that his particular unit was--was just--they were leaving.
They were going to leave town.

And--and he had to get word to my grandmother to join him in another
city so that they could leave that whole region. And they were to
meet in Wuhu because I think some of the--the railroad tracks to
Nanking had already been bombed. And so as he waited for her, you
know, she didn't show up. She w--he waited for four days and he
didn't know that it was just taking a long time because the
transfer--I mean, the railroads had been bombed out and everybody was
trying to get on a sampan to get out of there.

And so he waited and waited, and eventually it--it got to
be--it--it--to--to--it got to the point where he really had to make a
choice. He would either leave the city and leave Wuhu and--and maybe
never see his wife again or he could wait for his wife and his
daughter and--and then meet up with them but miss the boat out of the
region, knowing that that area would be overrun by Japanese soldiers.
And I--he was so desperate, right when he turned to leave, he--he
s--he screamed out her name, `Yepei.' He just screamed it out. And in
one last sampan, it happens that she was--my grandmother was in there
and she stuck her head out and yelled back. And--and it was because
of that fateful cry that they were reunited. Otherwise--you know,
otherwise, my mother would've never been born, they probably would've
never seen each other again.

LAMB: When did they leave China?

Ms. CHANG: They didn't leave China until shortly before the 1949
Communist Revolution, so that--that would've been sometime in the
1940s.

LAMB: Are they alive?

Ms. CHANG: Unfortunately, both have passed away. My grandfather
lived up--to be 94 years old when he passed away in 1993 and my
grandmother died this--this last summer.

LAMB: Did...

Ms. CHANG: It's--it's very unfortunate she didn't get to see the
publication of this book.

LAMB: And did you talk to both of them about the material in this
book?

Ms. CHANG: Yes. Actually, my grandfather because he was a poet and
a journalist and a book author. He had written about some of this in
his autobiography, but I did have a chance to interview my grandmother
as well, and she provided some more details before she died.

LAMB: And where did you grow up?

Ms. CHANG: I grew up in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, which is where
my parents were professors.

LAMB: How long did you live there?

Ms. CHANG: For ex--almost exactly 20 years. I moved there when I
was--my father was offered a position when, I guess, I was about one.
I went to school there, went to the university and--and left, I think,
at age 21.

LAMB: And are they still there?

Ms. CHANG: Yes, they are.

LAMB: And where did you move after you left Champaign...

Ms. CHANG: Well...

LAMB: ...Urbana?

Ms. CHANG: ...I worked briefly as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune
and the Associated Press in Chicago, and then I went to the Johns
Hopkins University writing seminars program, where I received my
master's degree. Then I got married and moved out to California,
where my husband was working.

LAMB: And where do you live now?

Ms. CHANG: I live in Sunnyvale, California, which is--which is the
heart of Silicon Valley.

LAMB: You say in the book that the Japanese have never apologized for
this.

Ms. CHANG: That's correct, never officially apologized.

LAMB: Why?

Ms. CHANG: Well, I think because there's--there's really no reason
for them to do so unless they were pressured to do so.

LAMB: And why hasn't somebody pressured them to do so? I mean, you
compare it a lot with what the Germans have done.

Ms. CHANG: Well, I think maybe demographics has something to do with
it. I mean, some of this activism behind the event is f--is fairly
new. But I would say the Cold War has a large role in this, the
silence of--of--of the Japanese and the--the Chinese and the Americans
on this issue. After the--the Communist Revolution neither, I think,
the PRC nor the ROC really wanted to pressure Japan to pay reparations
and--and to apologize because both of them needed Japan as an ally
against each other. They needed Japan for economic and political
reasons, and the United States also sought out Japan as its ally as
well against the forces of Communism in Asia.

LAMB: Back in 1937, how many people lived in Nanking?

Ms. CHANG: Before the bombings, before some of the evacuations,
about a million people.

LAMB: And what was the relationship between China and Japan back
then? What--what was going on in the world and what was their
relationship?

Ms. CHANG: Back in 1937? Oh, things by that point had been tense.
I mean, in the summer of 1937, Japan had--had attacked Shanghai. But
this--I mean, th--this is the rea--they had--war was--had already
broken out.

LAMB: But what was the reason?

Ms. CHANG: Well, it goes back a long a way, but I--the J--Japanese
had, actually, for hundreds of years, ambitions in China. It's--it's
really--it's not something that--it was not something that just
started in 1937. It--it was--it had--there is a long history of
animosity here.

LAMB: What's the reason?

Ms. CHANG: Reason for?

LAMB: The animosity.

Ms. CHANG: Well, again, you know, we--I don't know if we have enough
time to go into this, but there had already been, you know, war
between--you know, there was a f--there was a first Sino-Japanese War
and there had been already numerous attempts by the Japanese
to--to--to carve up par--parts of China. They had already seized
Manchuria by the 1930s.

LAMB: Wh--what was it and--and what is it about--it--what--was it the
Japanese character that led to this kind of slaughtering? I mean,
wh--what did you find in this process? I assume you've asked people
about that.

Ms. CHANG: See, it's--it's very complicated. Actually,
what--another historian said that trying to peer into the Japanese
mind was like trying to stare down a black hole. It's--it's
very--very difficult often to find out the motives for this. I--I
would say, though, that if you're looking at the--the soldiers
themselves, you'll find that many of them had been so brutalized
before the massacre that--that I think that the rape--that the
man--the Nanking massacre was--was an episode in which just this--as
much of the pent-up frustration that they had experienced had
exploded.

LAMB: The sold--the Japanese soldiers?

Ms. CHANG: The Japanese soldier was systematically hazed for years
before Nanking. I mean, he was--you have to imagine just how--how
intense the--the Japanese military experience really was. He had to
endure getting slapped around by Japanese officers. I mean, he--there
are--there are accounts of Japanese soldiers being forced to wash
their underwear--they--they were treated almost as subhuman within
their own army. And it's often been suggested that those who have the
least power can become the most sadistic when they do gain some chance
to unleash the frustration that was bottled inside.

LAMB: How much discussion have you had with Japanese people about
this event?

Ms. CHANG: Oh, I--I had an opport--I had the opportunity to talk to
a group of Japanese students who were s--who are studying in San
Francisco. And they were absolutely shocked to find out what
happened. I mean, they had been kept in the dark about this all their
lives. They said that their--their textbooks had contained only one
line on the Nanking massacre, which I think was referred to as the
Nanjing incident. And I remember that when I showed them some of the
photographs, I think one--one woman burst into tears. So it's clear
that the m--that many of the Japanese people to this day don't really
know what happened. I mean, the ignorance in Japan on this event and
on other atrocities is appalling.

If you--if you look--I mean, I--I--I had talked with a college
professor in J--in Japan, and--and he said that when he mentioned to
his students--re--remember, these are college students--that Japan had
been at war with the US, many of these students asked him which side
won. So in other words, they're not being taught about this in school
and the Ministry of Education has, for decades, censored this event
and others from their textbooks. I mean, this has been the subject of
a 30-year lawsuit between the Japanese government and a famous
historian there, Anaga.

LAMB: Is there a Ch--a Chinese Holocaust museum?

Ms. CHANG: Well, there actually is a rape of Nanking museum in
Nanjing. It has the big--big number 300,000 inscribed on it, but
that's about it. And--but I've met people in Los Angeles who are
interested in building a Chinese Holocaust museum in this country.

LAMB: You say that the House of Representatives got into this?

Ms. CHANG: Well, actually, that's--no, that's something different.
That's the Lipinski Bill.

LAMB: No, I didn't mean that they got into the Holocaust museum, but
they got into this whole issue of the rape of Nanking.

Ms. CHANG: That's right. Uh-huh. William Lipinski, who is the
Democrat from Illinois, has introduced a bill in Congress that calls
for the Japanese to officially apologize to its World War II victims
and to pay reparations, and the rape of Nanking is only one aspect of
the bill. He lists many other atrocities, such as, you know, the
Korean comfort women issue, the medical experimentation that the
Japanese had conducted, including vivisection without anesthesia on
American and Chinese prisoners of war, you know, the Bataan death
march. There are--there are so many other instances of wartime
atrocity that are mentioned in his bill and it's--I think they have
more than 30 supporters right now in Congress.

LAMB: What was the killing contest? You mentioned it earlier.

Ms. CHANG: Oh...

LAMB: How'd it work?

Ms. CHANG: The killing contest, yes. Well, there were two
sublieutenants who wanted to see who could kill 100 Chinese first, and
the--the Japanese media covered this avidly, as if it was some kind of
sporting event. And they--they--when they reached the--you know, the
100 mark, they--they--I guess they had lost counts. They figured,
`OK. Let's just up it up. Let's just up this to 150.' And...

LAMB: You've got--What?--the actual newspaper article right here.

Ms. CHANG: That's right. That's right.

LAMB: And you can see over here the numbers 105 and 106. What's
that?

Ms. CHANG: That--that's how close they were. They were running neck
to neck, you see. One had killed 105 people, another had lopped off
106 heads.

LAMB: And that was actually published in the Japanese newspapers.

Ms. CHANG: That's right. So this was clearly something that the
Japanese people knew about at the time.

LAMB: Who was conducting the contest?

Ms. CHANG: Oh, these two s--these two sublieutenants.

LAMB: I mean, who was challenging them? Who--whose idea was it that
they do it?

Ms. CHANG: I'm not really clear on the details of this, but--but
this was not typical. This was--was happening throughout Nanking.

LAMB: Here's a picture. It says, `In Nanking, the Japanese turned
murder into sport. Note the smiles on the Japanese in the
background,' and here's the photo right there. Where do you find all
these photos?

Ms. CHANG: Many of these photos were later collected by the Nanking
government for their war crimes tribunals against the Japanese after
the war. But sometimes the Japanese soldiers themselves took these
pictures. When I talked with one of the survivors, he remembers that
as he stood, you know, on the edge of this pit watching all the
Japanese lop off heads, then throw them in a--you know, to the side
and o--you know, one person was keeping s--count--keeping score and
the other one was laughing and taking photographs. You know, there's
an incredible story about how this one album of 16 photographs
eventually made its way from photo shop to--to, like--to a toilet, you
know, to--it--it was hidden for years until it finally ended up in an
archives.

LAMB: A--a couple of these pictures in here are rough to look at. I
haven't shown them yet. Are you--w--was it a tough decision to put
them in the book?

Ms. CHANG: It was. It was. I was very concerned that some of these
pictures would result in the book being banned from school libraries.
But I had numerous discussions with this--with, you know, the people
at HarperCollins and with--with other historians and friends. A--and
some people insisted that, you know, I put them in anyway uncensored
because this was history, this was the truth.

LAMB: What's this photo over here?

Ms. CHANG: That's the photo of a--of a woman who--a rape victim who
is being forced to pose next to a Japanese soldier naked. They found
these photos in the wallets of some of the Japanese soldiers. You
know, they took them. And sometimes the--the people in the local
Photomat would--would--would make copies because they knew how
important they were.

LAMB: On the other page at the top, what's that--what's that photo?

Ms. CHANG: I still have problems looking at it. That's a woman
who's been impaled after she's been raped.

LAMB: Right down here. And where did you find this?

Ms. CHANG: This, again, came--came from China. It...

LAMB: And...

Ms. CHANG: It--it--it was--it's--it's--it came from the Chinese
archives.

LAMB: And the photo above it?

Ms. CHANG: That's a picture of a woman who's been gang raped, and
she--as you can see, she's been tied to the chair so that she could be
raped whenever the soldiers were in the mood for it. And again, I
mean, I--I have a hard time even looking at these pictures even now.

LAMB: What's the purpose of putting them in the book then? What--and
as you decided wha--in the end, what was--what was the--how--the
conversation like between you and the publisher?

Ms. CHANG: Well, it's--there were people in the publishing house who
had problems looking at the pictures. In the end, we decided that it
was just--it was important for people to see what they were capable of
doing. And it was a tough decision. I--and I know that I might--I--I
may well catch a lot of criticism for it. But I don't think that
people will realize just how brutal the Japanese were until they see
these pictures.

LAMB: I--if I were a Japanese sitting here and--and saw these, I
would say things like, `What's your proof that this actually is
something that was caused by a Japanese soldier?'

Ms. CHANG: Mm-hmm. Well, all I can say is that there are thousands
of pages of primary source documents on this event in four different
languages that's--that pretty much describe with words these very
pictures. And--and many of these pictures--they're not--they're
not--they don't--didn't all come from Japan and China. Many of them
can be found in the United States, in the missionary collections.

LAMB: Let me show you this picture right here and ask you to tell me
what it is.

Ms. CHANG: The one to the right?

LAMB: The one up top. This--th...

Ms. CHANG: The--oh...

LAMB: The bayonet.

Ms. CHANG: The bayonetting. Well, these are pictures of the
Japanese bayonetting victims and--and they're doing it for practice.
They're using live prisoners as practice. And--and y--as you can see,
this--the--the gentle--the--the Chinese who's been blindfolded--I
mean, he's--he's been stabbed repeatedly, and this is happening even
after he's dead.

LAMB: And you say that's just practice?

Ms. CHANG: It's just practice.

LAMB: Below that, this photograph.

Ms. CHANG: This is a photograph of several Japan--several Chinese
victims being buried alive as Japanese soldiers watch.

LAMB: And you also tell a story in there where they would bury some
Chinese victims up to their heads and then have German shepherds or...

Ms. CHANG: Tear them apart.

LAMB: Tear them apart.

Ms. CHANG: That's true.

LAMB: Do you have any pictures of that?

Ms. CHANG: No, thank God.

LAMB: How--now how did you find that out?

Ms. CHANG: Well, that--that was--that came out of ar--you know,
archival documents and it also came out of descriptions which I found
in China. I'm telling you, literally I had so many facts on these
atrocities I--I had to--I had to use a computer database for them in
order to keep--keep them, you know, in order. I mean, I w--I--we had
that much evidence on it.

LAMB: If we had f--when did you start writing this book, or when did
you start compiling all the information?

Ms. CHANG: I started compiling the information probably in January
or February 1995.

LAMB: And I noticed that as late as August--almost the end of August
you had something quoted in here from the Japan Times...

Ms. CHANG: That's right.

LAMB: ...and this book came out in December. How did you get it--how
did you--were you able to publish it that close?

Ms. CHANG: Well, you see, the--we--we really had to publish this
right at the last minute because all of this activism, it's ongoing,
and--and we really were working right down to the last minute on this
book. It was a very tight schedule.

LAMB: And why is--you mean you were afraid you were gonna lose the
opportunity if you didn't get it published right away?

Ms. CHANG: It's--it's--it's a long story. I mean, HarperCollins
itself, as you know, has--has been through some difficulty and, you
know, they eventually canceled more than 100 book contracts and--and,
you know, there were some delays in the process. But--but that was OK
because that gave me the opportunity to put in some other information
that should've gone in the book. You know, I--I never thought, for
instance, that I would--ended up finding the family of John Rabe who
is the Nazi hero of Nanking. And, you know, I--I--I located the
dairies and located the family halfway through the project. So, I
mean, this was an ongoing process.

LAMB: And you talked to his daughter or his granddaughter?
Which--which...

Ms. CHANG: That's right, Ursula Reinhardt. I mean, that--I've--I've
tracked down the family when, I think, the book was almost finished.
So--so, yes, revisions were made up to the last minute.

LAMB: And who is John Rabe?

Ms. CHANG: John Rabe was the head of the Nazi party in Nanking, but
he was also the head of the International Safety Zone Committee in
Nanking, which is that group of about 20 foreigners who decided to
create in Nanking a 2 1/2-square-mile area for the refugees during the
massacre. They told the Japanese that this area was off limits to
them, and they had to feed these refugees and protect them from the
Japanese.

LAMB: You have a letter in here dated 8 June 1938 and it's Dear
Fuhrer...

Ms. CHANG: Yes.

LAMB: ...signed by John Rabe.

Ms. CHANG: That letter went to Her--Hitler.

LAMB: Why?

Ms. CHANG: Well, he was hoping to stop the atrocities by informing
the highest levels of German government about the Nanking massacre.
He may--he may have been a little naive, but he really thought that
perhaps the G--Germans would pressure the Japanese to stop the
killing. So what he did was in 1938, when he went back to Berlin, he
brought with him a copy of John McGee's film of the massacre and John
McGee was--was the--was the Episcopalian minister who took footage
of--of some of the atrocities--actually, he's the gentleman
right--right on the other page, actually.

LAMB: Which one?

Ms. CHANG: The--the picture that's a little lower on the page...

LAMB: Which one are you...

Ms. CHANG: ...to the right. This gentleman.

LAMB: OK, fine. We'll get it here so people can see what he looks
like. Well...

Ms. CHANG: He shot scenes from the Nanking Hospital, and it was this
film that was reproduced and--and--you know, in Shanghai. It was
smuggled out of Nanking and this--and they made several copies. John
Rabe took one of these copies. He also kept diaries of the massacre
and he brought those along with him to--to Berlin, and he--he sent a
copy of the film to Hitler and he--and he was hoping to make some kind
of, I guess, change in--in German policy towards Japan. But the net
result of the--of sending the film was--was a visit from the gestapo.
And they came to his home, arrested him, interrogated him for--for
hours, and eventually, they--they forced him to promise them that he
would never speak about the atrocities again.

LAMB: Where is that film?

Ms. CHANG: Where--that's a good question. We are trying to--well,
the f--John McGee's film is available in the United States. I mean,
several copies of--were made, so they're in different archives and
different homes. But John McGee--sorry, John Rabe's copy--we don't
know where it is because people have searched the German archives and
they can't find it. So to this day, they're not sure if Hitler has
really seen it, but the family's convinced that he did.

LAMB: If you saw the John McGee film, what would you see? What--do
you see the atrocities?

Ms. CHANG: You would see people being led away by the Japanese
soldiers. You have to remember, he couldn't just, you know, stick the
camera up, you know, right in f--in front of their faces. This had to
be done secretly. So you could see some footage that is filmed
through, like, maybe a crack in the door, a crack in the window, and
you would see crowds of Chinese being taken away. And the most
gripping images come from the hospital, where there were victims who
had--who had escaped being burned alive, people who had been slashed
with bayonets. There's one picture where one woman's head is just
about to fall off. It's--it's really very grotesque.

LAMB: Asuma Shuro or Shuro Asuma, depending on how you pronounce it,
who--is who?

Ms. CHANG: Shuro Asuma is a Japanese veteran of the Rape of Nanking,
and he's still in--in--he's still alive and he's in J--Japan right
now.

LAMB: And you corresponded with him.

Ms. CHANG: That's correct.

LAMB: How did that work? How did you find him?

Ms. CHANG: Well, I had to track him down, and I think a--a
journalist, Ian Buruma, actually, was the one who gave me his address,
and I--I wrote a letter to him, I had it translated into Japanese
and--and he responded im--almost immediately. And I had the letter
translated back into English. He sent me a copy of his diaries. And
he also answered every question that I had posed to him. See, I was
trying to understand the--the--the state of mind that he was in at the
time.

LAMB: What did you learn from him?

Ms. CHANG: What I learned was that the Japanese soldier really had
to see the Chinese as subhuman before they could kill them. I mean,
he--he depicted the--the Chinese in his diary as--you know, as like
animals or as insects.

LAMB: Right above that in the book, you can put this into context:
`A veteran officer named Tominga--no. Tomini--Tominiga Shuso recalled
vividly his own transformation from innocent youth to killing
machine.' And I wanna read what you have in here. Where did you find
that, by the way?

Ms. CHANG: That was in a secondary source. I think it came from a
book.

LAMB: `He scooped water from a bucket with a dipper, then poured it
over both sides of the blade. Swishing off the water, he raised his
sword in a long arc standing behind the prisoner Tonaka, steadying
himself, legs spread apart and cut off the man's head with a shout,
"Yo." The head flew more than a meter away. Blood spurted up in two
fountains from the body and sprayed into the hole. The scene was so
appalling that I felt I couldn't breathe.' If you were Japanese, what
would you want your own people to do about this, if they didn't know
about it?

Ms. CHANG: Well, I guess it would depend on the individual, but
I--I--I don't know what they would think. But I think that--I
personally think that they have a moral responsibility to come to
grips with this. Japan as a nation cannot move forward until
they--until they meet this squarely in the face.

LAMB: Well, at--a--even according to your testimony, they don't even
know about it.

Ms. CHANG: Some of them don't know about it, but there are those who
do, and I remember talking to some--some Japanese who, when they hear
it, they'll often just immediately deny it. They don't wanna believe
it. So it's very hard. It's very hard to know exactly how they're
gonna react even when these facts are--are thrust into their faces.

LAMB: Will your book be published in Japan?

Ms. CHANG: I'm not really optimistic that it will be, but perhaps
some kind of small radical publisher will take a risk and--and put it
out.

LAMB: From what you know, what would happen if it were--if books
were--tried to be sold over in Japan?

Ms. CHANG: I don't know, but I'll--I'll tell you that th--Shuro
Asuma, who's come out to apologize for the--for his role in the
massacre, he's faced countless death threats. And many of the
journalists who've written about this in Japan have either been
ostracized or--I mean, when you see them photographed, they have
sunglasses on because, you know, they--they've--they've run into
these--these kinds of threats, too. And don't forget, the--the
Japanese--some Japanese right-wingers shot, I think, the--the may--the
mayor of Nagasaki in the back simply because he--he said that he
thought Hirohito had some responsibility for the war. So...

LAMB: That was in 1989.

Ms. CHANG: That's right. So we have a country that is living in
denial. And I'll be honest with you, I--I am completely appalled that
more people don't know about this atrocity, because if you look--I
mean, 300,000 people died in Nanking, and 300,000 people might not
seem like a huge number until you place it in the context of World War
II history. Three hundred thousand deaths is greater than the deaths
from Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. It's also greater than the
combined civilian deaths of several European countries for the entire
duration of World War II. So in other words, if you add up the number
of civilians who died in England, France and Belgium, that still would
not be as many people who died in Nanking, which is one Chinese city,
in six to eight weeks. In the end, more than 19 million Chinese
people perished. They--they--19 million people were s--were killed.

LAMB: What do you wanna do with this?

Ms. CHANG: Well, I--I want the whole world to know what happened. I
want the entire world to know the truth.

LAMB: And how far are you willing to take it?

Ms. CHANG: Well, I think I've--I've--just writing the book is--is
the--was the biggest step, really, for me. I think I've done my part
in--in just--just laying down the facts for people to read.

LAMB: And also in the book you have some Americans.

Ms. CHANG: Mm-hmm.

LAMB: One in particular is Robert Wilson. Who was he?

Ms. CHANG: Robert Wilson is an--was a missionary doctor and he was
the only surgeon in Nanking during the--the great massacre.

LAMB: And what role did he play?

Ms. CHANG: Well, he was the person who ended up having to stitch up
the--the survivors who came, you know, straggling into the hospital
from bayonet wounds or burn wounds, and he was working night and day.
It's--it's--it's incredible what he was able to do under those
conditions.

LAMB: And what was the zone?

Ms. CHANG: The International Safety Zone--it was 2 1/2 square miles
in the middle of the city which the--the foreigners had marked off
with Red Cross flags, and--and it was--it was an area that they
claimed that the Japanese were not permitted to enter and they tried
to--you know, they--they just harbored the Chinese there. Thousands
of Chinese were pouring into the zone every day, many with only the
clothes on their backs, and just begging for a place to sit down so
that they could be safe from the J--from the Japanese.

LAMB: And how many people were inside that zone?

Ms. CHANG: S--hundreds of thousands. One actually said 300,000.
One--one of the zone members said 300,000 were in the zone.

LAMB: And you tell a story about how Chinese soldiers would come
in...

Ms. CHANG: Yes.

LAMB: ...and then the Japanese would come in. And how did they find
them when they were--they took off their uniforms and put on civilian
clothes. What was the technique they used to find them?

Ms. CHANG: Well, what they did was they searched their--their hands
to see if they had any calluses from handling guns. They also even
searched their backs to see if there were any backpack marks, even
their feet for signs of marching. And that way, they were able to
find out who had been a former J--a Chinese soldier, and they
systematically marched them out and shot them.

LAMB: Were there--was there a trial of any kind after all--the war
was over?

Ms. CHANG: Yes, there were--well, the biggest one was the Tokyo war
crimes trial or the in--it's als--the formal name is the International
Military Tribunal for the Far East, and that was held in Japan and it
resulted in some of the Class A war criminals being hanged by the end
of it.

LAMB: Was that everything that happened in World War II happened at
this trial? I mean, w--did it cover everything?

Ms. CHANG: It--yes, it--it was--it was covering--they were trying to
cover everything. But they also had a--a local trial, too, for
Nanking. There was a Nanking tribunal as well.

LAMB: And how long did that go on?

Ms. CHANG: It--it went on for several months. It was mainly--these
were held immediately after the war.

LAMB: And that was held in Nanking?

Ms. CHANG: Yes. Of course, the--the International Tribunal for the
Far East lasted considerably longer. I mean, it went on for years.

LAMB: How much publicity was there for this event either in Japan or
in Nanking?

Ms. CHANG: Though--there was considerable publicity for the Tokyo
war crimes trial. I--it was--I think it was the longest war crimes
trial in history. And they had, you know, hundreds of reporters
there. In Nanking, it was well-publicized, I'm sure, throughout
China.

LAMB: You tell a story in the beginning of the book about Commodore
Matthew Perry...

Ms. CHANG: Mm-hmm.

LAMB: ...and how the Americans opened up Japan to the outside world.
How did that work?

Ms. CHANG: Oh, well, what--what Perry decided to do when the
Japanese ignored requests from the American government to open up
their ports of trade, he--he marched up int--he--he studied Japanese
history carefully, and then he decided that the best way to--to deal
with them was to shock them into submission. And so he--he kind of
just came ri--he just went right up with--you know, to the--to one of
the ports and he strode into the capital with--with--with some very
aggressive-looking men and--and it just--it terrified the Japanese at
the time. I mean, this was their--the--the first time they had ever
even seen steam power. One historian said it would be--you know,
th--to--to really understand the pressure the Japanese were under, it
would be like an announcement maybe on CNN th--that--that we have some
weird-looking aircraft headed towards Earth. That--that was how
shocked they were at the time.

LAMB: And this was in July of 1853.

Ms. CHANG: Yes.

LAMB: Was that the first time Japan had ever seen an American?

Ms. CHANG: Probably the first time many of them had ever seen an
American.

LAMB: What happened to the country after that?

Ms. CHANG: Well, then they decided to modernize, and
they--they--they decided that they would--they would appease the
barbarians, that they would--they would try to learn from them because
it was obvious that they were lagging in--in technology. They had to
learn to--to build up their military.

LAMB: What happened next to the country?

Ms. CHANG: Well, the country did precisely that. And there
was--the--the Magi restoration and the--the entire country became very
nationalistic, and in the end, they--they--they built up a very strong
military and--and--and they began to get some of the respect that they
had craved, actually, from the West.

LAMB: Di--does the--the Rape of K--Nanking or the massacre at Nanking
have any impact on the relationship today between China and Japan? Do
you ever--did you talk to folks about that when you went over there?

Ms. CHANG: Well, it's actually very interesting that you ask me that
because the--the--many of the PRC officials that I've met,
they're--they're very s--they're sympathetic to the history of the
Rape of Nanking. I mean, many of them may have had relatives who died
during the Sino-Japanese War, but at the same time, I think they are
reluctant to endanger their--their trade relations with Japan, and
also, the political and diplomatic relations. So the PRC has
actually, as I--I think I may have mentioned before, has expelled
activists who have tried to promote this event--actually promote the
history of the rape in Nanking.

LAMB: In--in the back of your book, in the epilogue, you say there's
a number of lessons...

Ms. CHANG: Mm-hmm.

LAMB: ..from all this. But this is the one I wanted to ask you
about: `Another lesson to be gleaned from Nanking is the role of
power in genocide. Those who have studied the patterns of large-scale
killings throughout history have noted that the sheer concentration of
power in government is lethal, that only a sense of absolute,
unchecked power can make atrocities like the Rape of Nanking
possible.' What would you say then about today's Chinese concentration
of power in that government?

Ms. CHANG: Well, I think it's a dangerous situation because we
still--I mean, the PRC, to this day, it's still a totalitarian regime
and it's--it's--you know, if you have these kinds of s--conditions in
place, an atrocity like the rape in Nanking can happen again.

LAMB: What did they think when you went to China in 1995? Did the
officials know what you were doing there?

Ms. CHANG: In 1995? No, they didn't. And actually, I was a little
concerned when I went back because I had just written the book the
"Thread of the Silkworm," which is an unauthorized biography of the
father of the Red Chinese missile program. So I, you know--and I knew
that plenty of people had been kicked out of China for promoting the
history of the Rape of Nanking. So I figured that there was a good
chance that I myself would be interrogated and expelled from the
country.

LAMB: Did they know who you were?

Ms. CHANG: Not--the people in Nanking didn't. All they knew was
that I was a scholar who was out there seeking information.

LAMB: And you said you're married.

Ms. CHANG: Yes.

LAMB: Do you have children?

Ms. CHANG: Not yet.

LAMB: And what does your husband do?

Ms. CHANG: He's an electrical engineer and he works in Silicon
Valley, and he's been incredibly supportive of this project and
supportive of my career.

LAMB: And you said that you live in Sunnyvale, which is right in
Silicon Valley.

Ms. CHANG: That's correct. Uh-huh.

LAMB: And it seemed like there was somebody in--in this book that is
living in Sunnyvale. Was it somebody that would have been involved in
this?

Ms. CHANG: It so--it so turned out that there was a paramedic, you
know, in--in Nanking who now lives in Sunnyvale. I mean, this is
somebody who, when he was living in Nanking back in 1937--I mean, he
was--he was a little boy and--but he had volunteered to help the--the
Chinese army. He was working as a per--paramedic at the time. Sheer
coincidence.

LAMB: In the book you talk about, in the beginning of "The Rape of
Nanking," a--an incident that 57,000 people were killed?

Ms. CHANG: Oh, yes, that must be the--the Mofo...

LAMB: The mountain...

Ms. CHANG: ...Mountain massacre. That's correct.

LAMB: And what was that?

Ms. CHANG: Well, what they had done was they--they had kept these
tens of thousands of civilians in--in--in these camps, and then
eventually, after keeping them dehydrated and starved, they just went
out and just--and just started machine-gunning them, killing them.

LAMB: Was that the most that ever died at one time?

Ms. CHANG: I think it may have been.

LAMB: What--what's your sense of what would lead a human being to do
this kind of thing?

Ms. CHANG: I--I think that--I think that people are much more
capable of committing these atrocities than we would think. And I
think that if you're conditioned to believe that what you're doing is
the right thing, if somehow the--if the act of murder becomes like a
holy one, then it would--it would be easy, I think, to--to convince
people that not only what you're doing is--is wrong but that it
is--it's sanctioned by God and that it is--it's--it's the only right
thing you can do.

LAMB: Have you talked at all about what happened in Rwanda?

Ms. CHANG: There actually--in this book, it mentions Rwanda just
briefly, but I--I would say when I was looking at the news accounts,
you know, I--I--it--I felt like I was reviewing my old archival
documents again. It was--it--some of the similarities were
haunting--stories about women who had been raped by s--soldiers and
now they're going to carry an enemy soldier's baby and--and
th--these--these dilemmas that were so painful to me when reading them
because, you know, I kept seeing the same story over and over again.

LAMB: You tell a story in here, I think, of a woman to this day won't
give her real name or--What?--was--was raped in--at--I can't remember
exactly what it was, but you alluded to it then. What
was--that--that--that some of the rapes happened a--eventually
children were born?

Ms. CHANG: You see--yes, some--s--there were many half-Japanese,
half-Chinese children born as a result of this rape. And one of the
missionaries at the time, Louis Smith, said that, you know, there were
thousands of these children being smothered to death or drowned
because very few women really wanted--I mean, they c--they couldn't
love these children and--but you have to understand that they had--it
must've been a terrible choice for these women to make--I mean,
killing your own baby or raising a child that you can never love. And
I'm sure a lot of women couldn't make that choice. So at the same
time, there were thousands of woman also c--committing suicide in the
city. I mean, there were uncounted women throwing themselves in the
Yangtze River to drown.

LAMB: How interested have you found Americans in this story?

Ms. CHANG: I am surprised the response. I mean, it's overwhelming.
It seems to me that almost everyone I've talked with is interested,
and they're shocked that they don't know about this.

LAMB: Why don't we know about it in the United States?

Ms. CHANG: Well, I--I--I w--I sometimes wonder if it's maybe
demographics. You know, it's--it's--it's really stunning to me that
I--I really don't know the answer to that question. I mean, I hope
it's simply--it was just lack of interest. Maybe there weren't enough
Chinese and Japanese experts, you know, immediately after the war.
But, you know, the United States government itself was engaged in
a--a--you know, in a conspiracy with--with the Japanese to cover up
some of their own--you know, some of their own dealings. So there are
many political reasons why something like this wouldn't be told.

LAMB: What was that moment in here that you talked about when FDR
had...

Ms. CHANG: That's correct. That's right.

LAMB: ...How much?--30 seconds of film or 30 minutes of film take?
What was that s...

Ms. CHANG: Maybe 30 feet of film.

LAMB: Thirty feet of film, right.

Ms. CHANG: See--yes, the--well, as you know, the Japanese had bombed
the USS Penny and some Americans had died as a result of this bombing.
And the Japanese later on tried to excuse the--the bombing by saying,
`Well, it was a cloudy day,' or, `We couldn't really see clearly that
this was an American ship.' But the...

LAMB: What was the Penny, by the way?

Ms. CHANG: ...the--it was--it was a gunboat.

LAMB: And it was bombed on December 12th...

Ms. CHANG: Yes. Yes, right--right as the Japanese had...

LAMB: ...1937.

Ms. CHANG: ...had entered the city and--but, you know, there were
two newsreel men aboard and one of them--well, both of them took
footage of the Japanese swooping down almost to deck level to--to
shoot at the--the passengers. And it's clear from anyone who looks at
the footage that the Japanese could see the flags that were painted on
the deck or the f--or flying overhead. And the president
re--specifically requested that this footage be removed before it was
shown in American theaters.

LAMB: Why?

Ms. CHANG: Well, we can only speculate on the reasons why. It's
probably because they didn't wanna jeopardize any kind of settlement
that they wanted to make with Japan.

LAMB: We're out of time. This is our guest's book cover, book
jacket, "The Rape of Nanking," and our guest has been Iris Chang.
Thank you very much.

Ms. CHANG: Thank you.

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