Message from jlalas

[Anonymous]

I would highly recommend spending a day or two on reading and discussing excerpts from Iris Chang's highly controversial book, "The Rape of Nanking". The book is broken into three separate sections: the event from Japanese accounts, the event from the victims, and the even as seen by the foreigners who were in the city at the time of the attack, including a Nazi who came to be known as the Nazi "Oscar Schindler" (pardon me for the bad spelling).

The book begins with dazzling and shocking facts and images, including the idea that if all of the victims of nanking held hands they could form a human chain that went for miles. The personal stories of some of the survivors would probably be the best excerpts to use. One I remember clearly was about a man who was stabbed and got pushed into a pit of other dead bodies, some of them headless as a result of head chopping contests by Japanese soldiers. He had to lay underneath other dead bodies and pretend he was dead. Then, hours later Japanese soldiers came by and started stabbing all of the bodies to make sure all of them were dead - he ended up being stabbed 5 or 6 times but he had to force himself not to make a noise or else the Japanese would really kill him.

Though the book is surrounded in controversy, it can be used to excite students even more: "Why do you think certain historians are against this book?" "Why would the Japanese government not like this book" "Why are so many people attacking this book?" Kids love that stuff, and i have no doubt that this book can be used to challenge students, as well as shock them as to the events that occured in Nanjing during World War 2.