A Malaysian Chinese Remembers the Nanjing Massacre

(Disclaimer: This blog entry deals in a very sensitive and gory account of history. Reader discretion is advised. Anyone of acute racist sensitivities should be forewarned – Simon)

The China-Japanese relationship has hit the rocks again in the recent textbook revision fiasco. This time both sides are accusing each other of ‘un-neighbourliness’, with South Korea joining in for some mud-slinging. Meanwhile the street protests, flag burning, embassy-pelting, and product boycott continues in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and all over Japan.

I’m a Malaysian ethnic Chinese, born long after the war. My grandmother disliked Japan and Japanese products. She didn’t hate them, just disliked them, just like how some narrow-minded Malaysian Chinese dislike Indians (yeah, I know quite a few like that). But of course, she also didn’t like me, so she didn’t talk to me much (she already had 4 grandsons before me, so I was a little inconsequential).

My dad lived through the war and Japanese Occupation, but he never discussed it with us. All he said life was hard then, they had to live on sweet potato and sometimes hid in jungle. But my dad was an exemplary Christian, so I suppose he would not speak ill of anyone.

All my life I’ve been a little apprehensive about the Japanese. I only know about the war from what I read in the media, our history books, and personal accounts of survivors. But the recent political furor has spurred me to find some facts of my ancestral past.

I did not find much on the Malayan Occupation that I didn’t already know. But I did find out about the Nanjing Massacre from many sources (this is a good one). Summarized here are some of them:

During the Nanjing Massacre, the Japanese committed a litany of atrocities against innocent civilians, including mass execution, raping, looting, and burning. It is impossible to keep a detailed account of all of these crimes. However, from the scale and the nature of these crimes as documented by survivors and the diaries of the Japanese militarists, the chilling evidence of this historical tragedy is indisputable.

The Tragedy at Yangtze River - On 13/12/37, a large number of refugees tried to escape from the Japanese by trying to cross the Yangtze River, but were trapped by the Japanese Army and killed. A Japanese officer estimated that more than 50,000 people were killed.

Annihilation in the City - Japanese troops fired at more than 100,000 refugees or injured Chinese soldiers in the streets. Dead bodies covered the two major streets of the city. The streets became "streets of blood" as a result of the two-day annihilation.

Mass Execution of Captives – TheJapanese arrested anybody who was suspected to be a Chinese soldier. Many were arrested and sent outside of the city to be massacred, from several thousand to tens of thousand at a time. The captives were shot by machine guns, bayoneted, burnt alive or gassed.

Scattered Atrocities With Extreme Cruelty - Japanese soldiers invented and exercised inhumane and barbaric methods of killing including shooting, stabbing, cutting open the abdomen, excavating the heart, decapitation (beheading), drowning, burning, punching the body and the eyes with an awl, and even castration or punching through the vagina.

Raping - An estimated 20,000 women were raped by the Japanese soldiers during the six weeks of the Nanjing Massacre, most were brutally killed afterwards.

(Some of the descriptions for that last item were so brutal I won’t reproduce them here. Read the article for yourself for the details.)

Somehow I can imagine what happened to the Malayan Chinese were not so different than in Nanjing. It is no wonder it is often called the ‘Forgotten Holocaust’. Novella once sad ‘War is hate, anger is king'.

My conclusion? I don’t know what to say. But I am reminded of Romans 12:19:

Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

I can understand why my grandmother dislikes them.

(For further reading, you may want to try Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking)


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