Nanjing Massacre Museum

January 6, Sunday, Virginia’s birthday

I went with a guide today, after several weeks of trying, to the Nanjing Memorial Hall, http://www.nj1937.org/english/default.asp , the museum commonly referred to as the Nanjing Massacre Museum.  I am relieved that the Canadian government is not allowing to happen with Winnipeg’s Asper Foundation Human Rights Museum what has happened here.  It is not possible for me to judge whether the intent is to memorialize the atrocities and trauma of the event, or to ingrain hatred of the Japanese.  My student is generally a fair minded lad, I think, and sensitive.  But he too is unforgiving.  Taiwan is China, Tibet is China, Diaoyu Islands are China.  What is not China? 

How are the events of the Japanese massacre, over the course of a month from December 13, 1937 to January 14, 1938, of some 300,000 Chinese civilians different from the Tutsi massacre of Hutus in Rwanda, the Ukrainian Hlodomor, the German Holocaust of Jews?  I hope I would have the courage, in similar circumstances to kill myself before I would do such horrific things to others.  What is done to people’s minds that they will laugh as they kill innocents, or for that matter those they belief to not be innocent.  Farmers crossing a field with hoes in hand, 3 year olds gunned down, old women, young women raped, and murdered. 

My guide commented that he was brought to the “old” original, and much smaller museum as a primary student.  At that time the archeological remains of mass graves, which he referred to as the bones room, was a part of the display.  There were then some photos too.  He said the children, boys especially, just used the open areas to run around in and he had little lasting impression.  But I cannot think it an appropriate place to bring primary students.  Those mature enough to understand much, or those imaginative enough, would surely have unanswerable nightmares.  And for those not so, it would be a waste of time.  As middle school students and seniors, yes. It has value provided it is dealt with in a way that focuses on human rights rather than promoting hatred.  Considering my reading of articles around the recent Diaoyu Islands debate, the rhetoric and “news” carried such inflammatory language, I hesitate to believe that human rights would be the focus.

The guide asked me what was the part of the museum that I was most impressed by.  Certainly the photos of masses of unidentifiable bodies was impressive.  Why were so many of the bodies naked from the waist down?  Not only women, but men and children too?  And the 2 “bones” rooms, one in the original area and one in the new, spacious, hauntingly gloomily lit new museum, were impressive.  Skeletons unearthed, some whole, some not; some just jumbles of seemingly random human bones. 

But most impressive to me were the narratives and videos (even though I could not understand them) of women who survived the “Comfort Women’s Centres”.  To constrain the wonton raping of Chinese women in the months and years following the Japanese occupation, the Japanese commanders decreed that Comfort Women’s Centres be established in each major city so that the sexual appetites of the Japanese soldiers could be sated.  Anywhere from 5 to 50 women would be abducted from their homes and brought to the comfort centres for institutionalized humiliation.  Most were teenagers.  They did “chores” during the day.  At one cited centre the 6 women housed there used their daytime hours to hand wash the laundry of 100 men, and at night they were systematically raped and/or gang raped between 5 and 20 times, depending upon how attractive they were.  After 2-3 years, if they were still alive, and the majority were apparently not, they were either so sick and infected by multiple venereal diseases, or pregnant and therefore no longer sufficiently comely to be desirable, they were “released” to the streets, to find their way to whatever might be left of “home”, or to die, beyond Comfort. 

I had not realized it but as my guide pointed out, the Qing Dynasty, collapsed in 1911 and in the ensuing years while the National Peoples Republic was rebuilding the country, there was rampant poverty, the army was weak and there was inadequate military might or strategic foresight and skill to defend against the attacks that began in 1931.  At that time the French owned/controlled bits of China, and the Brits, too.  But, he said, it seemed the Japanese wanted to take over the entire country because of their dire need for additional resources.  And, perhaps, had it not  been for the intervention of the Russians and WWII, they might have had it.  And just as is the case in Africa, why did the West not intervene?  I guess they might have, but on the side of the Japanese because of the Red terror that was China.  Thanks be for the Russians.  The ongoing Diaoyu Islands debate simply keeps the fires of hatred burning.  They are tiny islands, but the brand of the Japanese is on them despite history’s claim that they are Chinese.  I do not know the history but I know the rhetoric here is very inflammatory.

There are many very poignant sculptures on the grounds which are wide open graveled spaces, speaking to the unnamed horrors that lie within.  The museum covers not only the Massacre itself, but the WWII years as well, until the Japanese were repelled, and leaders executed or long imprisoned as war criminals.  One could not be tried, the uncle of the Japanese royal Hirohito family whose members it was agreed would not be prosecuted.  The Japanese referred throughout to that month of killing as an “incident”, and therefore, their view, captives need not be treated with the respect the international community required to be shown Prisoners of War.  Thousands were beheaded, or individually shot and toppled over the banks of mass grave pits.  Toward nightfall, anxious to be done the day’s job of killing thousands, machine guns might be used.  Then, so that their deed was hidden, the Japanese would spend the night using heavy machinery or shovels to cover the graves.  A few, by hiding under bodies, feigning death, surviving multiple bayonet stabbings, or hiding in rivers and caves, did escape to the refugee centres established by the German Nazi John Rabe, (https://www.google.ca/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=&oq=nanjing+massacre+rabe&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4ACAW_enCA353CA378&q=nanjing+massacre+rabe&gs_l=hp...0i30j0i8i30l2.0.0.0.5347...........0.mT_vDbryzbg) by American and British humanitarians, who complained often and as forcefully as they dared about the raping, pillaging and murdering that was going on.  But to little avail.  One commander’s order sheet read “Kill them all.” 

As a side note, some of the heaviest fighting took within 2 km of my school at Purple mountain where Sun Yat Sen’s mausoleum is.  It boggles my mind and breaks my heart to imagine the scene.