The Nanking Hoax:A Historian Analyzes the Events of 1937

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The Nanking Hoax:A Historian Analyzes the Events of 1937

By Ara Ken’ichi

Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact

PREFACE

Is it possible that, in the late 1930s, the brutality of young Japanese men was such that it caused them to stand out from their counterparts in the rest of the world?

According to charges brought at the Tokyo Trials, after having occupied Nanking in December 1937, Japanese soldiers laid waste to the city, hunting down women and raping them, and killing all civilians who crossed their paths. In the brief span of one month, they committed 200,000 murders and 20,000 rapes. At that time conscription was universal. A soldier on active duty might have been — indeed, was — the boy next door. The soldiers of 1937 belonged to my father’s generation. I certainly feel an affinity with them, and I found the notion that they committed any such crimes, much less many of them, unimaginable.

It was in 1982, 45 years after the violence had allegedly occurred, that I decided I couldn’t rest until I had discovered what really happened in Nanking. Although nearly a half-century had elapsed, quite a few of the survivors of the conflict were alive and well, and in their seventies.

I was able to interview many of them about their experiences in Nanking. Most of the units that served in that city were composed of young men from the same prefecture. After I tracked down one veteran of the Battle of Nanking, he would lead me to another: “See the house beyond that field? The man who lives there served with me.”

But many former soldiers had moved to other parts of Japan in the great transplantation that accompanied postwar economic growth. For instance, an interview with a man now living in Tokyo led me back to his hometown, Sabae, in Fukushima Prefecture. “Visit my former comrade there. He should be able to tell you everything you need to know about Nanking.” These interviews turned into a five-year project that took me all over Japan; I conducted over 100 of them in the Tohoku, Kanto, Kansai and Kyushu regions, covering about half the nation’s territory.

I failed miserably, however, in my attempt to verify any of the accusations made at the Tokyo Trials. None of the former soldiers I interviewed mentioned any event even remotely resembling them. During discussions about Nanking, some interviewees digress, shifting to the bitter conflict fought in Shanghai. Others mentioned the Battle of Imphal in India; the veterans’ recollections of combat in that region were sharper, since it had taken place after the Battle of Nanking. However, the accusations made by the prosecution at the Tokyo Trials described crimes so horrific that no soldier could forget them, no matter how long ago they had occurred. I concluded that the charges brought at the tribunal had been invented.

I was anxious to communicate my discovery to a wide audience, via newspapers and television. I knew how the PRC would react, but nothing the Chinese could say was capable of obliterating the testimonies of more than a hundred men. Not once did I waver in my convictions about the Nanking Incident. However, at that time, Japan’s media and the PRC had joined together, raising their voices in an endless “Nanking massacre” chorus, which grew more deafening as the years went by.

As I looked back on the 70 years that had elapsed since the massacre, I saw a parade of characters marching through history: those who made the accusations, those who publicized them, those who used them to their advantage, those who were manipulated by them — Chinese, Americans, Japanese. So many people have participated in this drama in so many ways. During those seven decades, the events that actually did take place have become virtually indiscernible. Why were such accusations made? How were they disseminated throughout the world? Why were they given credence at the Tokyo Trials? How did the Japanese react to them? When did the Republic of China first make those allegations?

I realized that to answer these questions, I needed to breathe life once again into the characters and events that shaped this drama at each important stage. This book is the result of that realization. It is my hope that I have also shed light on the truth — on events as they actually took place.

Ara Ken’ichi
October 1, 2007

https://www.sdh-fact.com/book-article/220/