Iris Chang's The Rape Of Nanking

The late Iris Chang hoped that her work “THE RAPE OF NANKING” would lead to an official Japanese apology for the atrocities Japanese troops committed in Nanking in 1937. Chang’s well-intentioned attempt to secure a Japanese apology for the Nanking atrocities is meaningless because many of the perpetrators and victims are now dead. Thus, a Japanese apology would be an empty gesture that has no meaning. "We will probably never know exactly what news Hirohito received about Nanking as the massacre was happening," she writes, " but the record suggests that he was exceptionally pleased by it" (p. 179). How can one measure the meaning of another person's life? How can one measure the devastation that is a genocide, mass murder or rape of an entire
This includes The United States of America apologizing for slavery and Germany paying reparations to victims of the holocaust. The present generation, she writes, "can continue to delude themselves that the war of Japanese aggression was a holy and just war that Japan happened to lose solely because of American economic power . . ." (p. 224). Although it may seem shallow to give money or simply apologize for genocide or slavery, because the wounds that those acts leave behind are so deep. In a capitalistic society money or reparations is equivalent to paying victims, their families and the victims' government back for the wrong doing, it gives them freedom from the atrocities. The act of apologizing gives freedom; to the victims and their families, to the country that was attacked and to the country that did the act. This freedom comes in the form of breaking the silence. To admit the truth is probably one of the most powerful acts Japan could do; admitting their wrong doings allows for the possibility for a new future to be created, one that does not include