Editing The Rape of Nanking (book) (section)

== Background ==

===Inspiration===
As a child, Chang was told by her parents that during the [[Nanjing Massacre]], the Japanese "sliced babies not just in half but in thirds and fourths." Her parents had escaped with their families from [[China]] to [[Taiwan]] and then to the United States after [[World War II]]. In the introduction of ''The Rape of Nanking,'' she wrote that throughout her childhood, the Nanjing Massacre "remained buried in the back of [her] mind as a metaphor for unspeakable evil." When she searched the local public libraries in her school and found nothing, she wondered why no one had written a book about it.<ref name="RapeOfNanking7-8">{{cite book|author=Iris Chang|title=The Rape of Nanking|publisher=Penguin Books|year=1998|isbn=0-465-06835-9|pages=[https://archive.org/details/rapeofnankingfor00chan/page/7 7]–8|url=https://archive.org/details/rapeofnankingfor00chan|url-access=registration}}</ref>

The subject of the Nanjing Massacre entered Chang's life again almost two decades later when she learned of producers who had completed documentary films about it. One of the producers was Shao Tzuping, who helped produce ''Magee's Testament'', a film that contains footage of the Nanjing Massacre itself, shot by the [[missionary]] [[John Magee (missionary)|John Magee]].<ref name="Princeton">{{cite web|url=http://www.princeton.edu/~nanking/html/proposal.pdf|title=Proposal for The Nanking Conference at Princeton University|publisher=Princeton University|access-date=2007-07-23|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070110100610/http://www.princeton.edu/~nanking/html/proposal.pdf|archive-date=2007-01-10}}</ref> The other producer was Nancy Tong, who, together with [[Christine Choy]], produced and co-directed ''In The Name of the Emperor'',{{cn|date=September 2024}} a film containing a series of interviews with Chinese, American, and Japanese citizens.<ref name="Princeton" /> Chang began talking to Shao and Tong, and soon she was connected to a network of activists who felt the need to document and publicize the Nanjing Massacre.<ref name="RapeOfNanking8-9">Chang, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=8XnKuSxod8wC The Rape of Nanking]''</ref>{{Rp|8-9}}

In December 1994, she attended a conference on the Nanjing Massacre, held in [[Cupertino]], [[California]], and what she saw and heard at the conference motivated her to write her 1997 book''.''<ref name="Penguin">{{cite web|url=http://us.penguingroup.com/static/rguides/us/rape_of_nanking.html|title=The Rape of Nanking|publisher=Penguin Group USA|access-date=2007-07-22|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927210146/http://us.penguingroup.com/static/rguides/us/rape_of_nanking.html|archive-date=2007-09-27}}</ref> As she wrote in the book's introduction, while she was at the conference:<blockquote>I was suddenly in a panic that this terrifying disrespect for death and dying, this reversion in human social evolution, would be reduced to a footnote of history, treated like a harmless glitch in a computer program that might or might not again cause a problem, unless someone forced the world to remember it.<ref name="RapeOfNanking8-9" />{{Rp|10}}</blockquote>

===Research===
Chang spent two years on research for the book.<ref name="SFGate2005-04-17" /> She found source materials in the US, including diaries, films, and photographs of missionaries, journalists, and military officers who were in Nanjing at the time of the massacre.<ref name="RapeOfNanking8-9" />{{Rp|11}} Additionally, she traveled to Nanjing to interview survivors of the Nanjing Massacre and to read Chinese accounts and confessions by Japanese army veterans.<ref name="SFGate1998">{{cite news|url=http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1998/07/26/SC77214.DTL|title=Wars of Memory|publisher=SFGate|date=1998-07-26|access-date=2007-07-21|first=Charles|last=Burress|archive-date=2012-02-04|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120204145926/http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=%2Fchronicle%2Farchive%2F1998%2F07%2F26%2FSC77214.DTL|url-status=dead}}</ref> Also, she incorporated the most recent work on the subject by Chinese and Chinese-American historians by including many disturbing photographs and a myriad of translated documents.<ref> Yang Daqing, "Convergence or Divergence? Recent Historical Writings on the Rape of Nanjing", ''The American Historical Review'' 104 (1999), p. 7.</ref>

Before publication, the book was reviewed by [[Rana Mitter]] and Christian Jessen-Klingenberg of the [[University of Oxford]]; [[Carol Gluck]] of [[Columbia University]]; and [[William C. Kirby]] of [[Harvard University]].<ref>Chang, Iris; The Rape of Nanking; Penguin, London, 1998</ref> At the time of writing, the Japanese government classified Japan’s World War 2 archives, making archival records unavailable to investigators.<ref name="Alan Rosenbaum">{{cite book|author=Alan S. Rosenbaum|title=Is the Holocaust Unique?: Perspectives on Comparative Genocide|publisher=Routledge|year=2018|isbn=9780813344065| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PxdWDwAAQBAJ&q=If+the+Japanese+Foreign+Ministry+and+the+rest+of+the+Japanese+government+truly+care+about+historical+truth,+then+they+should+open+all+their+wartime+archives+to+the+rest+of+the+world+%E2%80%A6+They+shouldn%E2%80%99t+mind+inviting+an+international+task+force+of+historians+%E2%80%93+historians+from+the+U.S.,+China,+Japan,+Ko&pg=PT244}}</ref>

==== The diaries ====
Chang's research led her to make what one ''[[San Francisco Chronicle]]'' article called "Significant Discoveries" on the subject of the Nanjing Massacre, in the forms of the diaries of two Westerners who were in Nanjing leading efforts to save lives during the Japanese invasion.<ref name="SFGate2005-04-17" /> The diaries documented the events of the Nanjing Massacre from the perspectives of their writers, and provided detailed accounts of atrocities that they saw, as well as information surrounding the circumstances of the [[Nanking Safety Zone]].

One diary was that of [[John Rabe]], a [[Germans|German]] [[Nazi Party]] member who was the leader of the Nanking Safety Zone, a [[demilitarized zone]] in Nanjing that Rabe and other Westerners set up to protect Chinese civilians.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/NanjingMassacre/NMNR.html|title=Rabe's Records of "The Rape of Nanjing" Discovered|publisher=The Chinese University of Hong Kong|date=1996-09-26|access-date=2007-07-23}}</ref> Rabe's diary is over 800 pages, and contains one of the most detailed accounts of the Nanjing Massacre.<ref>{{cite book|author=Malcolm Trevor|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PrAoHzoP1QkC&q=%22john+rabe%22+diary+%22detailed+accounts%22&pg=RA1-PA121|title=Japan: Restless Competitor|publisher=Routledge|year=2001|isbn=1-903350-02-6|pages=121}}</ref> Translated into English, it was published in 1998 by [[Random House]] as ''[[The Good Man of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe]]''.<ref>{{cite book|author=John Rabe|url=https://archive.org/details/goodmanofnanking00rabe|title=The Good Man of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe|publisher=Random House|year=1998|isbn=0-375-40211-X}}</ref>

The other diary belonged to [[Minnie Vautrin]], the American missionary who saved the lives of about 10,000 women and children when she provided them with shelter in [[Ginling College]].<ref name="Vautrin">{{cite web|url=http://www.siu.edu/~siupress/titles/s00_titles/hu_goddess.htm|archive-url=https://archive.today/20070525134253/http://www.siu.edu/~siupress/titles/s00_titles/hu_goddess.htm|url-status=dead|archive-date=2007-05-25|title=American Goddess at the Rape of Nanking|publisher=Southern Illinois University|access-date=2007-07-23 }}</ref> Vautrin's diary recounts her personal experience and feelings on the Nanjing Massacre; in it, an entry reads, "There probably is no crime that has not been committed in this city today."<ref>{{cite news|date=2005-04-11|title=Scarred by history: The Rape of Nanjing|work=BBC News|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/223038.stm|access-date=2007-07-27}}</ref> It was used as source material by Hua-ling Hu for a biography of Vautrin and her role during the Nanjing Massacre, entitled ''[[American Goddess at the Rape of Nanking: The Courage of Minnie Vautrin]]''.<ref>{{cite web|date=2002-08-24|title=An American hero in Nanking|url=http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/DH24Ad01.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020826201217/http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/DH24Ad01.html|url-status=unfit|archive-date=2002-08-26|access-date=2007-07-27|publisher=Asia Times}}</ref>

Chang dubbed Rabe the "[[Oskar Schindler]] of Nanking" and Vautrin the "[[Anne Frank]] of Nanking."<ref>Chang, Iris. 18 January 2012. "[https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/01/the-nazi-leader-who-in-1937-became-the-oskar-schindler-of-china/251525/ The Nazi Leader Who, in 1937, Became the Oskar Schindler of China]." ''[[The Atlantic]]''.</ref><ref name="SFGate2005-04-17" />