Today is the 70th anniversary of the fall of the city now known as Nanjing, the Yangtz
e River-side city that served as China's capital during many years of that country's long history, to Japanese troops. The attack, which had begun the prior month, and its aftermath were gruesome. Estimates of noncombatants killed in late 1937-early 1938 range from 260,000 to 350,000 persons; the number, Iris Chang (below) wrote in The Rape of Nanking (1997), "exceeds the number of civilian casualties of some European countries for the entire[ty]" of World War II. "(Great Britain lost a total of 61,000 civilians, France lost 108,000, Belgium 101,000, and the Netherlands 242,000.)" She added, "It is likely that more people died in Nanking than in the 
British raids on Dresden and the fire storm that followed." (pp. 6-7)Yet numbers alone tell little of the story. Victims suffered assaults, sometimes sexual, always brutal, by means that delicate society likes to call "unspeakable" or "unthinkable." A just-released film demands thought about them. Fully 10 years ago Chang spoke of them in detail, in a volume that, though just under 300 pages, is a definitive account of the atrocity. The anger in her writing was as graphic as the awful documentary photos included in her book. As she explained, the "book describes two related but discrete atrocities": not only "the Rape of Nanking itself," but also
the cover-up, the story of how the Japanese, emboldened by the silence of the Chinese and Americans, tried to erase the entire massacre from public consciousness, thereby depriving its victims of their proper place in history.Chang, who was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and studied journalism at the University of Illinois, ended her 1997 work with a demand for apology. That has not occurred; indeed, China's memorials this year are expected to reflect "China's determination to nurture recently improving relations with Japan after years of discord over territorial disputes, competition for energy resources and history."
In 2004, at age 36 and while working on a book about the Bataan Death March, Chang took her own life. Her parents set up a fund in her memory, dedicated to preserving WWII memories.
