China looks forward on anniversary of 1937 Nanjing massacre

The CCP have killed more of it's own citizens than the Japanese ever did

Well, if the rubric is "how many Chinese were killed by a government" ... as atrocious as the war crimes committed by Japan in Nanjing were, they are a blip on much smaller blip on the radar when compared to haw many tens of millions of Chinese lost their lives to the CCP. But what can one expect from a totalitarian state responsible killing more humans than any government on earth? The Japanese army was horrible and inhuman, the Communist Party of China is and continues to be much, much worse... but I do not think the CCP is "looking forward" to that...

Why would you commemorate the anniversary of a ‘massacre’, that happened nearly 100 years ago !?

Especially when your government have committed similar atrocities yourself.

The irony is lost on the CCP as they look 83 years into the past at how many Chinese were killed by the Japanese Imperial Forces and yet the CCP continues today to kill its own citizens far, far, far surpassing the atrocities inflicted 83 years ago by Japanese Imperial Forces.

Oh my how little China has learned from the horrors of war that one would think it now sees it as acceptable. Can't think of another way to explain how killing their own citizens could be logical to the CCP.

What massacre? According to Japanese historians there were only a few hundred military personnel killed.

He used the anniversary to counter those who see China's rise as a threat, saying that the party is committed to international cooperation and peaceful development.

Chen also noted that China is the first country to bring COVID-19 under control and restore economic growth, which he said demonstrates the strength of Communist Party leadership. China is a one-party, authoritarian state.

And the Chi comm government, so quick to accuse others of distorting history, continues to do so as they have been for millennia.

This the same government that downplayed and lied about the coronavirus ravaging its borders, and allowed the infection to spread to all corners of the globe contributing to millions of deaths and destruction of the world economy and livelihood.

Utterly shameless.

China and South Korea use histories for their political purposes. They never mention any goodness Japan did to help their economy after the war. They arouse anti-Japan feelings among students at their schools. That is the reason we feel difficult to trust China and South Korea.

Irrespective of who killed more of who, the CCP doesn't seem to have used the occasion as an excuse to do a spot of Japan-bashing.

Only if your media source is limited to Japan Today (China Tomorrow).

Maybe it depends on your definition of Japan-bashing, but I looked up a number of sources before posting. Couldn't find anything. You want to share?

It would seem that anything that makes Japan uncomfortable, and anybody who does not join the line-up to make excuses for Japan's shortcomings is considered by many Japanese (and Japanaphiles) as Japan-bashing.

Echo's of the 1930's.

China the first to cure and get covid under control, CCP already had an antidote to begin with. Where the evidence it’s under control and we know this CCP virus released in China wuhan

Oxycodin said "China the first to cure and get covid under control, CCP already had an antidote to begin with. Where the evidence it’s under control and we know this CCP virus released in China wuhan"

Who told you that "this CCP virus released in China wuhan" ?

Americans do not fail to mention Nanjing Massacre when Japanese refer to atrocity of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

CCP: We must never allow the Japanese to inflict another atrocity on the Chinese people; that's OUR job.

There are quite a few Japanese deniers who downplay or deny the 300,000 deaths in the "Nanjing Incident" claimed by China. But the overall number of war-related fatalities in China between 1937 and 1945 is estimated to have been in the neighborhood of 20 to 30 million. The number of Chinese killed in retribution for aiding the US Army Air Corps flyers who crash-landed in occupied eastern China after the Doolittle Raid in 1942 may actually have been higher than Nanjing, and those killings were committed under orders and not the crazed blood lust of victorious soldiers. So Nanjing -- China's capital city at the time -- should be seen as something symbolic of a greater tragedy.

Almost every major city in China has a museum dedicated to Japanese atrocities. The best may be the Museum of War Resistance to Japan, located adjacent to the Marco Polo Bridge southwest of Beijing. There, China's Nationalist flag hangs from the ceiling beside the Stars and Stripes, Union Jack and flags of China's other WW2 allies.

Despicable that the Chinese keep bringing this up. Its 83 years ago. How about addressing the issue of 1-2 million innocent Muslims locked up in China for no reason other than ethnic and religious discrimination? Genocide, simple as that.

With the constant "victim status" that China is trying to achieve, along with their puppet state South Korea, it is 100% certain they NEVER wish to achieve positive relations with Japan.

P. Smith Today  07:04 am JST

Well, this excuses the Japanese atrocities in Nanking, and Asia.

Airtight “logic.”

Yes. That is a typical Japanese logic. They are very unique.

Despicable that the Chinese keep bringing this up. Its 83 years ago.

Is it likewise despicable that the Japanese keep bringing up the atomic bombings? After all they were 75 years ago. Japan NEVER tires of playing the victim status over them, never mind they started WWII. How about it?

I wonder if China will commemorate the thousands killed in Tainamen Square?

Here in Japan you won't hear a peep but in August...

China needs to ask for compensation. japanese were making biological weapons to kill more Chinese.

Unit 731 was specifically created by the Japanese military in Harbin, China (then part of Japanese-occupied Manchukuo) for researching biological and chemical warfare, by carrying out human experimentation on people of all ages. During the Second Sino-Japanese War and later World War II, the Japanese had encased bubonic plague, cholera, smallpox, botulism, anthrax, and other diseases into bombs where they were routinely dropped on Chinese combatants and non-combatants. According to the 2002 **International Symposium on the Crimes of Bacteriological Warfare, the number of people killed by the Imperial Japanese Army germ warfare and human experiments was around 580,000.[1] **

A confident-sounding Communist Party of China spoke of a brighter future as it remembered the victims at a ceremony Sunday on the 83rd anniversary of the Nanjing massacre.

Communist Party of China and a brighter future should not be used in the same sentence.

indigo said:

China needs to ask for compensation. japanese were making biological weapons to kill more Chinese.

Unit 731 was specifically created by the Japanese military in Harbin, China (then part of Japanese-occupied Manchukuo) for researching biological and chemical warfare, by carrying out human experimentation on people of all ages. During the Second Sino-Japanese War and later World War II, the Japanese had encased bubonic plague, cholera, smallpox, botulism, anthrax, and other diseases into bombs where they were routinely dropped on Chinese combatants and non-combatants. According to the 2002 ***International Symposium on the Crimes of Bacteriological Warfare*, the number of people killed by the Imperial Japanese Army germ warfare and human experiments was around 580,000.[1] **

SO, it was not acceptable 83 years ago for Japan to have done this BUT China todays gets a free pass for doing this in Wuhan and releasing it on the world?

tooheysnewToday  07:28 am JST

Why would you commemorate the anniversary of a ‘massacre’, that happened nearly 100 years ago

Because it serves a domestic political purpose. Same game that South Korea plays.

Despicable that the Chinese keep bringing this up. Its 83 years ago.

Is it likewise despicable that the Japanese keep bringing up the atomic bombings? After all they were 75 years ago. Japan NEVER tires of playing the victim status over them, never mind they started WWII. How about it?

There's a difference between remembering the past and deliberately teaching your children to hate another country over it. I for one am tired of my parents and grandparents constantly reminding me what Japan did seventy years ago as if they happened yesterday.

Glad it says, 'look forward on' and not, 'look forward to'.

marcelitoToday  08:39 am JST

This is 21 century, past is the past, get over it, China crbby !!..

Will you say the same when Hiroshima anniversary rolls around in summer again.?..no, you won,t...hypocracy central...Japan wants its neighbors to forget its atrocities at the same time it wants the world to acknowledge it was a victim. Perpetually. Innocent civilians slaughtered by military should be remembered no matter where it happened.

Same old uneducated attempt to equate Nanking (or other WWII) atrocities with the A-Bombs. They are not the same. If Japan "got over" Hiroshima, it would still be memorialized by 93 nations that have attended. How many nations attend the Nanking ceremony besides China itself? That s because the A-Bomb Memorial has a significance to the entire world in that it represents the Global hope that no nuclear weapons will ever be used again.

Japan NEVER tires of playing the victim status over them, never mind they started WWII. 

That's not what I learned in History class.

Forgvie but never forget.

Be it Nanking, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Pear Harbour and countless other atrocities throughout history that highlight just how low humans can sink in their endless quests to kill each other.

This is 21 century, past is the past, get over it, China crbby !!..

A reminder to anyone who thinks this is even mildly amusing

Over six weeks, Japanese troops raped and killed tens of thousands — and by some estimates hundreds of thousands — of people after conquering Nanjing

Not something a nation can easily get over.

Of course it's important to look forward and embrace a (hopefully) peaceful future, but it's even more important to learn from the mistakes and horrors of the past. Because otherwise, mankind is doomed to repeat them.

BUT China todays gets a free pass for doing this in Wuhan and releasing it on the world?

It didn't create the virus, it's not a biological weapon and it wasn't deliberately released. The authoritatirians who rule China maybe plenty of awful, when it comes to freedom and treatment of its peoples, but there's no need to bring conspiracy theories into the mix.

Communist Party of China and a brighter future should not be used in the same sentence.

Indeed, Aly.

The brutal filth who run the country are communist in name only.

The people of Nanking did not bring the massacre upon themselves. The numerous prisoners of war did not choose to die from slave work . Japan did that. But Japan could have avoided both or at least the Nagasaki bombings themselves by surrendering over an already lost war earlier. A war Japan started.

As long as the current generations do not accept this, remembrance services are necessary.

And yes move on, forgive. But forgiveness is granted after remorse.

expatToday  11:35 am JST

How can they be looking forward when the ceremony commemorates something that happened 85 years ago?

political strategy by playing the victim to justify the increase of Chinese military presence. the tension will increase. when the economy goes wrong War comes. history seems to repeat itself. Sadly, the War will be always the ultimate scapegoat for all troubles...

China had victims in WWII. Japan had civilian victims in WWII. In every war, all sides have victims.

The lesson is do not start a war, and do not allow anyone to start a war with you.

Leaders must learn to compromise better and stop hatred forming which can turn into war.

War no matter if won or lost or even ending without result means there are victims. Remembering victims is not wrong no matter when they died. Re blaming nations for past actions solves nothing, and remembering past horrors is not necessarily blaming anyone, it is just being sad that it happened in the first place.

War is wasteful and is to be avoided at all costs. When remembering any victims of any conflict that is what must also be remembered.

BigYen Today  11:46 am JST

OssanAmerica:

A great point that seems lost on too many people commenting here today.

The Japanese Galapagosian view of history never disappoints me.

https://www.heritage.org/asia/report/the-pearl-harbor-anniversary-japan-still-says-dont-blame-me

Both the Nanjing Massacre and the atomic bombing of either Hiroshima or Nagasaki were abominations. What's stuck in the back of my mind, however, is factual figures of victims in both cases. China says 300,000 people died in a six-week spree of killing, rape and destruction after the Japanese military entered Nanjing in 1937.

That figure seems to me too bloated in comparison with the number of Hiroshima victims, which Hiroshima City announced last year to be 89,025. There's a big discrepancy between the popularly estimated figure of 140,000 plus, but this will be clarified in time, I’m sure.

Now, how could Japanese foot soldiers kill 300,000 people in Nanjing in six weeks however atrocious they may have been?

I have this friend who is a Japanese Professor at Kyushu University and we would talk often about the Nanking atrocities and he always chuckled and told me not to be naive and that it was China and the west spreading propaganda lies about the people that were brutally murdered and it was Chinese soldiers that donned Japanese and killed their own people to pin it on Japanese soldiers as retribution and revenge so something they never knew about until after the war.

Needless to say, I was just dumbfounded and jaw literally dropped to the floor, but this gentleman truly believes in his heart that the Japanese are completely innocent of the propagated allegations, he thinks one reason is because the Chinese are jealous of the Japanese progress that it made during the Meiji Era.

Entirely predicable to see every single post by Japanese and Japanophiles saying, "b-b-b-b-b-b-b-but China has killed more of it's own people!"

These are the same people the deny it happened in the first place, despite IJA members themselves admitting it and in some cases going back to China to seek forgiveness (and being discredited by Japan for doing so), say Pearl Harbor was (a) not a sneak attack, and (b) was "self defense"; say that Japan did not do anything wrong in colonising the other nations and in fact gave education to those nations that were blessed with Japan's presence, and were even taught how to bathe properly; that Unit 731 was a world-respected medical group that did nothing wrong; that sex slaves were all willing prostitutes who made a great wage and had fantastic lives; and that the IJA did not force Japanese to pull grenades on themselves in caves in Okinawa, or to jump off the Itoman cliffs, to name just a few things that 'never happened'.

Records by the Tiananmen Mothers suggest that three students died in the Square the night of the army's push into the Square.[e]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests

Are they also looking forward to the next anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre? Or is China wants to pretend it has never happened hhhhmmmmm? The world remembers and will never forget!!!

An inhuman act in human history? What do the Chinese call what they’re doing to the mass sententious of Uyghur Muslims? China executes hundreds of thousands of their own citizens every year. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. China should really learn to just shut the F up.

tooheysnewToday  07:28 am JST

Why would you commemorate the anniversary of a ‘massacre’, that happened nearly 100 years ago

Because it serves a domestic political purpose. Same game that South Korea plays.

@OssanAmerica

The same can be said for the commemorations of the atomic bombings. The Japanese are more than welcome to commemorate those who died in the bombings, just as the Chinese are allowed to commemorate the Rape of Nanjing. Regardless of whether or not it's used for 'domestic political purposes' (as the respective events are in both Japan and China), it's important to commemorate these events so that they do not fade from our collective memories. The first step to repeating something like this is to forget that it happened before. We should never forget these sorts of things.

Hey! Before talking about history, let’s talk first about human nature which started with savagery, superiority complex, misjudgment of those leaders who used the trust of their people as a weapon to fulfill their goals by any means. ( one example is the system of colonialism "the policy and practice of a power in extending control over weaker peoples or areas".)

So, history is something that can’t be ignored or forgotten, especially if it was a bad one. However, history can easily be misinterpreted, misinformed or even exaggerated. That’s to say, it depends where the source comes from and who is the teller of the story?

The bottom line is that don’t be fooled by the history of the long - past because you will never find the truth.

You must be grateful for living nowadays because thanks to advanced technology with satellite, street cameras and the pockets handy mobile phones which help keeping some histories real with no legendary.

The Japanese war crimes in Nanking are what they are, but the CCP surely is not the party to talk about human rights violations.

What!? User names aren’t unique...Scrolling through the comments and surprised to see another Coffee posting...

I agree that it’s important to use history as a reminder of how catastrophic we humans can be, but that it should not be used as a way to teach hate. However, my grandparents and parents never complained about “how evil Japan” whatsoever. My grandmother, who passed away last year at 95, was a red cross nurse and stationed in Hiroshima from 1946-1947 and then later in Chongqing, China from 1948-1949, only had fond memories of Japanese and Chinese.

I think all massacres and genocides need to be reminded and commemorated.

The holocaust,the genocide of the Armenians,Stalin’s purge of million of people,or as the most recent ethnical massacre in the Yugoslavian war,as Nanjin that happened in the past,because it is a good way for us humans to remind ourselves that we should not commit such crimes anymore.

But also we have to stand our grounds for the silent genocides that happened very recently and are happening now,Tibet and the epuration of the Islamic and opposition of Communist China is something that is happening now.

OssanAmericaToday  10:59 am JST

tooheysnewToday  07:28 am JST

Why would you commemorate the anniversary of a ‘massacre’, that happened nearly 100 years ago

Because it serves a domestic political purpose. Same game that South Korea plays.

Same game that Japan plays with the atomic bombing commemorations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The CCP's hypocrisy is lost when it looks back 83 years into the past about how many Chinese were killed by the Japanese Imperial Forces, and then today the CCP proceeds to kill its own people way, far, far above the atrocities inflicted by the Japanese Imperial Forces 83 years ago.

Over six weeks, Japanese troops raped and killed tens of thousands — and by some estimates hundreds of thousands — of people after conquering Nanjing, then the capital of China, on Dec 13, 1937. Chen Xi, a senior party official called the massacre “an inhuman act in human history." 

Better get ready, Japan! Because very soon, they're gonna come YET AGAIN with their begging cups and brandishing the past again in your face and skills of guilt trips like the other country even though history has been settled.

Chairman Mao played down the Nanjing Massacre since he wanted Japanese investment at a time when China was isolated diplomatically and economically. Moreover Mao was grateful towards the Japanese for weakening Kuomintang enough to enable the communists to win the civil war.

It was only in later years that the CCP fanned the nationalist sentiment within China, probably because they wanted to divert attention away from their own crimes and towards their old WW2 foe and the atrocities committed half a century earlier.

As much as the Nanjing massacre needs to be remembered as a holocaust, the victims and the perpetrators are both long gone now and the fact is that the noise on both sides is more out of political concerns than genuine remorse or indignation.

Zaphod, I agree with your points, and moreover, human rights have been violated on a regular basis and in different forms and some GVTs are so good at doing them that they think no one understands or sees what they are doing.

Coffee, your message is a well balanced example and explained the fact that your grandparents and parents were among the luckiest ones who could make it to account the good part of the history but unfortunately, the people who were not lucky enough to escape the tragic situation are never here to account the bad side of the history correctly.

The Japanese war crimes in Nanking are what they are, but the CCP surely is not the party to talk about human rights violations.

@ Zaphod - Exactly right. The CCP Imprisoning between 1-2 million Muslim citizens to "re-educate" them (and who knows what else) is indeed a human rights violation at best, at worst genocide. These crimes are happening still.

The only way in which the A-bombings are used politically in Japan is to keep Article 9 from being changed. It is NOT used to foment hatred against Americans. This is how the A-Bombings differ from the way WWII history is used in China and South Korea.

The Hiroshima Ceremony was attended by 93 countries. It is not a victim game, it is the will and wish of the entire international community that nuclear weapons never be used again.

There are massacres occurring every week in Africa,

All parts of the body being hacked off with machetes.

That should be more newsworthy than something that happened nearly 100 years ago

Fighto

@ Zaphod - Exactly right. The CCP Imprisoning between 1-2 million Muslim citizens to "re-educate" them (and who knows what else) is indeed a human rights violation at best, at worst genocide. These crimes are happening still.

The Uigurs get all the attention, but the CCP is doing the same with the Tibetans and Mongolians, not to mention their own Falung Gong followers, who are preferred for organ-harvesting on demand, because of their supposedly healthy lifestyle.

Really, hearing the CCP pontificating about war crimes is quite a surrealistic experience.

China claims the invading Japanese Army killed 300,000 people in Nanjing in 1937 or an average 7,142 people per day. Could such a number of killings by hand have been possible unless deaths caused by aerial bombardment was also taken into account?

zichiToday  12:40 pm JST

Germany dealt with their brutal WW2 history and crimes and were then able to move on. Japan in part has not been able to do that.

That is correct. But Germany does not have neighbors who use anti-German sentiment as a political and diplomatic tool. When you consider Japan's relations with Asian, Oceania, North America and Europe, it is only China (PRC) and South Korea (ROK) who continue to prevent Japan from as you say "moving on".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements_issued_by_Japan#:~:text=September%206%2C%201997%3A%20Prime%20Minister,conduct%20caused%20tremendous%20damage%20and

Desert TortoiseToday  10:10 am JST

Despicable that the Chinese keep bringing this up. Its 83 years ago.

Is it likewise despicable that the Japanese keep bringing up the atomic bombings? After all they were 75 years ago. Japan NEVER tires of playing the victim status over them, never mind they started WWII. How about it?

When has Japan played "victim" over the A-Bombs? Do you see any anti-US agenda? Has Japan signed on to the resolution banning nuclear weapons? Has there ever been an example of Japan using the A-Bombings as a diplomatic or political tool?

Or are you confusing the several Atomic Bombing Victims associations and Anti-nuclear weaopons activists with Japanese government policy?

What I see is that the anti-JP crowd, most of which are pro-PRC/SK supporters, NEVER tire of repeating this fallacy.

I wonder how many what level of control of CCP spies have over Fuji TV?

Well, like Homer Simpson said looking at General Mao: “He looks like a little angel who killed 100 million people”. Nough said.

voiceofokinawa: "Now, how could Japanese foot soldiers kill 300,000 people in Nanjing in six weeks however atrocious they may have been?"

Not hard when you march people to rivers and machine gun them, or when a mere two IJA officers have a "race to see who can kill 100 people first with their swords". Now, imagine that mentality on the scale of the entire IJA, supported by the Emperor, and the people of Japan, who believed they were superior, and clearly some still do.

How many were forced to kill themselves in Okinawa, by the way?

OssanAmerica: "That is correct. But Germany does not have neighbors who use anti-German sentiment as a political and diplomatic tool."

Why should Japan's neighbours simply forgive Japan when it won't even admit what it did, raping and killing MILLIONS, and STILL people make excuses and say it never happened. Trust me, if Germany said the Holocaust never happened and/or refused to acknowledge their wrong doings, they would have neighbours just as angry and disappointed with them as Japan does. Heck, Japan thinks, as your comments suggest, that they are the VICTIMS here (not Japan's fault its neighbours don't like Japan, right?). When Japan makes an OFFICIAL, on the record apology, and a PM visits Nanjing to lay a wreath and apologise for the atrocity, THEN you will see healing and relations improving. But nope... they visit Yasukuni instead, to pray for the souls of the people who carried out the massacres.

I think the rest of the world will only give CCP credit for this when they face the atrocities their own political organization did (and still does) to the people of China. The CCP looks like the hypocritical joke it is.

Great leap forward, Tiananmen, Tibet, Hong Kong (more recently),Uighurs, south China Sea, and attempting to take over Taiwan....

The world and even Chinese citizens remember it themselves.

The CCP wishes it could erase the worlds memories, but it's impossible to cover up something that everyone else knows and remembers from historical facts which are facts because they are true and the evidence to back it up.

smithinjapan,

Not hard when you march people to rivers and machine gun them, or when a mere two IJA officers have a "race to see who can kill 100 people first with their swords*

Is it the fact that Nanjing residents were marched to the Yangtze River and machine-gunned en masse, as you assert?   

Yale University Sterling Professor Jonathan Spence, a most authoritative specialist in Chinese history, estimates 42,000 soldiers and citizens were killed and 20,000 women raped, many of whom later died. 

While their commander escaped, many soldiers were left behind in the city, who hid among the civilian population in civilian clothing to camouflage their identity when the Japanese military entered the city. Yes, there was the story about lieutenants Noda and Mukai who were reported to engage in a race to contest who will achieve the hundredth killing first with their sword. Both of them were executed for war crimes at the 1946 Nanjing war crimes tribunal.

XI LOL!

do not allow anyone to start a war with you

Easier said than done. How were the Poles supposed to stop both the Germans and the Soviets from invading and waging war on them? How were the Australians supposed to prevent Japan from attacking them at Darwin?

War is wasteful and is to be avoided at all costs

So never fight and just surrender when another nation attacks you? Many of us would rather take our chances in combat than just surrender our land and our rights to another nation. I guess by your warped standard the Chinese should never have taken up arms against the Japanese, nor should the Koreans and they should welcome the peace that comes from subjugation? Is that it? Just me but I would rather take my chances with combat than just bow to an invader and surrender.

The CCP wishes it could erase the worlds memories, but it's impossible to cover up something that everyone else knows and remembers from historical facts which are facts because they are true and the evidence to back it up.

Not so fast. My wife is a highly skilled electrical engineer but having grown up in China she knows almost nothing about the larger world or even about events that happened in her life in China. She knows nothing about the history of the Middle East or how any of those countries came to be. I don't think she even knows what Judaism is much less how Israel came to be. If you asked her about Lawrence of Arabia or Bernard Montgomery you would get a blank stare. She knows nothing at all about WWI, even though it was Germany's defeat in that war that handed Japan an island empire in the Pacific. She thinks Mao beat Japan with Soviet help. She knows Japan attacked Pearl Harbor but nothing between then and VJ Day. She knows nothing of events in Europe during WWII. She thinks China won the Korean war and knows nothing of the 1979 Sino-Vietnam war. She doesn't understand the Cold War or how it ended. She knows nothing about the events leading up to the confrontation in Tianamen Square. The only reason she knows anything about the Cultural Revolution is because her family was run out of their home by the Red Guards and made to live in poverty in a rural backwater. She lived that but it is not taught in China today. The whole of the Enlightenment passed China by so she knows nothing of the writings of Adam Smith, Voltaire, James Madison, David Hume, Thomas Jefferson or any of their thoughts that have carried fourth western civilization. She often mocks western ideas of personal freedom and personal choice as selfish and contrary to an orderly society. The Chinese have a very limited and very different understanding of the world they inhabit and you have to keep this in mind when dealing with them.

The CCP wishes it could erase the worlds memories, but it's impossible to cover up something that everyone else knows and remembers from historical facts which are facts because they are true and the evidence to back it up.

Something else you are missing is that in China being too inquisitive or critical can get you arrested or disappeared. There is great fear of the police and government. Very few want to be seen as interested in anything that might earn them the anger of any level of government. Involvement in civic affairs is strictly controlled through the CCP. Independent organizations of the sorts one finds in most western countries are simply not permitted. Even churches are not independent of the CCP as their clergy and what they preach must be approved by the CCP.

It's so funny "China" who is suppressing and sending minorities to concentration camp, blaming Japan!?

marcelitoDec. 14  02:26 pm JST

Why would you commemorate the anniversary of a ‘massacre’, that happened nearly 100 years ago

Because it serves a domestic political purpose. Same game that South Korea plays.

Naturally, Japan commemorating the events of August 1945 is sooo completely different.

Yes it is. How many countries attend the ceremony in China? Hiroshima has 93 countries attending. But I suppose you don't notice the difference. lol

zichiDec. 14  06:17 pm JST

OssanAmerica

Germany dealt with their brutal WW2 history and crimes and were then able to move on. Japan in part has not been able to do that.

That is correct. But Germany does not have neighbors who use anti-German sentiment as a political and diplomatic tool. 

Not entirely correct. For decades after the end of the war there were many who couldn't forgive or forget. There are still Brits who dislike the Germans for their Nazi past. Also the Russians and French. Wounds take time to heal.

There are still living Brits who have negative feelings towards the Japanese and always demonstrated when the emperor visited.

You are confusing Individuals with their Governments. None of Germany's former WWII enemies have made Anti-German sentiment a diplomatic and political tool, in the way China and South Korea has.

I don't think Japan handled their end-of-war-story correctly including many dismissing what took place. Most of the hurt countries never believed the sincerity of their apologies.

You have already seen the list of apologies that Japan has made to former victims of it's WWII imperialism. The only countries that refuse to accept the apologies is again. China and South Korea. To claim that "most" of the hurt countries do not accept the apologies is simply false.

WWII started a couple of years earlier, in Europe.

That is the white man's Eurocentric point of view which I challenge. European powers were fighting Japan much earlier. The US suffered its first losses to Japan in 1937 with the sinking of USS Panay. However in 1937 the US simply didn't have the means to challenge Japan effectively. But by November 1941, one month before the Pearl Harbor attack Admiral Halsey gave a task force leaving Hawaii to reinforce Wake with USMC fighter aircraft issued a one page oporder that instructed his commanders to sink any Japanese ship encountered en-route. By that time the US had more ships under construction for the Navy than it had in commission and was preparing in earnest to challenge Japan. The only open question was where and when would Japan attack.

It's China's right to remember their own history and commemorate the tragedy, but people tend to forget what can the current generation do to prevent such atrocities, Do China be a better government that treats its own citizens, ethnic minorities and it's surrounding neighbor right? Or as their economy grows becoming more arrogant and behaves exactly what the Imperial Japanese has done before. History will repeats itself.....

@awomde . Fully agree. Just look at history when under Mao Zedong 1958 to 1962, his Great Leap Forward in China his policy led to the deaths of up to 45 million people – making it the biggest episode of mass murder ever recorded. He was probably the biggest mass murderer in history. This is a historical fact.

smithinjapan,

The current population of the City of Nanjing is about 8,500,000. Before July 1937 it was about 1,000,000.  For fear of an imminent invasion by the IJA many residents escaped from the city, making the population dwindle to about 300,000 to 400,000 in November. Just before its fall to the invading IJA in December that year, the population is said to have further dwindled to 200,000.

So if these figures were generally correct, how could one adjust the sequence of these figures with 300,000 people killed in the Nanjing massacre?

voiceofokinawa: "Both of them were executed for war crimes at the 1946 Nanjing war crimes tribunal."

Which was FAR too good for them. And yet, many Japanese politicians lament it and pray for their souls.

"So if these figures were generally correct, how could one adjust the sequence of these figures with 300,000 people killed in the Nanjing massacre?"

Who says the figures are correct? You yourself dispute the numbers of those claimed to have died in the atomic bombings, as well as how many civilians, etc. And lest we forget, the American numbers are probably quite different. The more important point is that many Japanese claim it never happened at all, and in fact many posters on here can do nothing but deflect and claim Japan is the actual victim.

smithinjapan,

Which was FAR too good for them.

They were captured after the war for their bizzare action, court-martialed and executed. In fact, it was Japan as a whole that committed alleged war crimes by invading China and later attacking Pearl Harbor. 

You insinuate then that the dropping of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were minuscule compared with the atrocity IJA soldiers committed during the war. Thus, for you, the figure 300 thousand as the number of civilian deaths in the Nanjing Massacre cannot be incorrect and must be remembered everlastingly.

The CCP have killed more of its own citizens than the Japanese ever did?

Not according to most of my Chinese friends and acquaintances.

Not according to most of my Chinese friends and acquaintances.

They are not allowed to learn that Mao starved tens of millions of Chinese people to death. It's blocked on their internet, not taught in their schools, and talking about it will get you locked up.

They are remembering, just as many other countries do and should. It isn't a celebration. And yes, the Chinese people deserve to be taught more about their own history, but, another day hopefully.

Why would you commemorate the anniversary of a ‘massacre’, that happened nearly 100 years ago !?

Statistical figures in an argument must be correct and reliable. Otherwise, the argument will be dubbed as a lie by your opponent. That's why some right-wingers in Japan say there was no such incident as Nanjing Massacre in 1937.

@Desert Tortoise, if your wife is that ignorant of world history and what goes on around her then she probably needs to be taught to be aware of it. You've heard the saying, "Those that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

Many who do pay attention and have learned from history are easily able to recognize when something similar happens or starts occurring again. It's how we know to avoid/prevent the outcome from being the same terrible results (cough US 2020 Election cough).

A woman I know in Hong Kong didn't pay much attention to politics back in the early 2000s. Fast forward to today with the CCP taking away the previous rights and democratic freedoms she had before, she now pays absolute attention because it is directly affecting her now and she is attempting to get asylum in the US.

So while it may be difficult to try and teach a person to look outside of the box of their life, at least encourage them to be aware of it. Because obviously world events can intrude and affect your life instantly... (COVID pandemic anyone?)

Recently China used a photo of an Australian soldier holding a knife to an Afghani child's neck. Australia and the world was quick to denounce this photo as propaganda, and charged that it was photoshopped.

In 1937 the Republic of China (ROC) under Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek was fighting the Imperial Japanese invasion as well as the Communist Chinese under Mao Tse Tung. ROC originally had help from Nazi Germany until they signed a pact with Italy and Japan. After that the ROC turned to the US for help. In order to increase US compassion for China, they used propaganda in the form of exaggerating losses.

A terribly large figure of "tens of thousands" was used to describe civilian casualties by Joh Rabe, a German who was in Nanking at the time. He also happened to be a member of the Nazi party. When WWII ended the ROC charged Japan for the "Nanking Massacre" at the International Tribunal for the Fareast. The ROC used a death toll of 100,000 however the Tribunal dismissed the charge for lack of evidence.

1948, the ROC is chased off the mainland to Taiwan. The PROC/PRC (Communist China) take over.

In the late 1990s PRC engages in an anti-Japan offensive, and raises the civilian death toll at Nanking to 300,000. When historians around the world question this figure as the entire population of Nanking in 1937 was 250,000, PRC claimed that the figure represented the death toll from not just Nanking but also "surrounding areas". PRC went ahead and built a memorial based on that 300,000 figure.

There seems little doubt that many civilians died in the Nanking offensive Dec 1937 to February 1938. But the casualty figures have become a political tool rather than a historical recording. Few are aware that many ROC troops fled fighting the IJA by tossing their uniforms and donning civilian attire. And no remains of bodies of 300,000 people have been found. And no reports of cremations, which would have had to be on a Nazi concentration camp scale, exist.

It is the politicizing and exaggeration of the numbers which draws the response from Right wing Japanese that the Nanking Massacre "didn't happen".

So if you can look at a Chinese propaganda photo today and doubt it's authenticity, consider when there was no SNS and "word of mouth" was the main sharing method.