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The Denial and Its Cost Cost Its and Denial The 2 The Denial and Its Cost Reflections on the Nanking Massacre 70 years ago and beyond Essays of Honor Best Essays from Iris Chang Memorial Essay Contest 2007 Iris Chang Memorial Fund Global Alliance for Preserving the History of WW Ⅱ in Asia Cozy House Publisher New York 2008 3 Cover photo courtesy of Asian Week PUBLISHED BY COZY HOUSE www.cozygraphics.com Copyright © 2008 by Iris Chang Memorial Fund All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America September 2008 ISBN 978-1-59343-080- $12.00 4 CONTENTS Introduction………………………………………………...1 Preface………………………………………………………5 Essays of Honor The Denial and Its Cost Reflections on the Nanking Massacre 70 years ago and beyond First Prize Yoshikuni Kaneda…………………………7 Second Prize Kevin Ng………..………………………….15 Third Prize Philip D. Iglauer ……………………………23 Receipients of Iris Chang Youth Award (High-school-aged Writers of Essays of Honor) Jenny Chen…………………………………………………33 Glenn McLaurin……………………………………………41 Daniel J. Pearlstein………………………………………...47 Tianshu Zhang……………………………………………..53 Essays of Honor Shayaan Zaraq Bari………………………………………...57 Minjie Chen………………………………………………..65 Adrienne Y. L. Chuck……………………………………...72 Victor Fic…………………………………………………..81 Joe Goodwill……………………………………………….88 Carol Leung ……………………………………………….94 Wei Li…………………………………………………….100 Robert T. Marcell ………………………………………..106 5 Delroy Oberg …………………………………………….113 Thomas Park……………………………………………..122 Michael D. Sepesy……………………………………….129 Lillis Taylor……………………………………………...136 Jerry Jun-Yen Wang……………………………………..140 Mary E. Whitsell………………………………………...152 Essays of Distinction Melissa K. Benson………………………………………..159 Edward C. DuBois………………………………………..167 Zahid H. Javali……………………………………………173 Iris Lee……………………………………………………179 Mary Yan Lee…………………………………………….183 Lei Liu……………………………………………………187 Virginia Lohrmann……………………………………….194 Jenny Zheng……………………………………………...201 Reflections on the Nanking Massacre After 70 Years of Denial In Memory of Our Daughter Iris Chang By Ying-Ying Chang……………………………………205 Photographs……………………………………………...213 6 Introduction The year of 2007 marks the 70th anniversary of the Rape of Nanking. The Nanking Massacre, as it is also known, was one of the Essays of Honor most atrocious war crimes that Imperial Japan committed against China during its aggression in WWII. It was in 1997, on the 60th an- Introduction niversary of the massacre, that Iris Chang published her book “The Rape of Nanking, the Forgotten Holocaust of WWII” which broke the silence and shocked the Western world with details of this horrific historical tragedy. Ten years after the book’s publication, the Japa- nese government still did not make a formal apology to the victims of the Nanking Massacre. Japan continues to evade responsibility for its heinous war crimes committed in China and other Asian countries during WWII to this day. Worse yet, Japanese nationalist groups deny the Rape of Nanking ever occurred and claim it is a fabrication. In light of this and in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Rape of Nanking, the Essay Contest Committee decided the topic of the 2007 Iris Chang Memorial Essay Contest as “The Denial and Its Cost, Reflections on the Nanking Massacre 70 years ago and be- yond” to raise the conscience of Japanese people as well as the world. The Essay Contest Committee asked the contestants to reflect on the Rape of Nanking in the following directions: How has Japan been able to escape responsibility for its horrific war crimes committed against its Asian neighbors for so long? How can Japan regain the trust and respect of its neighbors who were brutally victimized during World War II? What can one do to heighten awareness for the Japa- nese atrocities committed in Asia during the Pacific War? How has the world learned from man’s inhumanity against man and how has it been affected by the aggressor’s post-war denial? And what can one 1 do to help bring this tragic chapter of history to a proper closure? This year, we received a total of 270 essays, among which over half (56%) were from the United States. The rest came from around the globe, including Australia, Canada, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Among the 270 contestants, 77% were students at the graduate, undergraduate, high school and middle school level. Other partici- pants came from diverse fields including education, business, engi- neering, homemaking, law, medicine and news media. The age range of the contestants was also highly diverse; spanning the early teens to 87. Many of the essays were of exceptional quality. Indeed, it was a rather challenging process to select the top winners as there were a large number of unique and distinguished writings. This year we were very fortunate to have a jury panel of seven- teen scholars to review the essays through three rounds. To ensure fairness in the selection process, each essay had been read independ- ently by at least two reviewers. In the first round, a total of 51 essays were selected. In the second round, 21 essays were selected from the previous pool of 51. In the last round, the top three essays were se- lected from the previous 21. This year, we also selected four top es- says written by high school students and designated them for the Iris Chang Youth Award. The remaining 14 essays from the top 21 were designated as essays of honor, and the remaining 30 from the 51 es- says were the essays of distinction. We felt these top essays were exceptionally outstanding in an- swering the questions given in this year’s topic. We hope that by compiling and publishing these top essays, the message for education of this tragic chapter of history can be spread. Remembering history is the first step to preventing such tragedies from ever repeating. This is 2 the goal of the Iris Chang Memorial Fund: to raise the awareness of the painful history of World War II in Asia and to support the educa- tion and research of younger generations in the U.S. with regard to Asian history. But due to the limitation of space, we could only pub- lish 21 top essays plus 8 of essays of distinction in this volume. At the end of this book, we also printed several photos depicting the many activities we were involved in the past two years. We, to- gether with Global Alliance for Preserving the History of WWII in Asia, helped to publicize two films, the documentary “Nanking” and Essays of Honor the docu-drama “Iris Chang—The Rape of Nanking.” We were also invited to participate in several panel discussions organized by univer- Introduction sity students on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Nanking Massacre. The Iris Chang Memorial Fund has also been supporting high school teachers for the annual China Study Tour, as well as a campaign to pass House Resolution 121 in U.S. House of Representa- tives. Indeed, the past few years have been full of activities aimed at raising public awareness for the Rape of Nanking. Here we like to express our thanks to everyone on the jury panel for their devotion and scholarly evaluation throughout the entire essay selection process. Their generosity and sacrifice among their busy lives are highly appreciated. They are: Kuei-Sheng Chang, Steven Clemons, Richard Chu, Ignatius Y. Ding, Werner Gruhl, George Koo, Michael Lee, Peter Li, Thekla Lit, Jiu-Fong Lo, Jack Meng, John Price, Rodger Scott, Peter Stanek, Jane Wu Tcheng, Ping Tcheng and Kaimay Yuen Terry. We like to thank Essay Contest Committee members Cindy Chan, Cinian Zheng-Durbin, Jane Wu Tcheng and Ping Tcheng. Without their passion and dedication, the essay contest and the publi- cation of this volume would not be possible. Special thanks to Cinian Zheng-Durbin for her continuous support and maintenance of our website and the artistic design of this volume’s cover. We also like to thank Victor Fic, Rodger Scott, Susan Hsieh and Amy Hsieh for their carefully edited some of the essays published in this volume and for 3 their valuable suggestions in improving our essay contest. We also like to give special thanks to the following organizations for their kind support and assistance in publicizing the contest: Asian- Week, Asian American Journalist Association, BayareaDragon.com, California Center for the Book, Chinese Southern Weekend Magazine Newspaper, Douwei News Net, Johns Hopkins University public communication department, KTSF Channel 26, New America Media, Rape of Nanking Redress Coalition, U. S. Holocaust Memorial Mu- seum, University of Illinois Laboratory High School, University of Minnesota Center of Holocaust Studies and Human Rights, Washing- ton State Holocaust Education Resource Center, World Journal Chi- nese Newspaper, and Yale University Library. Finally, we like to thank Bihua Zeng and the Cozy House Pub- lisher for their careful planning in publishing this book. Ying-Ying & Shau-Jin Chang Co-managers of Iris Chang Memorial Fund www.irischangmemorialfund.net 4 Preface From the 60th Anniversary to the 70th Anniversary Essays of Honor We are honored to be invited to write the Preface for this book. Preface In the past 10 years, the Canada Association for Learning and Preserving the History of WWII in Asia (ALPHA) has been working hard in two Canadian provinces, British Colombia (BC) and Ontario, to promote education and awareness of the World War II history in Asia . It was also 10 years ago, the year of the 60th anniversary of the Nanking Massacre, that Iris Chang’s book “The Rape of Nanking, the Forgotten Holocaust of World War II,” brought new hope to AL- PHA. Being the first book written in English on the subject, with ex- tensive research materials and many historical details about the Nank- ing Massacre, Iris’ book shocked the West’s conscience and generated a ripple effect in arousing the interest in and awareness of this vastly un- known atrocity, which is one of the darkest chapters of human history. We are very proud to be the first organization in the world to recognize the value of Iris’ work and to promote the book immedi- ately after it was published in November, 1997.
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