Hitler and the “Nanking Massacre” Exposed in Rabe’s Diary Furuso Koichi, Freelance Journalist Overlooked Evidence The so-called Nanking Massacre was something that the Chiang Kai-shek administration manufactured using foreigners. Afterward, however, the Chinese Communist Party dramatized it how ever they wanted, painting a fictitious portrait of hell. Buying into the story, 70 years after the fall of Nanking a documentary film called Nanking, directed by Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman, was screened in America in 2007. Furthermore, in the US House of Representatives, Rep. Mike Honda (who has received considerable political donations from citizens with Chinese ties) and others have put forward a resolution seeking an apology from Japan over the issue of “comfort women.” The resolution was passed handily, and this fact aggravated the situation for Japan all the more. This is a development at which we can not merely be spectators. At this opportunity, I would like to present evidence on the “Nanking Massacre” the Chinese Communist Party was involved with, and clarify the intention behind their deceptive methods. As is well known, The Rape of Nanking, written by Iris Chang, an American woman of Chinese extraction, became a best-seller 10 years ago. There was no Japanese translation of the book. Countless errors in the book were pointed out, but Chang refused to allow them to be removed or corrected, so the publication was halted by the publishers. Therefore, it has come to be seen in Japan as containing nothing but the charge of “barbarism” on the part of the Japanse army. This is a mistaken perspective, however. The point that must be noted is the fact that of all the countries participating in the Second World War, even Germany has been given absolution for her crimes — only Japan has not been accorded that forgiveness. War Crimes of America and Europe Ignored “The chronicle of humankind’s cruelty to fellow humans is a long and sorry tale. But if it is true that even in such horror tales there are degrees of ruthlessness, then few atrocities in world history compare in intensity and scale to the Rape of Nanking during World War II.” (Chang’s The Rape of Nanking, p. 3) “It is certainly true that in this century, when the tools of mass murder were fully refined, Hitler killed about 6 million Jews, and Stalin more than 40 million Russians, but these deaths were brought about over some few years. In the Rape of Nanking, the killing was concentrated within a few weeks.” (p. 5) “The death toll of Nanking — one Chinese city alone — exceeds the number of civilian casualties of some European countries for the entire war. (Great Briatain lost a 1 total of 61,000 civilians, France lost 108,000, Belgium 101,000, and the Netherlands 242,000.)” (p. 5) “It is likely that more people died in Nanking than in the British raids on Dresden and the firestorm that followed.... Indeed, whether we use the most conservative number — 260,000 — or the highest — 350,000 — it is shocking to contemplate that the deaths at Nanking far exceeded the deaths from the American raids on Tokyo (an estimated 80,000 – 120,000 deaths) and even the combined death toll of the two atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the end of 1945 (estimated at 140,000 and 70,000 respectively).” (p. 6) “Nothing the Nazis under Hitler would do to disgrace their own victories could rival the atrocities of Japanese soldiers under Gen. Iwane Matsui.” (p. 7) Setting aside for a moment Chang’s feigning ignorance that Mao Zedong killed 70 million and Chiang Kai-shek killed several million of their own countrymen, Europeans and Americans coming across accounts in the opening of her book that there were incidents of war crimes exceeding their own countries’ can read on in comfort. Moreover, Chang changes the story to praise of Germans. American and European readers are completely caught up in Chang’s pacing. Rabe, the Merchant of Death Before going into details of this trick, we must trace the changes in the so-called Nanking Massacre. Generally speaking, this fabrication has passed through three phases up till now. The first phase was from the time it all began, with 20,000 dead, to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (the Tokyo Tribunal) held in Tokyo. John Rabe. He is the main character in a Chinese–German co-production being filmed about the Nanking Massacre. 2 Chiang Kai-shek’s government’s claim in court was that 300,000 had died, but this was unacceptable. In the next phase, the Japanese stepped up. It was Asahi Newspaper journalist Honda Katsuichi who started the ball rolling with his article “Travels in China,” but about the same time Hora Tomio (then a professor at Waseda University) wrote a crude book in defense of the article. Eventually, Hora got together with some friends to form the “Nanking Incident Investigation Committee.” The scope of the “incident” grew with their continued contact with the Chinese, even concealing actual evidence. In the third phase, people living in America and acting as catspaws of the Chinese Communist Party began taking action. After over 10 years of preparation, three books were published in 1997 and 1998. The first was Chang’s book. The second was the so-called Rabe’s Diary, and the third was The Rape of Nanking: An Undeniable History in Photographs by Yin James and Shi Young. “The Rape of Nanking” as presented by all the different countries’ mass media is based on these three books. These three books complement each other, but the foundation is Rabe’s Diary. Rabe was an employee of Siemans Co. and a member of the Nazi Party. At the time, he was the chairman of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone. This committee was on its face responsible for the security of the refugees in Nanking, but in truth they hardly did anything along those lines — instead, they were devoting their time to writing a work of lies. Rabe typed away daily from several months before the fall of Nanking to early February of 1928, knocking out two different works. One was a “Secret Report” for Hitler and the other was his diary. The “Secret Report” intended for Hitler was sent to Berlin via the German ambassador, Oscar Trautman, who had fled to Hankou. The diary Rabe carried home with him. Chang’s Rape of Nanking begins with the bogus story that Chang discovered Rabe’s diary, which was in the possession of Rabe’s relatives. Chang went to Nanking in 1995 to interview residents, but by this time she already knew about Rabe. A year later, however, she set out to find out if his diary still existed. With the help of friends and acquaintances, she says, she got into contact with Rabe’s granddaughter, Ursula Reinhardt. In response to Chang’s persuasion, Reinhardt spent 15 hours photocopying the diary that the family had kept in its possession and took the copy to donate to the Yale Divinity School library. Then, in December, Chang announced at a press conference in New York its “discovery.” The story of Chang discovering the diary, however, is a lie. First, this hadn’t been a press conference called quickly after her “discovery” of the diary. Its planning had been a long time in coming. As evidence of this, the diary, which had been written in German, had to have its contents digested and condensed and an English translation prepared to be distributed to the press corps. The person in charge of the English translation was Jeff Heynen, a journalist with the Asahi Shinbun in Los Angeles. Preparations for the announcement of Rabe’s Diary 3 seem to have been made a year before Chang said she began investigating Rabe’s life in 1996. ┌───────┬───────┬───────┬───────┬──────┐ │ │Chinese edition │German edition │ Japanese edition │English edition│ ├───────┼───────┼───────┼───────┼──────┤ │Publication date │Aug. 1997 │Oct. 1997 │ Oct. 1997 │ 1998 │ │No. of translators│7 │ │1 │ 1 │ │No. of photos │80 │30 │38 │60 │ └───────┴───────┴───────┴───────┴──────┘ Directed by Communist China The Japanese translation of Rabe’s diary was published as The Truth about Nanking. According to the translator, Hirano Kyôko, the start was Courage and Pride, the autobiography written by former Foreign Ministry official turned author Erwin Wickert in the early 1990s. In the book, Wickert touched on Rabe’s activities in Nanking. As a student, Wickert had stayed in Rabe’s home. Around the time of Nanking’s fall, he was working at the consulate in Shanghai, and then he was transferred to the German embassy in Tokyo. After that, he worked in the German embassy in Communist China. After retirement, he took up literary pursuits. Reinhardt, having read Wickert’s autobiography, got in contact with him in 1995. This was the beginning of Rabe’s Diary’s appearance to the world — it was not Chang’s discovery. In fact, Chang even writes (on page 195) that before her New York press conference announcing the “discovery,” a reporter from China’s Renmin Zibao (People’s Daily) had called on Reinhardt. What’s more, it was not actually Chang who planned for the publication of Rabe’s Diary. Under a “comrades’ interests” of the Chinese Communist Party Jiangsu Province Committee and the Jiangsu Provincial People’s Government, China’s Jiangsu Provincial People’s Publishing Co. and Jiangsu Provincial Education Publication Co. negotiated to push forward publication of a German-language edition while acquiring rights to publish a Chinese-language edition. That Communist Chinese money was paid out is very clear if one looks at the difference in the times of publication of the other countries’ editions.