Nanking - documentary film

Nanking is a 2007 documentary about the fall of Nanjing, then the capital of China, to the Japanese in 1937. Over 200,000 Chinese citizens were killed, many tens of thousands simply executed after the city fell, and tens of thousands of women were raped. It's difficult to adequate describe this story. It's depressing, horrific, and deeply moving. The actions of a handful of foreigners including Americans and Germans saved hundreds of thousands of lives. The documentary details their actions as well as the atrocities committed by the Japanese soldiers.

Actors read the actual text from diaries of these foreigners. Their words are inter-spaced with interviews with Chinese people who were really there and even several Japanese soldiers who were there. With regards to tens of thousands of unarmed Chinese men and boys who were suspected of being soldiers and were executed, one of the now elderly Japanese men chillingly states that there were 30,000 to 50,000 Chinese soldiers and the Japanese army was unable to tend to so many, so what else could they do? (but execute them)

I got a shock at the end of the film when text appeared on the screen saying "dedicated to Iris Chang, 1968-2004". That name sounded familiar and a quick wikipedia check confirmed my suspicion. Iris Chang was the young author of The Rape of Nanking. It's a book that I read a couple years ago and highly recommend. Published in 1997, sixty years after the fall of Nanking, it was the first non-fiction English language book about the terrible events of that time that were, startingly, little known outside of China for decades after they occurred. I had no idea that Iris Chang had died and was dismayed to read just now of her descent into mental illness that concluded with her suicide. Upon reading this line, "Chang was also reportedly deeply disturbed by much of the subject matter of her research. Her work in Nanjing left her physically weak, according to one of her co-researchers." (SF Chronicle), I couldn't help but think that in some way the horrors of Nanjing claimed another victim.

Reading or watching documentaries about what happened in Nanjing certainly isn't the pleasant escapism that most of us prefer, but I think it's something about which the whole world should know.