The Rape of Nanking, or the Nanking Massacre, officially started when imperial Japanese troops marched into Nanking on December 13, 1937. With prearranged orders "to kill all captives", the Japanese soldiers entered the city and arbitrarily killed men, women, and children without any intellectual reasoning. The killings were not the only sadistic behavior of the Japanese soldiers upon entering the city. They also raped thousands of Chinese women. Females from pre-teen ages to the elderly ages were not spared. They were all fair game for the sinister Japanese soldiers. Perhaps even worst, after being raped many women were killed after the act. Such atrocities continued and developed for the next six weeks. While numerous amounts of rape incidents continued, mass murder of male civilians was executed and planned by Japanese high officials. The systematic plan consisted of having the captives in formation, their hands bound behind their backs, and marched outside the city wall where, in separate groups, they were beheaded, or buried alive, or bayoneted, or raked with machine-gun fire, or doused with gasoline and burned. This is a brief and very short summary of what happened in the Nanking massacre. This is necessary background information to further discuss and analyze Iris Chang's book, The Rape of Nanking.
After reading The Rape of Nanking, by Iris Chang, one can only hope that such atrocities against human kind will not and can not possibly be repeated. The book, which acknowledges and records such a horrific occurrence in human history, is the first step to make sure this part of history is not repeated. To educate those who knew nothing of the Nanking massacre is one of Iris Chang's intentions for writing the book. She does not only write the book to educate people, but also to pay her respect to the many victims of Nanking. She pays respect to the victims by acknowledging their existence and recording their history, so they will never be forgotten.
