"Nanking", The Movie

[Hugh_Hoy]

Spent some time this afternoon in a movie theatre watching â??Nankingâ?Â. Here is a short capsule of what it was all about (borrowed from a web page).

 

â??This documentary takes a look at Japan's invasion of Nanking, China in the first days of WWII, during which a group of unarmed Westerners created a safety zone where over 200,000 Chinese were saved from the brutal assault. This tragic tale comes alive again through the stories of the survivors, archival footage and the letters written by the Westerners as read by Woody Harrelson, Mariel Hemingway, Jurgen Prochnow, Stephen Dorff and more.â?Â

 

The movie seems to have been first shown at the Sundance Festival in 2006.

 

Not to be outdone, a Japanese director planned to make a movie about Nanking denying atrocities were committed by Imperial Japan. From another website:

 

â??A Japanese director plans a documentary blaming Chinese propaganda for reports that 200,000 people were slaughtered in Nanking during World War II.

Satoru Mizushima, director and producer of Nanking No Shinjitsu, or The Truth About Nanking, announced his project Thursday at a news conference in Tokyo. About 40 people, including two members of parliament, academics and film critics, came to the announcement to give him their support, theJapan Times reported. Another documentary, Nanking, was shown at the Sundance Film Festival last month in the United States. Nanking includes interviews with people who were living in the city in 1937. A feature movie based on the Iris Chang book, The Rape of Nanking, is in production. Most historians believe the Japanese Imperial Army killed 200,000 Chinese in Nanking in 1937. Mizushima disagrees.

 

I feel a huge responsibility to spread a correct understanding of history, the director said.â?Â

 

The film footage is sure as hell gonna make it tough for the Japanese movie maker to put a spin on what others say happen. The interviews of aged former Japanese soldiers who were involved in the invasion and occupation of China will be even more difficult to ignore. One old Jap fuck gleefully recalled the raping of a young girl and then killing her with a bayonet. (Girls as young as 10-13.)

 

Kind of makes me really, really, really sorry the U.S. wasnâ??t able to sink all of the Japanese islands with A bombs.

 

Anyway, the movie I saw was about 1 ½ hours long and conveyed through photos and film and personal accounts what Iâ??d only heard of in short mention. Finally decided that this might be an opportunity to hear and learn more. I learned enough, but the Japanese movie makerâ??s project sounds interesting.

 

Anybody seen it yet?

 

HH

 

 

[drogon]

The main problem is the fact that Japan never really apologized for this and that a lot of revisionism is allowed there.

 

Now, the moral ground? What Japan did there was not uglier than what the Germans did in Russia or what the Russians did in Germany (especially East Prussia) or what the Americans did in the Philippines etc.....

 

Japan should officialy apologize and ask forgiveness but with the current RPC government exploiting this (and other contentious issues in the Japan-China history) it does not help.

-> Better blame the stupid militarist cultures.

 

Never saw the movie and would like to

[rookie]

Nanking is high on my 'to see' list, it has receive rave reviews, but a good copy has yet to be available in the torrents...

[Hugh_Hoy]

or what the Americans did in the Philippines etc..

 

The Americans did the same in the P.I.? I guess I may be uninformed. Please detail. Thanks.

 

HH

 

[Old Hippie]

In the book "The Rape of Nanking," the author stated that the commander responsible for a lot of the atrocities went on to a prosperous career (as a dentist if I recall correctly) and was never held accountable. Ill check it out when it makes the rounds here.

[Julian2]

or what the Americans did in the Philippines etc..

 

The Americans did the same in the P.I.? I guess I may be uninformed. Please detail. Thanks.

 

HH

The Americans didn't do ANYTHING in the PI which is partly what's wrong with the place.

 

Hugh, I was in China a couple of years back and got talking to a few students one night and they all wanted one thing desperately: Japan flat, black and glowing in the dark.

They would all have been under twenty which means that their grand parents probably missed WW2 as well.

 

[Hugh_Hoy]

I wonder how the Japanese Olympians/visitors will be received on their return to "Nanking"? I don't doubt that the grandchildren and great grandchildren of survivors have had stories passed on down through their families and schooling. Not a period of time that would be ignored or forgotten.

 

BTW, concernng the P.I., "part of the problem" is that the U.S. didn't do "anything". What problem and within the context of what?

 

HH

[Old Hippie]

As I recall, there was initial wide spread hatred for the Americans in the PI post Spanish era...They came to like us a lot better later on, except for a few "nationalists" many of whom own property in the USA...or so I heard...

[drogon]

Better read some independent accounts/testimonies (mainly foreign journalists and the red cross) about the American occupation ofthe PI (right after the American - Spanish war)

 

There were never reliable stats about the extermination campaign led by the US troops.

Estimates range between 150.000 to 1.5 million filipinos who died due to the fightings, anti insurrection operations, famine, epidemies etc...

.

(Nanking death toll estimates vary hugely too)

 

General MacArthur (noth Douglas) words are quite famous about this sad episode.

-> This is an old story and part of the imperialist tendencies of the US in this period.

 

Eevery country has its "lets kill every other bastard" bad stories.....

 

About Nanking survivors: Stories were not all passed from one grandfather to his grandchildren for many reasons:

- Most rape victims (when still alive) accepted only recently to speak about it

 

- More than a few survivors died in communist China due to the country's internal situation

(famine, civil war etc....)

 

- Survivors stories were not of interest for the communist regime until recently -> used to fuel nationalism for revendications against Japan

 

Obviously, for a country like China which "killed" quite a few million of its own citizens through various "reforms", a few hundred thousands Chinese deads did not matter under Mao.....

 

The Japanese at that time were inhuman bastards so were the Germans.....

Every of our nation (maybe not Lichtenstein...)

has stains on its flag.

 

The movie is a good thing if it helps people remember how inhuman we can be.

 

 

 

 

[Julian2]

Colonialism has responsibilities as well as raking in the benefits. The Americans merely took over the plantation style feudal system they inherited from the Spanish and failed to build much in the way of infrastructure or develop a middle class amongst the local people.

 

One of the things the British Empire did in it's colonies was establish a Public Service that taught the locals how to run their own countries.

The Americans were happy to allow the Filipino ruling classes to run that side of things as long as they never made waves.

 

When the US "returned" in 1945 they saw the strategic importance of the PI and established military fortresses at Clarke Air Base and Subic Bay and continued to allow the before mentioned ruling classes to run the country.

 

Never mind that the whole lot should have been hung for doing the same thing for the Japanese while a lot of Filipinos fought bravely as Guerrillas under American command.

 

When they packed up and left in the early 90's the whole country was a basket case due to corruption and got worse.

 

Mind you, I'm not complaining, I've had amazingly cheap barfines there with girls who could have been film stars anywhere else in the world.

 

But the whole country could have gone communist after 1976. The New Peoples Army was enormously popular because in a lot of cases they were the only "court" where the ordinary people could get any justice at all.

 

Having said that, I love the PI and would move back there tomorrow should my current relationship collapse. (After making sure my dog had enough rabies injections for the next 20 years).