Shudo Higashinakano,

Professor of Intellectual History, Asia University,Tokyo

Iris Chang's book, The Rape of Nanking, was published in December of 1997 in the USA. Reiterating the claim of the Republic of China at the post-war Tokyo Trial, she insisted that the Japanese army ruthlessly killed citizens, the young and the old, whoever came into its path.

Less than two years have passed, and on August 24th, the California State Assembly, which wholeheartedly embraced Iris Chang's book, adopted a resolution alleging that Japan "brutally slaughtered" 300,000 Nanking citizens, as well as committing other war crimes.

This resolution claims to condemn "all crimes against humanity" and calls for "a clear and unambiguous apology" and "reparations by the Government of Japan".

If I am to describe The Rape of Nanking in a nutshell, it is pure baloney whether discussing the issue of burials of bodies, population of Nanking, or war-time international law.

There were only three cases of murder in Nanking in which the victims' bodies were actually confirmed by Westerners and Chinese in Nanking. In all three cases, the perpetrators were unknown, and could have been Chinese or Japanese. This is verified by Documents of the Nanking Safety Zone, a compilation of all such complaints.

If it is true that 300,000 citizens had been massacred in Nanking, then there would surely have been numerous witnesses of mass murders at the Tokyo Trial. However, there was not a single witness of illegal executions or murders.

When Reverend Magee was cross-examined about how many homicides he actually witnessed, he was able to cite only one, and that was a legal execution.

Not only is the claim that 300,000 Chinese in Nanking were killed a falsity, there existed no "Rape of Nanking" as alleged by the Tokyo Trial.

If the California State Assembly wishes to indict "all crimes against humanity", then it should indict the ruthless bombing of Tokyo on March 10, 1945, which killed 100,000 citizens in just one day, the dropping of the uranium atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, and the plutonium atomic bomb on Nagasaki on August 9.

When it comes to indiscriminate collective murder of ordinary unarmed citizens, these bombings are surely unprecedented "crimes against humanity", exceeding even the Jewish holocaust by the Nazis in terms of the number of victims killed in a single day.

I demand that the Upper and Lower Houses of the State of California present concrete evidence on the "Nanking massacre".

Note: This is a translation of an opinion column that appeared in Sankei newspaper on Sept.5. 1999. Some changes have been made with authorization from the writer.

Dr. Shudo Higashinakano has published two books on East Germany and has researched extensively on the Nanking Incident of 1937.

Among his publications are:

Nankin Gyakusatsu no Tettei Kensho, (The Nanking Massacre: Fact Versus Fiction - A Japanese Historian's Quest for Truth) Tokyo: Tendensha, 1998

(English and Chinese versions are in preparation)

Za Reipu obu Nankin no Kenkyu - Chugoku ni okeru Johosen no Teguchi to Senryaku, (translation: Study of "The Rape of Nanking" - methods and strategy of "propaganda war" in China) co-author with Nobukatsu Fujioka, Tokyo: Shodensha, 1999