Waiting for Divine Redemption
1 Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. 2 Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications!
3 If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand?
4 But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered.
5 I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope;
6 my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning,
more than those who watch for the morning.
7 O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
and with him is great power to redeem.
8 It is he who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities. [Psalm 130, NRSV]
[L] Chinese prisoners captured near Mufu Mountain. All of them would be murdered within a few days. [R] Chinese children murdered by Japanese soldiers, their bodies dumped into a pond.
The Nanjing Massacre (also known as the Rape of Nanjing) was the mass murder of Chinese civilians, noncombatants, and surrendered prisoners of war, as well as widespread rape, by the Imperial Japanese Army in Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, between 1937-38.[1] This year marks the 88th anniversary of the most bestial massacre carried out by the Japanese nation bent on a sick militarist policy. Their crimes against humanity fill the darkest page of human history and forever soil the annals of human civilization. They leave behind an odorous trail of shame.
In late 1937, as the Japanese invading troops approached Nanjing, Chiang Kai Shek’s Kuomintang army fled, leaving only 10,000 peasant-conscripts to defend the city. The Japanese army stormed in and unleashed a frenzy of mass-killing and rape, leaving a trail of utter destruction of a scale quite unheard of in world history. The degree of inhuman cruelty shocked even those German Nazis living in China at the time.
Within weeks of the Japanese army having swept into the ancient city of Nanking, they not only looted and burned the defenseless city but systematically raped 80,000 women and children, tortured and murdered more than 300,000 Chinese civilians. Amazingly, this massacre, considered one of the worst wartime atrocities in history,[2] continues to be denied by the Japanese government whose policy has consistently been: “deny, deny, and deny”. Their mantra is admit nothing, deny everything. To this day, the official Japanese posture remains a shameless, near comical, denial in the face of massive and uncontroverted historical records from multi-national sources of UNESCO recognition.
The Japanese invasion of China began in July 1937 (so the Chinese war-resistance is 14 years, longer than WWII), and pushed quickly through China after capturing Shanghai in November. As the Japanese soldiers marched on Nanjing, the capital at the time, they went on a killing frenzy, unleashing atrocities in a terror campaign, including a sick “killing contest” among themselves and massacring and torching entire villages.[3] While the German Nazis talked about “processing” or “handling Jews” in their genocidal campaign, the Japanese had their efficient “mopping-up operations” in rounding up Chinese prisoners and all male civilians in Nanjing for mass execution.[4]
Japanese Denials Despite Solid International Records
To this day the massacre remains a contentious topic in Sino-Japanese relations, as Japanese nationalists and historical revisionists, including top government officials, have either denied or minimized the massacre. Japanese right-wing politicians, including the late PM Shinzo Abe and the current female PM Sanae Takaichi, are well known deniers of Japanese war crimes, including even the existence of the Nanjing Massacre. Nothing is mentioned in school books so that the new generations, if ever they should accidentally come across such materials, tend to treat all this as misinformation. So much so, in fact, that young Japanese have practically been socialized into believing that Japan is a victim of war, with the two atomic bombs bearing iconic symbols of that narrative.[5]
At the time, General Iwane Matsui was in command of the Japanese Central China Area Army. Prince Yasuhki Asaka was installed as temporary commandeer in the Nanjing campaign. After the war, Matsui and several other commanders at Nanjing were found guilty of war crimes and executed. Other Japanese military leaders in charge at the time of the Nanjing Massacre escaped trial either because they were already killed or had committed ritual suicide. Asaka, who gave the order to “kill all captives”, was granted immunity as a member of the imperial family and never tried. The Japanese emperor Hirohito who ordered the invasion of China never had to face trial and could even enjoy a trip to Disneyland in the U.S. The beginning of the corrosive American duplicity may easily be traced to when they became the celebrated “victor” of WWII.
Safety Zones Set Up by Foreigners
Minnie Vautrin, a farm girl from Illinois dedicated herself to the education of Chinese women at Ginling College in Nanjing. She turned the school into a sanctuary for ten thousand women and girls.
John Rabe was a German diplomat and businessman best known for his efforts to stop Japanese war crimes and protect Chinese civilians during the Nanjing Massacre. He set up a Nanking Safety Zone (南京安全區) on the eve of the December 13, 1937 Japanese breakthrough in the Battle of Nanking. It was a demilitarized zone set up in an attempt to protect Chinese civilians. Rabe’s Safety Zone is credited with saving at least 200,000 lives.
We Shall Never Forget: Books, Movies, Memorials
The Jews never let the world forget the Holocaust. They made many movies and documentaries, built museums and held exhibitions to keep the world aware of the atrocity towards the Jews by German Nazis during WWII. Precious little, however, was publicised to the world concerning the atrocity committed by Japanese invaders of China during the same time. There was for a long time almost a complete silence on the heinous Japanese crimes in the Nanjing Massacre which in some respects, was far worse than the Holocaust.
The diaries of John Rabe bear powerful witness to the massacre and constitute an important historical source. See “Nanjing Massacre: The Diaries of John Rabe: An important historical record of the Nanjing massacre” at
https://news.cgtn.com/news/3d67544d31594464776c6d636a4e6e62684a4856/share_p.html.
- CGTN writes: “In those dark times, many foreign businessmen and missionaries chose to stay in Nanjing. Among them was John Rabe from Hamburg. They created the International Committee for the Nanjing Safety Zone to help Chinese people escape the massacre. John Rabe wrote in his diary that the 27 Westerners who stayed on in Nanjing and the Chinese were shocked by the scale of the robbery, rape and murder by Japanese soldiers. [John Rabe’s record] is an important supplement of the existing historical archives. It is a real historical record, and is also an international third party record. Documents of the Nanjing Massacre were listed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register in 2015. The historical records provide a powerful refutation of the Japanese right-wing denial of the Nanjing massacre.”
Every historical author adds to the collection of historical evidence of the massacre. “Terror in Minnie Vautrin’s Nanjing: Diaries and Correspondence, 1937-38”, Vautrin’s firsthand accounts of daily life in Nanjing and the intensifying threat of Japanese invasion, reveals the courage of the occupants under siege – Chinese nationals as well as Western missionaries, teachers, surgeons and business people – and the personal costs of violence in wartime. A review reads: This book “presents a comprehensive and detailed daily account of the events and of life during the horror-stricken days within the city walls and in particular on the Ginling campus. Through chronologically arranged diaries, letters, reports, documents, and telegrams, Vautrin bears witness to those terrible events and to the magnitude of trauma that the Nanjing Massacre exacted on the populace.”
The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, by Iris Chang, is a bestselling 1997 book. Against the well-known saying that “history is written by the victors,” the history of the Nanjing Massacre was not written at all. Chang refused to let this horrendous event be forgotten and took it upon herself to research and write a gripping non-fiction book. It is one of the first major English-language books to expose the heinous Japanese war crimes in Nanjing to Western and Eastern readers alike. Her work is also credited with the findings of the diaries of John Rabe and Minnie Vautrin. Although the author was not an original witness, her commitment to meticulous research was impressive. Her writing on one of the most brutal massacres in the long annals of wartime barbarity is heart-wrenching. Clearly outraged, she was not sparing of the Japanese. Chang wrote: “So sickening was the spectacle that even Nazis in the city were horrified, one proclaiming the massacre to be the work of bestial machinery.” A review reads: “As a history, this is a thorough if imperfect book. As journalism, it’s visceral, gripping, and horrifying. It may be flawed, and it may have come packed with a personal agenda, but the reality is undeniable, and anyone who says things like ‘Never again’ or ‘Lest we forget’ should read this. The survivors and ghosts of Nanking deserve it.” For more on the success and significance of this book, please turn to “The Rape of Nanking (Book)” at Wikipedia.
Daito Satoshi, the abbot of Zen-Buddhist Enkoji Temple in Kyoto, Japan, has collected and donated more than 4,600 pieces of historical materials for over two decades since 2002 to Nanjing’s Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre. He majored in history at college, and felt a responsibility to future generations in the preservation and communication of historical materials. “These materials need to be saved forever. The memory of the Nanjing Massacre belongs not only to China and Japan but to the world, for the sake of our future,” said Daito.[5]
Over the years, a few movies have been made on the Nanjing Massacre, with varying degrees of reception. The latest movie of 2025 production, entitled “Dead to Rights”, is put together as a documentary based essentially on historical evidence captured in preserved photographs. Originally called Nanjing Photographic Studio (南京照相馆), this movie has taken China’s summer box office by storm, surpassing 1 billion yuan (about 140 million U.S. dollars) in just 8 days. It has unexpectedly drawn world-wide box office success.
Posters for movie Dead to Rights.
A review reads: The film Dead to Rights brings the horrors of the Nanjing Massacre (1937-38) to the screen, offering a vivid portrayal of the atrocities committed by the Japanese army in China. Released just ahead of the 80th anniversary of China’s victory over Japan, the movie has sparked widespread debate and reflection on this dark chapter in history. The film captures not only the massacre’s brutality but also China’s lasting trauma.
CGTN wrote: The scale of violence was so extreme that, as one critic put it, “if the crimes committed in Nanjing were shown on screen in full, no theater in the world could play the film.”… To remember the war is not to sow hatred. China has long opposed war on any nation. What it seeks to remember is not nationalist triumph, but shared human suffering. One line from the film has stayed with many viewers: “Photographs may fade, but history does not.” Forgetting isn’t just erasure. It’s a second massacre – to Nanjing, and to truth itself.
The famous aphorism of Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana reads: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.
Our next post, scheduled for February 16, will focus on Japan’s crimes against humanity committed through their germ-warfare experiments on live humans at “Unit 731”.
May the deceased rest in peace, may all living Chinese remember their national humiliation, and may the Japanese learn to quell their spirit of aggression, to open their hearts to repent, properly apologise, and live in peace with their neighbours. Amen.
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References:
[1] International Memory of the World Register Documents of Nanjing Massacre, UNESCO; Martha L. Smalley, American Missionary Eyewitnesses to the Nanking Massacre, 1937-1938, 1997, Connecticut, Yale University Library Occasional Publications. Archived; Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking, 1997, p.6.
[2] Masahiro Yamamoto, Nanking Anatomy of an Atrocity, 2000, p.193; Lu Suping, The 1937-1938 Nanjing Atrocities, 2029, p. 33.
[3] Peter Harmsen, Nanjing 1937: Battle for a Doomed City, 2015, p.145.
[4] Peter Harmsen, Nanjing 1937: Battle for a Doomed City, 2015, p.243.
[5] “GLOBALink Japanese abbot donates historical materials of Nanjing Massacre,” at https://english.news.cn/20221213/97181027d254412da005ce80d45e6aa8/c.html; “New Irrefutable Evidence Found,” at https://test.nanjing.gov.cn/en/information/news/202311/t20231113_4096251.html.
Copyright © Dr. Jeffrey & Angie Goh, February 2026. All rights reserved.
To comment, email jeffangiegoh@gmail.com.
