Well, you mentioned "only two atomic bombs" on Japan. There was some consideration on the US side to employ nuclear weapons against Chinese targets during the Korean War. So I guess that puts both Japan and China under the what-if threat of being nuked
Well there are many posts and so much content to reply too but for now, I'll go with some of the points in your post, mostly on your last point about whitewashing and the other point about "not apologizing like the Germans".
For the whitewashing..
well for a high school book, this was quite good.
WW II Historical Thread, Discussion, Pics, Videos
Part of the reason why it's good is because the history gets politicized. Particularly the Nanking massacre. Guilty for what is done. Not guilty for excessive claims by the victim.
Rape of Nanking is often exaggerated. Degree of rape is difficult to assess. I'm sure it happened, along with pillage. It wasn't permitted from above command, but ground soldiers got too far with it. Surely a degree of racial superiority feeling was there. But i think this is defined as unique too much from observers today. What country didn't (and even today, so doesn't) view themselves as superior? Sure its a point to hold against Japanese. But this point is really kind of mute, people back then were racists across the board. What the Japanese certainly were not was what the Nazi's were. Japan had no policy of genocide. Sometimes Chinese react like how Jews react to the Nazis. Going that far is unreasonable and it fails to take into account the whole situation in entirety.
The main thing about Nanking is not the rape or pillaging, its the massacre that followed. But even this point is exaggerated. To start with, a few points before stating some number estimates. First off, after the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949 and throughout the rest of Mao's term, there was no talk about the Nanking Massacre. Mao never acknowledge it. Funny that. If it really was such a national tragedy for China, why didn't Mao ever talk about it? It's really astonishing that someday I think an example of him talking about it will turn up. But I haven't seen it yet. Another point to considered are the estimates of the population in the city of Nanking before and after the 6 week long lock down of the city by Japanese forces. The city had a population of about 800,000 around September or so. The Japanese Army was advancing and so people started to flee. By the time it was December, it is estimated the city's population was about 250,000. So then came the lock down, and then afterwards, by around February, the population was still around 250,000. Last point is that people came back into the city after the end of the lockdown and that the Japanese implemented policy to not loot and not rape for the sake of restoring order in the city and they gave free medical check ups. And yes, later Wang Jingwei would join the Japanese side to administer the Japanese controlled parts of China.
So why say those two points? Because by the 1980s came around, then people started talking about the Nanking Massacre and making up fake causality numbers. The number 300,000 comes out. So its been said that 300,000 have been massacred. That's a lot of people to claim to have been innocently massacred on the spot. But then comes the 1990s, and the 2000s, and heated debates take place, and it becomes obvious that 300,000 innocent civilians massacred is just simply not possible. So then the propagandists change their interpretation of 300,000 to include fallen soldiers or collateral damage and so on. But if doing so, then that doesn't fall in the massacre now does it. Collateral damage is unfortunate but it is not the same as willful intent to massacre standing unarmed people after a battle. And soldiers are soldiers, they don't count in a massacre statistics. And even after that, 300,000 is still too high.
Now defeated soldiers could still count as part of massacred even they were captured or if they even surrendered. But in Nanking is was muddled. CKS gave the order to fight in Nanking to the bitter end. Afterall Nanking was the capital and CKS wanted the highest possible struggle. Soldiers were not allowed to retreat. CKS forces on the other side had orders to shoot anyone that tried to retreat from Nanking. So when the Japanese came in, it was all to obvious that the Chinese soldiers were defeated, but they did not hold up the white flag and come out with their hands up. Instead they put on civilian clothes and scattered into the city's population.
So the massacre that did take place was the hunting down of once formally soldiers that scattered into the city populations. Most likely because the Japanese didn't want to risk a sort of guerrilla warfare inside the city. I of course don't take blame on some Chinese that were thinking of doing that. They were fighting for their city. But that is the basis of the massacre that was to take place. Well I'm sure some of the Chinese boy soldiers were just terrified of everything and wanted to escape being part of the fight. So after the battle, and after the Chinese soldiers scattered into the population, during lock down, the Japanese Army rounded up men that looked able to fight and had evidence of having been a soldier such as imprints of rifle-use on their body and such. They got massacred. The total size of the Chinese defending army is debatable but was something like 100,000 men. So naturally most died fighting, some scattered into the population. Total massacred was probably something like 20,000-40,000, mostly fighting age men from an army that did not surrender and just scattered into the population.
Post to continue in second post.
