Remembering A Forgotten Holocaust

When Ted Leonsis, vice chairman of AOL, was traveling in the Caribbean, he chanced upon a picture of Iris Chang in the obituary section of an old copy of the New York Times from 2004. Chang, author of the award-winning best-seller The Rape of Nanking, had committed suicide at the age of 36. Her story and work introduced Leonsis to a much-forgotten chapter of history, which he now tries to capture in the documentary Nanking. Leonsis decided to produce the film in memory of the victims of that event.

The documentary chronicles the 1937 invasion of China’s former capital—now known as Nanjing—by Japanese forces following the fall of Shanghai. The events that transpired constitute one of the worst atrocities in history. Over a period of six weeks, Japanese soldiers looted and burned the city, raped tens of thousands of women, executed en masse Chinese soldiers and noncombatants alike, and killed civilians indiscriminately. Despite the extreme nature of these atrocities, the Nanjing Massacre is often overlooked by modern observers.

After his initial research, Leonsis was shocked by a term frequently applied to the Nanjing atrocities: forgotten Holocaust. “I had never seen those two words strung together,” he said during an interview with Spectator. Following further inquiry, Leonsis decided to create what he deems an anti-war film on a story desperately needed to be told.

Nanking features interviews of surviving victims and former Japanese soldiers. It also features reenactments in the form of staged readings of the many firsthand accounts, such as letters and diaries left by those who saved hundreds of thousands of lives—including the 22 Westerners who remained in the city to set up a safety zone instead of fleeing for safety. According to Chang, this act saved approximately 300,000 people—or roughly half of those who remained in Nanjing during the invasion.
Such a structure for the film makes the presentation of the information remarkably neutral and even conservative. Every word spoken by the actors is from a historical account. Even the death toll is modestly cited from the Tokyo Trials at 200,000, despite scholarship that has emerged in the last few decades that place it at the now more commonly accepted 300,000.

But Leonsis is clearly well aware that he is treading on thin ice. Almost exactly 70 years after the event, the figures are still widely disputed—generally ranging from 20,000 to 400,000 dead. Ultra-nationalists in Japan still deny or diminish the massacre. In recent years, there have been massive protests in various Asian countries against Japanese approval of textbooks that whitewash the Nanjing Massacre. There have also been protests against former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, which houses, among other soldiers, 14 Class A war criminals. Now, even Leonsis’ small production has invoked ire amongst extremists who plan to film a documentary in response.

Leonsis stated explicitly that as an American, he feels he has “no horse in the race” to skew opinion of the massacre in one way or another. But unfortunately, his cautiousness does seep into his work. The actors, while portraying real-life heroes, are too reserved and exhibit little emotion—no doubt restrained by the fact that they are simply reciting excerpts of past documents from a chair. Jurgen Prochnow, who plays John Rabe, a Nazi businessman and unexpected leader of the safety zone, gives a performance that can best be described as stiff. Mariel Hemingway portrays Minnie Vautrin, the American missionary who saved thousands of young girls at the school at which she taught, in an almost naïve way. She lacks the depth required to depict a woman who, after leaving Nanjing, committed suicide out of remorse for not being able to do more. Only Woody Harrelson as Robert Wilson, the only surgeon, is convincing enough to communicate the humanity of the Nanjing expatriates. The formality of the depictions of the characters leads to a false sense of detachment—at times, the tone of Nanking is much too pedantic.

However, this is not to deny the overall haunting power of the film. The images presented are not easily forgettable. The initial portrayal of a peaceful Nanjing with children playing hopscotch is pitted in drastic contrast with photographs of corpses piled at the edge of the Yangtze River. Nanking presents the shocking images now canonical to projects covering the atrocities: a soon-to-be-dead patient burned black, living targets used for bayonet practice, and a disembodied head with a cigarette butt placed jeeringly between the lips.

The strength and integrity of the documentary lies with the interviews that are almost too painful to watch. It is horrifying and humbling to see octogenarians sob as they recount the many ways they lost their family and friends before their eyes. There is a sense of almost uncomfortable voyeurism in hearing an old man refer to his dead sister as “Jie Jie,” or Big Sister. Moreover, survivors are introduced very effectively. The audience is provided with a name in addition to the current age and age in December of 1937, which conveys a sense of urgency. Nanking fulfills the mission of gathering eyewitness testimonies, with a total of 88 surviving victims interviewed, and approximately a dozen featured. According to Leonsis, none of the survivors were filled with anger—rather, they wanted to give their complete stories at the end of their lives as a “warning.”

Nanking is only one of a slew of films covering the Nanjing Massacre that are due in the course of the next few years. Shooting for Purple Mountain, named after the picturesque mountain southeast of the city, began over the summer. A budget of $53 million has been allotted for the project that seeks an impact similar to that of Schindler’s List. Steve Buscemi is to star as Robert Wilson in John Rabe, a biopic due next year. On the other side, Mizushima Satoru has a movie underway that tells the story of the Imperial Japanese Army. The subject’s revival shows that the debate is hardly over—Nanking is only the tip of the iceberg.