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Nanking

Do you want to know the biggest problem in America? No, it is not sexual mores. We have been a nation of alley cats in heat since our founding. Terrorism? No. Booze and drugs? No, chemically altering ourselves is our real national pastime, not baseball. Even Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson knew that you did not need to deal with reality when you can have a drink to avoid it. No, the real problem we have in this nation is the inability to get outside of our skins, to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. Our biggest problem is most of us cannot be humble enough to try to understand the other. After New Orleans went under, Kanye West said, “George Bush hates black people.” As much as I dislike our current commander, he doesn’t hate black people. He just does not give them any thought, other than as the other. He cannot put himself in the place of one of the poor who watched their homes being destroyed. He is a son of privilege. Someone who has had his backside pampered cannot understand what it is like to be the working poor. A livable minimum wage is a whole different question when it is you, the American dream has left behind. Universal health care becomes a whole different kettle of fish when it is your child left at the mercy of our medical system without insurance. It is why I could never join the far right in their hatred of homosexuals and their efforts to stop gay marriage. Anyone, who has ever spent any time alone, knows that is not something you want anyone else to go through. I know way too many people, married to gay individuals, who have tried to hide their sexuality and you don’t want to put anyone else through that kind of union. When gay people stop being the other, you cannot maintain the hard heart and hide behind your Bible. We foam at the mouth about illegal immigrants coming over the boarder because we cannot put a face to the other. Yet, through their eyes, when you have almost no hope to feed your family, you watched your limited agricultural jobs disappear with NAFTA, and the flood of cheap subsidized American corn and other crops that followed. Then you learn that some American company is willing to look the other way and pay you more in an hour than you could make in a week, what are you going to do? You can say “let the good times roll” when it comes to the national debt and global warming until your great-grandchildren invent a time machine and come back to look you in the eyes and ask why you did this to them. We rolled our tanks into Iraq and will ultimately end up leaving with our tails between our legs because we could not overcome the cultural gulf and understand the other. Instead, they are just Hadjis, rag heads, Ahabs, towel heads, Abba-Dabbas, camel cowboys, and carpet pilots. It is almost impossible to win hearts and minds when you cannot speak their language or understand their culture. It is okay to water board and torture as long as he is the other. It is okay for an eight-year-old to lose his childhood making me my shoes, as long as he is not my kid, just the other.

The other. When you take equal humanity away from someone else, it always leads to death. If you do not believe, just read about The Rape of Nanking or watch this documentary. I do not believe that there has ever existed a society that believes it is all right to kill, but there has always been one “out clause” to that belief. It is all right to kill if the person who you are murdering is not as fully human as you are. If they are not equal to you, wipe them out. The Japanese considered themselves the master race, better than any of their neighbors. They were a land and people created by the Sun Goddess and were given the divine mission to rule and enlighten the less fortunate races. Young people were taught that the Chinese were “chancorro” or subhuman. To kill a Chinese person was no different than killing vermin. They were not fully human like the Japanese. They were the other.

In 1937, in the midst of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese invaded China. In early August, the Japanese Army suffered huge casualties in the brutal fight at the Battle of Shanghai. Incensed by the resistance of these chancorros, Japanese Emperor Hirohito took the gloves off. (Now, tell me if this sounds familiar.) He directed that the army would no longer have to follow international law when it came to “evil doers” captured, and that the detained were no longer to even be called “prisoners of war.” As the army’s morale lowered and casualty rates skyrocketed, they approached the doorstep of Nanking. The retreating Chinese military practiced a scorched earth campaign to destroy anything that might be of value to the Japanese. Crops, homes, building and even entire forests and villages were burnt to the ground. On December 9th, the Japanese military dropped pamphlets on the walled city instructing them to surrender or else, within 24 hours. When the Chinese did not reply by the end of the time limit, the Japanese attacked. Chaos erupted as Chinese soldiers fled in the face of the overwhelming enemy force. Some even put on civilian clothing and blended into the civilian population. Others were shot in the back by their own troops as they tried to flee. Still others fled to the north and drowned trying to cross the Yangtze. With almost no resistance, the Japanese entered the city four days later. Yet, Japanese soldiers wanted someone to pay for all that they had been through. What followed was a six week orgy of murder, rape, theft, and arson. It is estimated between 100,000 and 300,000 people were killed. Somewhere between 20,000 and 80,000 women were raped. Many of these acts of sexual violence were preformed in public, in front of husbands, fathers, and sons. Women, as old as 80 and as young as newborns, were the victims of these acts. Those not killed immediately afterwards where mutilated. Chinese men, with guns to their heads, were forced to perform all kinds of sexual perversions. Children and pregnant women were bayoneted. Mass executions were carried out. One ditch is estimated to be the resting place for 12,000 victims. Two-thirds of the city was burnt to the ground and the Japanese pillaged whatever they could.

What happened in those six weeks is still a source of contention between the Japanese and Chinese people. In 1982, the Japanese Ministry of Education suppressed any mention of what happened at Nanking from their high school textbooks, stating that the facts of what happened there were not well-established. Dr. Saburō Ienaga, the author of the textbook, sued the Ministry and fifteen years later emerged victorious. Even though there are thousands of photographs, survivor’s statements, physical evidence, and film, many Japanese politicians and cabinet ministers to this day refuse to admit that atrocities were committed, instead blaming such stories on Chinese nationalism. There has still been no official governmental apology to China for what happened.

“So what,” the critic would state, “Nanking was 70 years ago.” The other is still with us. It has been over six years since 9/11 and we still have not grappled with why we were attacked. It was not because “they hate us for our freedom.” In reaction to the Abu Ghraib scandal, President Bush stated that Iraqis "must understand that what took place in that prison, does not represent the America that I know." And there is the failure of our foreign policy and why we have failed so miserably in our war on terror. He and most of our leaders have never asked, “What is the America they know?” What is the America, people in the Middle East know? What is the America, some kid in a third world factory knows? What is the America, a poor black kid in the ghetto knows? What is the America, that someone living on minimum wage knows? What is the America, a homosexual knows? As long as they are the other, subhuman, evil in the eyes of our God, we will never know, and that is the greatest problem in America.

Verdict: A Great Documentary