Devoted to Corporate Attorneys, Corporate Lawyers, and Corporate Counsel

For those attorneys who have visited the history museum in Nanjing, China on the Nanjing massacre, they may notice that Iris Chang’s book seems very true to its details.  Iris Chang wrote Rape of Nanking.

Rape of Nanking, though nonfiction, can be read as a novel because it goes into details on the stories of individuals’ lives.  There is a section on how the Chinese people got killed, from having to line up, ordered by the Japanese to chop off the heads of their own people, and being shot into the rivers.  There is a section on the rape of women, no matter what age, from little children to the elderly over 80 years old.  One woman lived to tell her story to Chang because she fought back, and reported her happy ending with grandchildren today.  There is a section on how the Chinese submitted by going back to their homes, being tricked into thinking that the Japanese would bring a better government to them, only to be killed.

The attorney reading the book will see that there are legal issues surrounding the reparations to the Chinese from the Japanese for the personal injuries, emotional sufferings, and property damages.  Many of those who survived were afraid to report their injuries because they were ashamed of their sufferings, especially women who became pregnant from the rapes.  The political power of Japan after the war kept the happenings of the event from open disclosure.  People who read the book will have a better understanding of the prejudices of the Chinese against the Japanese, and how discrimination may occur in employment.  In the end, the book shows that people’s lives are unpredictable – a Japanese soldier who kills during a war without remorse can end up a doctor, a Chinese civilian who survives shots in a burial ground can live to tell about all the dead bodies that fell on top of him, the author of the book commits suicide.