Posted on 12/09/2004 9:15:37 AM PST by NormsRevenge
SHANGHAI, China (AP) - Li Xiuying, who survived one of the greatest atrocities of Japan's World War II invasion of China and later became a powerful advocate for victims, has died at age 86, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Thursday.
She died Saturday of respiratory failure in the eastern city of Nanjing, the scene in 1937 of what became known as the Nanking Massacre, Xinhua said.
"As a witness of the massacre, my mother had been fighting to reveal the truth of history," Lu Yongsen, Li's eldest son, was quoted as saying.
Li was 18 and pregnant when Nanjing, then known by the English spelling Nanking, was overrun by Japanese troops.
In later accounts, Li said she was attacked and slashed with swords by Japanese troops while hiding in an American mission school. She lost her unborn baby but survived after treatment by an American doctor, Robert Wilson.
Historians generally agree that the Japanese army slaughtered at least 150,000 civilians and raped tens of thousands of women during the 1937-38 occupation of Nanking.
China's Communist government puts the number of dead at more than 300,000 and has made the event a centerpiece of its claims that Japan has never sufficiently atoned for its brutal occupation.
In 1999, Li sued a pair of right-wing Japanese authors who claimed she had faked her accounts.
The Tokyo court awarded her a $14,000 settlement. In 2003, the Tokyo High Court upheld a lower court ruling that author Toshio Matsumura and Tendensha, the publisher of his book "A Big Doubt About the Rape of Nanking," had damaged Li's reputation.
In the book, Matsumura called Li's accounts inconsistent and questioned if she was the victim believed pictured in a film shot by an American missionary showing a hospital in the aftermath of the massacre.
Her burial Wednesday in Nanjing was attended by nine of her children and more than 10 grandchildren, Xinhua said.
You don't need to take the communist Chinese's account of things. There are plenty of witness accounts, including some from Brits that were there.
What you have written is the same as saying the holocost in Germany never happened, that "the ordeal was fabricated in an opportunist attemp to extort the [German] goverment after their loss in WW2."
Don't come on here raising stupid questions like this. If you have a question about what happened in Nanjing, go do some research.
The Nanking Massacre happened. There were reliable reports about it before the PRC came to power. Ask our US WWII POWs who were in Japanese custody how they were treated and you will see the conduct in China was not an isolated or made up event.
The stunning thing about the Rape of Nanking is that it was thoroughly documented by Japanese soldiers themselves with pictures they sent back to their families. A few years ago there was a book of photos published which was primarily made up of these snapshots showing beheaded people and women who were photographed right after a gang rape. There can be no doubt that this happened and that the Japanese army at the time was proud of what they did.
"Most of the Japanese..."atrocities" have been shown to be false..."
Shown by who?
I didn't realize we had an opening here for a fool. I guess I must've missed the ad.
One of those courageous historians was a woman named Iris Chang, who spent 2 years researching before publishing her "Rape of Nanking" in 1997. She was able to document over 100,000 civilians slaughtered and close to 100,000 raped. She was working on a book detailing Japanese abuse of U.S. POWs during the war when she committed suicide.
What about the tens of millions the Chicoms murdered? Seems like all the pinkies here don't want to talk about it.
For those who do not know, Yoko's family PROFITED handsomely from the Rape of Nanking!
See for yourself: http://www.google.com/search?q=rape+of+nanking&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official
If anyone has any lingering trepidation about the COA followed in the disposition of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, let him become familiar with what happened in Nanking. The Japanese may, in fact, have gotten off lightly.
The Japanese, like the Germans, liked to film everything.
She killed herself only a few short weeks ago, right? Wasn't that her?
"You don't need to resort to personal attacks."
No, but with you history revisionists it's so much fun. Two things you conveniently overlook:
1) The "democratic" Japanese government has steadfastly refused to acknowledge that they committed any war crimes, much less atone for them. While the Germans have been held financially liable for slave labor, stolen property, and murderous atrocities, the Japanese have essentially been given a pass, when what they should have gotten was a few more "Little Boys".
2) The government of China did not become communist until 1949. These horrific war crimes were commmon knowledge long before that. And, as others have pointed out, they were well documented. The photos aren't hard to find. If you WANT to find them, that is.
Savage and barbaric.
embrase = embrace
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