Graduate student China Studies

University of Washington

Seattle,  Washington,  USA

 

I am a twenty-seven year old white female from Birmingham, Alabama. I grew up in a town full of ghosts. The civil rights movement shaped lives all across Alabama and often the nucleus of the battle was centered in Birmingham. Lives were brutally battered and destroyed. There was no regard for sex or age. And yet, with time, the battle was won. That battle was before my time. Often, my mother thinks the battle was before her time as well. She was an elementary school student during the 60’s, and her middle-class, church-going family kept her sheltered and out of the fray. During my formative years, I went to school and played with black boys and girls. I thought nothing of it and wasn’t aware of my hometown’s important social history until I encountered lingering racism in the news or, occasionally on the streets. My parents taught me the difference between right and wrong and how absurd it is to judge people based on physical differences. When I first learned and later read about slavery, the Underground Railroad and brave freedom fighters such as Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglas and educators such as George Washington Carver, I was mystified by the crazed actions of one race against another, but I was lifted up by their brave stories. This was my first taste of the world’s imbalance.

When I was nine years old, I went to visit my father in Northern Japan where he was teaching English and trying to write the next great American novel. After a month of exploring the wonders of rural Japan, hiking among pristine streams and waterfalls, traipsing about in rice paddies and plucking rosy apples from branches hanging with ripe fruit, my father asked me if I wanted to spend a year in a Japanese school among Japanese children. My summer had been magical and I was delighted at the prolonged opportunity. Each day, I attended a fourth grade class. My teacher, Sato Sensei spoke almost no English. During my year among Japanese peers, I made many mistakes and grew deeper with understanding from them. The experience of another culture instills compassion because your eyes are open and only the emotionally blind are incapable of compassion. My year in Japan was a rich, colorful year and it shaped my sense of wonder and excitement. I learned to listen carefully, to perceive and to be patient. I fell in love with Japan. I fell in love with the resolve of the people. I fell in love with the sense of duty, honor and calm that I felt from every soul I met.

After my fourth grade year, I returned to Alabama with a devotion to Japan rooted in my whole being. I grew up and moved to Seattle to pursue a degree in Industrial Design. After graduation, I started working for a company with manufacturing ties in Shenzhen, China. And thus, a new devotion started to evolve. This devotion sprang from a different soft spot in my heart. My love for Japan grew from the beauty and the culture I had experienced at a tender age. My love for China grew from an idea that there was a grave imbalance. I watched as my white-collar co-workers experienced one world within the comfortable realm of product design and as my blue-collar counterparts in China slaved under very different conditions in order to produce the ultimately useless items that we designed for Americans to purchase for amusement. I felt that, somehow, my Chinese counterparts were being wronged. In every facet of life, culture was telling me that China was a simmering pot of opportunity, wealth and power. It seemed the time to make a change, and so, I quit my job and left for a yearlong teaching contract in Wuhan, Hubei Province.

In my mind, it is no accident that the Holocaust inflicted by Nazi Germany on the Jewish population of Europe during World War II is the first genocide that school children in America learn of. Based on what I have read about the Rape of Nanking, the atrocities occurred during the second Sino-Japanese war, which was fought in tandem with the Second World War. And thus the Japanese were committing crimes against humanity at the same time as the Nazis in Europe, if not earlier, and yet, after the war, the results of the Tokyo tribunal were very different from those of the tribunal in Nuremburg, Germany.

In Germany, many of the Nazi generals and sympathizers were put to death after court proceedings that were presided over by a multinational panel. In Tokyo, the power in the courts was still on the side of the Japanese. In order for justice to come, it is necessary for China to stand united against this terrifying history and speak up. The Chinese government must do its part as a strengthening world power to request honest telling of history and Japan’s role in it. Although the truth of the Massacre was obscured by many of the Japanese participants after the war, China’s government, led by Mao Zedong, further hampered justice when it suppressed history in order to strike a tenable diplomatic accord with Japan. Japan must risk likely shame and accept with honesty and integrity the complete history of its involvement in genocide during the second Sino-Japanese War. From my time spent in Japan, I know that society is imbued with a sense of honor and duty and that in the best of times, these traits bring out a great loyalty, but this loyalty can be disfiguring to the overall goal of love of country if it is stubborn and held in higher regard than compassion for fellow humans be they fellow countrymen or old foes. It is often this loyalty for country that leads to great lapses in judgment the world around. The greater good for humanity should be each citizen of the world’s guiding principle.

China must stand united and speak up about the painful scars left by the Massacre. At the time, China was a victim, but the country is victim no more. China has shown the world what she can do on her own. The people are strong and there is a determination that has built a strong economy and a self-sufficient infrastructure. In regards to past wrongs, to take the stance of a victim would weaken China’s ability to bring justice to those real and fallen victims of the Massacre. It is important that brave souls like Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth speak up. Iris Chang was a brave soul. She should not be the only one to stand up and demand action from the Japanese. In her time, she asked for recognition of the atrocities and recompense. Because of her constant research and her lone voice in the storm, she lost huge pieces of her soul, and we lost a shining example of bravery and strength.

The compassionate people of the world need to work harder to bring such atrocities as the Nanking Massacre to the rest of the world’s attention because these acts against fellow man are devastating. They continue to occur and each time, it is a more humiliating realization that we let it happen again. Bosnians and Serbs. Rwanda’s Tutsis and Hutus. Israelis and Palestinians. Sunnis and Shiites. Muslims and non-Muslims in Darfur, Sudan. There is too much apathy and the genocides continue as comfortable citizens in comfortable countries concern themselves with blocking out the truth as it appears on the nightly news and in newspapers and on the radio. Iris Chang raged against the apathy for so long and so alone that she lost her strength and herself.

Iris Chang’s demise is an additional tragedy, piled on the imbalance of the still-suppressed truth of Japan’s acts after the second Sino-Japanese War. Enough blood has been shed. It is time for compassion on all fronts. The world’s youth are tired of the mistakes of our predecessors, especially those who hold office and busy themselves in bureaucracy and neglect the task they were elected to contend with: the righting of wrongs and the protection of victims of genocide and hatred.

Imagine a world where Asia is united. What a powerful image that creates. So much of the world’s population resides in Asia and it is time these people had a united voice. There is no way for Asia to truly unite until Japan confesses the wrongs perpetrated by its powerful during and before World War II. But there is also a roadblock if China is not willing to come to the table ready for honesty. Victim and Foe must relinquish these roles alike and work towards a relationship of unity that does not rely on differences in order to create boundaries. It is time for honesty, openness, strength, integrity and forgiveness. It is time for individuals to really see each other when walking down the street. It is time for compassion. It is time for balance. And it will always be time for remembrance of the mistakes we’ve made so that we never make them again.