ABSTRACT
As Auschwitz has become a symbol of the Jewish Holocaust and Nazi atrocities in World War II, the Nanking massacre has become the symbol of the Japanese military's monstrous brutality and savage cruelty in the Asia Pacific war from 1931 to 1945. The publication of The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II in November 1997, on the sixtieth anniversary of the fall of Nanking to the Japanese in 1937, has brought about a sea change. For East Asians, particularly those who had directly suffered the brutality of Japanese militarism and occupation, the memory is painfully sharp. The foreign nationals who remained in the International Safety Zone provided a valuable third-party perspective on the Nanking massacre. In order to achieve a meaningful reconciliation, a fuller discussion of the complex and multifaceted issues of the Asia Pacific war perhaps will help provide a common ground upon which to build a satisfactory settlement among the Pacific rim countries.
