Educational Media Reviews Online

Nanjing Nightmares is a retrospective on the lasting effects of the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers in Nanjing, China during the winter of 1937-1938. The retelling is from the point of view of the Wang family. Though the Wang family lost a number of close relatives, they were among the lucky few thousand who survived the sacking of China’s capital living as refugees in an international safety zone near the American and German embassies. A total of 300, 000 Chinese (210,000 civilians, 90,000 surrendered soldiers) were slaughtered by the Japanese between September 13, 1937 and January 1938, most soldiers by beheading, soldiers and citizens machine gunned, some buried alive or burned alive, the women raped and abused by soldiers told by officers to kill their female victims after using them sexually. When the major portion of the overt rape and killing ceased, the citizens under Japanese occupation were told to return to their homes. In Nanjing, 1/3 of all residences and 2/3 of all businesses were burned or destroyed in the winter of 1937. Still the terror remained as the Chinese served their oppressors as slave laborers. Historical footage, still photos, and narratives from contemporary journals provide the viewer with some truly horrifying visual and emotional imagery. The images are intertwined with the stories of the Wang Ping’s living relatives and the mental toll the atrocities took on Ping’s mother and Ping’s children and grandchildren she helped care for from the 1940’s to 1970’s. She suffered annual mental breakdowns each fall from 1938 to her death.

This is a believable first- and third- person narrative of the Rape of Nanjing, as accurate as memory, surviving journals, and film can make it. A minor weakness is that the description of the incident that scared Ping’s uncle to death is remarkably similar to the incident that precipitated his mother’s periodic madness: likely a melding of the events in Ping’s memory. The strength ofNanjing Nightmares is in showing the horrors of 1937-38 and the long-term effects on the families of the survivors. One hopes that the authors of the journals from the Japanese side felt the shame in their conduct that one can only hope they felt. It is difficult to imagine atrocities of this scope, the total denial of another being’s humanity. It is potentially instructive for all living in post 9/11 time to be forced to consider that there is absolutely nothing beyond man’s ability to inflict upon his fellow human.

Nanjing Nightmares appears to have originally been produced for Canadian television. It has all the excellent qualities of broadcast television editing, sound, and production. The combining of narratives from contemporary journals with selections from the limited number of moving and still images surviving from 1938 is genius.

This film would enhance collections in history in academic and public libraries. This seems to have potential for initiating classroom discussion in several areas: origins of hatred/genocide; continuing psychological aspects of traumatic experience; mass psychology of terrorism; the Balkan war; events of 9/11; what does it mean to be human; Afghanistan, suicide bombings and the Middle East.