Screenshot of the video about the inappropriate remarks of Song Mou, a teacher at Shanghai Aurora Vocational College
Recently, the erroneous remarks of Song Mou, a teacher at Shanghai Aurora Vocational College, have triggered national anger. Through this incident, the author pays attention to the erroneous perception of some Chinese people about the statistical examination of the number of compatriots killed in the Nanjing Massacre, especially the ignorance of historical research. There is also the media public, which began to correct the long-used error of "300,000 people killed". In addition, the academic research results behind the education of the history of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression are seriously disconnected from the media and the propaganda of relevant government agencies. Talk about it with a special pen.
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Wall of the list of victims of the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall of the Japanese invasion of China
One. The lack of a complete list of compatriots killed in the Nanjing Massacre cannot be the basis for denying the theory of "more than 300,000."
Song proposed that "without a complete list of 300,000 people killed, the number of compatriots killed in the Nanjing Massacre is 300,000 is not established." I think this is impossible, unworkable, and ignorant of historical research.
First of all, the National Government of Nanjing promulgated the Household Registration Law on December 12, 1931. However, it was not announced until 1943. During this period, the so-called household registration management of the National Government has always been carried out by the police and Baojia, so it is not only imperfect, but also completely disordered. Even in January 1933, the Japanese military academy textbook "Study of the Combat Law of the Indochina Army" declared: "There is no household registration law for the Indochina people, and most of the soldiers are homeless, and their existence is innumerable." Therefore, even if they are killed or placed elsewhere, it will not constitute a social problem."
In addition, after the outbreak of the All-out War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression in 1937, a large number of refugees poured into the city of Nanjing, and a large number of Nanjing residents fled. After the fall of Nanjing, it was impossible to accurately count how many soldiers and civilians were stranded in Nanjing; at present, the academic community can only give a general figure of 600,000 or 700,000 people. This makes it impossible to compile a complete list of compatriots killed.
Coupled with the eight-year War of Resistance, the annihilation of evidence by the Japanese army, the civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communists, and regime change. There are also the impact of various objective factors and movements after the founding of New China. As a result, a large number of historical materials, evidence is lost, and even a large number of massacre sites have been seriously damaged, and many survivors, witnesses and anti-war veterans have been persecuted. The study and defense of the Nanjing Massacre caused irreparable losses. Until the end of 1983, the Nanjing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China and the Nanjing Municipal Government were directly responsible for resuming a comprehensive study of the Nanjing Massacre. In the gap of more than forty years, it is destined to compile a complete list of victims of the Nanjing Massacre, which is impossible. At present, there are about 11,000 people engraved on the list wall of compatriots killed in the Nanjing Massacre, which is a figure of more than 300,000 people. is seriously inadequate.
Second, historical research is a science. It is important to be objective and fair and to seek truth from facts. Everything needs to be based on investigation, archaeological survey, witness testimony, collection and examination of historical materials, etc., in order to form a relatively strong chain of evidence and historical information. On this basis, logical inference, analysis and construction are carried out, and finally a complete historical fact (also known as historical story) is formed.
For the historical reasons mentioned above. The study of the Nanjing Massacre was doomed to be impossible to be thorough and complete from the outset. Whether it is the "Judgment on the Case of Gu Shoufu War Criminals" and the "Case File of the Nanjing Massacre" issued by the Ministry of National Defense of the National Government in 1947, or the "Draft History of the Nanjing Massacre of the Japanese Army Invading China" published in 1987, the "Historical Materials of the Nanjing Massacre of the Japanese Army Invading China" and the "Archives of the Nanjing Massacre of the Japanese Army Invading China", they can only roughly explain the facts, reasons, number of victims, the scope of the massacre site, the time of the massacre, and other major issues. Then through continuous in-depth investigation and research, new literature archives, major parties and veterans' memoirs are published and studied. Step by step, detailed and comprehensive.
For example, the starting time and location range of the Nanjing Massacre, in 1997, the "History of the Nanjing Massacre" edited by Professor Sun Zhaowei for the first time proposed that the starting time and location range of the massacre should be related to the time and combat range of the Japanese army's attack on Nanjing, rather than only counting the fall of Nanjing on December 13 and the urban area of Nanjing. Until 2010, Zhang Xianwen led the editor-in-chief of the "Collection of Historical Materials of the Nanjing Massacre", and finally formed a unified consensus in the academic circles, that is, the starting date of the Nanjing Massacre was "December 5, 1937 to March 1938", and the geographical scope of the massacre was "at that time, the Nanjing Municipal Government had jurisdiction over the 7 districts in the city (including Xiaguan, the Premier Mausoleum Park) and the five suburbs of Pukou, Xiaolingwei, Yanziji, Shangxinhe, and Cemetery. There are also Wulong Mountain, Qixia Mountain, Longtan, Jiangning, Jurong, Lishui, Chunhua, Hushu, Molingguan, Niushoushan, Jiangpu, Liuhe, Tangshan, Mengtang, Jiangpu and so on around Nanjing." Based on this, it is clear that within the above-mentioned start date and the geographical scope of the massacre, prisoners of war of the National Army who have laid down their weapons can be counted as compatriots killed by the massacre. It can be seen that the study of the Nanjing Massacre requires long-term scientific, rigorous investigation and research. It is impossible to poke and punch, big and complete.
Third, the Nanjing Massacre is a very large field of historical research. It is impossible to avoid research blind spots and errors on some detailed issues. Especially before 2014, the social attention and research power were seriously insufficient; it was an unpopular field in the international academic community. This creates a lot of problems. For example, in 2009, director Lu Chuan filmed the movie "Nanjing! nanking! in order to restore history as much as possible. The Nanjing Massacre, the most authoritative and important research institution of the Nanjing Massacre, was requested to provide a list of the captured officers and men of the slaughtered Nationalist army. The result was only 2,3 names, all of which were used in the film. Director Lu Chuan once said in an interview with the media that he expressed deep regret about this matter. Research on the existing Holocaust has yielded rich results;
Fourth, "more than 300,000 said" seems to be general. In fact, it is the result of more than forty years of investigation, research, and demonstration. It is absolutely not "filmed" by anyone, and some self-media fabricated that Chiang Kai-shek and the United States colluded with the United States to "have poor military discipline in the black Army." This is even more nonsense. Since February 1944, the Chongqing Nationalist Government has set up a committee for the investigation of enemy crimes, and later successively set up a committee for the investigation of the losses of the War of Resistance, a committee for the investigation of enemy crimes in Nanjing, a committee for the treatment of war criminals, and a military tribunal for the trial of war criminals of the Ministry of National Defense. It was only in 1947 that the "Judgment on the Case of Gu Shoufu War Criminals" and the "Case File of the Nanjing Massacre" issued by the Military Tribunal for the Trial of War Criminals of the Ministry of National Defense of the Nationalist Government were formed, and for the first time, "more than 300,000 people were said", that is, "the captured soldiers and civilians were collectively shot by the Japanese army with machine guns and burned the corpses, including Shan Yaoting and more than 190,000 people." In addition, there were sporadic massacres, and more than 150,000 of their bodies were buried by charitable institutions. The total number of victims reached more than 300,000." By the end of 1983, the Nanjing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China and the Nanjing Municipal Government had restarted a comprehensive investigation and study of the Nanjing Massacre. After 4 years of efforts, 1756 victims, survivors and witnesses of the Nanjing Massacre were investigated and registered. At the same time, the Central Archives, the Second Historical Archive of China, the Nanjing Municipal Archives, and the libraries in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuhan, Chongqing, Chengdu and other places collected relevant historical archives and newspaper materials, collected, sorted out, and examined. And organized experts and scholars from Nanjing University, Nanjing Normal University, Soochow University, Jiangsu Academy of Social Sciences, China Second Historical Archives, Nanjing Municipal Archives, Nanjing Local History Office and other units to conduct repeated arguments, and finally confirmed the "more than 300,000" theory.
The reason for adopting the general statement of "more than 300,000" is based on the principle of "coarse and not fine" in the international academic community. For further research and conclusion in the future, it has left a certain space. At the same time, it also negates the previous 100,000 people, 200,000 people, and defines the number of victims as at least 300,000 people, which is scientific and rigorous. Similarly, in the study of the massacre of Jews in Germany in World War II, the international academic community currently uniformly adopts the "more than 6 million people theory", and the European Holocaust Memorial Hall and the group of monuments in Berlin, Germany, also use this figure. After the end of World War II, the international academic community began to study the issue of the Jewish Holocaust, and its influence was far greater than that of the Nanjing Massacre. This has also received strong support from the international community. As of May 2017, the names of just over 1.3 million victims are unknown. But this does not affect the authority of "more than 6 million people". Therefore, the statement that "more than 300,000 compatriots" were killed in the Nanjing Massacre met the research standards of the international academic community and was indisputable. In addition, since 1987, a large number of research results in Japanese academic circles, historical documents and veteran diaries, archival documents from Germany, the United States, and Britain, as well as the testimonies of newly discovered survivors of the Nanjing Massacre, as well as a number of influential foreign diaries such as "Rabe's Diary", "Toshiro's Diary", "Wei Telin's Diary" and so on, the research results of these new historical documents have proved the authority of "more than 300,000 people".
Finally, based on professional statistics. It is also allowed to give estimates close to the facts on the basis of scientific evidence when accurate figures cannot be counted for various objective reasons. Therefore, "more than 300,000 people say" is no problem.
Two. The issue of burial is misleading to research on the number of people killed
Beginning on December 5, 1937, the Japanese army caused the Nanjing Massacre. A large number of bodies of compatriots killed are piled up all over Nanjing. According to the Central Archives Collection "Confession of Japanese Prisoner of War Ota Shouo in 1954", it is recorded that the Japanese army destroyed the corpse and buried a total of 150,000 corpses. From December 12, 1937, when the World Red Swastika Society first organized burial groups, to May 1938, Nanjing had a total of 8 burial groups, 4 public burial teams and 6 pseudo-district governments and municipal governments participating in the burial of corpses. A total of 252,000 bodies were buried. This has formed a special problem or field of Nanjing Massacre research - burial research.
This question is helpful in the future statistics of the number of victims, but it is also very misleading. From 1944 to 1947, the Nationalist government investigated the Nanjing Massacre. The number of victims was inferred from the burial data. This leads to 400,000 people, 500,000 people, 600,000 people said. However, it was eventually found that there were problems, and finally in the "Judgment of the Gu Shoufu War Criminals Case" issued in 1947, it used the term "more than 300,000 people". There are two reasons: 1. There is a problem of cross-repeated burial. Due to the Japanese army burial and burial groups, civilian burial teams and pseudo-government burial teams. There was no unified, organized burial. Caused repeated burials. 2. The statistics of Japanese burials and burial groups, civilian burial teams and puppet government burial teams are included in the range of non-massacre dates and locations.
Due to the misleading issue of burying corpses, in 1962, mr. Gaoxingzu led the Japanese History Group of the History Department of Nanjing University to investigate and compile the Massacre of Japanese Imperialism in Nanjing. It is included in the burial data, forming a "about 400,000" theory. At the end of 1983, it was investigated by the Nanjing Municipal Party Committee and the Nanjing Municipal Government. The issue of buried body data was not taken into account and was not adopted.
Three. Attach importance to education in the history of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and to the propaganda of historical scholarship
I found that before the recent outbreak of the Shanghai Aurora Song incident, most of the domestic media, government agencies and self-media still used the "300,000 people" theory. Even at the Memorial Hall of the Compatriots Killed in Nanjing, an important institution of the massacre, the Victims' Memorial Wall still uses the data of "300,000". The word "above" is missing. The names of tens of thousands, if not more than 100,000, of the compatriots killed were erased. This shows the unprofessionalism of relevant practitioners in the media and government agencies, as well as the decoupling from the research results of academic research. Fortunately, after the incident, many media and institutions have uniformly made corrections.
However, I still appeal: Please add the word "above" to the memorial wall of the victims of the Nanjing Compatriots Memorial Hall of the Japanese Invasion of China. Let the number of "more than 300,000 people" be imprinted in the hearts of all Chinese people, and also highlight the authority and scientific nature of this number.
It is necessary to see that some media and government agencies have been sufficient in recent years to publicize the Holocaust. However, at the level of knowledge of publicity, professionalism is seriously insufficient, and it is simple and one-sided. There are still many mistakes and omissions. For example, when reporting on foreign friends in Beijing, Rabe, Wei Telin and others and the International Safety Zone, their role has been seriously exaggerated. Many Chinese people think that the safety zone can ensure the safety of Chinese refugees, and Rabe and others have saved more than 200,000 Chinese. In fact, Rabe and others did protect many Chinese people, and the safety zone also alleviated the atrocities of the Japanese army to a certain extent. But there was no way to stop the atrocities committed by the Japanese, and the Japanese ignored the existence of the safe zone. Not only did the Japanese army often carry out massacres in the safe zone, but also regarded the safe zone as a brothel, openly raped and gang raped Chinese women. Such as Jinling Women's Liberal Arts College, during the Holocaust. There were often Japanese officers who drove into schools to abduct Chinese women, and these women basically never returned. In addition, the number of shelters in the safe zone is 25 commonly used in the country. As early as last year, the author corrected it in the "History of Atrocities in the Safety Zone of the Nanjing Massacre in 1937". However, many media still use the wrong data.
There were also the defense of Nanjing, the causes of the great rout of the Nationalist army, the spontaneous resistance of the army and the people after the fall of Nanjing, the determination of the number of victims of the Nanjing Massacre, the date of origin, the geographical scope, the burial site, the National Government's external exposure and propaganda of the Nanjing Massacre, foreign media reports, and the Chinese Air Force and guerrillas behind enemy lines who attacked the Japanese army in Nanjing. And there are different degrees of errors and omissions.
Coupled with the many problems in the education on the history of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, rumors and erroneous views have been formed in China for a long time, such as "the Defense of Nanjing, the Nationalist Army Did Not Resist," "The 50,000 Japanese Troops Defeated 150,000 Nationalist Troops in the Nanjing Defense War," "The Nanjing Massacre, Why Didn't 300,000 Soldiers and Civilians Resist," and "After the Nanjing Massacre, Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang Did Not Testify to the World."
In addition, I want to complain about history education. The Zhang Zhehan incident before the 918 incident this year, the Incident of Chinese girls wearing Japanese kimonos in a certain place on the day of the 918 Incident, followed by the Incident of Japanese Military Flag Car Stickers, and now the Song Media Incident. These incidents have repeatedly highlighted many problems in China's war of resistance education. Not only is there a serious lack of attention, but there are problems with the way we educate.
I believe that the crux of the matter lies in the test-taking education system. Let everyone squeeze on a track of the college entrance examination, and study for the sake of fighting for credits. This has resulted in the vast majority of students memorizing history textbooks by rote. After the exam, I basically forgot everything, neither remembered, nor understood, let alone talked about inheritance. There are also many people who understand history, completely from film and television dramas, animations, novels, games, self-media, not to mention the basic historical common sense, even historical values are crooked, but also arbitrarily distort history. The author has seen that some college history department freshmen, many of them are for mixed education, not even basic historical knowledge, brush short videos, play games more time than reading books. In this way, China's historical education and research will not work.