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Writing about Atrocity: Wartime Accounts and their Contemporary Uses*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2011

PARKS M. COBLE
PARKS M. COBLE*
Affiliation:
University of Nebraska, Department of History, 622 Oldfather Hall, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588–0327, USA, Email: pcoble@unlnotes.unl.edu
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Abstract

In today's China, public memory of the War of Resistance against Japan, 1937–1945, is more visible than ever. Museums, movies, television programmes, and commemorations focus heavily on the victimization of the Chinese people at the hands of the Japanese invaders. Japanese atrocities, particularly the Nanjing Massacre, are at the centre of much of this remembering. But what of the wartime period? How did journalists and writers discuss Japanese atrocities? This paper finds that most wartime writing stressed the theme of ‘heroic resistance’ by the Chinese rather than China's victimization at the hands of Japanese. Exceptions to this approach included efforts to publicize Japan's action to Western audiences in the hope of gaining support for China's cause, and a related focus on the bombing of the civilian population by the Japanese. This paper suggests major differences between the current approach to remembering the war and to writing during the war itself.

Type
Part II: Remembering China's War with Japan: The Wartime Generation in Post-war China and East Asia
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 2: China in World War II, 1937–1945: Experience, Memory, and Legacy , March 2011 , pp. 379 - 398
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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