Nanking

HBO Documentary, 2007. There is a good bit of original footage in the documentary. The way this movie is done is interesting. At the start they have the actors speak the words of someone connected to the event, and that person's face is displayed as the actor speaks. This then gets interspersed with actual footage from the event as the actors continue to speak the original people's words just as if they were them. It makes for a very different and very good approach to doing a documentary.

WARNING! Many of the scenes of original footage are VERY graphic! Some of the personal accounts are also very graphic and some bothersome since some of the men who were involved don't seem to feel bad about what they did.

There were some Westerners there.

A survivor.

Another one of the various survivors that are shown.

The rich people were the ones able to flee the city. The poor people had to stay behind.

Then the film goes into the creation of the Safety Zone.

A Japanese soldier from the attack.

The woman then says how a Japanese soldier told her he wanted to have sex with her. She had cut her hair, though, and claimed she was a boy and he went away. The film then talks about how the Japanese roped Chinese men together and took them elsewhere and executed all of them.

One of the speakers talks about how oil was thrown on the dead bodies and they were burned.

One of the former Japanese soldiers said the Japanese military didn't know what to do with all the prisoners so killing them was the easiest solution.

This is one of the men in that unit.

Another man who was involved in the executions.

One of the men involved in the rapes. How can someone laugh like he seems to be doing after being involved in something like that?

The film then goes on to talk about the results of the War Crimes Trials.

Here is one of the reasons that the shrine is controversial.

Then the film talks about the people the actors are representing and what happened to them after they left Nanking. One committed suicide; one returned to California suffering from exhaustion; John Rabe was arrested both by the Gestapo and the Soviets. These people who were there are estimated to have saved the lives of 250,000 Chinese.

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