The Good Man of Nanking
The Diaries of John Rabe

I had delayed reading this important book for a long time simply out of sheer fear of having the atrocious scenes imprinted on my mind. In June 2011 I had attended a talk by Iris Chang’s mother, Dr. Ying-ying Chang, in Vancouver about her book The Woman Who Could Not Forget: Iris Chang Before and Be......more

Had the diary been written/published by a Chinese author, it'd be criticized again as propagating the anti-Japanese sentiment. But, this gruesome account of the suffering had been documented by a German, whose home country at that time was an ally of the Japanese army. Which I meant to say that J.Ra......more

John Rabe's diary provides the concrete details of the atrocity in Nanjing around the winter of 1937. As the head of the Safety Zone Committee, he saved many lives and helped countless. And thanks to him and others like him, we have accounts of what happened in Nanjing at that time despite the Japan......more

Not compelling but a competent first-person account of the Rape of Nanjing. I read it in conjunction with my stay in Nanjing where I studied Chinese. My school, Nanjing Normal University, was inside the "safe zone" that John Rabe set up in the midst of mass murder.......more

There is no denying that John Rabe was an incredibly brave fellow; standing in the face of oppression and potential violence to protect others. He needn't have stayed in Nanking once the Japanese invaded, but he did so to help a population that he had grown fond of. When he was writing his diaries, h......more