Iris Chang redux

[calbert at pop.tiac.net]

Proving the US a pathetic amateur with respect to historical 
revisionism, from today's WSJ:

"The Rape of Nanking" author Iris Chang's history of the atrocities 
committed by Japanese troops in 1937, was a best seller in the United 
States two years ago. Whether it would fare anything like as well in 
Japan we may never know, now that the Japanese publishers have 
cancelled the Chang book. What the publishers wanted, it seems, was 
for Ms. Chang to make changes in her history, which she refuses to 
do. They also planned to publish her work in conjunction with another 
one that would deny its validity. This mishmash having produced no 
agreement between the two sides, the publishers dropped the Chang 
book. Still, the indisputable horror of such events comes into 
question as time goes on - and revisionist history proceeds apace. It 
is evident in the uncertain tone, even, of a wire service report, in 
which we read that "many historians say soldiers raped and killed 
houndreds of thousands...." Now that there is no such thing as an 
accepted fact in the teaching of history today, we may perhaps read 
one day soon that many historians say there was a Civil War in the 
United States, or that historians say that world was at war in 1941."

love,
cfa