The accounts of the Rape of Nanking are hopelessly exaggerated. The death toll figures that Iris Chang, author of the wildly popular "Rape of Nanking," gives in her book are based on Chinese burial records. These can hardly be considered objective. John Rabe's diaries are a much better source. John Rabe was a Nazi businessman who helped protect the Chinese by setting up a safety zone outside of Nanking. Ms. Chang --who used Rabe's accounts as a primary source for her book-- has no problem, it seems, quoting Rabe when he speaks of the rapes and murders committed by the Japanese, but she chooses to IGNORE and OVERLOOK his estimates of the death toll. According to Rabe, Nanking was a city with a population of 1.2 million people. 800,000 people fled Nanking before it was captured by the Japanese. Of the remaining 400,000, over 250,000 people ended up in Rabe's safety zone. This leaves only 150,000 people unaccounted for. How then, could the Japanese have killed 369,366 people in a city where only 150,000 people remained? How can Ms. Chang incorporate so much of Rabe's diary into her book, yet claim that the Japanese killed FIVE TIMES the 50,000 to 60,000 that he estimated?

While it is undeniable that something terrible happened at Nanking, it is an injustice to blame the Japanese for more murders than they could have possibly committed.