The Hindu : Nanking toll termed a lie

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jul 14, 2003

International

International - Globescan

Nanking toll termed a lie

TOKYO: A senior member of the Japanese Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi's ruling party called estimates that Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in the so-called Rape of Nanking in China in the 1930s "a big lie,'' Japanese media reported on Sunday. "An estimation of 300,000 Rape of Nanking casualties, that is a pure fabrication, a big lie,'' Takami Eto(in the picture), the leader of the governing Liberal Democratic Party's third-largest faction, said in a speech at a party meeting on Saturday in Fukui in western Japan, the nationwide Asahi newspaper reported. Historians generally agree that the Japanese army killed at least 150,000 civilians during its 1937-38 occupation of Nanking, now called Nanjing. Some put the number as high as 300,000. But a group of Japanese nationalist scholars and lawmakers say the figures are inflated, and some even call the entire massacre a hoax. It wasn't clear from the newspaper report whether Mr. Eto was referring to the entire massacre or to the estimates of 300,000 people dying.

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