Do all the good you can ...

I and my wife was visiting a friend in Tan Tock Seng hospital, Singapore. We were about to leave when we had an Aha! moment .... lo and behold a group of young volunteers came in and offer to sing a few songs to bring cheer to the patients. 

It was already about 8.05pm, visiting hours is supposed to be over and yet this group of good Samaritans choose to spend their last few hours of the day to bring cheer and joy to the depressed and sick. 


It brings to mind this quote by John Wesley:

“Do all the good you can,

By all the means you can,

In all the ways you can,

In all the places you can,

At all the times you can,

To all the people you can,

As long as ever you can.”

I am very inspired by the simple acts of this group of young people; they could have stayed at home and play computer games, twittering, watching TV or out for a drink to enjoy themselves. Yet, they choose to do something simple but very meaningful to brighten the day of the patients before they retire to rest. Significant acts like this need not be expensive, do not need a lot of imagination, nor a lot of hard labour. It its about having a loving heart and a giving spirit. Little acts of kindness goes a long way.


May God bless them richly for being so kind and giving. 

Rape of Nanjing - The 1937 Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Soldiers

I have just finished reading this powerful book - The Rape of Nanjing. It has some of the most gruesome photos, which aims to describe 2 discrete atrocities by Japanese soldiers in the Rape of Nanjing. Firstly, how Japanese soldiers killed over 350,000 Chinese victims with maximum pain and humiliation in just 6 weeks. Secondly, the big cover up - the Japanese government tried to erase the entire massacre from public consciousness both at home and abroad.

Till today the Japanese have not owned up to this, leaving blank spaces of this Rape of Nanjing in their history books. George Santayana's immortal warning comes to mind - Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

The author Iris Chang researched the subject meticulously. Indeed, it provides a gripping and gruesome account of one of history's most brutal massacres. The mass butchery, rapes, murder, torture, killing contests by the Japanese soldiers, death by fire, mutilation, death by ice, death by dogs etc were unheard of. 


Read Wikipedia's account of it. Another source of historical document and photographs of the massacre is found here. (Nanjing Massacre: 300,000 Chinese People Killed, 20,000 Women Raped ...). And the website of Nanjing 1937 also give a lot of information on the incident.


Here is a documentary on youtube, by Rhawn Joseph, is based on 20 years research and consists entirely of archival photos and film-clips. This film begins with an overview of Japan and China at the beginning of the 20th Century, explains the mind-set of the Japanese and their God, Hirohito, and then continues with the invasion of China, the crimes committed by the Japanese (during the Fall) on the road to Nanjing, Nanjing Massacre, the rape of the Philipines, Unit 731, the Baatan death camps, Japanese denials, and the dropping of the A-bomb on Japan. 

And part 2 is below.

If you are in Nanjing visit The Memorial Hall for Compatriots killed in the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Forces of Aggression. It is located in the southwestern corner of Nanjing known as Jiangdongmen, which used to be one of the execution grounds and mass burial places of the cruel holocaust.


The memorial consists of three parts: the outdoor exhibits, the remaining bones of the killed and the museum for historical material displaying. In the outdoor sector, group sculptures, full-length statues, relief carvings, signboards, monuments, redeeming and repentant tablets, withered trees and broken walls as well as a wall carved with the names of part of the victims so far that have been located cluster together with green shrubs and lawns to suggest a graveyard-style architecture with the themes of life and death, grief and indignation.

An exhibition inside the memorial hall to the victims in Nanjing massacre

A building shaped like a coffin is to shelter some of the victims' bones excavated from the pits of thousands of bodies right in the site when the memorial was in construction-an iron evidence for the bloody crimes committed by the aggressive Japanese troops. The museum lies half buried in the ground like a colossal tomb. Inside, an immense collection of pictures, objects, charts and photographs relate the horror of the Rape of Nanjing. Through a versatility of means for exhibitions such as lighted cabinets, sand trays, clay moldings, oil paintings, micro-computers appliances, documentary shows and so on, the tragedy of the cruel holocaust in Nanjing and the beastly atrocities of the Japanese militarists are pictured and recounted.


Fortunately, even in such dark times, there was a small band of Europeans and Americans who risked their lives to defy the Japanese invaders and rescue hundreds of thousands of Chinese refugees from almost certain extermination. These courageous men and women created the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone. Read about it here and here too with some pictures.


The author, Iris Chang (張純如), before her untimely death in 2004, was one of America's leading young historians. Her last, widely-acclaimed book focused on Chinese immigrants and t heir descendents in the United States — their sacrifices, their achievements and their contributions to the fabric of American culture, an epic journey spanning more than 150 years. But even before the publication of "The Chinese in America: A Narrative History," Chang had established herself as an invaluable source of information about Asia, human rights, and Asian American history.


I gained much from reading the book and when you stumble upon it, I hope you will read it and glean from it the many lessons about human nature.