Teaching about Nanking  massacre expands Jersey genocide studies.
 By Anita Chan,  STAR-LEDGER STAFF
 
Chu-Yeh Chang was a 14-year-old boy, when the Imperial Japanese army
 invaded the Chinese capital Nanjing (then known as Nanking) more than
60  years ago.
 
Six weeks later; half of the city's population of 650,D00 had been
 slaughtered.
 
Chang escaped, but not before he saw family members raped by
Japanese soldiers and his grandparents' bodies dumped in the Yangtze River.
 
That was 1937. Six decades later Chang still recounts this horrific
 tale to his children and grandchildren. " They must not hate, but they
 must never forget," the son-spoken former journalist says. "It
happened. It was history."
 
For Americans and much of the rest of the world, the massacre in
Nanjing is little known. But over the last decade, historians, survivors
 who pass on oral history, and books including a best-selling nonfiction
 account, have began to bring the massacre to the fore.
 
   New Jersey educators joined those ranks this month when the state
 Council for History Education recommended incorporating the Nanjing
 massacre into the high school curriculum on genocide, which currently
 covers the decimation of American Indians, slavery and the Holocaust.
 
   The next step for the proposal is to develop a curriculum under the
 state Department of Education Commission on Holocaust Studies, and then
 to have it approved by local school boards.
 
  The New Jersey History Council, a nonprofit association of more than
400 educators, opened its annual conference at Princeton University with a
 discussion of the took "The Rape of Nanjing," the first
English-language study on the massacre.
 
" A lot of schools are very interested in this, and there are
teachers who are already covering the atrocities of Nanjing in their Classes on
 World War II" says John Pyne, program chairman of the council's
 Conference and the supervisor for social studies in West Milford
Township public schools. "It was genocide. Innocent people sometimes get
killed in war, but this was an overt decision to wipe out the civilian population."
 
  The addition of teachings on Nanjing would expand New Jersey's work on
 genocide studies. Such a curriculum is mandated for classrooms in only
 three other states.
 
   "New Jersey is recognized as one of the leading states teaching on
the Holocaust;" says Dr. Paul Winkler, director of the state' Commission on
 Holocaust Education. "We're constantly on the vigil to gather new
 material because we know it's something that's important to our
 mission."
 
 Uncovering the forgotten voice of Nanjing's victims was precisely
what led Franklin Lakes anesthesiologist Dr. Kevin Chiang to begin compiling
 the oral histories of survivors, returning eight times to China with
 other members of the Alliance in Memory of the Nanjing Massacre.
 
   Since the founding of the alliance in 1991, the group has organized
 lectures and aided research for projects including the book, "The
Rape of Nanjing."
 
 "We always felt urgency to complete the interviews with survivors
 because they could disappear at any time," said Chiang, who estimates
 that only ~,500 survivors are Still alive. "But we never dreamed when
we started there would be the kind of sensational response there is today.
 
Last year's release of Iris Chang's book on Nanjing drew attention to
 the incident, which is absent from nearly every Western textbook
account of the war. According to its publisher, Penguin Books, Chang's work
 triggered a wave of scholarly inspection into Nanjing.
 
  "(Chang's book) was extremely valuable for making people and
educators much more aware," Pyne says. "Before, we knew bits and pieces of what'
 happened at Nanjing, but a detailed study needed to be available for it
 to be taught in classes." Many of Japan's most prominent public officials, including
historians, scholars and politicians, deny a massacre ever took place at Nanjing.
 Late last month Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi refused to issue a
 written apology requested by Chinese President Jiang Zemin.
 
An aging Chu-Yeh Chang (no relating to Iris Chang), whose hearing was
damaged from a beating to the head that winter, is haunted by the
bloody scene. He still recalls how the "smell of death filled the air." (Chang's
 photo is submitted with this article in WWW.fyi.net/~wchang ).
 
The Japanese entered Nanjing Dec. 13 and by January the civilian
death  had climbed to 300,000 - a number greater than the combined number of
civilian and military deaths in France, Great Britain, and Belgium
during all of World War II.
 
   Photographs taken during the city's occupation are so graphic that
 state educators doubt they will be included in lessons on Nanjing.
 
   "We'll present some primary source documentation, but no visuals,"said
 Alan Lucibello, president of the Council for History Education. "With
 Nanjing, it's pretty upsetting. It's pretty gruesome." .
 
 Many state educators hope it's a valuable lesson in contemporary
 history that Nanjing will reveal for students in the 11 high school
 social studies classes he supervises.
 
   "This is not something that's over. These acts of inhumanity are
 continuing today in Rwanda, Indonesia, Bosnia. And certainly in the
U.S.,we share this sort of history," Pyne says. '"We have a responsibility
to deal with this history to make sure it never happens again."