A recent episode of The Fog of War and Humanity, produced by the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County and hosted by Rich Acritelli, examined some of the least-taught atrocities of World War II through an in-depth conversation with researcher Jenny Chan.
Chan, a nonprofit founder and archival researcher, shared how her work grew from childhood stories told by her grandmother, who survived the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong. As a young girl raised in San Francisco after emigrating from China at age 10, Chan said those stories were largely absent from American classrooms, leading her to dismiss them until physical evidence—photos and wartime currency—surfaced after her grandmother’s death.
That discovery pushed Chan into years of research on Japan’s wartime conduct in Asia, including the Rape of Nanking and Unit 731, a covert biological weapons program that conducted lethal human experimentation. Chan described archival findings showing that Unit 731 operated in occupied Manchuria, using Chinese civilians, Koreans, Russians, and evidence suggests Allied prisoners of war, as test subjects.
According to Chan, U.S. intelligence seized Japanese war crime data after the war and granted immunity to senior scientists in exchange for their research, allowing many perpetrators to reintegrate into Japanese society as doctors, politicians, and business leaders. She noted that Cold War priorities often eclipsed accountability.
The discussion also traced the road to the 1937 massacre in Nanking, beginning with months of brutal fighting in Shanghai that fueled Japanese retaliation. Chan cited estimates of roughly 300,000 civilians killed and described how violence was publicly glorified, including documented killing contests reported in Japanese newspapers.
Acritelli and Chan also explored broader themes of historical memory, contrasting Germany’s reckoning with its past to Japan’s ongoing denial and textbook minimization. They noted how economic pressures during the Great Depression led the United States to overlook atrocities, even as incidents like the bombing of the USS Panay foreshadowed Pearl Harbor.
The episode marked the first part of a multi-segment series, with future discussions set to address comfort women, wartime diplomacy, and the long-term consequences of silence.