The passages were originally blamed on a „rogue“ translator, and Kyodo News released an article saying that Stokes himself was not responsible for the paragraphs in question, and that they do not reflect his understanding of the historical events.

Now, however, Stokes has now gone out of his way to assert that he was the man responsible for the inflammatory passages, and issued a statement saying:

„The so-called ‘Nanking Massacre’ never took place [..] The word ‘massacre’ is not right to indicate what happened. It was originally a propaganda tool of the KMT government.“