The Nanjing Massacre and the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1938)

After a three-month urban battle with heavy casualties on both sides, Japanese forces completed the capture of Shanghai in mid-November 1937. General Iwane Matsui, commanding the Central China Area Army, then turned his forces west toward Nanjing, the Nationalist capital. The advance was marked by a documented terror campaign against civilians: villages were burned, women were raped and murdered, and Japanese aircraft strafed farmers and refugees. By late November, the Japanese 10th Army was advancing rapidly on the Chinese capital, with officers and soldiers operating under what one embedded Japanese journalist described as a "tacit consent" to loot and rape as they wished.

Location: Shanghai and the Lower Yangtze, China

As Japanese forces approached, the Chinese government began relocating from Nanjing on December 1; President Chiang Kai-shek departed on December 7. With the city facing bombardment and assault, an International Committee led by John Rabe, a German businessman and Nazi Party member, organized the Nanking International Safety Zone to shelter civilians. The zone, located in the western part of the city, would later be credited with saving at least 200,000 lives. Rabe boarded the USS Panay on December 9 in a failed attempt to negotiate a ceasefire with Chiang Kai-shek.

Location: Nanjing, China

During the advance on and occupation of Nanjing, two Japanese officers, Second Lieutenants Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda, competed in a publicized "contest to kill 100 people using a sword," which the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun reported on in early December 1937. After the contest extended into a second phase, the newspaper published the headline "Incredible Record" with the score 106-105. The killing contest became one of the most cited pieces of evidence for the premeditated nature of Japanese atrocities in the Nanjing campaign, and both officers were later tried and executed for war crimes.

Location: Nanjing, China

After days of intense fighting, Japanese troops entered Nanjing on December 13, 1937. Prince Yasuhiko Asaka, who had been installed as temporary commander, had issued a "kill all captives" order before the city's capture. Japanese units rampaged through the city for the next six weeks in what the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) would later describe as systematic mass murder. Civilians, including women, children, and the elderly, were killed; tens of thousands of captured Chinese soldiers were summarily executed in violation of the laws of war; and tens of thousands of women and girls were raped, with many victims then murdered. Approximately one third of the city was destroyed by arson.

Location: Nanjing, China

Over the six weeks following December 13, 1937, Japanese forces committed mass murder, mass rape, looting, torture, and arson in Nanjing. The IMTFE estimated more than 200,000 killed; newer academic estimates adhere to a death toll of 100,000 to 200,000 civilians and disarmed soldiers, with other estimates ranging from 40,000 (confined to the city) to over 340,000 (encompassing the wider Shanghai-Nanjing region). Rapes are estimated between 4,000 and over 80,000, with 20,000 being the most common academic estimate. The Nanking Safety Zone, though imperfect, sheltered Chinese civilians and is credited with saving at least 200,000 lives. Eyewitness accounts by Western residents, including Rabe and American missionaries Minnie Vautrin and John Magee, were later smuggled out and provided critical evidence for post-war trials.

Location: Nanjing, China

Although traditional historiography dates the core massacre to the six weeks after December 13, 1937, more recent scholarship has documented that Japanese atrocities in the Nanjing area did not end in January 1938 but persisted in the surrounding countryside until late March 1938. Japanese forces committed documented massacres at multiple sites along the Lower Yangtze, including villages in Jiangsu and Anhui, as part of a broader pattern of violence during the Second Sino-Japanese War. These regional atrocities fit into a continuous pattern of Japanese military violence that began with the capture of Shanghai and continued throughout the war.

Location: Lower Yangtze River region, China

Following Japan's 1945 surrender, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East convened in Tokyo to try Japanese war leaders. General Iwane Matsui, commander of the Central China Area Army, was found guilty of command responsibility for the Nanjing atrocities and was sentenced to death; he was executed on December 23, 1948. Several other commanders were also tried and convicted. Prince Yasuhiko Asaka, the imperial family member who had issued the "kill all captives" order, was granted immunity and never tried. The IMTFE's findings of mass murder at Nanjing remain a primary legal document on the event, though Japanese nationalists and historical revisionists, including some government officials, have denied or minimized the massacre in subsequent decades, making it a continuing point of friction in Sino-Japanese relations.

Location: Tokyo, Japan