^This number does not include Japanese killed by Chinese forces in the Burma campaign and does not include Japanese killed in Manchuria.
^Excluding more than 1 million who were disarmed following the surrender of Japan
^Including casualties of Japanese puppet forces. The combined toll is most likely around 3,500,000: 2.5 million Japanese, per their own records, and 1,000,000 collaborators.
The Second Sino-Japanese War was the war fought between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan from 1937 to 1945 as part of World War II. It is often regarded as the beginning of World War II in Asia. It was the largest Asian war in the 20th century[25] and has been described as "the Asian Holocaust", in reference to the scale of Japanese war crimes against Chinese civilians.[26][27][28] It is known in Japan as the Second China–Japan War, and in China as the Chinese War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression.
On 18 September 1931, the Japanese staged a false flag event known as the Mukden Incident, a pretext they fabricated to justify their invasion of Manchuria. This is sometimes marked as the beginning of the war.[29][30] From 1931 to 1937, China and Japan engaged in skirmishes in mainland China. Japan achieved major victories, capturing Beijing and Shanghai by 1937. Despite having fought each other in the Chinese Civil War since 1927, the Communists and Nationalists formed the Second United Front in late 1936 to resist the Japanese invasion together.
Tensions escalated after what would become the first battle of the war - the Marco Polo Bridge incident on 7 July 1937, in which the Japanese and Chinese opened fire upon each other after a Japanese soldier went missing. This prompted a full-scale Japanese invasion of the rest of China. This incident is widely regarded as the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, and the Pacific theater of World War II.[31]
^刘庭华 (1995). 《中国抗日战争与第二次世界大战系年要录·统计荟萃 1931–1945》 (in Chinese). 北京: 海潮出版社. p. 312. ISBN7-80054-595-4.
^Hsu Long-hsuen "History of the Sino-Japanese war (1937–1945)" Taipei 1972
^ abClodfelter, Micheal "Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Reference", Vol. 2, pp. 956. Includes civilians who died due to famine and other environmental disasters caused by the war. Only includes the 'regular' Chinese army; does NOT include guerrillas and does not include Chinese casualties in Manchuria or Burma.
^Ho Ping-ti, Studies on the Population of China, 1368–1953, Harvard University Press, 1953. p. 252
^Bix, Herbert P. (1992), "The Showa Emperor's 'Monologue' and the Problem of War Responsibility", Journal of Japanese Studies, 18 (2): 295–363, doi:10.2307/132824, JSTOR132824