Nanjing Massacre

Nanjing Massacre
Part of the Second Sino-Japanese War
A Japanese soldier pictured with the corpses of Chinese civilians by the Qinhuai River
Location	Nanjing, China
Date	From December 13, 1937, for six weeks[note 1]
Attack type	Mass murder, wartime rape, looting, arson
Deaths	200,000 (consensus), estimates range from 40,000 to over 300,000
Victims	20,000 to 80,000 women and children raped, 30,000 to 40,000 POWs executed
Perpetrators	Imperial Japanese Army Prince Yasuhiko Asaka (granted immunity) Gen. Iwane Matsui Lt. Col. Isamu Chō

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The Nanjing Massacre^[2] or the Rape of Nanjing (formerly romanized as Nanking^{[note 2]}) was the mass murder of Chinese civilians in Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, immediately after the Battle of Nanking in the Second Sino-Japanese War, by the Imperial Japanese Army.^[3][4][5][6] Beginning on December 13, 1937, the massacre lasted six weeks.^{[note 1]} The perpetrators also committed other war crimes such as mass rape, looting, torture, and arson. The massacre is considered to be one of the worst wartime atrocities.^[7][8][9]

The Japanese army had pushed quickly through China after capturing Shanghai in November 1937. As the Japanese approached Nanjing, they committed violent atrocities in a terror campaign, including killing contests and massacring entire villages.^[10] By early December, their army had reached the outskirts of Nanjing.

The Chinese army withdrew the bulk of its forces since Nanjing was not a defensible position. The civilian government of Nanjing fled, leaving the city under the de facto control of German citizen John Rabe, who had founded the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone. On December 5, Prince Yasuhiko Asaka was installed as Japanese commander in the campaign. Whether Asaka ordered the Rape, or simply stood by as it happened, is disputed, but he took no action to stop the carnage.

The massacre officially began on December 13, the day Japanese troops entered the city after a ferocious battle. They rampaged through Nanjing almost unchecked. Captured Chinese soldiers were summarily executed in violation of the laws of war, as were numerous male civilians falsely accused of being soldiers. Rape and looting was widespread. Due to multiple factors, death toll estimates vary from 40,000 to over 300,000, with rape cases ranging from 20,000 to over 80,000 cases. However, most credible scholars in Japan, which include a large number of authoritative academics, support the validity of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and its findings, which estimate at least 200,000 murders and at least 20,000 cases of rape. The massacre finally wound down in early 1938. John Rabe's Safety Zone was mostly a success, and is credited with saving at least 200,000 lives. After the war, multiple Japanese military officers and Kōki Hirota, former Prime Minister of Japan and foreign minister during the atrocities, were found guilty of war crimes and executed. Some other Japanese military leaders in charge at the time of the Nanjing Massacre were not tried only because by the time of the tribunals they had either already been killed or committed seppuku (ritual suicide). Prince Asaka, as part of the Imperial Family, was granted immunity and never tried.

The massacre has remained a wedge issue between modern China and Japan. Historical revisionists and nationalists in Japan have been accused of minimizing or denying the massacre.

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