December 13, 1937. Picture a city crumbling under the weight of an unstoppable army. The streets of Nanking (now Nanjing) are filled with smoke, the echoes of artillery fire, and the cries of terrified civilians. Japanese forces had breached the city’s gates after weeks of relentless bombardment. But instead of establishing control, they unleashed hell on earth.
For six weeks following their victory, the soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army committed acts of brutality so horrifying they still defy understanding today. The Nanking Massacre—or Rape of Nanking—is a story that has too often been buried in the shadows of history. But it’s not just a chapter in a history book. It’s a warning. Because what happened when humanity failed in Nanking can happen again if we let it.
By late 1937, Japan’s imperial ambitions had already ignited the Second Sino-Japanese War. The capture of Shanghai marked a significant victory for Japan, but the capital, Nanking, was the real prize. The Chinese Nationalist Army, outnumbered and under-equipped, tried to mount a defense but was quickly overwhelmed. By December 13, the gates of Nanking had fallen. The Chinese forces had retreated, leaving behind civilians—men, women, and children—who hoped surrender would save their lives. It didn’t.
What followed wasn’t a military occupation. It was a slaughter. This wasn’t about securing territory; it was about destruction. Dehumanization. Turning a city into a graveyard.
The Japanese soldiers began by rounding up prisoners of war and suspected Chinese soldiers. These men, thousands at a time, were marched to the outskirts of the city under the pretense of relocation. They were lined up in rows, bound, and executed en masse. Machine guns tore through their bodies. Those who survived the gunfire were stabbed with bayonets or buried alive.
The soldiers turned killing into a grotesque game. They staged “contests” to see who could kill the most people in the shortest amount of time. Two Japanese officers, Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda, proudly boasted in newspapers about their “race” to kill 100 men with their swords. This wasn’t just tolerated—it was celebrated.
Imagine the ground soaked in blood, the air thick with the stench of death. Imagine bodies piled high like discarded debris, left to rot as if they were less than nothing.
The horror didn’t end with the executions. It metastasized. Over the six weeks of the massacre, an estimated 20,000 to 80,000 women were raped. Women of all ages—teenagers, grandmothers, even pregnant women—were brutalized. Some were gang-raped in public. Many were killed afterward to silence them. Pregnant women had their bellies slashed open, their unborn children ripped out as soldiers laughed.
Children were not spared. Girls as young as eight were raped and mutilated. In one instance, soldiers tied up a woman and her teenage daughters, repeatedly raping them before setting them on fire. These acts weren’t isolated incidents; they were systematic. They were allowed. Encouraged.
Let that sink in for a moment. Entire families were torn apart in ways that defy words. It’s not enough to say this was evil. This was humanity at its absolute lowest.
And then there were the civilians who weren’t killed outright. Homes were looted. Entire neighborhoods were set on fire. Thousands of people were burned alive in their homes or executed in front of their families. Refugees who sought shelter in public buildings were dragged out and killed. Children were thrown into rivers and left to drown. Infants were bayoneted for sport.
Consider this testimony from survivor Xia Shuqin, who was eight years old at the time. Japanese soldiers entered her home, murdering her parents and siblings before raping her older sisters. Xia herself was stabbed and left for dead among her family’s corpses. She lay there, bleeding, for days. That was Nanking.
Westerners in Nanking, including missionaries and diplomats, created a “safety zone” in the city to protect as many civilians as they could. These zones saved tens of thousands of lives, but they couldn’t stop the massacre.
The international community, meanwhile, was largely silent. Reports of the atrocities reached the outside world, but Japan was a rising power, and nations like the United States were reluctant to intervene. The Great Depression had left the West inwardly focused, and many viewed the conflict in China as a regional problem, not a global one.
As Mark Twain once said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” The world ignored Nanking, just as it would later ignore the early warnings of Auschwitz. And in that silence, countless lives were lost.
After the war, General Matsui Iwane, who commanded the Japanese forces in Nanking, was executed for war crimes. But justice was partial at best. Emperor Hirohito, under whose name the atrocities were committed, was shielded from prosecution by the United States to maintain stability in postwar Japan. Many of the soldiers who committed these crimes returned home unpunished.
Japan’s government has since struggled to reckon with its past. For decades, the massacre was downplayed or outright denied in Japanese textbooks. Survivors were left to fight not only for recognition but also against the erasure of their suffering.
So why talk about this now? Because the lessons of Nanking are as relevant as ever. When you dehumanize an enemy—when you turn entire groups of people into “others”—you set the stage for atrocities like Nanking. And make no mistake: the seeds of this kind of horror exist everywhere. They exist in the rhetoric that calls immigrants “invaders.” They exist in laws that strip people of their rights. They exist in the silence of those who look the other way.
If war were to come to America—whether through civil strife or international conflict—do you really believe we’re immune to this? Nanking happened because ordinary people were turned into monsters by propaganda, by hate, and by the normalization of cruelty. It could happen again.
The Nanking Massacre isn’t just a story from the past. It’s a mirror held up to our present. The women, children, and men who suffered and died in Nanking are crying out to us, asking us to remember. To bear witness. To never let it happen again.
Because if we forget Nanking, if we bury it in the footnotes of history, then we let the rhyme begin again. And next time, it might be us.
