WWII: China’s Holocaust

In this sobering and unflinching episode, we confront one of history’s most overlooked atrocities: the devastation wrought upon China during the Second World War. While much of the world’s focus remains fixed on the European theatre, the horrors that unfolded in East Asia were no less harrowing. From ruthless invasions to state-sanctioned mass murder, we unpack the brutal campaigns that left millions dead and scarred a nation’s memory forever.

Join me as we trace the roots of imperial aggression, the descent into wartime barbarity, and the ideological battles that reshaped China’s future. We’ll also honour the voices of those who dared to document the unspoken, and reflect on why these stories still matter today. History isn’t just what we remember — it’s what we choose not to forget.

Transcript

Welcome. You’re with Lucas again on The Perspicacious Perspective.

Well we all know about the Holocaust that took place in Europe during WWII. 

The Holocaust was responsible for killing 6 million Jews who were systematically murdered by the Nazi regime.

If you include other victim groups (such as Romani people, disabled individuals, Poles, Soviet Prisoners Of War, LGBTQ people and others), the total death toll from Nazi persecution and genocide rises to around 11 million to 17 million.

But how many of us Westerners know about the Holocaust that went down in China?

What I’ve realised is, not enough people know about what was transpiring on the other side of the world at exactly the same time.

From 1937 throughout the Second Sino-Japanese War— the Japanese Imperial Army was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 10 to 20 million Chinese people. That includes: civilians massacred during occupations (like Nanjing), victims of biological warfare experiments, starvation and disease, and systematic massacres in other cities and provinces throughout China.

To be clear the Nanjing massacre alone accounted for 200,000–300,000 deaths over a few weeks but throughout the entire war and occupation period, Japan’s military campaigns and war crimes cost millions of Chinese lives.

This death toll is one of the highest civilian casualty counts in modern history, rivaling Soviet losses in WWII and even exceeding them by some estimates when accounting for famine and disease related to Japanese military actions.

I’m gonna tell you why there was a Second-Sino-Japanese War, exactly what happened during the war and how bad it was, why the Japanese were so ruthless, and when the Japanese pulled its military from China.

The first thing you need to understand is that there was a Civil War in China before WWII started.

The Chinese Communist movement was led by Mao Zedong. This is the guy that ended up founding China in 1949 after World War II. Then he ended up becoming responsible for the deaths of between 40-70 million Chinese people due to a series of political campaigns, purges, and policy disasters.

Mao was one of the founding members of the Chinese Communist Party in the early 1920s. Over time, he rose to prominence within the party thanks to his strategic thinking, leadership in rural guerrilla warfare, and his ability to rally peasant support — which was critical in a largely agrarian country like China at the time.

Chiang Kai-shek was the leader of the Kuomintang which is referred to as the Nationalist Party. The Nationalist Party sought to unify China under a centralized, anti-communist government. Mao Zedong led a sustained revolutionary struggle against this guy. The conflict between the Nationalists and Communists would erupt into open civil war several times between the late 1920s and the 1940s.

During the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), Mao and Chiang formed a tenuous Second United Front to resist Japanese invasion. Though officially allied, both sides remained deeply distrustful, often conserving their strength for the inevitable post-war struggle for control of China.

After Japan’s defeat in 1945, the Chinese Civil War resumed in full force. Mao’s Communist forces, benefiting from strong peasant support, Soviet assistance, and nationalist war fatigue under Chiang’s regime, ultimately defeated the Nationalists. That was when in 1949, Mao declared the founding of the People’s Republic of China, while Chiang and the remnants of the Kuomintang National Party retreated to the island of Taiwan, where they established a separate government that rules Taiwan till today.

Why was there a Second-Sino-Japanese War? 

The origins of the Second Sino-Japanese War trace back to the early 20th century, shaped by Japan’s imperial ambitions and China’s political instability. Following its dramatic transformation from an isolated feudal society to an industrialized military power, Japan had already tested its strength in the region, defeating China in the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895 and Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. The 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended the Russo-Japanese War, granted Japan significant concessions in Manchuria. Manchuria is part of modern-day North-eastern China including the provinces of Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang.

Japan gained control over the South Manchuria Railway and a foothold in the region, positioning Japan as the dominant power in Manchuria.

Japan established a military presence in Manchuria to protect its interests, especially to safeguard its control over the South Manchuria Railway, which was vital for transporting goods and resources like coal and timber back to Japan.

These victories emboldened Japan’s belief in its destiny to dominate East Asia, especially as Western colonial powers held influence throughout the region.

What was the Mukden Incident?

The Mukden Incident, also known as the Manchurian Incident, was a pivotal event that took place on September 18, 1931, and marked the beginning of Japan’s military aggression in China, leading to the full-scale invasion of Manchuria.

The incident itself was a false flag operation orchestrated by the Japanese Kwantung Army, which was stationed in Manchuria (northeast China) at the time.

The Japanese military planted explosives on the South Manchuria Railway near Mukden (modern-day Shenyang), a major city in Manchuria, which was under Japanese economic control through the South Manchuria Railway Company.

The explosion was small, causing minimal damage, but the Japanese military blamed Chinese saboteurs for the attack.

Rather than investigating the incident in a calm, rational manner, the Japanese Kwantung Army used it as a pretext for immediate military action. They invaded Mukden and other parts of Manchuria the same night.

The local Chinese military was weak, poorly coordinated, and largely unprepared to resist the Japanese forces, which led to a swift takeover of the region.

Despite Japan’s clear aggression, the Chinese government protested and appealed to the League of Nations for help, but Japan’s actions were already underway.

The Japanese quickly set up a puppet state in Manchuria, which they named Manchukuo, with the last Qing emperor, Puyi, installed as a figurehead ruler, though Japan had absolute control behind the scenes.

The League of Nations condemned Japan’s actions, but it failed to take meaningful action to stop the invasion.

The international community, including major Western powers, was unwilling to confront Japan at this point, partly because of the ongoing Great Depression, which made many countries reluctant to engage in military conflict.

The puppet state of Manchukuo remained under Japanese control for the next 14 years, until the end of World War II in 1945.

The Chinese government, under the Nationalist Kuomintang led by Chiang Kai-shek, initially struggled to mount a significant military response to Japan’s aggression, as it was embroiled in internal civil conflict with the Communists. The Chinese also lacked the resources to fight an industrialized power like Japan.

The Mukden Incident was a critical moment in the lead-up to World War II in the Pacific. It revealed the growing militarization of Japan and its aggressive imperial ambitions. The invasion of Manchuria marked a major turning point in Japan’s imperial expansion, showing the world that Japan was willing to use military force to achieve its territorial goals. Additionally, the event highlighted the weakness and ineffectiveness of the League of Nations, signaling that international diplomacy could do little to deter fascist aggression during this time.

At the same time, China was in turmoil. The collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911 led to years of fragmentation, warlord rule, and a struggle for national unity. The Chinese Nationalist government under Chiang Kai-shek faced significant challenges consolidating power, all while battling a growing Chinese Communist movement led by Mao Zedong. This internal disunity made China particularly vulnerable to foreign aggression.

Japan’s ambitions intensified in 1931 when, using the staged Mukden Incident as a pretext, it invaded Manchuria and established the puppet state of Manchukuo. Emboldened by the lack of international resistance and motivated by its need for natural resources like coal, iron, and farmland, Japan set its sights on further conquest within China.

What was the Marco Polo Bridge Incident?

The Marco Polo Bridge Incident was a critical event that occurred on July 7, 1937, and marked the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War between China and Japan. It was a military clash between Chinese and Japanese troops near the Marco Polo Bridge, located about 15 miles southwest of Beijing. 

Tensions had been building between Japan and China for years. Japan had already invaded Manchuria in 1931, establishing the puppet state of Manchukuo, and it was expanding its territorial ambitions in China. Japan was also increasingly involved in a series of border skirmishes and territorial disputes with China in the years leading up to 1937.

In the period before the incident, Japan had stationed significant forces in Beijing and surrounding regions as part of its imperial expansion. Meanwhile, the Nationalist government of China (led by Chiang Kai-shek) was struggling to unify the country, dealing with both Japanese aggression and internal civil war with the Chinese Communist Party.

On the night of July 7, 1937, a Japanese soldier went missing near the Marco Polo Bridge, a vital military position just outside Beijing. The Japanese military demanded permission to enter the nearby Chinese city of Wanping to search for the missing soldier.

The Chinese forces stationed at the Marco Polo Bridge refused Japan's demands, insisting they would only allow a limited search. Japan's military commanders, however, used the incident as a pretext to escalate the situation.

The Japanese military, using the disappearance of their soldier as an excuse, began bombarding the Chinese positions on the bridge. Fighting broke out, and Japanese forces attempted to cross the bridge and advance toward Wanping.

Chinese forces, though outnumbered and less well-equipped, fiercely resisted the Japanese attack. The Chinese soldiers eventually retreated, but the clash had already set the stage for larger-scale conflict.

The Chinese government, under Chiang Kai-shek, immediately saw the Japanese attack as a prelude to a broader invasion. Despite being engaged in internal conflict with the Communists, the Nationalist government began to mobilize for war against Japan.

In response to Japan's aggression, China unified under the Second United Front, with both the Nationalists and Communists putting aside their differences to resist Japanese invasion. This united front would form the basis for Chinese resistance during the war, despite internal tensions.

Following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, Japan quickly captured Beijing, and within weeks, it had launched assaults on other major cities, including Tianjin and Shanghai. These rapid advances led to a significant shift in the balance of power in East Asia, as Japan's military moved towards the capital city of Nanjing, where the infamous Nanjing Massacre would take place later in 1937.

Japan’s strategic objective was to establish control over China and integrate it into what it called the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere — a euphemism for a Japanese-dominated empire that would secure crucial resources and geopolitical power. 

The war that followed was brutal and protracted. Over the course of eight years, millions of Chinese civilians were killed through massacres, bombings, biological warfare, and widespread atrocities committed by the Japanese military. 

What was the Nanjing Massacre?

The Nanjing Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanjing, was one of the most horrific atrocities of the 20th century, committed by the Imperial Japanese Army during its invasion of China in the Second Sino-Japanese War.

The Nanjing Massacre took place over a period of about six weeks, starting on December 13, 1937, after Japanese forces captured the city of Nanjing, which was at the time the capital of the Republic of China under Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government.

After seizing the city, the Imperial Japanese Army unleashed a campaign of mass murder, widespread rape, arson, and looting against Chinese civilians and prisoners of war (POWs). The brutality was so extreme that it drew international condemnation, even from other Axis-aligned powers and neutral observers.

When Japanese troops entered Nanjing, the Chinese Nationalist army had either withdrawn or surrendered, leaving the civilian population largely defenseless. Instead of maintaining military discipline, the Japanese soldiers went on a spree of mass executions, sexual violence, and destruction.

Tens of thousands of Chinese men suspected of being former soldiers or resistance members were rounded up and systematically executed. Victims were shot, bayoneted, burned alive, buried alive, or beheaded.

An estimated 20,000 to 80,000 women were raped during the massacre — from young girls to elderly women. Many were killed afterward, often mutilated, burned, or thrown into rivers.

Japanese soldiers engaged in sadistic acts of torture, including live burials, dismemberment, disembowelment, and using Chinese prisoners for bayonet practice or beheading contests.

Homes, businesses, cultural landmarks, and places of worship were looted and destroyed. Fires were set throughout the city, leaving much of Nanjing in ruins.

The death toll remains debated among historians, but most credible estimates place the number of victims between 200,000 and 300,000 people. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East which tried Japanese war criminals after World War II, accepted an estimate of about 260,000 civilian and prisoner deaths.

At the time, several Westerners and missionaries were living in Nanjing, and many of them established a so-called Nanjing Safety Zone, which sheltered tens of thousands of civilians. Figures like John Rabe, a German businessman and ironically a Nazi Party member, played key roles in protecting civilians. Despite this, atrocities continued throughout the city.

The Nanjing Massacre stands as one of the most appalling examples of wartime atrocities against civilians in modern history. It demonstrated the lethal consequences of militarism, racism, and unchecked imperial ambitions. It also exposed the weaknesses of the international community in responding to crimes against humanity — a lesson that would inform the later creation of the United Nations and international war crimes tribunals.

What happened after the Nanjing massacre in 1937?

While the Nanjing Massacre was a horrific peak of brutality, it was just the beginning of a much larger and drawn-out campaign by Imperial Japan in China. After seizing Nanjing in December 1937 and committing the atrocities there, Japan pressed on with its broader conquest of eastern China, while digging itself into a long, brutal war it had underestimated.

After capturing Nanjing, the Imperial Japanese Army consolidated control over the city and established a puppet administration to govern it under Japanese oversight. Though the city was physically devastated and much of its population decimated, Japan intended to use Nanjing as part of its larger plan to dominate China economically and politically.

However, Japan's leadership made a critical miscalculation: they believed that capturing key cities like Shanghai, Beijing, and Nanjing would force the Nationalist Chinese government under Chiang Kai-shek to surrender. Instead, China — both the Nationalists and Communists — refused to capitulate, choosing to continue a protracted resistance war.

In the months and years following the Nanjing Massacre, Japan pursued a "Three Alls Policy" (“kill all, burn all, loot all”) in its military campaigns, particularly in northern and central China. This brutal scorched-earth strategy aimed to wipe out Chinese resistance by terrorizing local populations, destroying villages, and killing civilians suspected of supporting guerrilla fighters.

Japan captured other strategic Chinese cities like: Suzhou, Wuhan, and Guangzhou in 1938.

Despite these victories, Japan struggled to defeat the Chinese army and crush guerrilla resistance in rural areas. The conflict turned into a costly and drawn-out war of attrition, with Japanese forces stretched thin over vast territories.

After occupying Nanjing, Japan began setting up puppet governments in various occupied areas of China to legitimize its presence and attempt to stabilize control. The most notable of these was the Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China, established in Nanjing in 1940 and led by Wang Jingwei, a former ally of Chiang Kai-shek who defected to the Japanese side.

This puppet regime claimed to be the legitimate government of China but was widely seen as a collaborationist administration, lacking any real power outside the areas controlled by the Japanese military.

After Nanjing, the Second Sino-Japanese War escalated into a long, bitter conflict. Japan’s forces faced fierce resistance not only from Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists but also from Mao Zedong’s Communist forces, particularly in rural areas and guerrilla warfare, sabotage, and ambushes harassed Japanese supply lines and occupation forces.

What was the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign in 1942?

The Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign of 1942 was a military operation and reprisal campaign carried out by the Imperial Japanese Army in the Chinese provinces of Zhejiang and Jiangxi, in retaliation for a famous American air raid on Japan known as the Doolittle Raid.

The Doolittle Raid was an audacious, surprise air attack carried out by the United States Army Air Forces against the Japanese home islands, including the capital Tokyo, on April 18, 1942 — just a little over four months after Japan’s devastating attack on Pearl Harbor.

It was the first American air raid to strike the Japanese mainland during World War II and served as a direct reprisal for Pearl Harbor, aiming to boost American morale and demonstrate that Japan was vulnerable to attack.

The Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign turned into a mass slaughter of civilians and widespread destruction.  It was launched by Japan in May 1942, shortly after the Doolittle Raid.

Although the Doolittle Raid caused only minor physical damage, it was a profound psychological blow to Japanese leadership. Most of the American bombers crash-landed or their crews bailed out in Chinese territory, with the help of Chinese civilians and Nationalist soldiers.

In retaliation for this Chinese assistance, the Japanese military decided to punish the local population and root out Chinese guerrilla forces in the area where the American airmen had landed.

Between May and September 1942, roughly 180,000 Japanese troops conducted a massive military sweep through the Zhejiang and Jiangxi provinces. The campaign involved:

·       Search and destroy missions against Chinese military units and guerrillas.

·       Systematic mass executions of civilians suspected of aiding the Americans or resisting Japanese occupation.

·       Widespread rape, looting, and destruction of villages, towns, and farmlands.

·       The deliberate use of biological weapons: Japan’s infamous Unit 731, which specialized in biological and chemical warfare, was reportedly involved in spreading cholera, typhoid, plague, and dysentery pathogens during the campaign to weaken both military and civilian populations.

The campaign resulted in staggering casualties: An estimated 250,000 Chinese civilians were killed over the course of the operation, through massacres, disease, starvation, and biological attacks.

Entire villages were burned to the ground, and survivors were often executed or driven into the wilderness without food or shelter.

The Japanese also suffered casualties, largely due to disease outbreaks caused by their own biological warfare operations, which backfired on their troops.

The Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign was one of the deadliest reprisal operations in modern warfare history, carried out primarily against civilians as collective punishment for aiding enemy soldiers.

It highlighted Japan’s willingness to deploy biological weapons — a fact that remained largely secret until after the war, when captured records and testimonies revealed the extent of Unit 731's activities.

The campaign further inflamed anti-Japanese sentiment in China and hardened Chinese resistance efforts, particularly in rural and guerrilla strongholds.

After the war, many of the atrocities committed during the campaign were documented during the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, though not all perpetrators, especially those from Unit 731, were prosecuted, as some were granted immunity in exchange for data by Allied intelligence services.

What was Unit 731?

It was Japan’s secret biological and chemical warfare research unit during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II, responsible for conducting some of the most grotesque human experiments ever documented. 

Unit 731, formally known as the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army, was a covert military unit of Imperial Japan’s Army, based in Harbin, Manchukuo (the Japanese-occupied northeastern territory in China). It operated from 1936 to 1945, under the command of Lieutenant General Shirō Ishii, a physician and microbiologist with grand ambitions for Japan’s use of biological warfare.

Though it was publicly presented as a disease prevention and water purification unit, its real purpose was to develop biological and chemical weapons and to test them directly on living human beings — primarily Chinese civilians and prisoners of war, but also Soviet, Korean, Mongolian, and a smaller number of Western prisoners.

The atrocities committed by Unit 731 rival or surpass those of Nazi concentration camp experiments in both cruelty and scope. Victims, referred to as "marutas" (丸太, meaning "logs" — a dehumanizing codeword implying they were nothing more than wood to be disposed of), were subjected to inhumane experimentation including:

Vivisections: Where victims were dissected alive, often without anesthesia, so researchers could observe the effects of diseases on internal organs in real-time.

Biological Warfare Testing: Where prisoners were deliberately infected with plague, anthrax, cholera, typhoid, syphilis, and other diseases to study their progression and potential as battlefield weapons.

Frostbite Experiments: Where victims had limbs submerged in freezing water until frozen solid, then either thawed naturally or amputated to study the effects of hypothermia and gangrene.

Weapons Testing: Where live humans were used to test the lethality of grenades, flamethrowers, chemical agents, and other battlefield weapons.

Sexual Assault and Forced Pregnancy: Where female prisoners were systematically raped, forcibly impregnated, and then subjected to experiments — including vivisections — to study disease transmission to fetuses.

And Human Target Practice: Where some prisoners were tied to stakes and used as targets for bayonet practice, machine gun fire, or bomb tests.

It’s estimated that at least 3,000 people were murdered in Unit 731’s main Harbin facility alone, though the total number of deaths resulting from its biological warfare experiments in the region may be much higher — possibly in the hundreds of thousands when including those affected by the deployment of bio-weapons across China.

Unit 731’s work was not limited to the lab. Japan deployed biological weapons in various parts of China, particularly during the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign in 1942, spreading diseases like plague, cholera, typhoid, and dysentery. Infected fleas, contaminated food, and water supplies were used to deliberately target civilian populations, resulting in devastating outbreaks.

Ironically, these weapons sometimes backfired, with Japanese troops themselves falling victim to the diseases they unleashed.

After Japan’s surrender in 1945, the United States obtained intelligence on Unit 731’s research. Instead of prosecuting its leaders for war crimes, as was done with the Nazis at Nuremberg, U.S. military authorities offered immunity in exchange for the unit’s data on biological warfare.

Shirō Ishii and many of his associates avoided prosecution and lived out their lives in postwar Japan, with some even holding prominent positions in medicine, academia, and politics. The data collected by Unit 731 was reportedly used to advance American biological warfare research during the Cold War.

For decades, the Japanese government avoided full public acknowledgment of Unit 731’s activities. In recent years, increasing historical documentation, survivor testimonies, and declassified Allied records have exposed the full extent of its crimes.

Today, the Unit 731 Museum in Harbin, China, stands as a chilling reminder of these atrocities. In Japan, however, the subject remains controversial, with nationalist factions downplaying or denying the scale of the experiments.

Unit 731 was a top-secret biological and chemical warfare research unit of the Imperial Japanese Army, responsible for grotesque human experimentation and mass murder during 1936–1945. It operated under the guise of disease prevention but became a hub for some of history’s worst war crimes, including vivisections, biological weapons testing, and intentional disease outbreaks. Shockingly, many of its leaders evaded justice after the war due to deals made with U.S. military authorities.

The Nanjing Massacre and Japan’s aggression in China drew international condemnation but little direct military intervention at first. The United States, Britain, and other Western powers imposed economic sanctions and embargoes on Japan, particularly cutting off supplies of vital resources like oil and steel.

These actions, coupled with Japan’s growing isolation, helped set the stage for Japan’s decision to attack Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and widen the conflict into the Pacific War, linking the war in China to World War II.

After the Nanjing Massacre, Japan expanded its military occupation deeper into China, established puppet governments, and waged a brutal, scorched-earth campaign against both Chinese soldiers and civilians. Despite early territorial gains, Japan found itself mired in a costly and unwinnable war of occupation, facing relentless Chinese resistance. Its failure to force a Chinese surrender led to increasing international isolation and ultimately contributed to its decision to attack Western powers in the Pacific, plunging the region into full-scale World War II.

How did the Second-Sino-Japanese War end?

The end of the Second Sino-Japanese War was as brutal and complicated as the war itself. It didn’t conclude with a neat treaty like some conflicts; instead, it was effectively resolved by the wider outcome of World War II. 

The Second Sino-Japanese War, which began in July 1937 with the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, dragged on for eight bloody years. Initially, Japan overran much of eastern China, capturing major cities like Shanghai, Beijing, Nanjing, and Wuhan, and committing widespread atrocities such as the Nanjing Massacre. Despite these early victories, Japan struggled to fully conquer China’s vast interior and faced relentless guerrilla warfare and resistance from both the Chinese Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Communists led by Mao Zedong.

As the conflict wore on, Japan found itself increasingly overextended, bogged down in a grinding war of attrition while also becoming embroiled in the broader Pacific War after attacking Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Once the United States, Britain, and other Allied powers formally entered the war against Japan, China was recognized as one of the Four Major Allied Powers, alongside the U.S., U.K., and Soviet Union.

What was Operation Ichi-Go?

By 1944, Japan launched a desperate counteroffensive known as Operation Ichi-Go, its largest land campaign of the war, aiming to link up its territories in China and Indochina and destroy Chinese airbases used by U.S. forces. While Japan made territorial gains, it couldn’t deliver a decisive blow to the Nationalist or Communist forces, and its military resources were increasingly stretched thin as defeats mounted across the Pacific.

The endgame arrived in August 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Soviet Union declared war on Japan on August 8, 1945, invading Japanese-occupied Manchuria with overwhelming force. The Soviet invasion crushed the Kwantung Army, Japan’s largest and most elite force in China, in a matter of days.

Facing devastation at home, catastrophic military defeats, and no path to victory, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s unconditional surrender on August 15, 1945. The formal surrender ceremony took place on September 2, 1945, aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

Although Japan’s surrender officially marked the end of World War II, it also brought a close to the Second Sino-Japanese War.

After Japan’s surrender: All Japanese troops in China, Manchuria, Taiwan, and Korea were ordered to disarm and repatriate.

Taiwan, which had been under Japanese rule since 1895, was returned to Chinese Nationalist control.

Manchuria was occupied by the Soviet Red Army, which handed much of its captured Japanese weaponry over to Chinese Communist forces, giving them a decisive advantage in the subsequent Chinese Civil War.

Ironically, the end of the war against Japan reignited the dormant conflict between Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government and Mao Zedong’s Communists, which had been put on hold during the anti-Japanese resistance. This second phase of the Chinese Civil War would ultimately lead to the Communist victory in 1949 and the founding of the People’s Republic of China, while the defeated Nationalists fled to Taiwan.

The Second Sino-Japanese War ended as a consequence of Japan’s defeat in World War II. Key turning points included the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in August 1945. Japan’s unconditional surrender in September 1945 officially brought the eight-year war to a close, reshaping East Asia’s political landscape and setting the stage for the Chinese Civil War’s final phase.

Who is Iris Chang?

Iris Chang is the author of the book The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, which is one of the most influential and emotionally charged accounts of the Nanjing Massacre, bringing global attention to atrocities that had long been suppressed or ignored in much of the world, especially in Japan and the West.

Published in 1997, The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang, a Chinese-American journalist and historian, is a historical nonfiction work that documents the mass murder, rape, and atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army in the Chinese capital of Nanjing in December 1937 and early 1938.

The book is divided into several parts, blending personal testimonies, survivor accounts, historical documents, and war crime trial records. It offers a comprehensive, emotionally powerful, and deeply disturbing account of the events. 

When The Rape of Nanking was published, it caused a firestorm in Japan and made international headlines. Many Japanese nationalists accused Chang of exaggeration or fabrication, while others saw the book as an essential reckoning with suppressed history.

It was important for several reasons:

·       It introduced Western readers to an atrocity largely ignored in most American and European histories of World War II.

·       It presented graphic, detailed personal accounts that humanized the victims and exposed the inhumanity of the perpetrators.

·       It highlighted Japan’s postwar failure to fully acknowledge or atone for these crimes.

·       And it sparked public debate in both academic and political spheres about historical memory, war guilt, and justice.

Part of what makes the book so haunting is Iris Chang’s personal passion. She was deeply moved by survivor testimonies and the widespread ignorance of this atrocity in the West. Tragically, Chang later struggled with depression and PTSD-like symptoms from immersing herself in such dark subject matter, and she died by suicide in 2004 at age 36. Her death further elevated the book’s legacy, symbolizing the personal toll that historical trauma can take on those who confront it.