The Rape of Nanking (Nanjing Massacre) Blog

How one American missionary's life of faith, service, and unlikely courage became the heart of a novel about history's forgotten witnesses. Born Into a World That Was Already China's George Ashmore Fitch didn't choose China. China was chosen for him — at birth. He was born on June 12, 1883, in Suzhou, China, to George Field Fitch and Mary Seymour Fitch, both Presbyterian missionaries who had devoted their lives to the country. Growing up in the missionary compound world of l

Korean "comfort women" liberated by Chinese troops from the Japanese army, September 1944. /VCG In December 1937, Minnie Vautrin stood at the gates of Ginling College in Nanking, physically blocking Japanese soldiers from dragging Chinese women out of the refugee camp. She would repeat this act dozens of times each day for weeks. Her diary entries from that period make for harrowing reading: soldiers arriving in trucks to select women like livestock, girls as young as 11 bein

Atomic bomb blast of Nagasaki and Japanese soldiers using prisoners of war for bayonet practice. Every August, the world remembers Hiroshima and Nagasaki—the only two cities ever attacked with nuclear weapons. The images are seared into collective memory: mushroom clouds, shadow burns on concrete, victims with keloid scars, the haunting ruins of the Atomic Bomb Dome. Japan has built its post-war identity around these events, positioning itself as the ultimate victim of World