Nanking Massacre

Nanjing is the capital of Jiangsu province in China and has a prominent place in Chinese history and culture, having been the capital of China on... several occasions. Its present name means "Southern Capital" and was widely romanized as Nankin and Nanking until the Pinyin language reform, after which Nanjing was gradually adopted as the standard spelling of the city's name in most languages that use the Roman alphabet. Located in the lower Yangtze River drainage basin and Yangtze River Delta economic zone, Nanjing has long been one of China's most important cities. It is recognized as one of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China. It was the capital of Sun Quan's Wu during the Three Kingdoms Period and the capital of the Republic of China prior to its flight to Taiwan during the Chinese Civil War. Nanjing is also one of the fifteen sub-provincial cities in the People's Republic of China's administrative structure, enjoying jurisdictional and economic autonomy only slightly less than that of a province. Nanjing has long been a national center of education, research, transport networks, and tourism.
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The Second Sino-Japanese War was a military conflict fought primarily between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. From 1937 to 1941,... China fought Japan with some economic help from Germany , the Soviet Union and the United States . After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor , the war merged into the greater conflict of World War II as a major front of what is broadly known as the Pacific War. The Second Sino-Japanese War was the largest Asian war in the 20th century. It also made up more than 50% of the casualties in the Pacific War if the 1937–1941 period is taken into account. Although the two countries had fought intermittently since 1931, total war started in earnest in 1937 and ended only with the surrender of Japan in 1945. The war was the result of a decades-long Japanese imperialist policy aiming to dominate China politically and militarily and to secure its vast raw material reserves and other economic resources, particularly food and labour. Before 1937, China and Japan fought in small, localized engagements, so-called "incidents".
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Japanese war crimes occurred during the period of Japanese imperialism, primarily during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II. Some of the... incidents have also been described as an Asian Holocaust and Japanese war atrocities. Some war crimes were committed by military personnel from the Empire of Japan in the late 19th century, although most took place during the first part of the Shōwa Era, the name given to the reign of Emperor Hirohito, until the military defeat of the Empire of Japan, in 1945. Historians and governments of some countries officially hold Japanese military forces, namely the Imperial Japanese Army, the Imperial Japanese Navy and the Imperial Japanese family, especially Emperor Hirohito, responsible for killings and other crimes committed against millions of civilians and prisoners of war. Some Japanese soldiers have admitted to committing these crimes. Senior Japanese Government officials have issued numerous apologies for the country's war crimes since the 1950s.
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