When the Sino-Japanese war broke out, the Japanese army, as a great strongman, inspired with madness in various parts of China and repeated various barbaric acts, including massacres, which became a stain of war crimes. The Japanese army ignored the right of the Chinese people to ask for special consideration, etc., as they were a non-conquered people. Japanese troops massacred Chinese peasants by splitting their abdomens with farming tools and skewering their corpses on the farmland with the tools still stuck in them. Refugees were often bayoneted to death by drunken Japanese soldiers. Each area became a madhouse of rape, massacre, and looting. The international refugee zone, which had been set up by the Nanking government for the displaced, was sealed with some 200,000+ refugees. As a concentration camp, the Japanese army dragged thousands of Chinese out of the city and massacred them. They were used as bayonet training grounds, and as sacrifices, they were sprayed with oil and burned to death.
The Sino-Japanese War broke out from the Rohgou Bridge Incident on July 7, 1937, and the Japanese army immediately overwhelmed the Chinese army by force. The Chinese army even threw in a large number of reserve troops, which led to increased casualties. They suffered heavy losses before they could drag the Japanese forces from the coastal battle to the interior. The Chinese forces were also depleted of reserves and fell into a war situation where they could not even fight back. The Japanese were unable to repel the Chinese forces even in fixed positions, and the scourge of mass abuse and genocide broke out in Nanking and elsewhere. Japanese troops broke through the front line of the Chinese army and the invasion reached Nanjing. The Chinese army in Nanjing had no time to accommodate the retreating Chinese troops from Shanghai. Retreat routes were blocked and command posts were in disarray. The Chinese were unable to destroy any buildings or factories that would be of military or economic value to the Japanese.
The Japanese army entered Nanking on December 12, 1937. There was a long retreat from Nanking, with some 500,000 or more residents and soldiers fleeing on their own. The victorious Japanese army looted, abused and massacred in every direction in Nanjing. Hundreds of Chinese troops and civilian officials who escaped through the gates of the only remaining Nanking City to the north bank of the Yangtze River were swept away by Japanese machine guns and submerged. Hundreds of Chinese were swept away by the overland route stretching to the Shimonoseki Gate, and their bodies piled up in a heap. About 12,000 stores and houses were looted, and the looted goods were transported to Shanghai. By massacring Nanking, the Japanese forced the Chinese to welcome the occupation of Nanking and restore order. They also looted the American, British and German embassies and foreign buildings in Nanjing. In a 100-day investigation, the International Rescue Committee in Nanjing found that the Japanese had massacred at least 42,000 people in Nanjing alone, including some 22,490 women and children. It estimated that about 300,000 Chinese were massacred during the invasion from Shanghai to Nanking. The damage to Nanking was about 246 million Chinese dollars, about 1% of which was military damage and the rest was mainly looting and arson.
