CHINA – JANUARY 01: Chinese Puppet Government Set Up By Japan In Nankin. Photographed At Pekin On January 1938. Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images
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CHINA – JANUARY 04: Mounted Japanese Troops Passing Under The Chungshan Gate While Entering Nanking, China, On January 4, 1938. Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images
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An official Japanese picture of a captured Chinese soldier, Nanking, China, December 1937. With or without uniforms, thousands of Chinese soldiers at Nanking were brutally executed. Photo by Underwood Archives/Getty Images
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A Japanese bugle symbolically sounds the victory ceasefire from his position on top of Purple Mountain during the Second Sino-Japanese occupation in Nanking, China, in Jan. 1938. AP Photo
The Second Sino-Japanese War occurred as a full blown war between the years of 1937 and 1945. While China was in a civil dispute between the nationalists and communists, Japan entered and a war was started. Before the massacre, Nanking only had around 250,000 residents. However, due to Japanese/Chinese fighting since 1931, the Chinese government moved the capital from Peking to Nanking. This raised the population well over a million people; many of them were refugees. Imgur
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Japanese forces storm a barricade during the fighting in Nanking. ABC
