1931–1945 CE · Manchurian seizure, war in China and wider Pacific conflict · Asia · War
Japan seized Manchuria in 1931; full-scale war with China followed in 1937 and merged with the wider Pacific war after 1941. In late 1937 and early 1938, Japanese forces perpetrated mass killing, sexual violence, looting and terror against civilians and disarmed soldiers in Nanjing.
Atlas dossier · World WarsFree device narration · synchronized English captions · transcript available
Why it matters
Japan’s 1931 seizure of Manchuria, the full-scale Sino-Japanese War beginning in 1937 and the wider Pacific war from December 1941 were connected but distinct escalations. The 1931–1945 range makes room for Chinese resistance and occupation before Pearl Harbor without implying that every theatre began simultaneously.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Nanjing Massacre ↗After Japanese forces captured Nanjing in December 1937, they committed mass killing, rape, looting and other violence against civilians and disarmed soldiers over the following weeks. The dossier names these crimes directly while using a non-graphic archival record and avoiding a false precision where casualty estimates differ.
Library of Congress research shelf: Nanjing and the Asia-Pacific War ↗A visual presentation accompanying this entry. Read each image’s attribution to distinguish archival records, later depictions and reconstructions.
Enlarge and examine the pictureA photograph dated 1937 in the Kisarazu naval air unit album, credited to Itou Kaneo. Read the source record alongside the account of the Asia-Pacific war.
Photo 06 in Nanjing Massacre (Itou Kaneo's Album).jpg — 伊藤兼男 (Itou Kaneo); public domain in Japan and the United States (PD-Japan-oldphoto / PD-1996); via Itou Kaneo photograph album / Wikimedia Commons. Resized, cropped and converted to WebP for Atlas display.
Source and reuse terms ↗ · Read the licence ↗Interpretation note
This dossier distinguishes the event’s basic chronology from later arguments about meaning, responsibility and legacy. When comparing religious, national, Indigenous or scholarly interpretations, consult the primary and institutional sources above alongside peer-reviewed historical work.
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