Battle of Nanking

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of Nanking was fought in December 1937 for control of Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China. General Iwane Matsui, commanding Japan's Central China Area Army, was convinced that capturing Nanjing would topple the entire Nationalist Government. A swift and complete victory over China, he believed, would follow. In his way stood a city ringed by Ming Dynasty stone walls nearly 50 km in circumference. Those walls rose to 20 m in height, ran 9 m thick, and bristled with machine gun emplacements. Behind them, the Nanjing Garrison Force had assembled under General Tang Shengzhi, who publicly vowed to hold the city to the last man. Yet five weeks after leaving Shanghai, Japan's forces had enclosed the city and broken its defenses. What drove Japan to send its armies 300 km deep into China, in defiance of its own high command? Why did China choose to fight for a city its own generals called nearly indefensible? And what became of the soldiers and civilians left inside when the walls gave way?

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• 2. The Rogue March

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  The war that brought Japan's armies to Nanjing's gates began on the 7th of July, 1937, with a skirmish at Marco Polo Bridge. Japan's Army General Staff initially moved to limit the conflict. On the 7th of November, Deputy Chief of Staff Hayao Tada established an "operation restriction line." It forbade Japanese forces from advancing west of the Chinese cities of Suzhou and Jiaxing. General Matsui had told his superiors before leaving for Shanghai that he intended to march on Nanjing. Lieutenant General Heisuke Yanagawa, commanding the separate 10th Army, was equally eager. On the 19th of November, Yanagawa ordered his forces across the restriction line in open insubordination. Tada ordered him to stop. Yanagawa ignored the order. On the 22nd of November, Matsui sent an urgent telegram to the Army General Staff. Holding behind the restriction line, he argued, was only "letting our chance to advance slip by" while the enemy recovered. Within the Staff itself, Chief of the Operations Division Sadamu Shimomura had come around to Matsui's view. He was now pressing Tada to authorize the advance. On the 24th of November, Tada abolished the restriction line, citing "circumstances beyond our control," and days later reluctantly approved the campaign. When Tada flew to Shanghai on the 1st of December to deliver the formal authorization, units of the 10th Army had already captured Guangde. That was three days before Japan's advance was even supposed to start.

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• 3. A Contested Defense

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  On the 15th of November, 1937, Chiang Kai-shek convened the Military Affairs Commission's Supreme National Defense Council. The Battle of Shanghai was still ongoing. The question before the council was whether to defend Nanjing. Chiang's most senior officers opposed the idea almost unanimously. Chief of Staff He Yingqin and Deputy Chief Bai Chongxi argued the army needed time to recover from its losses at Shanghai. German military advisor Alexander von Falkenhausen identified a critical geographic vulnerability. Gently sloping terrain in front of Nanjing would ease an attacker's advance, while the Yangtze River behind the city would block any retreat. The head of the Fifth War Zone, Li Zongren, added his voice to the opposition. Chiang overruled them all. General Tang Shengzhi, an ambitious senior member of the Commission, broke with his colleagues and voiced support for Chiang's position. Accounts differ on whether Tang did so enthusiastically or reluctantly. Chiang organized the Nanjing Garrison Force on November 20 and formally named Tang its commander on November 25. The written orders Tang received on November 30 were to "defend the established defense lines at any cost and destroy the enemy's besieging force." On the same day the garrison was established, Chiang officially moved China's capital from Nanjing to Chongqing. He and his wife Soong Mei-ling flew out of Nanjing on a private plane just before dawn on the 7th of December.

  Thirteen divisions were listed on paper in the Nanjing Garrison Force, including three elite German-trained units. Most had been severely mauled at Shanghai. To fill out the ranks, 16,000 young men and teenagers from Nanjing and surrounding villages were pressed into service as new recruits. Many received only rudimentary training on how to fire a weapon on their way to the front lines. Outside the walls, a series of semicircular defense lines were constructed. The innermost was the Fukuo Line, a sprawling network of trenches, moats, barbed wire, minefields, gun emplacements, and pillboxes. By the 6th of December, all the city's gates had been sealed and barricaded with an additional 6 m of sandbags and concrete. On the 7th of December, Tang ordered all structures within 1-2 km of the city incinerated. Roadside structures within 16 km of Nanjing were to be burned as well. By early December, Nanjing's population had fallen from more than one million to fewer than 500,000. Those still in the city were largely the very poor, who had nowhere else to go.

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• 4. Terror on the Road

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  On average, Japanese units were advancing toward Nanjing at up to 40 km per day. Racing far ahead of their supply lines, troops looted food and shelter from Chinese civilians along the way. A Japanese journalist assigned to the 10th Army described the situation candidly. He wrote that soldiers moved so fast because officers had given tacit permission to "loot and rape as they wish." The 170 miles between Shanghai and Nanjing were left, in the words of contemporary observers, "a nightmarish zone of death and destruction." The hamlet of Nanqiantou was set on fire with many inhabitants locked inside the burning buildings. Two women were raped repeatedly; one of them was pregnant. Japanese soldiers murdered her and the remaining villagers and threw their bodies into a nearby creek. A crying two-year-old boy was thrown into the flames. Two girls near Pinghu chose to drown themselves rather than be captured.

  In a separate incident documented from the advance, two Japanese officers held a competition to see who could behead 100 Chinese captives first. The contest was run twice, with the goal raised to 150 in the second round, and was reported in Japanese newspapers. Japanese forces executed all soldiers captured along the road; prisoners were shot, beheaded, bayoneted, and burned to death. The Japanese also launched "mopping-up operations" through the surrounding countryside, burning any structure without immediate military value and killing its inhabitants. The Shanghai Expeditionary Army captured Danyang on the 2nd of December, more than five days ahead of its own schedule. Japanese forces were now within striking distance of Nanjing's outer defenses.

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• 5. The Final Assault

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  By the 5th of December, 1937, the forward contingents of Japan's Shanghai Expeditionary Army had arrived outside Nanjing's outer defense line. Chunhua, a town 15 miles southeast of the city, was its key anchor. China's 51st Division of the 74th Corps held it. Despite lacking the keys to some of the surrounding fortifications, the 51st had established three defensive lines complete with pillboxes, hidden machine gun nests, two rows of barbed wire, and an anti-tank ditch. By December 8, Japanese artillery and six bombers had enabled a breakthrough. The Chinese defenders had already endured days of incessant shelling and suffered more than 1,500 casualties. The 51st Division ultimately took more than 2,000 casualties in the five-day battle, including two regiment commanders and four battalion commanders.

  On Nanjing's southern side, armored vehicles of Japan's 10th Army charged Chinese positions at Jiangjunshan and Niushoushan. Chinese defenders on the high ground possessed mountain guns powerful enough to destroy Japanese armor. Multiple Japanese tanks were disabled. In some cases, Chinese soldiers armed with hammers climbed onto enemy vehicles and banged on their roofs, shouting at the crews to get out. By December 9, the 58th Division had been overwhelmed and withdrew, having suffered 800 casualties by its own records.

  On December 10, General Matsui ordered an all-out assault on Nanjing at 1:00 pm. His 16th Division climbed the ridges of Purple Mountain, wresting each Chinese encampment in bloody infantry charges. Matsui forbade the use of artillery on that portion of the mountain. He was committed to protecting two historic sites on its slopes: the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum and the Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum. That evening, Japanese engineers blew a hole in the city wall near the Guanghua Gate. Two companies of the 36th Regiment charged through and planted their flag. One company lost 80 of its 88 men, including their battalion commander, Major Ito. The Chinese brought up the 87th Division, the 83rd Corps, artillery, tanks, and armored cars. They attacked the Japanese foothold with a pincer movement, hurling grenades and flaming gasoline-soaked lumber down from the wall above.

  On the southern side, Japan's 6th Division was storming the Yuhuatai plateau in front of Zhonghua Gate. It was a fortress of interlocking trenches, barbed wire, anti-tank ditches, and concrete pillboxes. Many Chinese defenders had been chained inside their pillboxes from the outside to prevent retreat. Making Japanese progress slower still was the elite 88th Division, which was apt to counterattack. By noon on December 12, Yuhuatai had been overrun. Virtually all of the 88th Division's defenders were dead, including three of their four regimental commanders and both brigade commanders. Japanese losses in that fight came to 2,240, including 566 killed, by their own records. At 2:00 am on December 13, the 87th Division abandoned the Gate of Enlightenment. They withdrew toward the Yangtze, leaving behind approximately 400 severely wounded men who could not walk. Tang Shengzhi wrote to Chiang during the fighting: "Our casualties are naturally heavy, and we are fighting against metal with merely flesh and blood."

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• 6. Attack on the Yangtze

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  On the morning of the 12th of December, 1937, the American gunboat USS Panay was on the Yangtze River. It was escorting three Standard Oil tankers away from the battle zone. The ship's identity was plainly visible: two large American flags had been painted on canvas awnings, and another cloth flag flew from the bow. Japanese naval aircraft attacked the vessel from approximately 28 miles upstream of Nanjing. They were led by Lieutenant Shigeharu Murata, who would later command torpedo bomber squadrons at Pearl Harbor. The first bomb hit disabled the Panay's forward gun and snapped its foremast. After 20 minutes of continuous bombing and strafing, the ship was on fire and listing to starboard, crippled by two bomb hits. Two newsreel cameramen aboard managed to film much of the attack. At one point, Japanese aircraft passed close enough to the ship that the pilots' faces were clearly visible on film. The crew and civilians evacuated in two boats, most of them injured. From the reeds of a nearby island, they watched a Japanese motorboat machine-gun the sinking ship. A Japanese crew briefly boarded the vessel before departing; the American flag was still flying from the bow. At 3:54 pm, the Panay rolled to starboard and sank. Two crewmen and one civilian died; 43 crew members and five civilians were wounded. The three Standard Oil tankers, the Mei Ping, Mei Hsia, and Mei An, had also been struck and severely damaged. They had been evacuating approximately 800 Chinese employees of Standard Oil and their families.

  Later that day, the same pilots bombed the British vessel SS Wantung. Colonel Kingoro Hashimoto, an Imperial Army officer in the vicinity, had also ordered his troops to fire on the Panay as it sank. Hashimoto was a founder of a right-wing secret society in Japan. He issued further orders for his forces and artillery to fire on all ships on the Yangtze "regardless of nationality." When British officers complained that their vessels had clearly displayed a British flag, Hashimoto replied, "I do not recognize any flag but my own."

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• 7. The Collapse

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  On the 11th of December, Chiang Kai-shek telegraphed Tang Shengzhi with a conditional order. "If the situation cannot be sustained," Chiang wrote, "you may retreat if necessary to regroup and prepare for a counterattack." Tang made a last-minute attempt to negotiate a temporary ceasefire through German citizens John Rabe and Eduard Sperling. When it became clear the talks could not be concluded in time, he drew up a breakout plan. All units were to commence a coordinated escape under cover of darkness at 11:00 pm on December 12, then muster in Anhui province. Just after 5:00 pm, Tang transmitted the plan to his units. He then crossed the Yangtze River himself and escaped through Pukou on the opposite bank. Japanese forces would occupy Pukou less than 24 hours later.

  The 87th Division, which had lost contact with headquarters, never received Tang's order and continued to hold its positions. Near the Yijiang Gate, a massive crowd of soldiers and civilians funneled violently through an exit with only half its width open. Among those crushed to death in the resulting stampede was Colonel Xie Chengrui of the Training Division. Barrier troops of the 36th Division posted atop the gate had not been told of Tang's orders. Mistaking parts of the crowd for deserters, they opened fire. A tank charged the barrier troops at around 9:00 pm and crushed many people until a grenade destroyed it.

  At Xiaguan harbor, those who arrived found what witnesses described as "unimaginable chaos." Tang had earlier sent the larger vessels to Hankou, leaving a severe shortage of boats. With the crowd fighting to clamber aboard any available craft, some boats became so overloaded they sank midway across the 2 km stretch of river. Soldiers clinging to improvised rafts rarely made it across; makeshift vessels broke apart in the current. Others plunged into the frigid Yangtze, clinging to logs, furniture, and scrap lumber. Most were swallowed by the river or froze before reaching the far bank. The 87th Division arrived at the Xiaguan wharves with some 3,000 men; only around 300 survived the crossing. Of the 12,500 troops in the Guangdong 66th and 83rd Corps at the start of the battle, only 3,000-4,000 made it out. China's 2nd Army, led by Xu Yuanquan, had obtained 20 private vessels ahead of time. Those ships successfully evacuated 11,851 officers and soldiers across the Yangtze before Japanese naval units closed off the route.

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• 8. After the Gates Fell

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  By late morning on the 13th of December, all major gates to the city had been captured. Tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers had already stripped off their uniforms and discarded their weapons into the streets. American journalist F. Tillman Durdin, reporting from inside the city, described it as "the wholesale undressing of an army." Japanese units immediately began systematic searches of every building in Nanjing for remaining Chinese soldiers. Criteria for identifying former fighters were often arbitrary. One Japanese company rounded up all men with "shoe sores, callouses on the face, extremely good posture, and/or sharp-looking eyes." George Fitch, head of Nanjing's YMCA, reported that "rickshaw coolies, carpenters, and other laborers are frequently taken." Buddhist burial workers from the Red Swastika Society were marched away on suspicion of being soldiers. Chinese police officers and firefighters were targeted. So were street sweepers. Chinese prisoners rounded up in these sweeps were executed en masse. The killings came to be known as the Nanjing Massacre. Contrary to General Matsui's expectation, China did not surrender. The Second Sino-Japanese War continued for eight more years, ending only with the surrender of Japan itself.

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