The Nanking Massacre stands as one of lesser-known tragedies stemming from World War II, which rudely introduced the world to industrialized, systemic genocide via the death camps of Germany. However, unlike the organized extermination carried out by the Germans, the Nanking Massacre was a depraved six-week orgy of rape, torture, and murder resulting in thousands upon thousands of deaths of Chinese military personnel and civilians. Despite the passage of sixty-three years since the tragedy, this issue has continued to be a factor in Chinese-Japanese relations resulting in numerous arguments among historians and government officials of both countries.

Often history texts and teachers have taught that World War II began the morning of September 1,1939. While this assessment can be deemed appropriate for the

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"200,000 civilians could not have possibly have been massacred unless ghosts were killed."

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European theater of operations, the Asian/Pacific theater began in 1931, with the takeover of Manchuria in northern China and the establishment of the puppet state of Manchukuo in 1932. Historically referred to as the "China Incident" or the "Marco Polo Bridge Incident" by Japan, the full-fledged campaign of the Japanese Imperial army operating in China began in 1935 and reached its pinnacle of brutality culminating in the annihilation of the city of Nanking in 1937. For six weeks, the citizens of Nanking were subjected to wholesale slaughter, rape, and torture.

However, herein lies the matter of contention between historians and officials from China and Japan. First, there is a large debate over the actual number of casualties. China places the official figure in the vicinity of 300,000 casualties, the International Military Tribunal of the Far East estimating 260,000 casualties, some historians believe upwards of 340,000, some Japanese right-wing nationalists claim 40,000, and some "revisionist" scholars and historians claiming that only forty-seven civilians were killed. Second, the ultra-nationalist, right wing factions and historians (branded "revisionists") within Japan maintain that the Nanking Massacre is a fabrication, a form of "victor's justice", heaped upon Japan to shame the wartime legacy. They claim that such an event could not possibly have occurred.

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