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The Nanjing Massacre: documentary records of civilian killings and looting

Civilian killings and looting followed the Japanese occupation of Nanjing in December 1937. Contemporary documents and the Tokyo tribunal judgment record these acts. This entry examines records, not the total death toll.

Facts and evidence

Nanking Outrages, dated 10 January 1938 and held by Yale Divinity Library, records killings of civilians and looting of homes and shops. Written during the events, it mixes observations, reports from others and estimates; not every incident can be treated as witnessed personally by its author. Source 1

The Nanjing section of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East judgment records the Japanese entry into the city on 13 December 1937. Printed page 1012 describes killings of men, women and children and the looting of residential and commercial properties. This is a postwar judicial finding and is identified separately from the contemporary document. Source 2

Scope and limitations

This entry addresses records of civilian killings and looting without adopting the documents’ numerical estimates. The two documents differ in date and purpose, but the judgment may draw on testimony from foreigners in Nanjing; their underlying evidence cannot be assumed to be wholly non-overlapping.

Yale’s catalogue places NMP0113 under Bates, while a handwritten attribution on the first scanned page names Lewis C. Smythe. Authorship remains unresolved. This entry identifies the document by title, date and archival reference rather than assigning a definite author. Readers can examine both the catalogue and scan.