Below is a link to “The Nanking Massacre” reading. Shortly after invading China in 1937, Japanese forces attacked the capital city of Nanking, beginning in December 1937. More than 300,000 Chinese troops and civilians were slaughtered by the Japanese over a six-week period. Frank Tillman Durdin was a New York Times correspondent covering the Second Sino-Japanese War when the attack on Nanking occurred. He and other Western journalists chose to stay behind in Nanking to cover the massacre. Durdin’s article was one of the first news articles published in the Western media about the massacre. Eventually Tillman and other American journalists managed to escape to Shanghai.
Please read “The Nanking Massacre” and answer the following discussion questions in no less than 200 words.
Link (https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/nanking.asp)
Source: “The Nanking Massacre, 1937,” Internet History Sourcebook
Discussion Questions:
1. According to this eyewitness report, what atrocities were conducted by the Japanese in Nanking?
2. In what ways were Americans, Europeans, and other foreigners involved in the Nanking Massacre?
3. How would the Nanking Massacre impact Sino-Japanese relations throughout the 20th
century and even into the 21st century?
