Nanyuan, about 10 kilometers south of Beiping, was the 29th Army’s main barracks. Japanese aircraft bombed it heavily from 0530 on 28 July, according to the American counselor of embassy, Frank Lockhart, who cabled Washington that afternoon (FRUS 1937, vol. III, doc. 290). The 20th Division attacked from the east, south and west, while the Kawabe Brigade moved from Fengtai toward Dahongmen to cut the road back to the city. The People’s Daily puts the garrison at about 20,000 men, including a training corps of about 1,500 university students, most of whom had only just learned to fire a rifle. The barracks were a flat compound without deep trenches, early bombs cut the telephone lines and the Chinese units fought separately. By about 1300 or 1400 organized resistance was over (People’s Daily, 26 May 2015; Harmsen).

Sources: FRUS 1937, vol. III, doc. 290; People’s Daily (26 May 2015); Harmsen, Shanghai 1937

Read more: Chapter 5: The Fall of Beiping and Tianjin

The first Chinese generals killed after full-scale war began. Tong Linge, 45, was the 29th Army’s deputy commander and commanded at Nanyuan; wounded in the leg early in the battle, he refused to leave and was killed during the withdrawal on the afternoon of 28 July, by a bomb in most accounts. A memorial on the Beijing street named for him shows a watch set to 1430, the time given for his death. Zhao Dengyu, 39, commanded the 132nd Division and had led the famous broadsword night attack at Xifengkou on the Great Wall in 1933; he was killed the same day on the road to Dahongmen, by gunfire or bombs depending on the account. Both were promoted posthumously to full general, Beiping named streets for them in 1946, and in 2014 both were named among China’s first 300 national anti-Japanese martyrs (Xinhua, 2025; Beijing Daily, 4 September 2025).

Sources: People’s Daily (26 May 2015); Xinhua (23 June and 9 August 2025); Beijing Daily (4 September 2025)

Read more: Chapter 5: The Fall of Beiping and Tianjin · Chapter 9: The Bridge Today

It did fight, at Nanyuan, Xiyuan, Fengtai and Langfang on 28 July, and lost. By that afternoon Song Zheyuan had lost his deputy commander, a division commander and his main barracks. Beiping had walls more than 500 years old and about 1.5 million people, but no defense against bombers and heavy guns, and Chiang Kai-shek ordered Song back to Baoding on the Beiping–Hankou railway. Song named Zhang Zizhong acting mayor and left that evening, and most of the army withdrew south overnight. Nanjing was stunned, but W. H. Donald, Chiang’s Australian adviser, told Ambassador Johnson that Chiang had regarded Beiping as lost since 1935 and that “things were really just beginning” (FRUS 1937, vol. III, doc. 314). The withdrawal saved most of the army, and it spared the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven and the city walls a battle.

Sources: FRUS 1937, vol. III, doc. 314; Chinese Wikipedia, “Pingjin zuozhan”; Wikipedia, “Battle of Beiping–Tianjin”

Read more: Chapter 5: The Fall of Beiping and Tianjin

At about 0200 on 29 July 1937 the peace preservation corps of the Japanese-sponsored East Hebei regime at Tongzhou, east of Beiping, turned on the Japanese. The mutineers attacked the small Japanese garrison detachment and the Japanese and Korean houses and shops and killed many civilians, including women and children. The most widely used figure is 223 dead out of about 385 Japanese and Korean residents, from the Japanese army’s history of 1939; other Japanese counts run from 184 to about 260 (Japanese Wikipedia, “Tsūshū jiken”). Why the corps mutinied is still argued: a mistaken Japanese bombing of its camp on 27 July, Chinese radio claims of victory, secret contacts with the 29th Army and anger over the drug trade are all cited. Japanese troops who retook the town carried out reprisals against Chinese civilians (Harmsen). In Japan the massacre fed the cry to “punish outrageous China.” It came the day after Japan’s general attack began.

Sources: Japanese Wikipedia, “Tsūshū jiken”; Wikipedia, “Tongzhou mutiny”; Harmsen, via China in WW2 (29 July 2014)

Read more: Chapter 5: The Fall of Beiping and Tianjin

Before dawn on 29 July the Chinese 38th Division under its deputy commander, Li Wentian, with peace preservation units, attacked the Japanese in Tianjin: the guard post at the main station, the garrison headquarters at Haiguangsi and the Dongjuzi airfield. Japanese aircraft and artillery answered by bombing and shelling the Chinese city, and the Chinese abandoned Tianjin and the Dagu forts on the night of 30 July. Nankai University, a center of Chinese patriotism and of research on Manchuria, was bombed on 29 July; on 30 July Japanese troops entered the campus, looted it and set fire to the surviving buildings, and the American consul general reported that the destruction was completed by artillery, bombing and fire (FRUS 1937, vol. III, doc. 321). Nankai joined Peking and Tsinghua universities in exile, from 1938 as Southwest Associated University in Kunming. A Chinese local history puts Tianjin’s civilian dead at more than 2,000.

Sources: FRUS 1937, vol. III, docs. 293 and 321; Wikipedia, “History of Nankai University”; Chinese Wikipedia, “Pingjin zuozhan”

Read more: Chapter 5: The Fall of Beiping and Tianjin

At noon on 8 August 1937 about 2,000 Japanese troops of the Kawabe Brigade, with field guns, tanks and trucks, marched into Beiping through three gates without resistance; the American embassy reported no disorder (FRUS 1937, vol. III, doc. 388). Some accounts date the formal parade to 18 August, and the best-known photograph of Japanese troops passing through Qianmen is dated 13 August. The occupiers closed the telegraph offices, told schools to stop teaching the Nationalist doctrine and went from bookstore to bookstore naming banned books. On 14 December 1937 the Japanese installed a collaborationist Provisional Government under Wang Kemin, and the city took back the name Beijing. It stayed under Japanese control for eight years. The surrender of Japanese forces in North China was accepted in the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City on 10 October 1945.

Sources: FRUS 1937, vol. III, docs. 388 and 391; Wikipedia, “Provisional Government of the Republic of China”

Read more: Chapter 5: The Fall of Beiping and Tianjin · Chapter 9: The Bridge Today

Across the whole North China plain. Tokyo had hoped a quick blow would bring Nanjing to terms; instead Japan organized the North China Area Army at the end of August and pushed along three lines. Northwest, Japanese forces broke through Nankou Pass and took Kalgan on 27 August. Southwest down the Beiping–Hankou railway, Baoding fell on 24 September. In Shanxi the Communist Eighth Route Army’s 115th Division ambushed a Japanese supply column at Pingxingguan on 25 September, China’s first success of the war, though it did not stop the advance; Taiyuan fell on 8–9 November after the hard battles at Xinkou. South down the Tianjin–Pukou railway, the Shandong governor Han Fuju abandoned Jinan, which fell on 27 December; Chiang had him executed on 24 January 1938. By year’s end Japan held the cities and railways but not the countryside (Wikipedia campaign articles).

Sources: Wikipedia, “Operation Chahar,” “Beiping–Hankou Railway Operation,” “Battle of Pingxingguan,” “Battle of Taiyuan,” “Han Fuju”

Read more: Chapter 5: The Fall of Beiping and Tianjin

Historians do not agree on exactly why Chiang Kai-shek chose to fight there, and Peter Harmsen writes that the record does not settle it. The sources point to several reasons. The creeks and paddy fields of the Yangtze delta favored a defender against Japanese tanks and trucks. A battle beside the International Settlement would be fought in front of the world’s diplomats and press, and might bring foreign pressure on Japan. And the lower Yangtze was Chiang’s own base, where a stand showed that the national government itself was fighting (Harmsen, Shanghai 1937; van de Ven, China at War). The spark was the killing of Sub-Lt. Ōyama Isao and his driver at Hongqiao aerodrome on 9 August. Fighting began in Zhabei on 13 August, and Japan answered with a field army. In September Tokyo renamed the conflict the China Incident.

Sources: Peter Harmsen, Shanghai 1937; Hans van de Ven, China at War; Mitter, Forgotten Ally

Read more: Chapter 6: Shanghai 1937

The name is used for two events. On Saturday 14 August 1937 Chinese bombers attacking the Japanese flagship Izumo on the Huangpu dropped bombs that fell short, on Nanjing Road beside the Cathay and Palace Hotels and outside the Great World amusement center, where thousands of refugees had gathered. Totals range from about 1,200 dead to about 2,000; among the foreigners killed was Robert K. Reischauer, a Princeton scholar and brother of the future ambassador to Japan. The American consul general cabled within the hour that Chinese planes were not respecting the Settlement (FRUS 1937, vol. III, doc. 453). Two weeks later, on Saturday 28 August, Japanese aircraft bombed Shanghai’s South Station, and H. S. Wong of Hearst Metrotone News photographed a baby crying alone in the wreckage. Life estimated in October that 136 million people had seen the picture (Life, 4 October 1937).

Sources: FRUS 1937, vol. III, doc. 453; University of Bristol, Historical Photographs of China; Life (4 October 1937); Harmsen

Read more: Chapter 6: Shanghai 1937

No. When Lt. Col. Xie Jinyuan’s battalion of the 88th Division moved into the five-story concrete Sihang Warehouse on the north bank of Suzhou Creek about midnight on 26 October 1937, it had about 420 men. Chinese announcements called them the “800 heroes” to make the force sound stronger, and the name stuck. They held the building in full view of the International Settlement across the creek. A Girl Guide, Yang Huimin, carried a national flag to them, and it went up on the roof on the morning of 29 October as a crowd estimated at 30,000 watched. Under British and American pressure Chiang authorized a withdrawal, and on the night of 30–31 October about 377 defenders crossed into the Settlement, where they were interned. Xie was stabbed to death by four of his own men on 24 April 1941 (Harmsen; The Paper, 2020).

Sources: Harmsen, Shanghai 1937; The Paper (2020); Sun Yuanliang’s report of 31 October 1937; Wikipedia, “Defense of Sihang Warehouse”

Read more: Chapter 6: Shanghai 1937

Japan broke the deadlock with a landing behind the Chinese line. On 5 November 1937 the Tenth Army came ashore almost unopposed at Jinshanwei on Hangzhou Bay, and on 8 November Chiang ordered a general retreat, which became a rout. Nantao, the last Chinese-held district, fell on 12 November, where a French Jesuit, Father Robert Jacquinot de Besange, had set up a refugee zone. The Japanese broke the fortified Wufu line and took Suzhou on 19 November. The cost was enormous. Chinese military losses are estimated at 187,000 to 300,000 killed and wounded, falling heavily on the German-trained divisions. Japan’s official history counts 40,672 killed and wounded by 8 November, 9,115 of them dead, though other Japanese records give more. Civilian deaths were never counted (Harmsen; Senshi sōsho, as tabulated by The Paper).

Sources: Harmsen, Shanghai 1937; Senshi sōsho, as tabulated by The Paper (Pengpai); Ristaino, The Jacquinot Safe Zone

Read more: Chapter 6: Shanghai 1937 · Chapter 7: Nanjing, December 1937

Most of Chiang’s generals and his German adviser, Alexander von Falkenhausen, told him the capital could not be held, but Chiang believed it could not be given up without a fight. Tang Shengzhi volunteered to defend it. The government announced on 20 November that it would move to Chongqing, working first from Hankou, and Chiang flew out on 7 December. On 10 December, after Tang ignored a surrender summons, Gen. Matsui Iwane ordered a general assault. Purple Mountain, Guanghua Gate and the plateau of Yuhuatai fell after hard fighting, and on the afternoon of 12 December Tang ordered a breakout. It collapsed into a stampede to the Yangtze: soldiers and civilians were crushed at Yijiang Gate and drowned trying to cross. The city fell on 13 December. Japanese records give 1,558 killed and 4,619 wounded in the battle for the city (Harmsen, Nanjing 1937).

Sources: Harmsen, Nanjing 1937; Taylor, The Generalissimo; Wikipedia, “Battle of Nanking,” summarizing Japanese records

Read more: Chapter 7: Nanjing, December 1937

For about six weeks after 13 December 1937, Japanese troops killed Chinese prisoners of war by the thousands, killed civilians in the streets and in their homes, raped women and girls on a vast scale and looted and burned much of the city. The Tokyo tribunal found that about 20,000 rapes occurred in the first month and that about one-third of the city was destroyed by fire (IMTFE judgment, ch. VIII). Men picked out as former soldiers were marched to the riverbank and shot; soldiers’ diaries describe mass executions near Mufushan on 16 and 17 December. A group of about fifteen Americans and Europeans, chaired by the German businessman John Rabe, ran a Safety Zone of about 3.86 square kilometers that sheltered 200,000 to 250,000 people. Their letters and diaries, and John Magee’s film, are among the main records of the massacre (Brook, ed., Documents on the Rape of Nanking).

Sources: IMTFE judgment, ch. VIII; Timothy Brook, ed., Documents on the Rape of Nanking; Rabe, The Good Man of Nanking; Wakabayashi, ed., The Nanking Atrocity

Read more: Chapter 7: Nanjing, December 1937

No exact count exists, and the figures differ mainly in how they define the area, the time period and the victims. The Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal of 1947 found more than 300,000, the figure the Chinese government uses. The Tokyo tribunal found more than 200,000 civilians and prisoners murdered in Nanjing and its vicinity in the first six weeks, relying largely on burial records of more than 155,000 bodies. Kasahara Tokushi gives more than 100,000 and close to 200,000 or more; Hata Ikuhiko, counting only prisoners and civilians unlawfully killed, about 38,000 to 42,000; John Rabe said in 1938 that the Europeans put it at 50,000 to 60,000. The Japanese government says that the killing of a large number of noncombatants cannot be denied but that the number is difficult to determine. All serious historians agree on the essential facts (Fogel, ed., The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography).

Sources: Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal (1947); IMTFE judgment (1948); Kasahara, Nankin jiken; Hata, Nankin jiken; Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan

Read more: Chapter 7: Nanjing, December 1937 · Chapter 9: The Bridge Today

Few of those responsible. The Tokyo tribunal acquitted Gen. Matsui Iwane, who commanded the Central China Area Army, on 37 of 38 counts but convicted him on Count 55, failing to take adequate steps to secure observance of the laws of war at Nanjing. He was hanged at Sugamo Prison on 23 December 1948. The former foreign minister Hirota Koki was convicted in part over Nanjing. Prince Asaka Yasuhiko, who commanded the Shanghai Expeditionary Army during the capture of the city, was given immunity as a member of the imperial family and never tried. China’s own Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal sentenced Lt. Gen. Tani Hisao of the 6th Division, who was shot at Yuhuatai on 26 April 1947, and in 1948 executed the two lieutenants of the newspaper “killing contest,” Mukai Toshiaki and Noda Tsuyoshi, whose case rested largely on wartime press stories (IMTFE judgment).

Sources: IMTFE judgment (1948); Wikipedia biographies of Matsui, Asaka and Tani and “Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal”

Read more: Chapter 7: Nanjing, December 1937

Yes, under the same century of treaties that put Japanese troops near the bridge. Marines had guarded the American legation in Peking since 1905, with detachments at Tianjin and Qinhuangdao. The Army’s 15th Infantry Regiment had been at Tianjin since 1912; it barricaded the foreign concessions when the fighting reached the city in July 1937 and sailed home on 4 March 1938 after 26 years. The 4th Marines had been in Shanghai’s International Settlement since 1927, reinforced in August 1937 by the 2nd Marine Brigade. The Asiatic Fleet’s Yangtze Patrol kept gunboats on the river, among them Panay. On 20 August 1937 a shell fragment killed Seaman First Class Freddie Falgout aboard the cruiser Augusta at Shanghai. The Marines left in North China in December 1941 were captured on 8 December; of 204 Marines and sailors taken, 184 came home (USMC University, Always Faithful).

Sources: USMC University Press, Always Faithful, ch. 5; 15th Infantry Regiment Association; Naval History and Heritage Command

Read more: Chapter 8: America and the World

An address Franklin D. Roosevelt gave on 5 October 1937 in Chicago, dedicating the Outer Drive Bridge in the heart of the isolationist Midwest. Without naming any country, he spoke of an “epidemic of world lawlessness,” of civilians bombed from the air and nations invaded without a declaration of war, and compared the response he had in mind to a community’s quarantine of the sick (Miller Center transcript). He proposed no sanctions, no blockade and no change in the law, and at a press conference the next day he declined to say what a quarantine would mean. Isolationists attacked the speech as a step toward war; Dorothy Borg’s 1957 study found the press reaction far more mixed than legend held. In Tokyo the Nichi Nichi called the speech imprudent (Grew to Hull, FRUS 1937, vol. III). Its practical effect was small.

Sources: Miller Center, University of Virginia, transcript; Borg, Political Science Quarterly 72 (1957); FRUS 1937, vol. III

Read more: Chapter 8: America and the World · Chapter 6: Shanghai 1937

Condemned Japan in words and did nothing to stop it. On 6 October 1937 the League Assembly adopted reports finding that Japan’s operations in China could not be justified under the treaties and recommending a meeting of the Nine-Power Treaty parties; the same day the State Department said Japan’s actions were contrary to the Nine-Power Treaty and the Kellogg–Briand Pact, the first time Washington formally named Japan a treaty breaker in this war (FRUS Japan 1931–1941, vol. I). The conference met at Brussels from 3 to 24 November. Japan refused to attend, and the American delegate, Norman H. Davis, had instructions that ruled out sanctions. On 15 November fifteen states declared that the conflict concerned all parties to the treaty, with Italy dissenting, and on 24 November the conference adjourned without measures. It never met again, and Shanghai had fallen by then.

Sources: FRUS Japan 1931–1941, vol. I; FRUS 1937, vol. IV; Nine Power Treaty Conference records; Mitter, Forgotten Ally

Read more: Chapter 8: America and the World · Chapter 6: Shanghai 1937

On 12 December 1937, the day before Nanjing fell, Japanese naval aircraft bombed and strafed the American river gunboat USS Panay and three Standard-Vacuum Oil Company tankers she was escorting about 28 miles above Nanjing. Panay had taken off the last American embassy staff and several journalists, and large American flags were spread on her awnings. The attack began at about 1327 by the Navy’s history, and she sank at 1554. Storekeeper First Class Charles L. Ensminger and the Italian journalist Sandro Sandri were mortally wounded, and Coxswain Edgar W. G. Hulsebus died in Shanghai on 19 December; the master of one tanker, Capt. Carl H. Carlson, was also killed. The Navy counts 48 wounded. The same day Japanese Army artillery under Col. Hashimoto Kingoro shelled the British gunboat Ladybird at Wuhu (NHHC, DANFS; FRUS 1937, vol. IV).

Sources: Naval History and Heritage Command, DANFS, “Panay II”; Navy casualty lists (HyperWar); FRUS 1937, vol. IV

Read more: Chapter 8: America and the World · Chapter 7: Nanjing, December 1937

Japan said it was a mistake: its aviators, acting on an Army report of Chinese troops escaping upriver in merchant ships, had not identified the vessels. The American evidence makes that hard to accept. The attack lasted more than an hour in clear weather, the flags were large, the aircraft came in low and Japanese Army motor boats also fired at the scene. Newsreel cameramen Norman Alley and Eric Mayell filmed much of it, and the footage was shown in American theaters weeks later. Okumiya Masatake, who led a squadron of dive bombers in the attack, wrote in 1953 that 24 aircraft took part, that the pilots relied on the Army’s report and did not check closely, and that it was a terrible mistake (Okumiya, Proceedings, June 1953). Many historians conclude that some Japanese officers knew or should have known the ships were neutral; no document has proved an order from above.

Sources: Okumiya Masatake with Roger Pineau, U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings (June 1953); NHHC, DANFS; Wikipedia, “USS Panay incident”

Read more: Chapter 8: America and the World

Because the American public did not want war, and Japan apologized at once and paid. Foreign Minister Hirota Koki called on Ambassador Joseph Grew to apologize, a formal note accepting the American demands reached Washington on 24 December 1937, and on 22 April 1938 Japan paid an indemnity of $2,214,007.36 (NHHC, DANFS). The mood at home showed in Congress. Rep. Louis Ludlow’s proposed constitutional amendment, requiring a national referendum before a declaration of war except in case of invasion, had been bottled up in committee, but in the weeks around the sinking a discharge petition forced a vote. Roosevelt fought it, and on 10 January 1938 the House voted 209 to 188 against bringing it to the floor, a margin of 21 votes (Council on Foreign Relations). The Navy Cross went to 26 men for 12 December 1937, including two British officers.

Sources: NHHC, DANFS; Council on Foreign Relations, “TWE Remembers: The Ludlow Amendment”; Home of Heroes, Navy Cross roll

Read more: Chapter 8: America and the World

Step by step, as Washington moved from words to money and trade. A “moral embargo” on aircraft sales to nations bombing civilians began on 1 July 1938. The Export-Import Bank lent China $25 million in December 1938. On 26 July 1939 Hull gave notice ending the 1911 commercial treaty, which lapsed in January 1940. Export controls on oil products and scrap followed in July 1940, and a scrap embargo on 26 September, as Japan entered northern Indochina and signed the Tripartite Pact. China became eligible for Lend-Lease in May 1941. When Japan moved into southern Indochina, Roosevelt froze Japanese assets on 26 July 1941, and American oil stopped. Japan would not leave China; the United States would not settle without it. Hull’s note of 26 November asked for withdrawal from China and Indochina, and on 7 December Japan struck (FRUS Japan 1931–1941, vol. II; Office of the Historian).

Sources: FRUS Japan 1931–1941, vol. II; Office of the Historian, “Japan, China, the United States and the Road to Pearl Harbor, 1937–41”

Read more: Chapter 8: America and the World

No. The American Volunteer Group was organized in 1941 by Claire Lee Chennault, a retired Army Air Corps captain who had been Chiang Kai-shek’s air adviser since 1937. With Roosevelt’s approval it recruited about 100 pilots, 60 from the Navy and Marine Corps and 40 from the Army Air Corps, and some 200 ground crew through a private contractor, the Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company. The men resigned from the services to join, were employed by the company and served under Chinese authority. The group bought 100 Curtiss P-40 fighters, of which 99 were delivered, and trained at Toungoo in Burma. It first fought on 20 December 1941, twelve days after Pearl Harbor, intercepting Japanese bombers attacking Kunming, and was replaced by the U.S. Army Air Forces’ 23rd Fighter Group on 4 July 1942 (Ford, Flying Tigers).

Sources: Daniel Ford, Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and His American Volunteers; Wikipedia, “Flying Tigers”

Read more: Chapter 8: America and the World

China lost its cities but did not surrender. On 16 January 1938 Konoe announced that Japan would no longer deal with Chiang’s government. Chinese armies under Li Zongren won their first large victory at Taierzhuang between 22 March and 7 April 1938, though Xuzhou fell on 19 May. Japan took Wuhan in October 1938, and the government moved up the Yangtze to Chongqing, which Japanese aircraft raided 268 times by incomplete count between 1938 and 1944. From 1939 the war settled into stalemate: Japan held the cities and railways, China the interior. After Pearl Harbor China had allies and American aid, but Japan’s conquest of Burma cut the Burma Road. In 1944 Operation Ichigo, about 510,000 Japanese troops by Japanese records, overran much of central and southern China and the American air bases there (Mitter, Forgotten Ally; van de Ven, China at War).

Sources: Mitter, Forgotten Ally; van de Ven, China at War; Wikipedia, “Battle of Taierzhuang,” “Battle of Wuhan,” “Bombing of Chongqing,” “Operation Ichi-Go”

Read more: Chapter 9: The Bridge Today

One of the most destructive decisions of the war. After Xuzhou fell, Japanese armies headed for Zhengzhou, where the Beiping–Hankou railway crossed the Longhai line, and beyond it Wuhan. To stop them, Chiang Kai-shek approved breaching the Yellow River dikes. After a failed attempt at Zhaokou, Nationalist troops broke the dike at Huayuankou, north of Zhengzhou, on 9 June 1938, digging by hand when explosives were not enough. The river poured southeast across the plain. A postwar survey by Han Qitong and Nan Zhongwan, published in 1948, counted 893,303 dead in Henan, Anhui and Jiangsu and 3,911,354 people displaced; other historians, including Micah Muscolino and Diana Lary, give more than half a million dead. The flood delayed the Japanese drive and bought time to evacuate Wuhan. The river was returned to its old course only in 1947 (disasterhistory.org; The China Project, 2023).

Sources: Han Qitong and Nan Zhongwan (1948), via disasterhistory.org; The China Project (14 June 2023); Muscolino, The Ecology of War in China

Read more: Chapter 9: The Bridge Today

After Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s surrender on 15 August 1945 and the instrument was signed aboard USS Missouri on 2 September, with Gen. Xu Yongchang signing for China, the Nationalist government ordered celebrations on 3 September, the origin of Victory Day. The surrender of the Japanese forces in China was signed in Nanjing, the city Japan had taken in 1937, at 0900 on 9 September 1945, in the auditorium of the Central Military Academy. Gen. Okamura Yasuji, commander in chief of the China Expeditionary Army, signed, and his chief of staff presented the document to Gen. He Yingqin. The hour was chosen with care: the ninth hour of the ninth day of the ninth month, since “nine” in Chinese sounds like “long-lasting.” More than a million Japanese troops in China surrendered. On 10 October the North China forces surrendered in the Forbidden City (Mitter; van de Ven).

Sources: Mitter, Forgotten Ally; van de Ven, China at War; Wikipedia, “Surrender ceremony of the Second Sino-Japanese War”

Read more: Chapter 9: The Bridge Today · Chapter 7: Nanjing, December 1937

No exact figure exists. Western historians most often give 14 to 20 million Chinese dead from 1937 to 1945, most of them civilians, and Diana Lary gives 20 to 30 million. Rana Mitter describes a war that killed up to 20 million and created 80 to 100 million refugees (Mitter, Forgotten Ally). The People’s Republic’s official figure, repeated by Xi Jinping on 3 September 2015, is more than 35 million Chinese military and civilian casualties, a figure that counts the wounded as well as the dead and runs from 1931. For the armies, the Nationalist government’s official tally was 1,319,958 killed, 1,761,335 wounded and 130,116 missing; Western estimates of Nationalist dead run to two million or more, and Communist sources give about 160,000 killed in their own forces. Most Chinese deaths came not in battle but from flood, famine, disease and flight.

Sources: Mitter, Forgotten Ally; Diana Lary, The Chinese People at War; Wikipedia, “Second Sino-Japanese War” (infobox figures)

Read more: Chapter 9: The Bridge Today

Japan’s records are fuller than China’s, though not simple. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare counts 465,700 Japanese war dead in China proper, including about 23,500 lost at sea, and a further 245,400 in Manchuria and at Nomonhan, most of them from the Soviet invasion of August 1945 and the internment that followed rather than from the war that began at the bridge (MHLW, overseas war dead by region). Some reference works give a range of 455,700 to 700,000 Japanese military dead in the China war. Individual campaigns show how the figures were built: Japan’s official history counts 9,115 killed at Shanghai by 8 November 1937, and the 11th Army counted 7,092 killed and 19,112 wounded in the Wuhan campaign of 1938, with more than 100,000 cases of illness. The collaborationist Chinese armies lost somewhere between about 290,000 and 575,000 men.

Sources: Japan, Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare; Senshi sōsho; Wikipedia, “Battle of Wuhan” and “Second Sino-Japanese War”

Read more: Chapter 9: The Bridge Today

Because the sources count different things. Some count deaths, others casualties, killed and wounded together; the People’s Republic’s 35 million is casualties from 1931, while Western totals of 14 to 20 million are deaths, mostly from 1937. Some count soldiers killed in action and leave out those who died of disease or hunger in the ranks. Some cover China south of the Great Wall, others Manchuria too. Then there is who did the counting: the Nationalist and Communist armies kept separate books, wartime surveys of floods and famines could count refugees and lost births among the dead, and each side’s reports of enemy dead were often inflated. Battle figures vary most of all: Japanese losses at Taierzhuang are given as anything from under 2,500 casualties (Jiang Keshi, from Japanese records) to about 20,000 killed and wounded (Harmsen). This collection gives the range and names the source (Chapter 9).

Sources: Mitter; Lary; Anthony Garnaut (2013); Jiang Keshi; Harmsen; Japan, Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare

Read more: Chapter 9: The Bridge Today · Chapter 7: Nanjing, December 1937

As the start of the national war of resistance. For three decades after 1949 the People’s Republic told the war mainly as a Communist story; from the 1980s, Mitter and others note, it became a national story of shared suffering that included the Nationalist armies (Mitter, China’s Good War). The national war museum opened inside Wanping on 7 July 1987, the 50th anniversary, and the anniversary is marked there each year. On 7 July 2014 Xi Jinping led other senior leaders to the bridge. That February the National People’s Congress Standing Committee made 3 September Victory Day and 13 December the national memorial day for the victims of the Nanjing Massacre, and in September 2014 the Ministry of Civil Affairs published a first list of 300 anti-Japanese martyrs, nearly a third of them Nationalist officers. Military parades marked 3 September in 2015 and 2025, and since 2017 textbooks have taught a fourteen-year war from 1931.

Sources: Mitter, China’s Good War; China Daily/Xinhua (28 February 2014); Phoenix News (1 September 2014); China Digital Times

Read more: Chapter 9: The Bridge Today

In two strands that do not fit easily together. In 1937 Taiwan was a Japanese colony, as it had been since 1895, and Japan’s health ministry records that 207,183 Taiwanese served in the Japanese armed forces in the Second World War and 30,304 were killed or went missing. For many families, the war was one in which their fathers and grandfathers wore Japanese uniforms. The other strand came with the Nationalist government, which took over Taiwan in October 1945 and retreated there in 1949. For the Republic of China the war of resistance was its own war and victory; it made 3 September Victory Day in 1946, and the date is still Armed Forces Day in Taiwan. On 3 September 2026 President Lai Ching-te led the autumn ceremony at the National Revolutionary Martyrs’ Shrine in Taipei (Focus Taiwan). Retrocession Day, 25 October, was restored as a public holiday from 2026.

Sources: Focus Taiwan (3 September 2026); Wikipedia, “Taiwanese Imperial Japan Serviceman” and “Retrocession Day”

Read more: Chapter 9: The Bridge Today

As part of a long argument about how to teach and remember the years from 1931 to 1945. School textbooks must be approved by the Ministry of Education, and the historian Ienaga Saburo sued the government three times from 1965 over its screening of his account of the war; the last case ended in 1997. In 1982 reports that the ministry was pressing authors to call Japan’s “aggression” in China an “advance” drew protests from China and South Korea. Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo is the other flashpoint: in 1978 it secretly enshrined fourteen men convicted or accused of Class A war crimes, and visits by prime ministers, among them Nakasone in 1985, Koizumi six times from 2001 to 2006 and Abe in 2013, drew protests from Beijing and Seoul. No emperor has visited since 1975 (Stanford SPICE; Wikipedia, “Yasukuni Shrine”).

Sources: Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education; Wikipedia, “Yasukuni Shrine”

Read more: Chapter 9: The Bridge Today

Japanese prime ministers have expressed remorse and apology several times. On 3 May 1995 Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi visited the bridge and the Wanping museum, where he wrote in the visitors’ book a pledge to face history and keep peace between the two countries; the inscription is on display (Christian Science Monitor, 8 May 1995). On 15 August 1995 his government’s statement said Japan, following a mistaken national policy, had caused tremendous damage and suffering through colonial rule and aggression, and offered a “heartfelt apology” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan). Later governments reaffirmed it, though Abe Shinzo’s statement of 2015 referred to past apologies without repeating them in his own voice. In 2025 Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru used the word “remorse” in the 15 August address. Many Chinese see Yasukuni visits and textbook disputes as undercutting the apologies.

Sources: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Murayama Statement (15 August 1995); Christian Science Monitor (8 May 1995); Associated Press (October 2025)

Read more: Chapter 9: The Bridge Today

Yes, on foot. The bridge and Wanping are in Beijing’s Fengtai District, about 15 kilometers southwest of Tiananmen Square; Beijing Subway Line 16 stops at Wanpingcheng station, and buses stop at the sculpture park. The bridge has been closed to motor vehicles since 1985 and is a ticketed heritage site; Beijing’s tourism office lists admission at 20 yuan and hours of 0700–1900 from April through October and 0800–1700 from November through March. At the east end stand the Kangxi stele on its stone tortoise and Qianlong’s “Morning Moon over Lugou” stele. From the bridge you can see the railway bridge upstream, on the line of the old Beiping–Hankou railway fought over on 8 July. The site can close in floods, as it did in August 2023, so check before you go, and allow at least half a day for the bridge, the town and the museum (Visit Beijing).

Sources: Visit Beijing, Lugou Bridge listing; Wikipedia, “Wanping Fortress”; People’s Daily (14 August 2023)

Read more: Chapter 9: The Bridge Today · Chapter 2: The Bridge, the Town and the Garrisons · Atlas

The Museum of the War of Chinese People’s Resistance against Japanese Aggression, China’s national museum of the war, at No. 101 Wanping Chengnei Street. Planning began in 1984, construction in 1986, and the museum opened on 7 July 1987, the 50th anniversary of the incident; later phases were completed in 1997 and 2005, and a new permanent exhibition opened for the 70th anniversary of victory in 2015. Its front steps come in two flights, of eight and fourteen steps, for the eight-year and fourteen-year war. By its builder’s account it had received more than 37 million visitors by 2021 and holds more than 25,000 objects. Admission is free; it is open 0900–1630 and closed on Mondays except on holidays and major anniversaries. Bring a passport and check whether advance booking is required (Visit Beijing; Wikipedia, museum article).

Sources: Visit Beijing, museum listing; Wikipedia, museum article; China State Construction, via The Paper

Read more: Chapter 9: The Bridge Today · Chapter 3: The Night of 7 July 1937

Start at the walls of Wanping: on the south wall a plaque marks damage from Japanese shelling in July 1937, and a row of inscribed black stone drums along its foot tells the story of the war. Just south of the walls is the War of Resistance Sculpture Park, opened on 15 August 2000, with 38 bronze columns about 4.3 meters tall and a sculpted “Awakened Lion of Lugou” at its center. A short distance east of the town, on the road toward Dawayao, is the tomb of Gen. Zhao Dengyu, killed on 28 July 1937, rebuilt in 1980 and protected as a Beijing municipal relic (Xinhua, 2025). In central Beijing, Tong Linge Road and Zhao Dengyu Road in Xicheng District carry the generals’ names. The Japanese exercise ground and the Longwangmiao embankment lay north of Wanping, but the ground has changed beyond recognition (Visit Beijing; Art@Site).

Sources: Visit Beijing; Art@Site; Xinhua (23 June 2025); Beijing Daily (4 September 2025)

Read more: Chapter 9: The Bridge Today · Chapter 5: The Fall of Beiping and Tianjin

The collection’s chapters each end with a guide to the ground. In Shenyang, the 9.18 Historical Museum near the Liutiaohu site tells the story of the Mukden Incident, and in Changchun Puyi’s palace survives as a museum. In Shanghai, the Sihang Warehouse Battle Memorial, opened on 13 August 2015, keeps the shell holes in its west wall, and the Bund hotels still face the corner where the bombs fell on 14 August 1937. In Nanjing, the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre at Jiangdongmen opened on 15 August 1985 on the site of a mass grave, and the John Rabe House on the Nanjing University campus opened as a memorial in 2006. There is no marker on the Yangtze where Panay sank. The road ends at the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor (Chapters 1, 6, 7 and 8).

Sources: Hiroshima Peace Media Center; Shanghai municipal heritage listings; Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre; John Rabe House

Read more: Chapter 1: From Mukden to the Bridge · Chapter 6: Shanghai 1937 · Chapter 7: Nanjing, December 1937 · Chapter 8: America and the World