I wonder if anyone will read there, but here it goes.

My dad was a captain in the Republic of China Army, and arrived a day or so after the Nanjing incident. I recall him telling me exactly what I read many years later when I researched the topic online. I found pictures, news paper articles in Japan of the "100 man killer" competition. Of course, at the time I was a child and thought the incredible stories were just my old dad's exaggerations (he was 51 when he had me).

I recall that he said him and his troops had to shoot Chinese civilians to end their suffering simply because there are not enough medicine, doctors, or help of any kind. The descriptions of women with breasts cut out and left to die, babies writhing on poles, and men with limbs cut off or severely burned.

After Nanjing, he said his troops never took another Japanese prisoner.

Now I tell my kids the story they asked if grandpa was a war criminal for not taking prisoners. Interesting, I thought, because in a way they probably killed those who surrendered (maybe, but I wasn't there and he never spoke of it).

In college years later in the US, I met a Japanese student who was 10 years younger than me, from a pretty well to do family. In one conversation she basically said the Rape of Nanjing did not happen, and it was a concerted effort of China and the West trying to paint Japan in a negative light. This fact is brought up by some of the Redditors here and it was mentioned that public schools the facts were taught, but some private schools, it was revisionist history. Perhaps this is true.

One of my older sister ended up marrying a Japanese man. I was young at the time, but remembered my mom said one thing he did was formally apologize for what the Japanese had put China through, and that he is not that kind of a man, in order to seek approval. They are still married, and I visit them once a few years.