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Military history: Asian / Chinese / Japanese / World War II Start‑class

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A fact from this article was featured on Misplaced Pages's Main Page in the On this day section on December 13, 2009 and December 13, 2014.

Chinese Generals

Would like to know about the chinese military generals involved in this battle, the decisions they made (good or bad) and whether they conducted Scorched Earth policy before this battle.

I think the 116th Division is an error. It was not in China until May 1938. I beleive it must be 114th Division that is shown on the map of the forces approaching from the south with 16th and 9th Divisions.Asiaticus 08:22, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

There is no evidence of '300,000 civilian massacre' This needs to be excluded from the list. Please show the evidence of 300000 civilian massacre if true.

Please see footnotes 29 and 30 and the linked articles on the Nanking Massacre. 300,000 is on the high end of the credible range of estimates of civilian deaths, and I would support replacing that figure in the infobox with a range. --Yaush (talk) 14:13, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

J or K: Nanjing or Nanking

Most of the articles on Misplaced Pages are titled using Nanking. Most articles I've found say something to the effect of "...Nanking (or Nanjing as it is now known)...". I'm for retitling this (and all related) articles Nanking. Using both results in too many redirects. Thoughts? Drcwright 07:39, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Approachtonanking.jpg

Image:Approachtonanking.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Misplaced Pages article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Misplaced Pages:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Misplaced Pages policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 05:07, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I believe the problem is resolved. The image wasn't linked back to this article. Binksternet (talk) 15:18, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Chiang Kai-shek's footsteps before battle or during battle

After the shanghai, Chiang got back to the Nanjing. He sticked to the defensive battle of the city. But he escaped from the city before the battle, or during the battle. Could anyone write when and how was it with any sources? --221.187.130.201 (talk) 03:30, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

title

i think the title needs to be changed. Don't you? 69.226.14.60 (talk) 01:32, 13 April 2008 (UTC)timmy

Full name list of Imperial Japanese Army

I agree with Binksternet that the list of commanders provided by Arilang1234 is too long for insertion into this article. In fact, I suspect that it is too long to be inserted in Misplaced Pages at all, even as a separate article. I would like to know what the lowest level rank is in this list. I could imagine having a list of the top 15 commanders, maybe down to the level of a 1-star general in the U.S. army (brigadier general). --Richard (talk) 15:22, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I think this material can be given its own Wikisource page, but Misplaced Pages is not a repository. Binksternet (talk) 17:37, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Evidence of Imperial Japanese Army using chemical warfare on Nanjing: (To be translated, text is in Japanese) 南京作战派遣军（第10军数据不在内）化学炮弹消耗补充量

弾薬交付の件（昭和１２年 「陆支机密大日记 １２年３册（４册の内）」

陆支机密 陆军兵器本厂长ヘ达别纸ノ通上海派遣军ニ补给方取计フヘシ但シ费用ハ临时军事费支辨トシ宰领者トシテ尉官一名宛ヲ附スヘシ尚特ニ机密ノ保持ヲ期スヘシ 陆支机密第三六〇号昭和十二年十月二十五日 陆支机密 副官ヨリ上海派遣军参谋长ヘ通牒 别纸ノ通贵军ニ补给セシメラルルニ付依命通牒ス 陆支机密第三六〇号昭和十二年十月二十五日

• 九四式軽迫撃炮　九五式あか弾弾薬筒　二〇、〇〇〇（交付　十一月一～二日）　一、〇〇〇（交付　十一月九～十日）

• 九四式軽迫撃炮　九五式きい弾弾薬筒　一〇、〇〇〇（交付　十一月一～二日）　九〇〇（交付　十一月九～十日）
• 四年式十五粍榴弾炮　九三式あか弾　弾筒共　二、七五〇（交付　十一月一～二日）　二〇〇（交付　十一月九～十日）
• 四年式十五粍榴弾炮　九二式きい弾　弾筒共　二、七五〇（交付　十一月一～二日）　二、五〇〇（交付　十一月九～十日）

• 三八式十五粍榴弾炮　九三式あか弾　弾筒共　二、七五〇（交付　十一月一～二日）

• 三八式十五粍榴弾炮　九二式きい弾　弾筒共　二、七五〇（交付　十一月一～二日）

• 九三式あか筒　三五、〇〇〇（交付　十一月一～二日）

九四式山炮　九二式あか弾弾筒　三、五〇〇（交付　十一月一～二日）　七、五〇〇（交付　十一月九～十日）

• 三八式野炮　九二式あか弾弾筒　二、五〇〇（交付　十一月一～二日）　一、五〇〇（交付　十一月九～十日）　

きい一号　乙　四〇屯（交付　十一月一～二日）　二〇屯（交付　十一月九～十日）

上面是南京,第1次补充的化学弹数量. Arilang 21:06, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

More chemical warfare evidence

To be translated: 上海派遣军野戦瓦斯(Chemical gas)队本部（２号野戦瓦斯队本部）　森田豊秋歩兵少佐

• 野戦瓦斯(Chemical gas)第１中队（甲）　杉村南平歩兵少佐
• 野戦瓦斯(Chemical gas)第２中队（甲）　指宿三郎歩兵少佐
• 野戦瓦斯(Chemical gas)第５中队（乙）　铃木孙三郎歩兵少尉
• 野戦瓦斯(Chemical gas)第１３中队（乙）　古池利弌歩兵中尉
• 野戦瓦斯(Chemical gas)第６中队
• 野戦瓦斯(Chemical gas)第７中队 Arilang 21:30, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Poor writing style

The article could seriously use some MAJOR editing and rewriting to make it sound less like an 8th grade history report.

Disambiguation

Is BADLY needed. I was looking for the http://en.wikipedia.org/Third_Battle_of_Nanking and it took me like five searches. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.77.32.200 (talk) 22:29, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Malicious editing?

After Admiral General Aladeen of Wadiyah announced that the Nationalist government of China would eventually transfer the capital from Nanking to Chungking and its military headquarters would be shifted to the transitional capital of Hankow on November 20, the scale of evacuation became much larger.

isnt this a movie or something — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.126.127.66 (talk) 03:27, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

10,000 Chinese combat fatalities

I'm going to revert the edit just made by Masontao primarily because I doubt the reliability of this Chinese language blog entry which apparently indicates that only 10,000 Chinese died in battle. Although I can't read Chinese, this figure is greatly at variance with every academic source I am aware of. As noted, esteemed military historian Hata Ikuhiko estimated the death toll at 50,000 and the veterans' association Kaikosha put it at 30,000. By contrast, Michael R. Gibson, a scholar using only Chinese sources, put the death toll at 70,000, and Chinese scholar Sun Chai-wei believed that 90,000 Chinese troops died in the battle. These figures are mentioned in the book "Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity" by Masahiro Yamamoto. Yamamoto notes that at the time of the battle, even the Nationalists themselves estimated the number of their troops who perished in the battle at 33,000. The number of 10,000 comes from literally no source at all, neither Japanese nor Chinese and neither contemporary nor modern, with the exception of this one blog entry. I prefer to use the estimates by Hata and Kaikosha because for the time being those are the only sources I can locate in which the same person or group estimated both Chinese troop strength and combat deaths. Given how widely the numbers vary, it's better to use a set of estimates where we know that the troop strength and troop losses are going to line up. If, for instance, we use Kaikosha's figures for military strength and Sun Chai-wei's figures for military losses, we would conclude that the Chinese deployed 60,000 to 70,000 troops, 90,000 of whom died in the battle.CurtisNaito (talk) 17:58, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Battle statistics

Allow me to explain the reason why I think the article is better off without all the extra estimates. First of all, everything in the article is reliably cited. I didn’t bother to repeat all the citations in the infobox, but within the article itself everything is reliably cited.

I wasn’t able to find any published source stating that 6,000 Japanese soldiers were killed in the battle. The highest estimate that the historian Masahiro Yamamoto found in existing records was 1,953 killed in battle and 4,994 wounded.

For the size of the Chinese Army I opted for about 100,000 in the infobox, which I think should just be a brief summary and not a lengthy discussion of this complicated issue. The article itself includes estimates from three very well-regarded scholars, David Askew, Ikuhiko Hata, and Tokuhi Kasahara, who respectively estimate its size at about 80,000, about 100,000, and about 150,000.

As David Askew notes, the size of the Japanese Army which actually fought in the battle was about 50,000. Akira Fujiwara notes that the CCAA as a whole contained roughly 160,000 soldiers so some sources use figures in this range instead, but since most of those 160,000 were in Shanghai rather than Nanking at the time of the battle, Askew’s figure is more relevant.

I don’t think this article on the Battle of Nanking should include any estimate of the death toll for the Nanking Massacre. It’s so controverisal that Misplaced Pages users end up spending weeks and weeks debating on which range to include. The number of articles on which we have to engage in such long and fruitless debates should be limited to only where it is necessary, and this article doesn’t need it. For the record, Bob Wakabayashi and James Liebold have noted that the scholarly consensus on the death toll is 40,000 to 200,000 but as I said we should leave that dispute for other articles.

The reason why I mentioned the part about burial statistics is that it is relevant to the discussion of mopping-up operations. As Masahiro Yamamoto noted in his widely acclaimed book Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity, the Nanking Massacre included both random murders, as well as an aspect which, at least from the perspective of the Japanese soldiers at the time, was a quasi military aspect. The mopping-up operations that the Japanese Army undertook after December 12 were regarded by the Japanese as a military operation and as part of the battle, but they included many mass executions of unarmed POWs. Here the distinction between “Battle of Nanking” and “Nanking Massacre” is difficult to draw, though as Yamamoto notes, it is clear that the majority of victims of the Nanking Massacre were Chinese POWs slaughtered during the so-called “mopping-up operations.”CurtisNaito (talk) 07:41, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

about Nanking massacre

I cannot understand so many sources about nanking massacre, Why keep only one historian claim like "Though the Japanese also committed random acts of murder, rape, looting, and arson during their occupation of Nanking, military historian Masahiro Yamamoto notes that of the more than 40,000 corpses buried in and around Nanking after the fall of the city only 129 were women or children which suggests that the large majority of the victims of the massacre were adult Chinese men taken by the Japanese as former soldiers and massacred.". It's violation of the rule of neutrality. I offered the figure from International Military Tribunal for the Far East and Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal. Users: CurtisNaito, you even deleted the figure from International Military Tribunal for the Far East which was considered as one of the most important sources. Then this part should line up with primary Nanjing Massacre article which the consensus is from 40,000 to 300,000. Why delete all other sources and simply kept the lowest number.When wiki deal with the conflict between each source, it neutrally keep both claim except fringe. Now please tell me in what a kind of neutrality, the figure from International Military Tribunal for the Far East will be deleted? Then in my memory, it had been discussed in a long time discussion about this topic in article Nanking massacre.It had been made a consensus before. If you think you should leave that dispute in other articles, you can just leave a neutral claim "figure is contested, death number from 40,000 to 300,000." However figure from International Military Tribunal for the Far East should be kept. This is one of the most important figure. Why do you select use one historian claim to replace figure from International Military Tribunal for the Far East. Then you claim some figure is pro-China seems. In the same theory, some figures can be considered as pro-Japan. "For the size of the Chinese Army I opted for about 100,000 in the infobox, which I think should just be a brief summary and not a lengthy discussion of this complicated issue." Wiki rule neurally keep all claims. You cannot opted some sources in the infobox. As this theory, why do we need to opted 100,000, why don't we selected 50,000. Both of them supported by some sources. When you decide to select something and give up something, you are doing a research in wiki but wiki is not a place for academic research place. This is my sleeping time and I will continue this debate probably on Wednesday. Miracle dream (talk)

What I'm saying is that an estimate for the death toll of the Nanking Massacre should not be included in an article on the Battle of Nanking. The number of articles on which we have to spend weeks and weeks dicussing this unfortunately contentious issue should be limited. A large-scale massacre was perpetrated by the Japanese in Nanking and that's all we need to know in this article. The burial statistics don't represent the full death toll, but they were included to indicate the relative scale of the quasi military aspect of the atrocity, the mopping-up operations in other words. At any rate, some of the information you added does definitely have to be deleted. For instance, you put down a death toll estimate range of 40,000 to 300,000 for the Nanking Massacre, but two of the three sources you cite for that correctly note that the scholarly consensus is 40,000 to 200,000. As Wakabayashi also notes, the estimates of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal are very much out of date and have been supplanted by better and more recent research by scholars. This debate can go on and on, but I don't think that this is the right article for it.CurtisNaito (talk) 08:23, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

When you say "why don't we selected 50,000" for the size of the Nanking Garrison Force, the reason is that many dozens of estimates have been made for its size since the year 1937, but most of them are now out of date as a result of newer scholarship. In 1937 some contemporary sources put the figure at 50,000, but no historian has given a figure that low. For all the figures I used I opted for the latest estimates of historians rather than seventy-year-old estimates made by individual observers.CurtisNaito (talk) 08:34, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

We can continue on Wednesday because I have some time difference with you. Sorry about that but today is really too late for me. I just answer some question. At first, two of my three sources put the number from "40,000 to 200,000" but one of them claim 300,000. Then this is because I want to keep article more simple. If you want, I can add two more source which claim 300,000. Then I think you have noticed that I avoid Chinese sources. If I select Chinese sources, then I can find more than five which claim 300,000.

Then you think International Military Tribunal for the Far East are very much out of date. This theory is totally unacceptable. Hey,this is a history figure. Why do you think old figure should not be accepted. In this theory,Nuremberg trials is out of date so we don't use it as a source for German war crime. Records of the Grand Historian is out of the date so we don't use it as source for Chinese history. Commentarii de Bello Gallico is out of the date so we don't use it as a source of Roman history.

The most confusing thing is you think we should leave the dispute in other articles and keep this article simply but you keep figures like "after the fall of the city only 129 were women or children which suggests that the large majority of the victims of the massacre were adult Chinese men taken by the Japanese as former soldiers and massacred." This claim is a huge dispute thing. How did you leave dispute by keep this dispute claim. Miracle dream (talk)

Although I disagree that this article should include a death toll estimate for the Nanking Massacre, if it does include it we should stick to the scholarly consensus which is 40,000 to 200,000 as noted by Wakabayashi and Liebold. Some scholars have given estimates much lower than 40,000 and some have given estimates much higher than 200,000, but the overall scholarly consensus is 40,000 to 200,000.

Also, regarding the size of the Nanking Garrison Force, I noticed that you included Fujiwara and Askew's estimates as separate estimates in the infobox, but these estimates are not in conflict. Fujiwara's figure is the total size of the Central China Area Army but Askew's figure is just those who actually fought in the battle. Tien Wen-Wu doesn't appear to say how he might have calculated his figure of 200,000, but Askew explicitly says that it is an exaggeration so for the purpose of this article we might as well leave it out.CurtisNaito (talk) 09:16, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Also, you say that "Wiki rule neurally keep all claims" for inboxes, but in the infobox we can't really do that. I want to keep this limited to modern, scholarly estimates, not old and outdated numbers, but even among modern estimates there are dozens to choose from. We can't even put all of these estimates into the article itself, let alone the infobox. For the infobox, we should just keep it short and not go into a debate so lengthy that it would not even fit into the article itself. However, one possible compromise I would consider might be to just put "unknown" or "estimates vary" into the infoboxes and leave a selection of actual estimates to the article itself. In the future, a separate article should be created on the Nanking Garrison Force, and we might be able to fit all the various estimates into this article, but in the article on the Battle of Nanking there is only so much space for all these figures and the debate surrounding them.CurtisNaito (talk) 09:51, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

I want to add that, while estimating the size of the Nanking Garrison Force is a difficult task due to unreliable statistics on the Chinese side, the size of the Japanese Army is not really in dispute. Just prior to the Battle of Nanking the CCAA had 160,000 troops, of which roughly 50,000 participated in the battle itself. This is not really in dispute among modern scholars. If newer and more reliable sources exist, then there is no reason to resort to using older, dubious figures like those of the IMTFE and Nanking War Crimes Tribunal, let alone Records of the Grand Historian.CurtisNaito (talk) 17:04, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

If you check article Holocaust victims and German war crimes, Nuremberg trials were considered as the major source of them. Nobody will consider it dubious because of out of date. International Military Tribunal for the Far East is the Nuremberg trials for Japanese war crimes. Most of Japanese war crime were judged by International Military Tribunal for the Far East. If we considered International Military Tribunal for the Far East is dubious, then we will overthrow many events and re-write many articles like Bataan Death March, Attack on Pearl Harbor and Manila massacre. Actually there were a long time debate about figure of Nanking massacre which you involved this before . In this discussion, somebody listed lots figures from scholars which offered figures above 300,000. Chinese scholar Sun Zhaiwei, Zhang Lianhong, Taiwanese scholar Lee En-Han, Japanese scholar Yoshida Tak Matsusaka and U.S. scholar Marvin Williamsen, Frank Dorn and Edward L. Dreyer were the ones who offered data 200,000 to 300,000. Some of them even claimed more than 300,000. After this 2 months discussion, the consensus was established (40,000 to 300,000) and you current behavior is a kind of disrupt of consensus.

For the army strength, if you want to keep it more simple. You can simply write like Chinese army from 50,000 to 100,000 not just put 100,000 figure alone. Russo-Japanese War id an example for this. Then you thought there should not be so many estimation in infobox but actually there are tons of article like this. For example, article Battles of Khalkhin Gol put the all of Japanese military record, Soviet claim and Modern western in infobox for Japanese loss figure. Article Korean War also put the Chinese claims and American estimation in the infobox.

The things what I do is to keep all claim of these important sources. The previous article is " estimates ranging from 40,000 to over 300,000" which consist of figures from Japanese sources, American sources and Chinese sources. You rewrote this like " that of the more than 40,000 corpses buried in and around Nanking after the fall of the city only 129 were women or children which suggests that the large majority of the victims of the massacre were adult men taken by the Japanese as former soldiers and massacred." Do you think "only 129 were women or children which suggests that the large majority of the victims of the massacre were adult men taken by the Japanese as former soldiers and massacred" is a neutral claim in wiki? Especially, when International Military Tribunal for the Far East claim 20,000 women were raped.

Yeah, some Japanese historian claim the death is less than 40,000 but there are also someone who claimed the death is above 500,000. Recently, I am a little busy so every day I may only reply one or two time. I am very sorry about that but I hope you can understand my case. Miracle dream (talk)21:08, 15 December 2014‎

The debate over the credibility of the estimates put forward by the postwar war crimes tribunals can be included in another article, but if you believe that they are credible, why do you keep on inserting sources into this article which reject their validity? The Wakabayashi source you included provides an extensive rebuttal of the death toll estimates put forward by both tribunals. You cited Tokushi Kasahara for the death toll put forward by the Nanking War Crimes Tribunal but he explains in detail in his book Nankin Jiken why this estimate is clearly wrong. You favor putting Kaikosha's research into the article, but Kaikosha calculated the death toll of the Nanking Massacre at only 30,000. Among independent scholars who have written books or peer-reviewed articles on the massacre and who have explained what data they used to calculate their estimates, almost all of them are today within the 40,000 to 200,000 range. That is the overwhelming scholarly consensus and if any range of figures should be put into the article, that is surely the one. Earlier I had left out the estimate of the massacre's death toll from the article in the hopes of avoiding another lengthy discussion like this, but oh well.CurtisNaito (talk) 23:03, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Until today, I was not really aware of this discussion, though overall, it also was not my intention to really participate in the discussion until being alerted to it and asked for my opinion on the subject on my talk page. The below is essentially copied from my response on my talk page, but with minor edits for location.

As one of the original participants in the original death toll debate, what I recall was that consensus ultimately was either to list a range of 40,000-200,000 as general scholarly consensus, while noting that certain estimates of the death toll reached as high as 300,000, or to have the range be put forward as 40,000 to 300,000, but with notes indicating that estimates over 200,000 had been called into question. In all honesty, it being the case that I participated in the discussion while preparing also for some fairly difficult exams, with at best divided attention, I must confess to not actually remembering the specific details, though I do recall that the (very extensive) discussion had been archived in the Talk:Nanking Massacre page, and that a basic consensus had been achieved (apparently several times) during this time period. Nevertheless, I believe we can all agree that firstly, our estimates definitely ought to be based on the consensus of reputable academics, Chinese, Japanese, Western, or wherever, and that it is within the ability of us as Wikipedians and mature adults to figure out what this consensus is and who is a reputable academic on this subject.

Having said all of that, it may seem (and is my intention) that I come off as non-committal in the above, because honestly, it is really not my wish to regenerate or rejoin what was (as I recall), a very acrimonious debate, and one which I in particular, have no desire to rejoin, having since discovered that I am finding much more joy in editing subjects on Misplaced Pages which also fall within my sphere of interest but are significantly less controversial and politicized. Nevertheless, it is my hope that everyone participating in these discussions you allude to will be able to resolve their disputes on this subject and other subjects (as I see this is not the only active discussion on this talk page) peaceably and with little acrimony, and I wish everyone good luck in this.Zmflavius (talk) 17:45, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

What I see from the book "China's Bitter Victory: The War with Japan, 1937-1945" . The figure from Marvin Williamsen is "Trapped Chinese troops were treated with frightening barbarity by their conquerors. As a matter of policy all were tortured and butchered. But soldiers were hardly the only victims of the nearly incredibly cruelty and the vicious, uncontrolled behavior of the Japanese troops. After recounting some, but only some, of the unspeakable horros visited upon the residentes of Nanking in two weeks of outrage. Over 20,000 civilian men of military age had been slaughtered. At least 20,000 young women and girls had been raped, murdered, and then gruesomely mutilated. Over 200,000 civilians,and possibly as many as 300,000, had been senselessly massacred" 03:16, 27 December 2014 Miracle dream (talk)

Compromise proposals

I've been thinking a lot about this issue and considering how we might resolve our differences here. I want to propose the following compromises on the following issues.

KAIKOSHA ESTIMATES=Though I do highly value Kaikosha's path-breaking estimates, the first detailed scholarly estimates of the size of the Nanking Garrison Force ever made, I eventually deleted them because they are controversial among a number of scholars including Masahiro Yamamoto and also Tokushi Kasahara who wrote a lengthy essay rebutting them. Still, these estimates are reliable enough that I think we can re-add them into the body of the article, but not the infobox. Okay?

INFOBOXES=For the infoboxes we will replace the estimate of Chinese troop strength and the estimate of Chinese combat casualties with "estimates vary". People can consult the body of the article to see the range of estimates. The range in the body of the article, though, should only include the estimates of scholars and researchers, not those of single primary sources. I'll re-add Kaikosha's estimates into the article, but the figure of 50,000 is clearly not credible. Okay?

JAPANESE TROOP STRENGTH=In the infobox we should stick with just "c. 50,000" for Japanese troops strength because that is the number that actually fought in the battle. Having said that, I put into the article that the CCAA included "over 160,000" troops (including those in Shanghai) but I noticed that Fujiwara does accept estimates as high as 200,000, so we'll delete Tien-wei Wu's figure, which is refuted by the very article you are sourcing it to, and replace "over 160,000" with "160,000 to 200,000" citing Fujiwara. Okay?

NANKING MASSACRE ESTIMATES=Though I still think that the best way to dodge this issue would be no estimate at all, as an alternative why don't we insert, right after the burial statistics, a sentence stating that most scholars now believe that about 40,000 to 200,000 Chinese were killed during the atrocity. For the purposes of this article on the Battle of Nanking, let's not delve into fringe numbers smaller than 40,000 or larger than 200,000 and let's not delve into the older estimates made by the war crimes tribunals which were vague to begin with and are now widely discredited, including by the very sources you have cited. We can cite Liebold and Wakabayashi as representing the scholarly consensus on the matter. Okay?

I hope that covers all the big issues. Tell me in your response if you agree with anything in a point-by-point manner. I want to first get of the way any areas that we now agree on. If there's anything still left over that we disagree on then we will focus our discussion on just that.CurtisNaito (talk) 21:30, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

1. I agree to put estimation vary in infobox or neutrally put all figures from different sources in the infobox. Can you give me a reason why 50,000 is clearly not credible? Don't make your personal analysis because wiki is not academic seminar. We just need to copy figures from sources. Especially, you thought "only 129 were women or children which suggests that the large majority of the victims of the massacre were adult Chinese men taken by the Japanese as former soldiers and massacred" is credible but 50,000 armies of Chinese strength is uncredible. Both were cited from sources written by historian. Then previously, I may agree to delete Tien-wei Wu's figure. But after I check the references, I changed my mind. Based on the references, most of sources (seems more than 10) are from Japanese historians. Only one citation was from Chinese historian. Moreover, when I check the sources, I see it was added in this week which means there is no Chinese source in this article before. It made me feel it is un-neutral. I think we my need to add a little more Chinese source for this. Then you said Fujiwara claim also 160,000 to 200,000 which is closed to the estimation from Tien-wei Wu. Why do you choose to keep citation from Fujiwara while delete figures from Tien-wei Wu. They have nearly same estimation. Especially, this article used too many Japanese sources while ignore all Chinese sources. We should balance the sources. Moreover, it seems Tien is a Tawanese.

2. Then I agree you wrote like Fujiwara estimates "160,000 to 200,000" but to say 50,000 is the figure fought in Nanking, I need more explain. Because the figure "160,000 to 200,000" is cited from Fujiwara and 50,000 fought in Nanking is cited from David Askew. They are two different historians. We can't use army estimation from one historian while claimed only 50,000 of this estimation were in battle based on another historian. It is kind of misuse sources. I think you clearly can write it like"Fujiwara estimates the army is from 160,000 to 200,000 but Askew thought only 50,000 fought in the battle." In the same time, add the figures from Tien-wei Wu.

3. I agree what you said use the range figure to replace currently un-neutral claim. However, the figure should be 40,000 to 300,000. I don't know why we need to discuss this again. The consensus had been made during the 2 months discussion in article Nanking Massacre which you are also involved. If you ignore this consensus and made a debate in another article related that article, it is not constructive for wiki. Do we need to debate every time in different articles when they are some kind of related with the main article Nanking Massacre. Moreover, why can we use some estimations from historians to replace figures from International Military Tribunal for the Far East and Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal. You can suspect these figures but wiki is not the place to do academic research. We just need to neutrally write this range. You don't believe figures 200,000 from IMT and 300,000 from NWCT. Actually I also don't believe figures less than 150,000. However, I select neutrally put figure from 40,000 to 150,000 in this range even I don't believe this. Then why I think we should put claim of IMT in this article？ Then reason is the International Military Tribunal for the Fast East is one of the most important event in WW3. Judges from 11 countries make their decisions in this trial. Then this trial lasted about 2 years. We cannot label it as dubious because of some historians' estimation. Then as I said, there are also many historians support figure 300,000. I listed so many historians who supported 300,000 above. To my surprise, you ignore all of them. It seems figures larger than 300,000 is fringe. You give up the figure less than 40,000 while actually I also give up figure 500,000 which is from a document of U.S. government because they are fringe.Miracle dream (talk)20:22, 17 December 2014‎

The reason why a Chinese troop strength of 50,000 should not be in the article is because no historian has ever argued in favor of a number that low. Kaikosha's estimates are the lowest ever made by researchers, and they estimated Chinese troop strength at 60,000 at the lowest. As Askew notes in his essay, a number of contemporary observers in 1937 estimated Chinese troop strength at around 50,000 but these estimates were rebutted decades ago and have been superseded by better research. Askew explains in the very article you cited that no one knows for certain the origin of the contemporary estimates putting the size of the Chinese Army at 50,000 and he discusses in detail how a "micro approach" to calculating the size of the Chinese Army produces a larger figure.

As Askew notes in his essay, the number of Japanese troops who fought in the Battle of Nanking was roughly 50,000. As noted by Fujiwara Akira, 160,000-200,000 is the troop strength of the entire CCAA, which was in charge of occupying all of Central China. Why should we include Japanese soldiers stationed in the coast of Shanghai as part of Japan's troop strength in the Battle of Nanking? Nanking is 300 kilometers from Shanghai and Japanese troops who were 300 kilometers from the battlefield should not be counted as part of Japan's troop strength for the purposes of the infobox. It seems like all Wu Tien-wei did was take the maximum upper bound of Fujiwara's estimate as his number, but even the source you cite says that Wu Tien-wei's number was "magically conjured up". I advocate that we use reliable figures for troop strength, not numbers that were, as the source you yourself cited says, "magically conjured up".

For the Nanking Massacre death toll estimate, we should not include the estimates of the postwar war crimes tribunals. We should stick with reliable estimates and not include estimates which are refuted by the very same sources which you have been inserting into the article. The sentence stating that the "large majority of the victims of the massacre were adult Chinese men" does not include a comprehensive death toll estimate. Its purpose in the article is to show that most of the victims of the massacre were killed during mopping-up operations. None of the sources currently cited in the article dispute this theory, but the information you have have been adding to the article is disputed by your own citations. If we include a death toll estimate, we should stick with the well-established scholarly consensus of 40,000 to 200,000 which is recognized internationally. Among historians outside of China who have written books or peer-reviewed articles on the massacre, very few have ever put forward an estimate under 40,000 or over 200,000. Scholars like Williamsen and Dreyer have never written more than a paragraph on the Nanking Massacre in their entire lives and the figure of 500,000 from a single German-based diplomatic cable includes deaths in Shanghai and does not clearly refer to massacre victims exclusively. Privately, Chinese historians also acknowledge that the death toll of the massacre was between 40,000 and 150,000.CurtisNaito (talk) 20:59, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

When you said " Chinese historians also acknowledge that the death toll of the massacre was between 40,000 and 150,000," can you add word "some of historians"? Actually from what I mentioned, lots of Chinese historian thought 300,000 death number. Then rarely Chinese historian will put the number to 40,000. I also see source from Japanese historians who claimed the death was 300,000 even 400,000. Based on your theory, I think I can say Japanese historian also acknowledge that the death toll of the massacre was between 300,000 to 400,000. As I said, different historians has different figures, You said some historian put the death toll like this but I have listed more than 5 historian put the death toll up to 300,000. Can you tell me we must ignore these historians who support 300,000 to select someone deny this. We can simply put all these claim. Actually I don't want to debate this thing because it has a consensus from 2 month discussion and you are one of them. When many editors spends lots of time and energy in such a long discussion, you jump to another article related and started a new discussion.Do you think it is a good behavior to do like this? Hence,next time, I jump to a new article,we can discuss again. Then this discussion will never be end. In the discussion above, I saw you ignore this consensus time after time. Can you tell me why do you ignore a consensus before which you involved? For Fujiwara Akira, you can simply wrote like Fujiwara Akira thought entire CCAA but David Askew thought only 50,000 in battle. But as I said, we should fairly add the figures from Tien even you can write someone suspect his figures. Yeah, German-based diplomatic claim 500,000 death. So what? You don't have the right to deny it. We are wiki editor not the professional historian. Even we are the professional historians, we should debate this in academic seminar not in wiki.

Then don't cheat me. The mopping-up operations was added by you. I check the edition history of this article, You wrote this article before and change section from Nanking massacre to mopping-up operations. Now you used the contents you changed as basic theory to support your idea. It is a little hard to accept. Thanks to reminder me this thing. Actually I require to recover this section to the title "Nanking Massacre" like the article before you rewrote.

It seems we reached lots of agreement. I am very happy for this. Miracle dream (talk)23:51, 17 December 2014‎

Well, your English is a little rough so I'm having difficulties understanding some of what you are saying. I can't really respond to your last paragraph because I'm not sure what you are trying to say. Among the many points I've made up to now I suppose that my main assertion is that we should not include figures which are described as nonsense by the sources which we are citing. As just one example, you inserted the figure of 200,000 as the size of the Japanese Army but sourced it to an essay which says that this number was "magically conjured up". This Misplaced Pages article is just an article on the Battle of Nanking, not on the size of the CCAA or on the Nanking Massacre. Probably all this information can be put somewhere on Misplaced Pages, but we can't fit into an article on the Battle of Nanking every estimate ever made for these things. Therefore, it's reasonable to stick largely to those estimates that are most widely agreed upon. Surely we can agree that a figure which is, as the source you cited states, "magically conjured up" is not valid for the purposes of this particular article. Even now I still don't understand why you want to include so many figures in this article which are demolished and rejected in no uncertain terms by very same reliable sources that you are citing.CurtisNaito (talk) 00:57, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Nanking Massacre was the direct result of this battle. It must be mentioned in this article, and so is the victim death toll. For the death toll, we should keep it consistent with the consensus achieved in a lengthy discussion in Talk:Nanking Massacre. No need to start another discussion here. --MtBell 07:18, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

If we do include the death toll, it's only natural that we should use the scholarly consensus of 40,000 to 200,000. The proof that this is the scholarly consensus is as follows.

(1.) Bob Tad Wakabayashi wrote a very well-received edited volume in 2007 entitled "The Nanking Atrocity, 1937-38" which amalgamated the work of a large number of the leading specialist scholars who have studied the Nanking Massacre. In writing the conclusion of this book, Wakabayashi concludes that 40,000 to 200,000 is the scholarly valid range of estimates. Even though he expresses some personal disagreement with some of the estimates within this range, he still notes that any estimate within this range is at least numerically possible, whereas numbers lower than 40,000 and higher than 200,000 are not humanely possible given the bounds of current evidence.

(2.) In the academic journal Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies, James Leibold concurs that 40,000 to 200,000 constitutes "the most careful and thoroughly empirical analysis of the death count to date".

(3.) All Chinese historians who have been interviewed anonymously for their opinion on the death toll of the Nanking Massacre have given the range of 40,000 to 150,000 which is very close to the scholarly consensus of 40,000 to 200,000. In China there is some gap between the public views of historians, which are tightly censored, and their private views. In 2006 when historian Kaz Ross investigated the real opinions of Chinese historians in the city of Nanking on an anonymous basis, all of them gave figures between 40,000 and 150,000.

(4.) Almost all scholars outside of China who have written books or peer-reviewed article on the Nanking Massacre have given figures between 40,000 and 200,000. David Askew, Tokushi Kasahara, Yoshida Yutaka, Jean-Louis Margolin, Masahiro Yamamoto, and Ikuhiko Hata, etc... (all the scholars cited in this article and then some) all give figures within this general range.

(5.) Almost all the individuals cited above who have given figures above or below this range are non-specialists with no particular knowledge of this subject. Yoshida Tak Matsusaka, Marvin Williamsen, and Edward L. Dreyer have never written more than a paragraph about the massacre in their entire careers. Adding all their research together would not fill a single page of text. Furthermore, none of these scholars have ever said how they calculated their figures. An estimate which is not known to be based on any data should not be considered part of the scholarly consensus of specialists. In fact, it seems like many of these scholars merely copied down the verdicts of the post-war war crimes tribunals without analyzing them. Frank Dorn, for example, cites "over 200,000 civilians" most likely from the IMTFE verdict, but in the previous sentence cites "over 20,000 civilian men" directly taken from Bates' testimony at the IMTFE. However, as Masahiro Yamamoto has noted, these two estimates are mutually exclusive because Bates did not accept the validity of the Chongshantang burial records which the IMTFE did include. This sort of copying and pasting from a single primary source is not equivalent to the level of research carried out by the historians who have written books or peer-reviewed articles on the massacre which actually do explain how the death toll was calculated.

There is really no question that 40,000 to 200,000 represents the overwhelming scholarly consensus among Nanking Massacre specialists. 40,000 to 200,000 is a useful range because this range of figures has successfully united almost all specialist scholars in the field, cutting across all ideological and national boundaries. An article on the Battle of Nanking should stick to this consensus and not delve into fringe figures.CurtisNaito (talk) 08:01, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

I am not interested in discussing the massacre death toll again since the consensus (40,000-300,000) has already been reached in a discussion early this year in Talk:Nanking Massacre. If you are confident enough to challenge the consensus, please go to Talk:Nanking Massacre and ask some admins to restart the discussion. If you can achieve new consensus, I will be happy to follow. But for now, please respect what the majority in the discussion have agreed on: 40,000-300,000. --MtBell 08:45, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Looking over that discussion, it doesn't appear to me that that was the consensus at all. When users referred to specialist scholars, the predominance of the 40,000 to 200,000 range was quite clear. What I'm advocating is that we respect what the majority of scholars have to say on the issue.CurtisNaito (talk) 08:52, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Here, you just offered some scholar who supported 200,000 death figure but ignore the historians who supported 300,000 death. I have listed lots of historian above. You even don't want to read these. I have said some scholars like Hora Tomio(over 200,000), Lee En-Han from Taiwan (over 200,000 to over 300,000), Marvin Williamsen (over 200,000 and possible as many as 300,000),Frank Dorn (over 200,000 and possible as many as 300,000), Iris Chang, David B. MacDonald, Japanese historians Honda Katsuichi and Hora Tomio who supported rage up to 300,000. If I don't make a mistake, Japanese historian Fujiwara Akira is also the one who supported the death number should be over 300,000.

However, it's not the point. The thing is you cannot simply dismiss a consensus from 2 month long discussion which you involved before. It violated the discussion rule of wiki. We have spend 2 month to discussed in such a topic. We cannot spend whole of our life in this topic. This is not the academic seminar. As I said before, I personally don't believe the figure below the 150,000. However, some historians offer this figure so I neurally put 40,000 to 150,000 in this range even I don't believe it. It doesn't matter what I think. Miracle dream (talk) 03:44, 19 December 2014

Well the reason why I didn't want a death toll estimate in the article was to avoid this debate. However, if we do include a death toll estimate in the article I'm worried that this debate will keep on reoccurring like it is now. If we do include a death toll estimate though, I'd say that we stick to the overwhelming scholarly consensus of 40,000 to 200,000. You are mistaken about Hora Tomio, Honda Katsuichi, and Akira Fujiwara. All of those scholars advocate figures of 200,000 or less. Marvin Williamsen and Frank Dorn have done no research on this subject to speak of, and David B. MacDonald has never put forward his own estimate of the death toll. I know you have strong personal views on this subject, but so often you are misquoting scholars or citing sources which refute the figures you want to use. It's important that we treat all the sources with care and consideration, and, as I indicated earlier, when looking at the most recent scholarship of specialists, there is an overwhelming consensus for the range of 40,000 to 200,000. The broadest possible range, including all estimates even by non-specialist scholars, would go from zero to eleven million, but for the purposes of this article narrowing it down to the scholarly consensus is the best policy.CurtisNaito (talk) 04:36, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

I dread having this contentious debate yet again. and yet ... ten months is long enough to rethink the consensus, particularly since I'm vinding CurtisNaito's arguments rather persuasive. I think I supported 40,000-300,000 in the earlier debate; I am now persuaded otherwise. So I think the argument that the consensus is established and cannot now be challeged carries very little weight with me at this point. --Yaush (talk) 18:12, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

@Miracle dream: Misplaced Pages is the 💕 that anyone can edit. One does not need CurtisNaito's permission to edit this article, not to mention the undeniable fact that there is the consensus. The death toll of victims is important to this article as it measures the scale of Japanese atrocities which were the consequence of the battle started by Japanese. Not hundreds, not thousands, but hundreds of thousands of civilians and disarmed soldiers were massacred by Japanese troops in Nanking and during their march to the city. Such facts must be clearly stated in this article. --MtBell 16:36, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

I think it's unlikely that that language will be inserted into the article because it's simply too far out of step with the views of scholars. It's important that Misplaced Pages be based primarily on the views of scholars and not the personal opinions of users. As I said, I had not favored including a range of estimates at all because I'm certain that including such contentious figures in the article will end up forcing us to have this debate again and again. You say that you are "not interested in discussing the massacre death toll" but in that case you should support my position of not putting one in. Otherwise, not only will we probably be discussing this for weeks more now, but who knows how many more times this will rebound on us? If we do include a range of estimates though, it's natural that we should include the range which is widely agreed upon by scholars, 40,000 to 200,000. Maybe not quite all Wikipedians are convinced of what the vast majority of scholars are already convinced of, but at least for an article on the Battle of Nanking, there is no consensus to put a set of Nanking Massacre statistics into the article which have been refuted by the scholarly community.CurtisNaito (talk) 18:22, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't think it's "unlikely". It's just because you are uncapable of writing the atrocities. So, make way for others. I will add contents , with sources, about the atrocites committed by Japanese troops during their march and the so called "operations". As I said, I am not interested in wasting time of discussing the death toll again and again because it has already been thoroughly discussed with a consensus achieved. And, I am not going to discuss with you about the necessity, either. Just to inform you that. --MtBell 18:55, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

There still exists the problem of undue weight issues though. This is already a fairly lengthy article on the Battle of Nanking, and it's not clear how much information on the Nanking Massacre we can fit into it. This article is already almost as long as the article on the Battle of Guadalcanal, despite the fact that that battle was much longer and more strategically significant. The massacre is already covered in this article, and is covered in much greater detail in other articles, so we do need to decide where to put a cap on the amount of Nanking Massacre material we put into an article on the Battle of Nanking. Also, the tone you're taking regarding discussions is very wrong. You can't say that you want to include contentious material in the article and then say that "I am not going to discuss with you about the necessity". Either you don't want to insert contentious material and you don't want to discuss it, or you do want to insert contentious material and you do want to discuss it. CurtisNaito (talk) 19:04, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

CurtisNaito, I am a little surprised. I thought you should trust the my neutral attitude. It seems you did not trust me. Then I reply case by case. For Marvin Williamsen, I simply give the link I am reading "over 200,000, and possibly as many as 300,000, had been senselessly massacred". The translation version from Hora Tomio is "不下于二十万人", safely translated to "no less than 200,000". It means 200,000 is the lower bound which did not have much difference with "over than 200,000" I cited. David B. MacDonald cited many figures from different scholar. The figure he used from 42,000 to over 350,000. However, he really claimed that figure between 42,000 and 100,000 is rather low and most put the death toll considerably higher. From your theory, based on David B. MacDonald we should delete figure from 42,000 to 100,000. Then don't tell me who did research and who cited others' figure. It is the original research from wiki editor. It is not our works. Wiki just need the publication as the source for citation except fringe. It doesn't matter how the author do his research. We are not historians and wiki is not the academic seminar. Even we are historians, we should debate in some academic conference not in wiki. When you said some scholar did research and some didn't, you were doing original research here which is the violation of wiki rule. Moreover, have you done some research before? Do you know research should include lots of paper review, survey and paper citation. Did you see any academic paper without any citation before? In common case, the citation author used is something he agreed with except he wanted to debate with this citation. It is really funny that Amateur people in wiki think he is better than professional scholar in paper review. CurtisNaito,I know you have strong personal views on this subject, but so often you are misquoting scholars or citing sources which refute the figures you want to use. You should believe scholar read the historian publication in a rigorous attitude not just want to find some figures he favor like you. CurtisNaito, it seems the difference between you and me is: I personally don't believe figure below 150,000 but I neutrally accept these figures from 40,000 to 150,000 following the neutrality rule of wiki and you personally don't believe figures from 200,000 to 300,000 and you will never accept these figures. If we do include a death toll estimate though, I'd say that we stick to the overwhelming scholarly consensus of 40,000 to 300,000.

I'm worried that this debate will keep on reoccurring like it is now so I will use the previous discussion consensus to edit this article. By this way, I will solve all dispute. I will think about some way following the 2 month discussion consensus. Miracle dream (talk)

You haven't demonstrated any scholarly consensus. It doesn't demonstrate a scholarly consensus to haphazardly put together the estimates of people who have never written more than a sentence on the massacre in their whole careers and who have never bothered to reveal how their numbers were calculated. Of the individuals you just cited only one, Hora Tomio, has ever actually written a book or article on the massacre which states its base sources. Hora Tomio wrote in his own book "南京大虐殺 決定版" that the death toll was 200,000, but as he himself and Takashi Yoshida have noted, this estimate includes all soldiers killed in combat, not just massacre victims. Hora Tomio has noted, like most of your other sources, that the estimates of the postwar war crimes trials were exaggerations. The scholarly consensus in both China and internationally was clearly put forward by Bob Tad Wakabayashi, Kaz Ross, and other specialist scholars as being 40,000 to 150,000/200,000. Just extending the range of the top estimates to 300,000 doesn't make sense. If you really do insist on an extended range, maybe we should extend the top estimate to 300,000 and lower the bottom estimate to 10,000. A comprehensive survey of the Nanking Massacre undertaken by Shokun magazine identified numerous Japanese researchers who put the number of victims at 10,000. While they may be fringe, they are no more fringe than those who advocate numbers higher than 200,000. Just randomly modifying the top figure of the scholarly consensus is not feasible for this article, and there is no consensus among users to do that.CurtisNaito (talk) 03:56, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Concur. The current range of 40,000 to 200,000 should remain. --Yaush (talk) 04:12, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

I guess I'll add that to the article. It's not in there now. I cleaned-up this article several months ago because it had a "citation needed" tag and needed to be trimmed somewhat. At the time I deleted any specific estimate of the death toll because I thought that by doing so I could avoid having another debate like this one on the precise range of estimates to use. As you can see I failed. However, since most people seem to want to have an estimate I think, as you indicate, there is a good case, from my post here to use the scholarly consensus of 40,000 to 200,000 massacre victims. I'll add that and see how it goes.CurtisNaito (talk) 04:22, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Oppose. According to the discussion in Talk:Nanking_Massacre/Archive_8, the consensus is 40K to 300K. If anyone wants to challenge the consensus, please go to that talk page and ask to start a new discussion. --MtBell 05:31, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Oppose. At first, there was a consensus from a 2 month long discussion which you involved. You cannot dismiss this consensus before. Then the source you offered doesn't demonstrate a scholarly consensus. I have listed lots of source which claimed the figure 300,000. Hence, the previous consensus is more suitable for all of these sources. Miracle dream (talk) 19:51, 22 December 2014‎

Concur with Curtis Naito and Yaush.TH1980 (talk) 21:40, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Bombing

A user recently inserted a comment into the article that the Japanese made "900 sorties" over Nanking, but that could be misinterpreted. Though the source does day that 900 aircraft participated in attacks on Nanking, a "sortie" can also refer to a mission involving several aircraft. In his previous sentence, Kasahara states that the Japanese air force attacked Nanking 50 times. Therefore, by some definitions one can say that "50 sorties" were made (involving 900 aircraft). However, that is only one set of estimates. Kasahara actually gives several sets of estimates and does not say which ones are most reliable. Text was also inserted which says that the Japanese were "aiming at both military targets and civilian facilities", but it might be more accurate to say "military and government facilities". Apart from government facilities, Kasahara notes in his 1997 book Nankin Jiken that the Japanese were not deliberately targeting civilian facilities. The Japanese were telling their flyers that it didn't matter whether or not they hit their targets square on, so it was common that purely civilian targets were hit, though Kasahara does not say that they were being aimed at. I'd rather limit how much we talk about the bombing though, because that started long before the Battle of Nanking and long before the Japanese were contemplating marching on Nanking. In some ways it might be better defined as a part of the Battle of Shanghai.CurtisNaito (talk) 13:40, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Find a dictionary, CurtisNaito. A "sortie" means a flight of a single aircraft in a military operation. I am really curious how 900 sorties in 110 days could be "non-stopping" and "continually obstructing" Chinese preparation for war. Could you stop blustering for Japanese imperialism?

Japanese aircrafts bombed hospitals, schools, densely populated areas and refugee camps. My university was also bombed with 8 250-kg bombs. This is history. Live with it. Your edit is reverted. --MtBell 14:48, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

MtBell, please keep it civil. We can still find a consensus on this. I thought that by some definitions "sortie" involves more than one aircraft because Misplaced Pages says that a sortie may involve "one or more aircraft". Still, whether or not that's true, we'll just change it to use the word "aircraft" so it's more clear. I've been trying to stick with the wording of the sources here, and Kasahara simply does not say that the Japanese were aiming at civilian facilities, except for government ones. I'll change "aiming" to "hitting" to make the text fit the source better. Kasahara does describe the bombing as being "nonstop", but upon re-reading it, Kasahara does not specify to what extent the raids obstructed defense preparations, so we'll leave that part out.

Furthermore, I've already explained why we shouldn't include the Nanking Massacre estimates of the postwar war crimes trials. Two of the sources you cited for the death toll estimates have explicitly refuted their validity. For the purpose of this article, we should stick with reliable figures, not widely disputed ones. There is clearly no consensus for a death toll range of 40,000 to 300,000, but if consensus can be built to it, I'm now open to the possibility of an extended scholarly consensus which increases the top figure to 300,000 and lowers the bottom figure to 10,000. That would be the scholarly consensus, plus higher and lower fringe figures.CurtisNaito (talk) 15:08, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

1) A single military aircraft can carry out several sorties. For example, Japan's 2nd United Air Force Unit launched 289 sorties between September 19th and 25th, with 72 aircrafts not 289 aircrafts as your understanding.

2) I don't think schools and hospitals are government facilities.

3) For the estimated range of the massacre victims, I am following the consensus achieved in the main article. Respect it, unless you manage to reach a new one. --MtBell 15:42, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

As I said though, I wanted to stick with the wording of the original sources. In the original version of Kasahara's book he states that 900 aircraft participated in some way or another in the bombing. He does not say that there were 900 sorties. Kasahara explains in a few paragraphs in Nankin Jiken that purely civilian facilities were not specifically targeted, but they were hit because the Japanese Air Force was instructing their flyers that they did not always have to score direct hits on their targets. On the death toll of the massacre, we'll need a consensus for that. Right now not even a bare majority on the talk page agree with you. We are just going to have to keep talking about it until we can come to an agreement.CurtisNaito (talk) 16:04, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

You made me laugh, CurtisNaito. You are misrepresenting the sources, AGAIN. This evening, I will translate what Kasahara really wrote in his book. Now you still have time to withdraw your LIE. --MtBell 16:15, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

In the original source he says "参加延機数は九00余機". The total number of aircraft that participated was over 900. Could it be that the Chinese version says something different? Even if so, we should stick to the original.CurtisNaito (talk) 16:26, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

That was "more than 900 sorties". Do you have any idea of the Japanese air force strength in battle? This evening I will list details of all Japanese air force units involved in the Battle of Shanghai and Nanking. --MtBell 16:55, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

The point is that I translated it correctly. Whether Kasahara is right or not is another story. I wouldn't be surprised if the statistic was an exaggeration as the Japanese military was often very boastful of their achievements. Even so, Kasahara doesn't say that it is an exaggeration so we shouldn't say that either. The exact same source says that the Japanese made fifty attacks on Nanking, so if we at least agree on that, then let's just put "fifty attacks" in instead and forget about the 900 whatevers.CurtisNaito (talk) 17:02, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

For the statistics, what I cited is Zhang's Nanjing Massacre: a complete history, not Kasahara's book. I will check whether Zhang's book quoted documents from China or Japan. --MtBell 17:12, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

You also cited Kasahara's book, which I have read, and the statistics cited above do come from Japanese sources. In fact, as Kasahara notes, they were the official figures calculated by the Japanese military. If Zhang did his own calculations and came up with something different, we could try including both sets of figures, but I'm hesitant to do that. If this is an area where historians disagree, then for this article we should leave out the controversy. Most of the bombing took place between August 15 and December 1, before the Battle of Nanking in other words. It's okay to mention the bombing briefly, but delving into historical controversies about competing statistics is beyond the scope of an article which is actually about the Battle of Nanking, not the bombing of Nanking. Maybe we should just put "fifty attacks" into the article, unless you know of a source which disputes that number also.CurtisNaito (talk) 17:20, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

I cited Kasahara's book as a source to the Japanese deliberate bombing to civilian facilities. However, it's good to know that you have realized that the Japanese authority tended to exagerate their strength. So forget about your "non-stopping" air raids and "inexorable" advances. --MtBell 17:30, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

It's well known that the Japanese side exaggerated any victories they achieved while the Chinese side tried to downplay any losses they incurred. A mention of that has already been noted in the article for some time now. When possible, I generally favor estimates calculated by modern scholars, rather than ones quoted from primary sources. The wording which I used for the article though, reflected the wording and tone of the sources. As I said before, Misplaced Pages should be based on scholarly sources rather than personal opinions.CurtisNaito (talk) 17:38, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Sounds good. But "non-stopping air raids continuously obstructed Chinese preparation" is merely your own invention and misrepresentation of Kasahara's book. Stick to the sources next time. Remember that someone here has access to the sources. --MtBell 17:55, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Kasahara notes that there was a raid about every two days, though at their peak the Japanese were bombing three times per night. I guess you have no objection to instead writing that the Japanese made fifty aerial attacks on Nanking, per the source cited?CurtisNaito (talk) 18:00, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Japanese air units available to the battle

• 1st United Air Group 第1聯合航空隊(木更津航空隊、鹿屋航空隊)：中攻38，鑑戰12
• 2nd United Air Group 第2聯合航空隊(第12、13、21、22航空隊)：鑑戰24，鑑爆30，鑑攻12，水偵12
• 第23航空隊：水偵12

Total: 140 military aircrafts. What CurtisNaito asserts "900 aircraft participated in attacks on Nanking" is impossible. --MtBell 22:59, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Okay, we'll leave that out then. It was not in the article at the time you posted this message. Maybe the Navy was exaggerating, or maybe Kasahara misinterpreted the statement, or maybe they were including Army planes as well or something. Whatever the case may be, we can leave that and other disputed statistics out of the article.CurtisNaito (talk) 03:03, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Japanese air attacks on civilians and civilian facilities

CurtisNaito asserts that "Kasahara notes in his 1997 book Nankin Jiken that the Japanese were not deliberately targeting civilian facilities". Let's see what Kasahara really have written in his book:

• "... airfields, factories, railways, bridges, government administrations, the Central University, the Central Hospital, power plants, water plants and even the densely populated Xinjiekou all became attacking targets."
• "... the Central Hospital was also a target... Japanese aircrafts bombed the hospital, totally ignoring the huge red cross painted on the roof."
• "On August 26, the British Ambassador to China, Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, was machine-gunned by Japanese aircrafts in his car which was then flying British flags." (firing "undeliberately" with machine guns?)
• "The Japanese (air) forces also targeted on hospitals accomodating injured soldiers."

According to Kasahara's book, it's quite clear that civilian facilities were purposely bombed by Japanese. --MtBell 23:39, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

You're not reading the same version of the book as I am apparently. I have a 1997 edition of the Japanese version in front of me and, for starters, it doesn't mention the Knatchbull-Hugessen incident anywhere, or at least not in the first 140 pages. Secondly, the word "target" which you keep on repeating is in most cases not present in the copy I'm reading. It says that bombs were dropped ("陸用爆弾が投下され") but if you read on page 34 Kasahara notes that the basic situation was that the air forces of Japan did not care whether or not they hit their targets directly, which is why purely civilian structures were destroyed. I'm curious if you're reading a different edition. The Chinese edition maybe? Because I can't understand, for instance, where you read about the Knatchbull-Hugessen incident which does not appear to be in the book. Kasahara noted in his book Nankin Jiken to Nihongun that his books are sometimes manipulated and censured during the translation process into Chinese so that may be a factor. At any rate, you still have no reason to switch the Nanking Massacre death toll estimates with a version that is not in accordance with either scholarly consensus or the consensus of users. Going against consensus like that makes it unlikely that the article will remain stable.CurtisNaito (talk) 03:03, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

In case you want to know the wording used by Kasahara, he says that the attitude of the Japanese air force was 誤爆をしてかまわない(we don't care if accidental bombings happen). I think for this article we can just say that the Japanese "hit" military and civilian facilities. If there is a scholarly debate on the extent to which it is deliberate, then we can leave that to a future article on the Bombing of Nanking. I know that there's room elsewhere on Misplaced Pages to deal with this, but for the purpose of an article on the Battle of Nanking we should use neutral language that accurately summarizes our sources.

I also want to say that it's important to assume good faith in negotiations. You said earlier that my description of "China's defense preparations were, however, continually obstructed by nonstop Japanese air raids" was "your own invention", but that wasn't really a fair statement. Kasahara repeatedly notes that the Japanese air force was launching daily or near daily wave attacks on Nanking and on the same pages that that he mentions this (page 33 for example) he also notes that the attacks targeted Nanking's defenses. I was fine with deleting that statement since Kasahara does not say to what extent the defense preparations were actually "obstructed" by the nonstop Japanese attacks that targeted them, but the statement was hardly an invention. If you think that I ever misinterpreted in this article anything Kasahara has written, then you're probably just reading some other version of what Kasahara wrote, maybe a poor Chinese translation or something. Some of the things you quoted in the last paragraph don't seem to be in the Japanese original at all.

Incidentally though, it's concerning that we are spending this much space in the Battle of Nanking talk page discussing the bombing of Nanking, which largely occurred BEFORE the battle, and the Nanking Massacre, which largely occurred AFTER the battle. We've said very little about the actual Battle of Nanking which is the topic I would rather have this article focused on.CurtisNaito (talk) 07:54, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

I am wondering when you would admit that I am citing in my edits Kasahara's another related book One hundred days in the Nanking Safety Zone. It's clearly another book as the information I provided in the reflist, and you should not attack its reliability by "poor translation" or something else. Anyway, I can understand why you want to delete the content about Japan's deliberate attack on civilians and hospitals. Such dark history may be too hard for you, but including these historical facts is a must to achieve a balanced article required by NPOV, regardless of your personal emotions or beliefs. This is history.

I have my own plan of re-organizing contents including the air raids, the evacuation, Japan's devastating march, etc. The air raids were part of the military actions by Japan and also a reason of Nanking's evacuation. Japan's march from Shanghai to Nanking was so brutal because of Japan's poor supply organization. Killing, raping and looting along Japan's march was the prelude to the Nanking Massacre. They should be part of the article. I hope you can be patient, stop attacking my every edit and wait for some time until you have good reasons. That would save a lot of time and reduce meaningless debates. ---MtBell 09:42, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

You said in your last post you were quoting Kasahara's 1997 book Nankin Jiken. But at any rate, my main interest here is ensuring that due weight is given to the material most pertinent to the article's subject, the Battle of Nanking. MtBell, you're talking about how "Such dark history may be too hard for you" but when I cleaned up this article, I not only trimmed the section on the bombing of Nanking, but also the section on the scorched earth tactics employed by the Chinese Army. That section used to be five paragraphs long. The older version of this article said that the Chinese "were determined to turn every Chinese national and every piece of their soil into ash... They incinerated nearly all of the Xiaguan district. Targets within and outside of the city walls—such as military barracks, private homes, the aforementioned Chinese Ministry of Communication, forests and even entire villages—were burnt to cinders". I shortened this to one sentence.

I did not delete that because "Such dark history may be too hard". I am not an apologist for the atrocities and war crimes of the Chinese Army and I don't think that you are just because you don't seem to want to reinsert this information. However, this article, which focuses heavily on the actual fighting, the battle in other words, did not have room for five paragraphs condemning China's ruthless scorching of Chinese homes and people. The scorched earth policy reached its peak on December 7 and is therefore more relevant to the actual Battle of Nanking than the bombing which started back on August 15 or the massacres which took place after December 13. However, it was simply too much to cover in this already long article.

In the long run I would like to see an article on the Bombing of Nanking covering all this data. I would also like to see an article on the scorched earth policies employed by the Chinese military. Of course, there already is an article on the Nanking Massacre, which is actually the best place for a lot of the material you want to add. For the purpose of this article both of those subjects need to be kept relatively brief to leave room for the actual battle. This battle lasted only thirteen days, but the main body of the article is getting close to being as long as the article on the Battle of Guadalcanal, which lasted over six months!! For instance, the unreliable estimates made by the postwar war crimes tribunals definitely do not belong in this article as they have been supplanted by more recent, scholarly estimates, something acknowledged by the very same sources you cited in the article. There's a place on Misplaced Pages for the older, now discredited estimates, but it is not here. I think I'm being reasonable in saying that we can't stuff this article full of too much extra material on Chinese war crimes. And likewise, we can't stuff it too full with extra material on Japanese war crimes.CurtisNaito (talk) 14:09, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Burial records: 40K is not the total of all buried corpses

According to the source cited by CurtisNaito, 40K is only the portion that the Red Swastika had buried. CurtisNaito should not misuse this number as the total of all buried corpses. Please note that even the source admits that there were other burial teams.

• The Red Cross Society of Nanking kept their daily and monthly burial records from January to May, in which the corposes buried totaled more than 22K.
• Detailed records of the Red Swastika and the Red Cross show that their burial works only covered the western half of the walled city and its direct vicinity near the Yangtse River outside the west walls. Newly discovered official burial requests for corpses in the eastern half of the city were all sent from the district administrations to Chongshantang, which reported around 100K corpses buried in the eastern half and adjacent rural areas.
• Another charity organizaiton, Tongshantang, also reported more than 7 thousand buried according to their team leaders' testimony, covering the vicinity ouside the South Gate.
• The Bureau of Burial Works (Daizangju) reported more than 10 thousand buried.
• Other charity organizations were also involved in burial works: Shun'an Charity, around 1500; Mingde Charity, more than 700; Guangli Charity Society, around 3 thousand.

In summary, 40K is neither the total of all buried corpses nor can be served as an estimate of all victims. This burial statistic is incomplete and is unnecessary in the article, since the total estimate of all victims is already given. --MtBell 01:56, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

I think that part should remain. To quote the book, "It is thus doubtful that the Red Swastika statistics contain only its own data... Based on these analyses, one may conclude that the Red Swastika Society’s document describes the bulk of the burial activities in Nanking. It also reveals that the vast majority of victims were men, and that women and children accounted for only 129 of over 40,000 corpses. The predominance of men suggests that the majority of the victims in Nanking died in military-related situations, that is, either in combat or by execution." Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi in his edited volume "The Nanking Atrocity" and David Askew in his detailed essay "The Scale of Japanese Atrocities in Nanjing" both concur with Yamamoto's assessment. According to Askew, "virtually all primary sources agree that a single organization, the Red Swastika Society, was responsible for burials." CurtisNaito (talk) 02:17, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

I divided your comments into several parts to which I will answer one by one. Let us focus on the burial records and resolve this problem first.

Please provide the context of the point of views you quoted from works by Yamamoto, Wakabayashi and Askew. For now I don't see how they draw to the conclusion or make the assumption that "the Red Swastika Society’s document describes the bulk of the burial activities", and "a single organization, the Red Swastika Society, was responsible for burials". These asserts contradict to what I have read. Please list documents as evidences on which these asserts are based. I hope Yamamoto, Wakabayashi or Askew didn't make their assumptions simply by guessing. --MtBell 08:47, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Each of them cites their own evidence. All three of these individuals are specialist scholars who have devoted entire books and peer-reviewed article exclusively to these subjects and they are the kind of scholars that the article should give priority to. For all the extensive data they provide, I think you'll just have to read them, especially Askew's essay which is VERY detailed, but I'll try to summarize the gist of what they are saying and the sources they use. Yamamoto notes, for instance, that discrepancies exist between contemporary data on the Red Swastika Society's burials while they were taking place and the Society's final tallies which were much larger. Yamamoto notes that if the Red Swastika Society's burial stats and the Red Cross Society's burial stats were added together, it would come close to filing the gap. Miner Searle Bates estimated the death toll of the Nanking Massacre at 40,000 based apparently off analysis of burial statistics made by the Red Swastika Society, but he explicitly wrote that their statistics came from multiple organizations, not one. Askew uses a variety primary sources, all of which emphasized the leading role played by the Red Swastika Society in doing burial work, and concludes and all the other organizations, including the Red Cross Society, were subcontracting with the Red Swastika Society and that is why their burial statistics were all included together. Therefore adding the Red Swastika Society's stats with any of the other stats, such as those of the Red Cross Society, is actually double-counting. Between Askew and Yamamoto, Askew is a bit more strident in insisting that everything was done by the Red Swastika Society, whereas Yamamoto just concludes that they did the "bulk" of the burials. All three sources concur that the Chongshantang's burial statistics were fabricated. The Chongshantang claimed to have buried three times the number of corpses that the Red Swastika Society buried, though no contemporary eyewitnesses ever saw the men of the Chongshantang doing a significant number of burials. Askew notes that one of the very few contemporary documents that actually does mention the Chongshantang says that it was NOT involved in burial work! In other words, the Red Swastika Society was the main organization doing burials, and it added into its own statistics the statistics of its subcontractors and other associate groups. If the books you've been reading don't even mention this research, I would suspect those books are very badly out of date. Although the works of Yamamoto, Wakabayashi, and Askew are quite new, most of the basic information on which they are based has been around since the 1980's.CurtisNaito (talk) 09:43, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Askew's description of the Red Swastika as "the only organization involved in burial works" is not worth of refuting. Even the other two scholars, as what you mentioned, admit that there were other organizations burying corpses in Nanking. Askew was just playing the old tune of the delialists which collapsed long before.

"Yamamoto notes, for instance, that discrepancies exist between contemporary data on the Red Swastika Society's burials while they were taking place and the Society's final tallies which were much larger."

Having checked the daily burial records quoted in Xianwen Zhang's Nanking Massacre: a complete history published in 2012, I don't see any discrepancy. The records were in great details. Not only were the number of corpses processed each day recorded, but also reported locations where the corpses were found as well as tomb sites. The records were created in 1938, dating from January to October, totaled 43071 bodies. The "discrepancy" noted by Yamamoto is simply because he cited an incomplete record which was created in March, lacking the stats in the following 7 months. Furthermore, Yamamoto quoted Bate's letter written in March that Bates estimated 10K victims insdie the walled city by burial records from organizatioins involved. However, this is a strong evidence against Yamamoto's claim. Bates' letter showed that the Red Swastika was not, the primary orgnization burying corpses inside the walled city (as what Yamamoto claimed), for Zhang's book cited the Red Swastika's burial count within the walled city was only 1793 by March, a figure far less than the total 10K reported by Bates in the same month.

"Yamamoto notes that if the Red Swastika Society's burial stats and the Red Cross Society's burial stats were added together, it would come close to filing the gap."

Yamamoto has mistaken coincidence for logical reasoning. It is an apparent logical error. And, as explained above, there was no gap between the stats at all.

"Askew ... concludes and all the other organizations, including the Red Cross Society, were subcontracting with the Red Swastika Society... "

Though Askew's "conclusion" is as biased and unreliable as the denialists', I'd like to cite Zhang's book to refute it in details, with daily burial records of the Red Cross and the Red Swastika. The daily records of the Red Cross total 22691, while the Red Swastika's amount to 43071. Noting that the geographical regions of the corpses found by the two organizations did not overlap at all, one must admit that the claim by Askew and Yamamoto, that the corpose count of the Red Cross was part of the Red Swastika's, is incorrect and absolutely impossible. Since the complete records are too lengthy, I only quote their records in February 1938.

I keep the Chinese names of the places so that you can search by Google maps and have a visual impression of the different coverage of the two organizations. --MtBell 12:33, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

None of those authors is a denialist in any way. Askew shows that primary sources of the time acknowledge the Red Swastika Society as playing the central role in the burial effort. Large-scale burials efforts would not likely have been possible without the backing of the Japanese, and the Japanese were supporting only the Red Swastika Society. The Japanese were making notes on the Society's burial efforts and, as Yamamoto notes, the statistics which the Red Swastika Society finally unveiled after the war were different in key ways. Askew includes in his book the breakdown of the statistics of the burial organizations, but he notes that the final tallies recorded by the organizations were often modified much later. The daily breakdowns seem to not have been actually recorded on the days the burials took place. For instance, the Red Cross Society claimed to have buried many thousands of individuals just outside the walls of Nanking at the end of December and beginning of January, but both Japanese documents and testimony of Chinese burial workers reveal that no burials were undertaken outside the walls until January 21 1938. Bates based his estimate solely off the Red Swastika data, but Yamamoto notes that he fully acknowledged at the same time that their data included burials by other organizations. The conclusion of Askew and Yamamoto is that the Red Cross data was part of the Red Swastika's Society's final burial tallies.

Having said that, why don't we just add "by the Red Swastika Society" after "buried"? Can we agree on that?CurtisNaito (talk) 13:21, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

(I would agree. That sounds like a fair compromise.)TH1980 (talk) 08:01, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

But while the Red Swastika Society figures include almost all the burials, they don't represent the full death toll because they don't include destroyed corpses and, as far as broad-range massacre victims go, they don't include victims in the remote rural areas. In order to ensure readers aren't confused, I've agreed to put a death toll estimate alongside this information ... CurtisNaito (talk) 02:17, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

describing atrocities related to the battle only

Concerning the statement about the burial statistics, basically I didn't want the section on the Nanking Massacre to be nothing more than a summary of that article. I wanted to focus primarily on the components of the massacre which were related in some way to military activity. Most the sources I consulted for this article seem to agree that a majority if not a very large majority of the victims of the atrocity were POWs and suspected POWs. Many of these individuals were rounded up during the mopping-up operations that took place after the battle and massacred. The way the mopping-up operations were undertaken was linked directly to the outcome of the battle, in which the Chinese Army did not surrender or retreat, but rather, the Army basically just collapsed, with the former troops throwing away their uniforms and going into hiding. This demonstrates the linkages that existed between the Battle of Nanking and the Nanking Massacre.CurtisNaito (talk) 02:17, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

about the consensus

...but we should use the consensus of 40,000 to 200,000. Most of the people we've consulted so far at least disagree that the alleged consensus of 40,000 to 300,000 currently exists, and in fact Zmflavius and myself don't seem to think such a consensus ever existed.CurtisNaito (talk) 02:17, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Death toll

What I see from the book "China's Bitter Victory: The War with Japan, 1937-1945" . The figure from Marvin Williamsen is "Trapped Chinese troops were treated with frightening barbarity by their conquerors. As a matter of policy all were tortured and butchered. But soldiers were hardly the only victims of the nearly incredibly cruelty and the vicious, uncontrolled behavior of the Japanese troops. After recounting some, but only some, of the unspeakable horros visited upon the residentes of Nanking in two weeks of outrage. Over 20,000 civilian men of military age had been slaughtered. At least 20,000 young women and girls had been raped, murdered, and then gruesomely mutilated. Over 200,000 civilians,and possibly as many as 300,000, had been senselessly massacred" 03:16, 27 December 2014 Miracle dream (talk)

It's clear how poor those statistics are though. They are actually from Frank Dorn, not Marvin Williamsen. Dorn wrote his book back in 1974 before very much research had been done on the massacre. His entire book has no sources and no citations and he never states how his figures were calculated or what data his estimates were based off. My suspicion is that he took his numbers from the verdict of the IMTFE, but he was fairly careless in the way he recorded his data. He gives "over 200,000 civilians" as the death toll of the massacre, without providing a citation but most likely from the IMTFE verdict. However, in the previous sentence of his book he says the Japanese killed "over 20,000 civilian men" a statement which seems to be taken directly taken from Miner Searle Bates' testimony at the IMTFE. However these two estimates are mutually exclusive because, as David Askew made very clear in his article "The Scale of Japanese Atrocities in Nanjing", Bates did not accept the validity of the Chongshantang burial records which the IMTFE did include. It's like I said before, for the purposes of this article we should focus on up-to-date and reliable estimates. Information by specialist scholars who have stated how they calculated their data is ideal. Dorn was a military office. He was not a historian at all, much less a historian of the Nanking Massacre. His estimates are of completely unknown origins and are clearly not reliable.CurtisNaito (talk) 03:40, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Really, It's clear those statistics are very poor because you think they are poor. Even Frank Dorn and Marvin Williamsen are history scholar and have professional experience in this area. They are still poor because you think they are poor,right? Marvin Williamsen cited this figures in his publication. It would be really silly to say that it's excellent for a Misplaced Pages editor to read some sources from some publications or judgement from International Military Tribunal of the Far East and the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal and write his own description of it or simply deny it, but that it's impossibly bad to have actual professionals read and research and write a description of it. Amateurs are not always better than professionals, especially when it comes to evaluating something technical. As I said, Marvin Williamsen has professional experience in this area and he is a professor and scholar. When he cited something, that means he agree with this except he want to debate with this. It is impossible bad to say some professors read and research some sources and cited materials. Also, this sources has been published. In wiki rule, if there is a reliable publication, we should neutrally cited each of them. I said before, I personally suspect the figures from 40,000 to 150,000 but I can accept it because I always try to follow the wiki rule. However, you will never accept figures you suspected even they are from some publication of professional scholars. This is a kind of un-neural attitude in wiki or we can call it as personal interest. Now in this case, you are one of amateurs here but Frank Dorn and Marvin Williamsen are professional scholar. As I said, amateurs are not always better than professionals, and actually in common cases, amateurs are much worse than professional scholar. Do you know why I use figures from these two professors? It is because they are Americans. Actually whenever I use figures from Chinese scholars, you always simply ignore them while I always accepted figures from Japanese scholars. It is really unfair.

Then it seems you always forgot an important wiki principle here. That is wiki is not the place for academic seminar. Nobody can do original research here and every figures should be neutrally cited from publication. Hence, when the sources are publications from some famous professional scholars, it simply follow the rule of wiki. When you deny the figures from professional scholars' publication by some of your opinion, it is simply a kind of original research.

Then it is very silly to simply deny figures from International Military Tribunal of the Far East and the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal by 1 or 2 week discussion among the wiki amateurs. As I said, it is another kind of original research. Expecially, the International Military Tribunal of the Far East spent two years by 11 countries to investigate the rape and massacre.

It is really funny to deny the sources from 1974. By this theory, after 10 years, we should delete all contents of wiki because we should consider all of these sources are out of date. Can you imagine to deny the figures from Nuremberg trials when we research Holocaust? Do you know Commentarii de Bello Gallico and Records of the Grand Historian were even used today as the primary sources for history research. They were written in 2000 years ago. Did you see any scholar deny them because they are all out of date?

By the way, there is another funny thing here. We cannot use figures from Chinese or Taiwanese scholars. We cannot even use figures from International Military Tribunal of the Far East and the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal which were two of the most important event in WW2. However, we can use any figures from Japanese scholars. In this discussion, it seems we should not use every sources which supported or cited from International Military Tribunal of the Far East and the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal but we should use any sources which deny them. It is a really "neural" way to cite sources.

Hence, all questions I need to ask are "Is the book a publication from scholars","are Frank Dorn and Marvin Williamsen professional scholar?", "Did Marvin Williamsen use this figure in his publication?"07:28, 27 December 2014‎ Miracle dream (talk)

Claims based off evidence are more valid than claims based off nothing. Dorn provided no citations for his estimates and did not say how he calculated them. The same is true of the Christian Science Monitor article. Probably these two sources just copied their estimates from the postwar war crimes trials, but they could have just as easily invented them out of thin air. A claim which has no evidence to back it up is NOT equivalent to the thorough research done by Nanking Massacre specialists like Wakabayashi. Wakabayashi provides extensive details on the burial data, eyewitness accounts, and Japanese military records that he used to determine the empirically valid range of figures. This is clearly a superior estimate. No wonder Leibold called it "the most careful and thoroughly empirical analysis of the death count to date". Furthermore, we shouldn't say that "40,000 to 300,000 Chinese civilians" were massacred, firstly because only one of the three sources you cite indicates only civilians. Wakabayashi and Leibold include the separate category of POWs in their range, and the Christian Science Monitor article just says "Chinese", not civilians specifically. But at any rate, it's not appropriate to take the carefully calculated range of estimates made in 2008 by a specialist scholar (Wakabayashi's 40,000 to 200,000) and then simply tack onto it the mysteriously calculated figure of 300,000 dredged up from an old 1974 book without any citations and a short newspaper article also without any sources. It's not hard to see which works here ought to be considered more reliable by Misplaced Pages standards, and it's an inappropriate synthesis to simply combine together a reliable estimate with an unreliable one and then somehow title them the "most reliable sources". Given how many recent and high-quality estimates have been made in recent decades for the death toll of the Nanking Massacre, there is simply no imaginable reason why, for this article, we should use clearly discredited estimates like those of the postwar war crimes tribunals. Some of the very same sources you have cited, including Kasahara and Wakabayashi, have strongly called into question their conclusions. If you believe so strongly that the IMTFE made a highly reliable estimate of the massacre, it only shows that you have not yet read the sources you are citing in the article. If you just read these sources, you can see that my questioning of the estimates of the tribunals is not original research, but rather the latest research of modern scholars. Between Records of the Grand Historian, and a more recent history book by, say, John Fairbank, obviously Wikipedians would favor the more recent research. Between citing the Bible, and citing a more recent history book by, say, Bart Ehrman, obviously Wikipedians would favor Ehrman. You say that Records of the Grand Historian is a great primary source, but you must remember that Misplaced Pages is not supposed to be based off primary sources. If nothing had been written on the Nanking Massacre since the 1940's, then of course the postwar war crime trials would be the best sources to cite, but why cite such old sources which are so widely criticized when more recent and more widely acclaimed scholarship does in fact exist? As Wikipedians, we do have to analyze sources for reliability, and not just include every published source equally. Published sources written by credentialed scholars have put the death toll of the Nanking Massacre between zero at minimum and ten million at maximum, but even if a small number of non-specialist historians put an estimate into a book, that does not automatically make that estimate equally valid to every other estimate in existence. If we are not allowed to analyze sources for reliability, then we would be required to write in zero to ten million as the correct range of estimates. However, if we take a look at recent scholarship by specialist historians, research which we can believe based on EVIDENCE rather than pure faith, then the range of 40,000 to 200,000 stated by Wakayabashi emerges as the overwhelmingly dominant set of figures.CurtisNaito (talk) 07:42, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

No, totally wrong. Between Records of the Grand Historian, and a more recent history book by, say, John Fairbank, obviously Wikipedians will neurally cite both even they have some of conflict. This is the rule of wiki which required every editor neurally cited each other. Then every scholar who want to research Chinese history will read and research the book Records of the Grand Historian but not all scholar will cite sources from John Fairbank. It is because the book written in that time will more easily get the concurrent information. For example, we record something happened today will be more accuracy than something happened in 20 years ago. This is the history not engineering technical problem. Even history professional scholar will not say something like sources from John Fairbank is more accuracy Records of the Grand Historian. When you said something like this, you just prove you are one of the amateurs. I know you don't believe Bible, However I don't want to talk much about Bible because it involved some religious problem.

"Claims based off evidence are more valid than claims based off nothing" No, there are two problem here. The first is actually claims based off investigation is the most valid. Why every scholar need to research International Military Tribunal of the Far East and the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal? It is simply because they used more than two years to investigate this thing.

The second is what I said It would be really silly to say that it's excellent for a Misplaced Pages editor to read some sources from some publications or judgement from International Military Tribunal of the Far East and the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal and write his own description of it or simply deny it, but that it's impossibly bad to have actual professionals read and research and write a description of it. When a professional scholar cited sources or claims, they do research here. Now what you do here is you ignore the sources from professional scholars by your own standard but it is not the wiki standard. Some scholar based on their own research to write a professional claims. Then we use our amateurs analysis to deny the summary from professional scholar.

Whatever you think, Wakayabashi is also one of huge numbers of scholars. It just like Frank Dorn and Marvin Williamsen are two of scholars in this area. We can neutrally cite all of materials from them. I find some figures from previously discussion.

On December 13, 1937, the Japanese troop entered Nanjing, beginning a six-week bloodbath in which an estimated 300,000 Chienese civilians were killed.Official PRC histography has placed the number of death at around 300,000 (some even take this number as conservative and place the number close to 450,000). Some Japanese revisionists claim as few as 5,000 died; others claim the entire incident was a fabrication. Most Western scholars accepted the 300,000 death toll.--Michael Berry, A History of Pain, Columbia University Press, 2013 (isbn:9780231512008)

Well, in that case, what you do think about actually including a death toll estimate range of zero to ten million in the article? I have citations from published sources for both of those figures.

Concerning Hora Tomio, his own books mention the death toll of 200,000 but that includes Chinese soldiers killed in action. For an English-language source, see Takashi Yoshida's The Making of the Rape of Nanking, which says "Hora estimated that some 100,000 combatants were killed while fighting and that 100,000 civilians were killed during and after the battle."

Concerning Barry, he provides no citation for his claim, which does include one clear factual error anyway. If you read Jonathan Spence's book The Search for Modern China, he does NOT estimate the death toll of the massacre at 50,000. What he says is that contemporary sources put the figure at 40,000. I would guess he was probably referring to Miner Searle Bates and Lewis Smythe. Spence never said that he agreed with that figure. But at any rate, if we utilize your policy of accepting all sources equally, the correct range based on Berry would be zero to 450,000. Would you be alright with using zero to 450,000 as the appropriate range for this article?CurtisNaito (talk) 08:24, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

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